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Somebody besides GATA calls attention to the Bank for International Settlements
9:34p ET Saturday, April 11, 2015
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Zero Hedge tonight publishes a long excerpt from what may be the most recent serious treatment of the Bank for International Settlements, the 2013 book "Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank That Runs the World" by Adam LeBor --
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-11/meet-secretive-group-runs-world
-- and while it's worth reading, it may not convey much new to people who have been following GATA for more than a few months, since GATA often has called attention to the bank's crucial role in rigging the gold market on behalf of its member central banks.
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Indeed, the BIS was the lead defendant in GATA's first litigation about gold market rigging, brought in December 2000 by our consultant Reginald H. Howe:
http://goldensextant.com/BIS-PFcase.html
Also called to your attention since then by GATA:
-- In November 1983, 30 years before LeBor published his book, the financial journalist Edward Jay Epstein went over much the same ground in an article about the BIS for Harper's magazine:
-- A president of the Netherlands Central Bank who was simultaneously president of the BIS, Jelle Zijlstra, wrote in his memoirs in 1992 that the gold price was suppressed at the behest of the United States, a discovery made by gold researcher Jaco Schipper and conveyed to GATA three years ago:
http://www.gata.org/node/11304
-- William R. White, then the director of the monetary and economic department of the BIS, told a BIS conference in Basel in June 2005 that a primary purpose of international central bank cooperation is "the provision of international credits and joint efforts to influence asset prices (especially gold and foreign exchange) in circumstances where this might be thought useful":
-- The BIS actually advertises to prospective members that its services include secret interventions in the gold market:
http://www.gata.org/node/11012
-- According to its annual reports the BIS functions largely as a gold banking and gold market intervention service for its member central banks. On Page 110 of its report for 2013 the BIS says: "The bank transacts foreign exchange and gold on behalf of its customers, thereby providing access to a large liquidity base in the context of, for example, regular rebalancing of reserve portfolios or major changes in reserve currency allocations. The foreign exchange services of the bank encompass spot transactions in major currencies and Special Drawing Rights (SDR) as well as swaps, outright forwards, options, and dual currency deposits (DCDs). In addition, the bank provides gold services such as buying and selling, sight accounts, fixed-term deposits, earmarked accounts, upgrading and refining, and location exchanges." See:
http://www.gata.org/node/12717
Of course none of this trading by the BIS for its members is ever publicized. It is known only to the BIS, its members, and their favored agents in the markets being rigged, even as the market riggers presume to lecture other market participants about proper procedure and undeveloped nations about the virtues of free markets, as if there are any free markets left.
In the part of his book excerpted tonight by Zero Hedge, LeBor notes that the enormous power, secrecy, and unaccountability of the BIS are inconsistent with the democracy purportedly maintained by some of the bank's major members.
But reviewing LeBor's book two years ago for The New York Times --
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/books/review/tower-of-basel-by-adam-le...
Michael Hirsh was probably right that the BIS "has been more of a witness to history than a maker of it, more Forrest Gump than Superman." For, as Hirsch observed, "International finance is now largely dictated by global banking corporations, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the other major central banks that make up the membership of the BIS. More often than not, they base their policy on national or regional interest."
That is, offensive to democracy as its secret operations are, the BIS is more the servant of its members than their master. The big problem is not the BIS but that the political systems of the bank's major members have been taken over by their domestic financial classes.
To recover its democracy each country will have to wage its own struggle. Satisfying as it might be, nuking Basel tonight wouldn't really accomplish much. The bankers quickly would find themselves another clubhouse somewhere else, equip it with the most sophisticated computers and market-rigging programs, and be back in business in a week, with the trading room of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York picking up the slack in the interim -- at least until some financial news organizations dared to attempt the sort of journalism they've long been leaving to Zero Hedge.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
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