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What are all those monetary metals derivatives held by a few big U.S. banks?
11:03p ICT Sunday, March 11, 2018
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
GATA's and gold's old friend Larry Parks, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education (FAME, http://fame.org), calls attention tonight to the third-quarter 2017 report of the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, which shows that just several government-insured U.S. banks hold $45 billion in derivative positions related to monetary metals.
The chart disclosing these positions, appearing on Page 32 of the OCC report, is reproduced at GATA's internet site here:
http://gata.org/files/PreciousMetalsDerivativesAtFDIC-InsuredBanks.jpg
The full OCC report is posted at GATA's internet site here --
http://gata.org/files/OCC-Q3-2017-ReportOnBankTrading&Derivatives.pdf
-- and at the OCC's internet site here:
https://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/derivatives...
Parks asks: Are these derivatives a "pass-through" on behalf of bank customers or are they held by the banks on their own behalf?
... Dispatch continues below ...
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Of course the probability is that these positions are actually the positions of the U.S. government and other governments using the banks as intermediary cover lest more explicit public records of gold and silver market intervention be created.
After all, filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission already have documented that governments and central banks are receiving discounts from CME Group, operator of the major futures exchanges in the United States, for surreptitiously trading all financial and commodity futures contracts offered by CME Group exchanges:
http://www.gata.org/node/14385
http://www.gata.org/node/14411
In January GATA published CME Group's discount schedule for such trading by governments and central banks:
http://www.gata.org/node/17976
How likely is it that a few U.S. banks would be so involved with the monetary metals derivatives without the approval or instructions of the U.S. government?
After all, in April 2012 Blythe Masters, chief of the commodity division of one of the banks cited in the OCC derivatives report, JPMorganChase, told CNBC that the bank maintained only client positions in the monetary metals, not positions of its own:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc9Me4qFZYo
https://www.benzinga.com/media/cnbc/12/04/2478161/jp-morgan-commodities-...
https://www.ft.com/content/efc5618a-7e66-11e1-b20a-00144feab49a
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/blythe-masters-blogosphere-silver-manipula...
Of course as far as we can tell nobody from the mainstream financial news media has ever asked Masters or JPM whether those clients include governments or central banks, as CME Group has admitted in its SEC and CFTC filings that it does a lot of secret business with them.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
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