Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
If you're near Switzerland at the end of October and the beginning of November, you might want to head over to Basel to help the Bank for International Settlements celebrate itself.
The bank announced yesterday that it is planning "a special exhibition marking its 90 years of promoting global monetary and financial stability":
https://www.bis.org/press/p210906.htm
A detailed description of the exhibition suggests that the bank's history will be heavily sanitized:
https://www.bis90.org/?lang=en
Of course nothing seems to be planned to explain the bank's surreptitious assistance to Western governments, and especially the U.S. government, in rigging the gold and currency markets at the expense of the developing world.
The only exhibition of the BIS' market rigging seems to be at GATA's internet site, where the rigging is confirmed by BIS documents that apparently will not be part of the exhibition in Basel.
For example:
https://www.gata.org/node/4279
https://www.gata.org/node/11012
https://www.gata.org/node/21363
The BIS' description of the exhibition includes a section headlined "Focus on Europe (1930-60)" that somehow manages not to mention anything between 1939 and 1945, when millions of Europeans were killed practically within sight of BIS headquarters.
Wikipedia gives a hint about the cause of this omission:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_for_International_Settlements
At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the BIS Board of Directors -- on which the main European central banks were represented -- decided that the bank should remain open, but that, for the duration of hostilities, no meetings of the Board of Directors were to take place and that the bank should maintain a neutral stance in the conduct of its business.
However, as the war dragged on, evidence mounted that the BIS conducted operations that were helpful to the Germans. Also, throughout the war, the Allies accused the Nazis of looting and pleaded with the BIS not to accept gold from the Reichsbank in payment for prewar obligations linked to the Young Plan.
This was to no avail as remelted gold was either confiscated from prisoners or seized in victory and thus acceptable as payment to the BIS.
Operations conducted by the BIS were viewed with increasing suspicion from London and Washington. The fact that top-level German industrialists and advisers sat on the BIS board seemed to provide ample evidence of how the BIS might be used by Hitler throughout the war, with the help of American, British, and French banks.
Between 1933 and 1945 the BIS Board of Directors included Walther Funk, a prominent Nazi official, and Emil Puhl, responsible for processing dental gold looted from concentration camp victims, as well as Hermann Schmitz, the director of IG Farben, and Baron von Schroeder, the owner of the J.H. Stein Bank, all of whom were later convicted of war crimes or crimes against humanity.
* * *
Does the BIS board room display photographs of the board's former Nazi members? Will the bank's exhibition permit visitors to take a look?
While the BIS no longer may be assisting war criminals, by helping to suppress the gold price, and thus the prices of all commodities -- the primary exports of the developing world -- and by destroying free markets, the bank still isn't doing humanity any favors.
If you attend the exhibition, please write something about it and send it to GATA for possible publication. But it might be best not to let anyone at the BIS see your dental work.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
* * *
Join GATA here:
New Orleans Investment Conference
Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel
2 Poydras St., New Orleans, Louisiana
Tuesday-Friday, October 19-22, 2021
http://https//neworleansconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/NOIC2021_Powell.html
* * *
About the author
