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[stonedyou] 15/12/2023 13:56

U.S. Congressman Asks Federal Reserve Whether Nations Are Repatriating Gold from New York.


Washington, D.C. (December 14, 2023) – As central banks across the globe continue to scoop up gold bullion for their reserves at record rates, U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV) is asking Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell some pressing questions about gold.

Gold currently trades at all-time highs in most currencies. Market insiders claim that Germany’s Bundesbank is again seeking to repatriate some of its gold vaulted with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The Fed recently refused to respond to inquiries from the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee about whether any foreign gold had been repatriated this year.

In 2013, the Bundesbank asked the New York Fed to return 300 tonnes of its gold, but the bank inexplicably took more than three years to fulfill the request.

This incident raised the doubts about the status and security of foreign gold vaulted with the New York Fed, since Germany’s gold had been assumed to be held unencumbered and in a segregated area within the Fed’s vault.

This week, Rep. Mooney wrote to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell as follows:

I remain interested in the Federal Reserve’s activities with respect to the gold market. The gold price – now hitting all-time highs – is in some ways a report card on your management of the current system of unbacked Federal Reserve notes and bank credit.

I am increasingly concerned that actions by the Fed, the U.S. Treasury, and deficit spenders in Congress have undermined the world’s confidence in our currency, making our nation more financially vulnerable – to say nothing of the impact of inflation on our own citizens.

Please respond in writing to the following questions no later than January 15, 2024:

Has the Federal Reserve or the Federal Reserve Bank of New York repatriated any gold to foreign nations this year? If so, to which countries and how much?
How much gold is the Federal Reserve vaulting for foreign nations now and how does this compare to the amount vaulted at the end of 2022?
Does the New York Fed’s statement of November 9 asserting that the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department did not intervene in the foreign exchange markets during the July-September 2023 quarter cover the gold market as well? (See
Mooney’s question about Federal Reserve interventions in the gold market echo concerns raised by some traders and policy makers that the Fed may be surreptitiously managing the gold price. The central bank has disclosed its interventions in many other markets, but it has not admitted to gold interventions.

“Americans deserve to know more details about the status and use of U.S. gold reserves and all other aspects of government gold activities, particularly as runaway debt and deficits combined with weaponization of the SWIFT payments system threaten the world’s confidence in the Federal Reserve note,” said Stefan Gleason, president and CEO of Money Metals Exchange.

Rep. Mooney has long been a leader on a sound money issues in Congress, having introduced reforms such as the Gold Reserves Transparency Act, the Monetary Metals Tax Neutrality Act, the Gold Standard Restoration Act, and the Digital Dollar Pilot Prevention Act.

A copy of Mooney’s letter to the Federal Reserve can be found here.

[cinoib] 15/12/2023 13:45

Justice, I have as passed my buy price and nice timing as has fallen ever since and gold now falling again as expected from the thieves of wall St,.

[stonedyou] 15/12/2023 12:20

Bullish on Bullion: China Will Drive The Gold Price in 2024COMMENT: 'Given ongoing geopolitical fragmentation, we now expect institutional purchases to remain elevated'


Geopolitical tensions spurred a major gold rebound in October, widening the gap between real yields and gold even further. In our view, the weakening of the decade-long correlation between real yield levels and gold is not only a reflection of the current higher inflation regime, but also reveals stronger structural demand.

Meanwhile, emerging market central banks have ramped up their gold holdings in an effort to gain more independence from the US dollar, and the shift in China’s growth model has increased economic uncertainty, boosting physical demand for gold from local investors. Taken together, the confluence of these factors should support gold at a structurally higher price level than prior to the pandemic, softening the historical influence of real yields.

Gold: Who's Buying it, and Why?

As the ramifications of events in the middle east hit home in early October, the price of gold rebounded, pushing the metal close to $2000 (£1566) per ounce. Notably, the surge followed a period of consolidation that gold had experienced on the back of rising real yields. As such, the precious metal's recent pickup has amplified its recent decoupling from the 10-year yield on US Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPs. This prompted us to take a closer look at the underlying factors.

Some time ago, we established inflation as an important long-term driver of gold. The precious metal's post-pandemic price dynamics largely confirm this hypothesis. Clearly, the elevated inflation rates seen over the past two years imply a markedly lower gold price in real terms (which we obtain by deflating the dollar gold price with US headline inflation). This essentially reduces the gap between real yields and gold.

Yet a substantial part of the gap remains unexplained. In our view, the decoupling of the decade-long correlation between long-term US real yield levels and the gold price largely points towards structural shifts in demand.

In an effort to gain more independence from the US dollar, EM central banks have stepped up their gold holdings substantially over the past two decades – in particular China and Russia. The pace of institutional gold buying saw another acceleration after the US and their allies froze Russian dollar reserves in response to the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. With official gold purchases exceeding 100 tonnes in H1 2023 alone, China continues to be the most significant institutional buyer year to date.

Difficult China Backdrop Makes Gold Shine

Gold has also become increasingly attractive for individual buyers. Again, China is a case in point. Once considered a safe asset, real estate has lost much of its appeal among local investors. The government's decision to deflate the housing market means the sector is in a structural decline. New sales and housing starts have fallen to levels not seen in a decade, and house prices have moved markedly lower over the past quarters.

Chinese equities have similarly underperformed over the past two years and the renminbi has revisited its 2022 lows, erasing the gains it made after China's reopening. With the government enforcing strict limits on capital outflows, it is hard for investors to turn to the outside world.

Along with its lack of viable and attractive domestic investment alternatives, China's macro backdrop makes gold shine ever more. Beyond this, local investors see gold as a hedge against the weakness of the Chinese renminbi. The unusually high demand for gold is particularly visible in a recent spike of the China gold premium – the spread at which gold is traded in Shanghai compared to London. The spread typically hovered around $10 per ounce over the past ten years, yet it temporarily rose above $50 per ounce during Q3 2023.

Given that domestic financial asset returns are set to remain highly volatile, we expect physical gold demand to stay strong in China, a level high enough to matter for the world market. Taken together, we expect the confluence of these factors to support the gold price at a structurally higher level than prior to the pandemic, weakening the historic influence of real yields on gold to a considerable extent.


Claudio Wewel is an FX strategist at J. Safra Sarasin Sustainable Asset Management

[stonedyou] 15/12/2023 12:14

Russia's gold reserves worth hits new record.


ST. PETERSBURG, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- The value of Russia's gold reserves has exceeded 150 billion U.S. dollars for the first time in contemporary history, due to the rise in gold prices, RIA Novosti news agency reported on Thursday.

The value of Russia's gold investments in November increased by 2.2 percent, reaching 151.9 billion dollars, according to RIA Novosti's analysis of Russian Central Bank data.

The previous high was 148.7 billion dollars recorded in October.

In physical terms, Russia's gold reserves decreased by about 16 tons to 2,315 tons in November.

According to the central bank, Russia's international reserves rose by nearly 3 percent to 592.4 billion dollars in November, the highest level since April this year. ■

[justiceforthemany] 14/12/2023 20:57

$2052 Gold.
Which idiot will be selling now on any rise, at a P/E of just 3-4?

[justiceforthemany] 13/12/2023 21:03

$2025 now but the rogue bar stewards manipulating this stock, keeping it down even when the P/E is just 3, don't care. FCA as ever useless. Anyone know someone who works for them? WTF is their purpose? All Homer Simpsons it seems.

[cinoib] 13/12/2023 20:05

Gold just took a flying leap to $2015, see if that moves it in the morning or we loose it all before close.

[justiceforthemany] 13/12/2023 16:26

Sitting duck.

[justiceforthemany] 07/12/2023 15:41

$2031 yet share price falls....ridiculous.

[johnbull1] 07/12/2023 09:07

Hi Cinoib, but that's last year. And advfn don't seem to realise that's in cents so their PEs wrong. Esidon think that EPS is going to more than 5cents, doesnt feel right. But im a buyer here anyways

[cinoib] 06/12/2023 17:45

eps is 3.17cents and pe is 5.24. Or so it says on here so someone is out a bit.

[johnbull1] 05/12/2023 11:46

I dont get Edison numbers. Costs unchanged and revenues up only some (remember an amoutn hedged) the 5.5cents EPS (or 4-4.5p) can't be right as last year was only 3.2 cents. But very cheap anyways.

[justiceforthemany] 04/12/2023 15:17

Edison now forecasting a higher EPS and target mid 30s
Upgraded dividend also.
At current prices EPS for year ending June 2024 = 5.5p
P/E THREE

hxxps://www.edisongroup.com/research/valuation-up-22-2-with-new-gold-price-forecasts/33010/

[stonedyou] 04/12/2023 12:37

Part 10


Meanwhile, not asking the right questions of the right people seems to be the first principle of most mainstream financial journalists and even the first principle of some gold and silver market analysts. These journalists and analysts take government secrecy in central banking for granted, even as the evidence of market intervention and manipulation explodes all around them. This acceptance of secrecy reminds me of the bumbling police detective played by Leslie Nielsen in the "Naked Gun" movies, particularly his performance in this scene:



Well, there is something to see here.

The precious metals promise great rewards to investors, but to get the necessary information you have to do a lot more work than other investors.

And you have to remember the remarkable properties of gold and silver. It's not just that gold is the most malleable and lustrous of metals, or that silver is the most conductive and reflective, but also that, once they get into the hands of central banks, bullion banks, and exchange-traded funds, gold and silver can become invisible.

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Join GATA here:

Vancouver Resource Investment Conference
Sunday and Monday, January 17 and 18, 2010
Hyatt and Fairmont Conference Hotels
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada


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Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt:



Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009:



Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon:



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GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:



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[stonedyou] 04/12/2023 12:36

Part 9


Then the Gods of the Market tumbled,
And their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled
And began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters,
And Two and Two make Four,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
Limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future,
It was at the birth of Man.
There are only four things certain
Since Social Progress began:
That the Dog returns to his Vomit
And the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger
Goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished,
And the brave new world begins,
When all men are paid for existing
And no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us,
As surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
With terror and slaughter return.

The gold price suppression story is important despite this week's dramatic rise in the gold price. For even as the price of gold has been rising, we really don't yet know what a fair price, a free-market price, for gold is, since gold has not traded in a free market for many years and is not trading in a free market now.

Indeed, since central bank intervention in the currency, bond, equities, and commodity markets has exploded over the last year, we don't really know what the market price of anything is anymore. Thus the gold price suppression story is a story about the valuation of all capital and labor in the world -- and whether those values will be set openly in free markets, the democratic way, or secretly by governments, the totalitarian way.

The specifics of the gold price suppression operation are complicated, but you don't have to remember them all if you know what they mean.

They mean that there is a currency war going on between countries and their central banks. There has been such a war for many years, only the victims were not really fighting back. Now some of them are. Signs of this war are now everywhere -- like the story published a month ago by the British newspaper The Independent that described an international plan to replace the dollar in oil trading:



Gold and silver have been and remain currencies and will be remonetized by markets eventually if not by central banks as well, because gold and silver are the only neutral currencies, the only currencies that are not the liabilities of any particular country.

But when you invest in currencies like gold and silver, you risk getting caught in the crossfire of the currency war. As in any war, truth is the first casualty in the currency war, even as secrecy is always the first principle of central banking.

[stonedyou] 04/12/2023 12:35

Part 8


The truth as GATA sees it is this:

First, gold is the secret knowledge of the financial universe, but it is becoming an open secret. That is GATA's work -- to break the secret open, to show how the gold price has been suppressed by central bank creation of imaginary gold in amounts to match and thus help conceal the vast inflation of the world's money supply. We will continue to use freedom-of-information law against the Fed and the Treasury Department about their policies toward gold and the disposition of the U.S. gold reserve. Of course central banks can no more afford to account fully for their gold reserves than the Fed and JPMorganChase can afford to disclose details of their negotiations for the rescue of Bear Stearns. Indeed, as my correspondence with the IMF suggests, the disposition of Western central bank gold reserves is a secret more closely guarded than the blueprints for the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Why can't the public and the markets be permitted to know exactly where central bank gold reserves are? Because in the hands of governments gold is a deadly weapon -- as the Reserve Bank of Australia acknowledges, the main weapon of currency market intervention.

Second, all technical analysis of markets now is faulty if it fails to account for pervasive government intervention.

And third, the intervention against gold is failing because of overuse, exposure, exhaustion of Western central bank gold reserves -- we estimate that the Western central banks have in their vaults only about half the 32,000 tonnes they claim to have -- and the resentment of the developing world, which is starting to figure out how it has been expropriated by the dollar system, a system in which people do real work and create real goods and send them to the United States in exchange for mere colored paper and electrons.

For years now the Western central banks have been attempting a controlled retreat with gold, bleeding out their reserves with sales, leases, and derivatives so that gold's ascent and the dollar's inevitable decline may be less shocking. Central bankers often convey part of this strategy in code; they warn against what they call a "disorderly decline" in the dollar, as if an "orderly" decline is all right.

The rise in the gold price over the last decade is just the other side of that coin -- an "orderly" rise, 15 percent or so per year, a rise carefully modulated by surreptitious central bank intervention.

But GATA believes that the central banks may have to retreat farther with gold than anyone dreams, and far more abruptly than they have retreated so far. We believe that when the central banks are overrun in the gold market, as they were overrun in 1968, and the market begins to reflect the ratio between, on one hand, the supply of real gold, actual metal, not the voluminous paper promises of metal, and, on the other hand, the explosion of the world money supply of the last few decades -- as the market begins to perceive the difference between the real and the unreal -- there may not be enough zeroes to put behind the gold price.

A century ago Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem that foresaw the decline of the empire of his country, Great Britain. Kipling's poem attributed this decline to the loss of the old virtues, the virtues that were listed at the top of the pages in the special notebooks, called "copybooks," that were given to British schoolchildren at that time -- virtues like honesty, fair dealing, Ten Commandments stuff. The title of Kipling's poem is "The Gods of the Copybook Headings," and its conclusion is a warning to the empire that succeeded the one he was living in:

[stonedyou] 04/12/2023 12:34

Part 7


This prompted me to raise one more question for Conny Lotze. I wrote her: "Is there any audit of the IMF's gold that is available to the public? I ask because, if the amount of IMF gold held by each depository nation is not public information, there does not seem to be much documentation for the IMF's gold, nor any documentation for the assurance that its custody is just fine. Without any details or documentation, the IMF's answer seems to be simply that it should be trusted -- that it has the gold it says it has, somewhere."

And that was the last I heard from Conny Lotze. She didn't answer me again. I had spoken a word that is increasingly unspeakable in the gold section of central banking: audit.

This week the IMF at last announced the disposal of some of the 400 tonnes of gold it long had been threatening to sell. Two hundred tonnes have been purchased by the Reserve Bank of India. This may or may not be a real transaction, a real transfer of gold from an IMF vault to a vault of the Reserve Bank of India. More likely this transaction is only a bookkeeping entry among IMF member central banks. But in any case it seems likely that the gold with which the IMF has been threatening the market for years is never going to hit the market, if it even exists. Rather, this gold will remain in the mysterious possession of central banks.

Lately central bankers often have complained about what they call "imbalances" in the world financial system. That is, certain countries, particularly in Asia, run big trade surpluses, while other countries, especially the United States, run big trade deficits and consume far more than they produce, living off the rest of the world. These complaints by the central bankers about "imbalances" are brazenly hypocritical, since these imbalances have been caused by the central banks themselves, caused by their constant interventions in the currency, bond, and commodity markets to prevent those markets from coming into balance through ordinary market action lest certain political interests be disturbed.

Yes, when markets balance themselves they often do it brutally, causing great damage to many of their participants. The United States enacted a central banking system in 1913 because for the almost 150 years before then the country went through a catastrophic deflation every decade or so. Central banking was created in the name of preventing those catastrophic deflations.

The problem with central banking has been mainly the old problem of power --- it corrupts.

Central bankers are supposed to be more capable of restraint than ordinary politicians, and maybe some are, but they are not always or even often capable of the necessary restraint. One market intervention encourages another and another and increases the political pressure to keep intervening to benefit special interests rather than the general interest -- to benefit especially the financial interests, the banking and investment banking industries. These interventions, subsidies to special interests, increasingly are needed to prevent the previous imbalances from imploding.

And so we have come to an era of daily market interventions by central banks -- so much so that the main purpose of central banking now is to prevent ordinary markets from happening at all.

By manipulating the value of money, central banking controls the value of all labor, services, and real goods, and yet it is conducted almost entirely in secret -- because, in choosing winners and losers in the economy, advancing infinite amounts of money to some participants in the markets but not to others, administering the ultimate patronage, central banking cannot survive scrutiny.

Yet the secrecy of central banking now is taken for granted even in nominally democratic countries.

Maybe the Federal Reserve's intervention to rescue Bear Stearns through the Fed's de-facto subsidiary, JPMorganChase, will cause some devastating public inquiries by Congress and the news media. But what a hundred years ago in the United States was called the Money Power is so ascendant today that it sometimes even boasts of its privilege. What other agency of a democratic government could get away with the principle that was articulated on national television in the United States in 1994 by the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Blinder? Blinder declared: "The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth."

[stonedyou] 04/12/2023 12:33

Part 6


Intervening in markets is what central banks do. They have no other purpose.

Central banks admit intervening often in the currency markets, buying and selling their own currencies and those of other governments to maintain exchange rates at what they consider politically desirable levels. Central banks admit doing the same in the government bond markets. There is even evidence that the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have been intervening frequently in the U.S. stock markets since the crash of 1987.

You do not have to settle for rumors about the "Plunge Protection Team," also known as the President's Working Group on Financial Markets. Again you can just look at the public record.

The Federal Reserve injects billions of dollars into the stock and bond markets every week, on the public record, through the major New York financial houses, its so-called primary dealers in federal government bonds, using what are called repurchase agreements and the Fed's Primary Dealer Credit Facility. The financial houses thus have become the Fed's agents in directing that money into the markets. The recent rise in the U.S. stock market matches almost exactly the money funneled by the Fed to the New York financial houses through repurchase agreements and the Primary Dealer Credit Facility.

Meanwhile, for years the International Monetary Fund, the central bank of the central banks, has been openly intervening in the gold market by threatening to sell gold. The IMF said its intent in selling gold was to raise money to lend to poor nations. This explanation was ridiculous on its face, though the IMF has never been challenged about it in the financial press. No, the financial press has been happy to tell the world that central banks that lately have effortlessly conjured into existence fantastic amounts of money in many currencies could find a little money to help poor countries only by selling gold.

Of course the intent of the IMF and its member central banks was not to help poor countries but to intimidate the gold market and control the gold price.

That the IMF intimidated the gold market so long with this threat of gold sales was all the more remarkable because the IMF probably has never had any gold to sell in the first place.

In April 2008 I wrote to the managing director of the IMF, Dominque Strauss-Kahn, with five questions about the IMF's gold. I copied the letter to the IMF's press office by e-mail, and quickly began to get some answers from one of its press officers, Conny Lotze.

My first question to the IMF was: "Your Internet site says the IMF holds 3,217 metric tons of gold 'at designated depositories.' Which depositories are these?"

Conny Lotze of the IMF replied, but not specifically. She wrote: "The fund's gold is distributed across a number of official depositories." She noted that the IMF's rules designate the United States, Britain, France, and India as IMF depositories.

My second question was: "If you would prefer not to identify the depositories for security reasons, could you at least identify the national and private custodians of the IMF's gold and the amounts of IMF gold held by each?"

Conny Lotze replied, again not very specifically: "All of the designated depositories are official."

My third question was: "Is the IMF's gold at these depositories allocated -- that is, specifically identified as belonging to the IMF -- or is it merged with other gold in storage at these depositories?"

Conny Lotze replied, still not very specifically: "The fund's gold is properly accounted for at all its depositories."

My fourth question was: "Do the IMF's member countries count the IMF's gold as part of their own national reserves, or do they count and identify the IMF's gold separately?"

Conny Lotze replied a bit ambiguously: "Members do not include IMF gold within their reserves because it is an asset of the IMF. Members include their reserve position in the fund in their international reserves."

This sounded to me as if the IMF members were still counting as their own the gold that supposedly belongs to the IMF -- that the IMF members were just listing the gold assets in another column on their own books.

My fifth question to the IMF was: "Does the IMF have assurances from the depositories that its gold is not leased or swapped or otherwise encumbered? If so, what are these assurances?"

Conny Lotze replied: "Under the fund's Articles of Agreement it is not authorized to engage in these transactions in gold."

But I had not asked if the IMF itself was swapping or leasing gold. I had asked whether the custodians of the IMF's gold were swapping or leasing it.

[stonedyou] 04/12/2023 12:32

Part 5


So there it is: The Federal Reserve today -- right now -- has gold swap arrangements with "foreign banks."

Eight years ago Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and the general counsel of the Federal Open Market Committee, Virgil Mattingly, vigorously denied to GATA, through two U.S. senators who had inquired of the Fed on our behalf, that the Fed had gold swap arrangements, even though FOMC minutes from 1995 quote Mattingly as saying the U.S. has engaged in gold swaps:



But now the Fed admits such arrangements.

Of course Fed Governor Warsh did not say that the Fed has actually swapped any gold lately, only that it has arrangements to do so -- and, just as important, that the Fed does not want the public and the markets to know about those arrangements, does not want the public and the markets to know about the disposition of United States gold reserves.

GATA is preparing to sue the Fed in federal court to compel disclosure of these gold swap arrangements.

There is a reason for the Fed's insistence that the public and the markets must not know what the Fed is doing in the gold market.

It is because, as the documents compiled and publicized by GATA suggest, suppressing the gold price is part of the general surreptitious rigging of the currency, bond, and commodity markets by the U.S. and allied governments, because this market rigging is the foremost objective of U.S. foreign and economic policy, and because this rigging cannot work if it is exposed and the markets realize that they are not really markets at all.

And the rigging increasingly is being exposed and understood.

In complaining about the manipulation of the gold market, GATA has not been called "conspiracy nuts" by everyone. We have gained a good deal of institutional support over the years.

First came Sprott Asset Management in Toronto, which in 2004 issued a
comprehensive report supporting GATA. The report was written by Sprott's chief investment strategist, John Embry, and his assistant, Andrew Hepburn, and was titled "Not Free, Not Fair -- the Long-Term Manipulation of the Gold Price." It remains available at the Sprott Internet site:



Then in 2006 the Cheuvreux brokerage house of Credit Agricole, the major French bank, issued its own report confirming GATA's findings of manipulation in the gold market. The Cheuvreux report was titled "Remonetization of Gold: Start Hoarding," and you can find it at GATA's Internet site:



And in 2007 Citigroup -- yes, Citigroup, a pillar of the American financial establishment -- joined the supposed conspiracy nuts. It published a report titled "Gold: Riding the Reflationary Rescue," written by its analysts John H. Hill and Graham Wark, declaring: "Gold undoubtedly faced headwinds this year from resurgent central bank selling, which was clearly timed to cap the gold price." You can find the Citigroup report at GATA's Internet site:



Even those authorities who do not want to run afoul of government institutions that with a few computer keystrokes can create virtually infinite amounts of money may have to admit the opportunity for central banks to manipulate the gold market. For it is widely acknowledged that annual world gold production is about 2,400 tonnes, that annual net world gold demand is about 3,400 tonnes, that gold production has been falling as demand has been rising, and that the thousand-tonne gap between production and net demand has been filled mainly by central bank dishoarding and leasing.

What do you suppose the gold price would be if central banks were not supplying more than a quarter of annual demand?

That dishoarding was not all innocent management of a foreign exchange reserve portfolio. Much of it was meant as market intervention -- and after all, market intervention is exactly why central banking was invented.