call the bis at 1-800-rig-mkts, page-27

You can always trust an economist to come up with the big-picture questions. Indeed, as one heckler poses, why on earth would central banks be interested in the gold market?

The 1975 letter on gold to the President addresses it clearly: The US gold policy will affect the shape of the international monetary system in the generation to come. Are they interested in containing gold’s price? If you believe that entering into a Collusive Oligopoly with Germany would help, certainly they are. Come to think of it how many western central bank gold market operations since 1975 have been supportive of a gold price containment policy, or conversely have the collective western central bank gold market operations since 1975 been supportive of a free market gold price?

While you think about that, the subject of this thread, the Bank of International Settlements is the central bank’s central bank. All central banks operate under the rules of and report to the BIS. The BIS mission to ensure monetary and financial stability would certainly be assisted if the gold market interventions they claim were aimed at containing the price of gold. To be convinced otherwise as some will no doubt try, one would want to see how much, where and when the BIS or its agents had spent on gold market interventions over the past few years.

Alas the data is on gold market interventions is top secret but any time you need to know about currency interventions, most central banks publish that after the operation. For instance the Bank of Japan recently announced it was secretly using commercial banks to assist in currency market interventions. Naturally such an unbalanced approach to reporting only arouses suspicions of a gold price containment policy. If only the hecklers could produce the evidence required to prove that BIS gold market interventions were trifling and meaningless.

Lastly, the tired argument that a rising gold price refutes existence of a gold price containment policy is like trying to argue that there is no greenhouse policy because carbon emissions are out of control, and needs a little work.