-- Published: Monday, 30 June 2014 | Print | Disqus
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
GATA's friend and consultant R.M. calls attention to some documents demonstrating that the Bank of England's involvement with the gold market may be even more intimate than generally understood.
In a presentation to the London Bullion Market Association's Fifth Annual Assaying and Refining Seminar, held in March 2013, a Bank of England customer relationship manager, Luke Thorn, disclosed that the bank participates on three LBMA committees.
"We are not a member of the LBMA," Thorn said of the bank, "but we continue to play a key role in the London market. We have observer status on the Management, Physical, and Vault Committees."
Thorn's presentation is posted at the LBMA's Internet site here --
http://www.lbma.org.uk/assets/ThornAR13Trans.pdf
-- and at GATA's Internet site here:
http://www.gata.org/files/LBMAAssayingSeminar-Thorn-03-2013.pdf
And at the LBMA's Precious Metals Conference in Rome last September, the head of the Bank of England's Customer Banking Division, Matthew Hunt, confirmed the bank's participation on two of those committees:
"More specifically on gold," Hunt said, "though we are not active traders in the market, we are a large custodian and some of the people in our team responsible for gold observation sit on the LBMA Management Committee and the LBMA Physical Committee as observers. Thus we retain a significant engagement with the gold market via that route."
Hunt's presentation is posted at the LBMA Internet site here --
http://www.lbma.org.uk/assets/Speeches/Hunt%2020130930.pdf
-- and at GATA's Internet site here:
http://www.gata.org/files/LBMARomeConf-09-30-2013-HuntBankOfEngland.pdf
Thorn said the Bank of England holds gold "on behalf of our customers, who are Her Majesty's Treasury, central banks, and some LBMA members."
Of course having private customers and such a "significant engagement" in a commodity market puts a central bank in a peculiar position. After all, as Thorn notes, there are many gold vaults in Britain besides the Bank of England's. So it may be asked why the bank maintains such business at all -- unless, of course, gold is not a mere commodity but the world's natural and international money whose valuation central banks may very much want to control lest gold embarrass their own currencies.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
* * *
Join GATA here:
Casey Research 2014 Summit
Hill Country Resort and Spa
San Antonio, Texas
Friday-Sunday, September 19-21, 2014
http://www.caseyresearch.com/summit/2014-fall
New Orleans Investment Conference
Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel
New Orleans, Louisiana
Wednesday-Saturday, October 22-25, 2014
https://jeffersoncompanies.com/new-orleans-investment-conference/home
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006:
http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html
Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt:
http://gata.org/tshirts
Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009:
http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal
Help keep GATA going
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:
http://www.gata.org
To contribute to GATA, please visit:
http://www.gata.org/node/16
| Digg This Article
-- Published: Monday, 30 June 2014 | E-Mail | Print | Source: GoldSeek.com
