What's 1200 tonnes of gold among friends?...Those "friends" being the Bank of England and either the webmonkeys churning out whatever 4GL code running the BOE's app page, or some lessee (question to leaseholder: is there anything to hold?). Here's what GATA's Chris Powell had to say about this, at 2:26 in:
Click here if embedded video does not display.
Highlights:
- At 3:54, Powell discusses the dramatic price of gold drop on April 12 and 15 and if it might be related to the BOE gold discrepancy.
- If you've ever wondered what the difference between a gold "swap" and a gold "lease" is, this is at 4:58.
- At 6:12, Powell talks about the Federal Reserve's own Kevin Warsh, who inadvertently admitted to the Fed's gold swap arrangements, but refused to FOIA the terms.
- At 7:20 we talk about JP Morgan's "exit" [yes, scarequotes intentional] from the commodities market, and Goldman and Morgan's necessity to stay in the gold game (though not necessarily with skin). Powell suggests JP Morgan's kabuki-ish departure is simply a "giveaway for gold price suppression scheme."
- A little history of overt gold manipulation at 9:37 regarding a 1968 "gold pool" agreement amongst our favorite central banks. US gold stocks were drawn down from 25,000 to 8,000 tonnes within weeks. [We would add that the official holding of US gold is currently 8,000 tonnes...so basically nothing has changed since 1968?]
At 11:33, the lovely Justine Underhill explains how the gold market was blatantly exploited by our HFT friends after an inadvertent Non Manufacturing ISM leak (yes, we checked with them and they said is was a one-off...we'll see).
Click here or the image for a jump.
[The date on the graph should be Aug 5th...sorry]
The full report from GATA on the BOE's [non-]response to various inquiries, the lack of answers of which speak more voluminously than the opening volume of COMEX gold itself, may be found here. And here's the Nanex post from which we cribbed the chart. Also, hats off to Alasdair Macleod of GoldMoney for breaking this story.
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We also asked former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts (and author of "The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism") about interest rate manipulation by the Fed, and (surprise, surprise), we a got a response about gold price manipulation. It would seem they go hand in hand (Fed's and Morgan's). Begins at 2:49 in:
He debunks GDP, unemployment stats, and just about everything our Ministry of Disinformational BS (BLS?) throws at us on a monthly and quarterly basis. And yes, we do have to challenge the notion that the system we have could be considered anything but free market Laissez Faire capitalism. Just watch the damned thing.
Best,
Bob (Twitter: EnglishPI)