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Another mysterious IMF gold sale -- plugging the London leaks?
8:05p ET Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Another unexplained sale of gold by the International Monetary Fund turned up today in another Reuters story based on another statement from the World Gold Council.
This time the sale is said to have been 18.5 tonnes unloaded in March. Two weeks ago the WGC reported that the IMF had sold 5.6 tonnes in February. (See http://www.gata.org/node/8578.)
Once again the IMF apparently has issued no formal statement about the most recent sales, disclosure coming only because the WGC thumbed through the IMF's monthly International Financial Statistics report and mentioned it to a select reporter or two. (No press release about the sales seems to have been posted at the WGC's Internet site either.)
But then the IMF isn't talking much about its supposed gold lately, having refused last month to respond even cursorily to some pointed questions from Business Insider's Vince Veneziani (see http://www.gata.org/node/8583), questions that were similar to questions put to the IMF by GATA itself in April 2008 and evaded just as badly. (See http://www.gata.org/node/6242).
GATA knows of two investment houses that recently applied to the IMF to purchase some of its supposed gold and were refused, one of them being Sprott Asset Management in Toronto. (See http://www.gata.org/node/8511.) Since the money of those investment houses presumably is as good as anyone else's, since the IMF for years has been issuing dozens of statements about selling gold for every actual sale made, and since the IMF as recently as last November issued a detailed statement about its supposed sale of 200 tonnes to India (see http://www.gata.org/node/7971), the IMF's unusual silence about its two most recent sales invites suspicion and speculation about where the gold is going.
If it's not going to investment houses that want to buy it and if its destination cannot be disclosed lest the markets figure out what is happening, is the gold being used to plug holes in the increasingly leaky dike of Western central bank and bullion bank gold price suppression? Is the gold being rationed to members of the London Bullion Market Association, whose impossibly short positions in gold and silver were disclosed over the last six months in reports by GATA board member Adrian Douglas (see http://www.gata.org/node/7908, http://www.gata.org/node/7911, and http://www.gata.org/node/8388) and then candidly confirmed by CPM Group founder Jeffrey M. Christian at the March 25 hearing of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (see http://www.gata.org/node/8478)?
It's too bad that the World Gold Council, which reportedly has an annual budget above $60 million, doesn't press these questions after thumbing through those subtle IMF reports. But then it's too bad that the World Gold Council exists mainly to ensure that there never is a world gold council.
Today's Reuters story is appended.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
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IMF Sold 18.5 Tonnes of Gold in March vs 5.6 Tonnes in February
From Reuters
via Yahoo News
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20100505/tbs-gold-imf-sale-7318940.html
NEW YORK -- The International Monetary Fund sold 18.5 tonnes of gold in March under the second phase of its gold sales program, industry group World Gold Council said on Tuesday.
The IMF's sales, which totaled 5.6 tonnes in February, are taking place under the umbrella of the third Central Bank Gold Agreement, which began in September 2009. Signatories of the CBGA are largely euro zone central banks, the largest gold holder of which is Germany.
Natalie Dempster, WGC's director of government affairs, said IMF released the data in its monthly International Financial Statistics publication.
Total sales under the pact, which limits signatories' gold sales to 400 tonnes a year, were just 7.2 tonnes to April 20.
The IMF began its planned sales of 403.3 tonnes of gold last year. It sold 200 tonnes to India and smaller amounts to Sri Lanka and Mauritius last year.
The price of gold gained almost 6 percent in April, its biggest one-month rise since November, as the credit ratings downgrades of Greece, Spain, and Portugal, sparked a flight to safety into the metal.
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