You are here

Refusals to answer should be enough to settle the gold-rigging issue

Section: Daily Dispatches

10:55p ET Wednesday, November 29, 2018

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Questions are asked to get answers, but refusals to answer may be enough to permit conclusions to be drawn and thus in effect constitute answers as well.

With all these recent refusals to answer, who really cannot believe that governments and central banks long have been manipulating the gold market so they might control the currency markets and thereby defeat all markets?

Consider the following.

* * *

By letter on July 27 this year U.S. Rep. Alex X. Mooney, R-West Virginia, put many critical questions to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell:

http://gata.org/node/18407

Among the questions:

-- Given the recent tight correlation between the gold price and the value of the Chinese yuan, has China been rigging a market purportedly protected by antitrust law in the United States?

... Dispatch continues below ...



ADVERTISEMENT

Buy, Sell, or Store Precious Metals with Money Metals

Money Metals Exchange, a national bullion dealer recently voted "Best in the USA" by a worldwide ratings group --

https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2015/02/03/worldwide-ratings-organizati...

-- is a great low-cost source for precious metals coins, rounds, and bars. Money Metals also pays handsomely when you wish to sell your precious metals.

Shop online with Money Metals Exchange here --

https://www.moneymetals.com/buy

-- or by calling 1-800-800-1865.

Meanwhile, the Money Metals Depository --

https://www.moneymetals.com/depository



-- What is U.S. government policy toward gold? Does it remain, as U.S. government archives show it to have been at least since the 1970s, to drive gold out of the world financial system?

-- Is the U.S. government trading in gold or gold derivatives through the Treasury Department's Exchange Stabilization Fund, other government agencies, or other intermediaries?

-- How does the Federal Reserve reconcile the written statement of Fed Governor Kevin M. Warsh in 2009 that the Fed has secret gold swap arrangements with foreign banks with the assertion by Fed Chairman Powell in July this year that the Fed has had no involvement with gold swaps?

-- Has any audit sought to identify any encumbrances on monetary metals owned by the U.S. government?

Four months have passed and Mooney's letter has gone unanswered and even unacknowledged by the Fed and Treasury.

* * *

By letter in July GATA asked the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to examine the recent correlation of the gold price and the valuation of the Chinese yuan:

http://gata.org/node/18405

We asked the commission:

-- How does the CFTC allow a foreign government or entity to control the price of this important commodity and currency by trading in U.S. markets?

-- Is market manipulation by a foreign power happening with the authorization of the U.S. government?

Four months have passed and the commission has not answered or even acknowledged the letter.

* * *

By letter in September GATA asked the CFTC if the commission has jurisdiction over market rigging by the U.S. government itself or whether such market rigging is authorized by federal law, such as the Gold Reserve Act of 1934, which established the Exchange Stabilization Fund:

http://www.gata.org/node/18512

Two months have passed without an acknowledgment from the commission.

* * *

On July 2 your secretary/treasurer e-mailed the public relations department at JPMorganChase & Co. about the bank's involvement in the monetary metals markets, which occasionally has been controversial. The message read:

"In April 2012 Blythe Masters, then chief of the bank's commodities desk, told CNBC that the bank had no position of its own in the monetary metals markets and was trading only for clients:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc9Me4qFZYo

"Can you tell me if this remains the case and if the bank's clients in trading the monetary metals markets include governments and central banks?"

Five months have passed without an acknowledgment from JPMorganChase.

* * *

A year ago GATA e-mailed the press office of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, the gold broker for most central banks, asking for an explanation of what the bank does in the gold market, for whom the bank does it, and for what purposes:

http://gata.org/node/17793

The bank promptly replied but did not answer the question. The bank wrote: "We do not comment on specific accounts / holdings of central banks or of the BIS. Please see our latest annual report for details on gold. Further information can be gleaned from central banks directly."

But GATA did not ask the BIS to "comment on specific accounts / holdings of central banks or the BIS itself." We asked the BIS for an explanation of what the bank does in the gold market generally and why. Further, there is precious little information about gold in the BIS' annual report and most of the bank's members conceal their trading of gold and gold derivatives.

Indeed, a secret March 1999 report by the staff of the International Monetary Fund, obtained by GATA, says central banks conceal their gold loans and swaps precisely to facilitate their surreptitious interventions in the gold and currency markets:

http://www.gata.org/node/12016

* * *

Eight days ago the London Bullion Market Association issued a report purporting to disclose the weekly volume of gold trading by its members. Bloomberg News headlined its story about the report this way: "London Gold Market Comes Clean":

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-20/london-gold-market-co...

But Bullion Star's gold market analyst Ronan Manly, whose research through the years has exposed much about the LBMA, didn't believe that the association had "come clean" about anything. Manly found the LBMA's data report suspicious in part because it seemed to omit trading by central banks through LBMA members:

http://www.gata.org/node/18630

So your secretary/treasurer e-mailed the LBMA press office and LBMA Chief Executive Ruth Crowell, calling Manly's analysis to their attention and putting a question to them: "In the interest of the transparency the LBMA says it is pursuing, please tell me whether central bank trading data has been removed or omitted from the information you have just reported."

The LBMA has not responded.

* * *

Quite without any help from governments and central banks, GATA has extensively documented what is actually their longstanding policy to suppress and control the gold price to defend their control of the world and prevent free and transparent markets from developing. Various admissions and confirmations are summarized here --

http://www.gata.org/node/14839

-- and more can be found here:

http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21

GATA invites skeptics to dispute these admissions and confirmations specifically, rather than to dismiss them generally. GATA invites skeptics to try putting their own questions along these lines to governments, central banks, and their agents like the LBMA and to report any answers and refusals to answer.

Of course mainstream financial news organizations could settle this issue quickly and easily by examining the documentation, pressing a few questions of their own, and reporting what they found. Indeed, the refusal of those news organizations to attempt critical journalism in regard to central banking is central banking's greatest power, power greater even than their power to create and allocate infinite money in secret. For central banking operates so much in secret precisely because its policies work mainly by deception, and exposure would defeat them.

GATA long has been delivering its documentation to many financial news organizations around the world, with little result. But our friends can help by sharing our work, particularly with financial journalists who report about manipulated markets without addressing manipulation, and by sharing our work with elected officials and asking them to investigate as Representative Mooney is doing.

GATA aims to keep at it but fighting all the money and power in the world on behalf of free and transparent markets, limited and accountable government, and equality among the nations is no picnic. Don't think you can't do anything here. You can, and GATA needs the help.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org

* * *

Help keep GATA going

GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:

http://www.gata.org

To contribute to GATA, please visit:

http://www.gata.org/node/16