Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Gold swaps undertaken by the Bank for International Settlements, a major gold broker for central banks, increased 24 tonnes in September, from 30 tonnes to 54, GATA's consultant on the bank, Robert Lambourne, reports.
Lambourne calculated the BIS' swaps volume from the bank's September statement of account, which was published today:
https://www.bis.org/banking/balsheet/statofacc250930.pdf
His calculation presumes that the bank did not sell any of its own 102 tonnes of gold, for which there are no indications.
The BIS refuses to explain its gold swaps -- why they are undertaken and for whom. But since the bank is an organization consisting exclusively of central banks, the swaps must involve BIS members.
According to the BIS, its mission is to "support central banks' pursuit of monetary and financial stability through international cooperation, and to act as a bank for central banks":
https://www.bis.org/about/index.htm
In 2005 the head of the BIS' monetary and economic department, William R. White, gave a powerful hint about the purpose of the bank's gold swaps. White explained at a conference at BIS headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, where he may have assumed that only fellow central bankers were listening, that a primary purpose of this "international 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":
https://www.gata.org/node/4279
Translated from Obscurantic, the language of central bankers when they speak in public, this means that monetary and financial stability throughout the world requires rigging the gold market, gold being money far superior to government money. Hence the gold swaps, which allow gold to be applied where needed by central banks to prevent a free market from breaking out in the monetary metal and bringing some discipline to government currencies.
That's an older part of the gold story that can't be told by mainstream financial news organizations and market analysts.
The newer part is that Lambourne's calculations show that BIS gold swaps, which stood at 552 tonnes in 2021, have declined 90% since then.
This indicates a profound change of gold policy among most BIS members, apparently their defection from price suppression efforts in subservience to the U.S. dollar, to their acquisition of gold and recovery of leased and swapped gold in pursuit of national monetary and economic sovereignty.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
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