Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
GATA consultant Robert Lambourne reported today that gold swaps undertaken by the Bank for International Settlements, the central bank of the central banks and a broker for them in the gold market, fell markedly in November, from 54 tonnes in October to 39 tonnes.
The information can be calculated from the bank's monthly statement of account for November, published this week:
https://www.bis.org/banking/balsheet/statofacc251130.pdf
The decline in swaps implies that the BIS was not recruited to intervene as much in the gold market in November on behalf of its member central banks and that there continues to be little interest among them in incurring more gold liabilities or in letting their metal get far from home.
The report written by Lambourne on July 1 --
https://www.gata.org/node/23935
-- provides some history on the swap transactions and their volatility since the bank in 2010 adjusted its public accounting to make it possible for its gold swaps to be calculated, though the swaps are still not reported plainly by the bank.
As recently as January 2022 the bank's swaps exceeded 500 tonnes but they have fallen sharply since, indicating a change of policy toward or outlook on gold, a trend that seems to have correlated with increasing central bank acquisitions and repatriations, along with gold's rising price.
Nevertheless, the BIS has a well-placed confidence that no mainstream financial news organization will ever ask it to explain the purposes of the swaps and to identify the parties to them, lest gold cease being the immensely powerful secret knowledge of the financial universe.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
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