Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

In an interview with Daniela Cambone of Kitco News posted today, Franco-Nevada Corp. Chairman Pierre Lassonde, a member of the Board of Directors of the World Gold Council, repeats his assertion, made last year in an interview with MineWeb's Geoff Candy --

http://www.gata.org/node/13105

-- that central banks "spend no time whatsoever thinking about gold."

Lassonde thereby contradicts what he told Cambone just seconds earlier about all the effort the German Bundesbank lately has spent lately fending off complaints that there's something fishy about the slow pace of repatriation of the German gold purportedly vaulted at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

And having achieved great respectability in the financial world, Lassonde must believe that he can overlook the dozens of documents collected and published by GATA establishing both the historic and current interest of central banks in the gold price.

Maybe Lassonde thinks that those documents, collected here --

http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21

-- are all forgeries, though some of them remain posted in the Internet archives of government agencies.

Or maybe Lassonde thinks that all those documents have been misconstrued, like the presentation made by the director of market operations of the Banque de France to the conference of the London Bullion Market Association in Rome last September, wherein the French central banker said the bank trades gold for its own account "nearly on a daily basis":

http://www.gata.org/node/13373

That is, maybe the Banque de France trades gold just for fun and "spends no time whatsoever thinking about it."

Maybe Lassonde thinks the same goes for the Bank for International Settlements, whose annual report for 2013 --

http://www.gata.org/node/12717

-- declares: "The bank transacts foreign exchange and gold on behalf of its customers, thereby providing access to a large liquidity base in the context of, for example, regular rebalancing of reserve portfolios or major changes in reserve currency allocations. The foreign exchange services of the bank encompass spot transactions in major currencies and Special Drawing Rights (SDR) as well as swaps, outright forwards, options, and dual currency deposits (DCDs). In addition, the bank provides gold services such as buying and selling, sight accounts, fixed-term deposits, earmarked accounts, upgrading and refining, and location exchanges."

Yes, maybe the BIS also gives no thought to the gold trading it does on behalf of its member central banks. Maybe it's just fun for the BIS too.

As a member of the World Gold Council's board, Lassonde is plainly in the disinformation business.

But then all these documents have been sent many times to Cambone herself, who, interviewing Lassonde, just sits there smiling and looking pretty while he spouts nonsense, never posing even one critical question based on the documentation.

Whatever business Cambone is in, it's not journalism.

Her interview with Lassonde is eight minutes long and can be viewed at the Kitco News Internet site here:

http://www.kitco.com/news/video/show/GSA-Investor-Day-2014/558/2014-02-2...

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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 -- Published: Monday, 24 February 2014 | E-Mail  | Print  | Source: GoldSeek.com

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