Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
What is the "soul" of money.
In a speech last month to Goethe University's Institute for Law and Finance in Frankfurt, Germany, the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, Agustin Carstens, declared that the "soul" of money is trust in central banks:
https://www.bis.org/speeches/sp220118.htm
You know -- the institutions that, often in secret, bestow huge amounts of money on their cronies in politically connected financial institutions, rescuing the rich at the expense of the poor; that intervene secretly to manipulate and destroy markets, picking winners and losers; and that, their executives being unelected, generally subvert democracy.
This is especially so with the BIS itself, which every day is the broker for the secret interventions in the gold market of its central bank members. Ask the BIS what it does in the gold market, for whom, and for what purpose and you won't get any talk about the "soul" of money. You'll get the door slammed in your face. Ask to attend the meetings of the BIS board as it schemes to control the world's money and you'll be told to wait for the press release.
As a practical matter the "soul" of money isn't trust at all. It is just the power of government to levy and collect taxes that must be paid in the government's own currency. That is, taxation is the primary source of value for any major currency. If there were no taxes, or if payment of taxes was allowed in something other than a government's own currency, the currency quickly might lose value amid competition with various forms of money.
Any central bank that wants its money to have a "soul" worth trusting should begin by trusting the people using that money to know everything the central bank is doing -- to observe closely all its operations.
Of course there are no such central banks.
That central banks and the BIS itself don't trust the people they purport to serve signifies that they don't deserve any trust themselves.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
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