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China knows about gold price suppression, and U.S. knows China knows

September 4, 2011 Leave a comment

By Chris Powell | GATA

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China knows that the U.S. government and its allies in Western Europe strive to suppress the price of gold, and the U.S. government knows that China knows, according to a 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to the State Department in Washington.

The cable, published in the latest batch of U.S. State Department cables obtained by Wikileaks, summarizes several commentaries in Chinese news media on April 28, 2009. One of those commentaries is attributed to the Chinese newspaper Shijie Xinwenbao (World News Journal), published by the Chinese government’s foreign radio service, China Radio International. The cable’s summary reads:

According to China’s National Foreign Exchanges Administration, China’s gold reserves have recently increased. Currently, the majority of its gold reserves have been located in the United States and European countries. The U.S. and Europe have always suppressed the rising price of gold. They intend to weaken gold’s function as an international reserve currency. They don’t want to see other countries turning to gold reserves instead of the U.S. dollar or euro. Therefore, suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the U.S. in maintaining the U.S. dollar’s role as the international reserve currency. China’s increased gold reserves will thus act as a model and lead other countries toward reserving more gold. Large gold reserves are also beneficial in promoting the internationalization of the renminbi.

It’s hard to believe that, two years later, China is still leaving so much of its gold with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of England when even little Venezuela has publicly figured out the gold price suppression component of the Western fractional reserve banking system and is attempting to repatriate its gold from the Bank of England and various Western bullion banks:http://www.gata.org/node/10281

http://www.gata.org/node/10286

It is already a matter of record that China dissembled about its gold reserves for the six years prior to the public recalculation of its gold reserves in April 2009 that prompted the commentary in Shijie Xinwenbao. At that time China announced that its gold reserves were not the 600 tonnes it had been reporting each year for the previous six years but rather 76 percent more, 1,054 tonnes:

http://www.gata.org/node/9545

ZeroHedge, which seems to have broken the story of the Beijing embassy cable this evening, comments:

Wondering why gold at $1,850 is cheap, or why gold at double that price will also be cheap, or, frankly, at any price? Because, as the following leaked cable explains, gold is, to China at least, nothing but the opportunity cost of destroying the dollar’s reserve status. Putting that into dollar terms is, therefore, impractical at best and illogical at worst. We have a suspicion that the following cable from the U.S. embassy in China is about to go not viral but very much global, and prompt all those mutual fund managers who are on the golden sidelines to dip a toe in the 24-karat pool.

The ZeroHedge commentary can be found here:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/wikileaks-discloses-reasons-behind-chinas-…

In addition to fund managers throughout the world, this cable may be of special interest to the gold bears CPM Group Managing Director Jeff Christian, who says he consults with most central banks and that they hardly ever think about gold, and Kitco senior analyst Jon Nadler, who insists that central banks have no interest whatsover in manipulating the gold price.

In fact, of course, gold remains the secret knowledge of the financial universe, and its price is actually the determinant of every other price and value in the world.

The Beijing embassy cable can be found here:

http://cables.mrkva.eu/cable.php?id=204405

And, just in case, at GATA’s Internet site here:

http://www.gata.org/files/USEmbassyBeijingCable-04-28-2011.txt

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

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Updated: Sep 6, 2011

Another more recent cable released through Wikileaks provide even more damning evidence of US using gold as the “weapon of choice” in their currency war with China. Gold is the Political Metal.

This time the quick change of the U.S. policy (toward China) has surprised quite a few people. The U.S. has almost used all deterring means, besides military means, against China. China must be clear on discovering what the U.S. goals are behind its tough stances against China. In fact, a fierce competition between the currencies of big countries has just started. A crucial move for the U.S. is to shift its crisis to other countries – by coercing China to buy U.S. treasury bonds with foreign exchange reserves and doing everything possible to prevent China’s foreign reserve from buying gold. The nature of such behavior is a rogue lawyer’s behavior of ‘ripping off both sides’: taking advantage of cross-strait divergences, blackmailing the Taiwan people’s wealth by selling arms to Taiwan, and meanwhile coercing China to buy U.S. treasury bonds with foreign exchange reserves and extorting wealth from the mainland’s people. If we [China] use all of our foreign exchange reserves to buy U.S. Treasury bonds, then when someday the U.S. Federal Reserve suddenly announces that the original ten old U.S. dollars are now worth only one new U.S. dollar, and the new U.S. dollar is pegged to the gold – we will be dumbfounded. Today when the United States is determined to beggar thy neighbor, shifting its crisis to China, the Chinese must be very clear what the key to victory is. It is by no means to use new foreign exchange reserves to buy U.S. Treasury bonds. The issues of Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, trade and so on are all false tricks, while forcing China to buy U.S. bonds is the U.S.’s real intention.”

Gold: The Political Metal in Action

August 29, 2011 1 comment

By Alasdair Macleod | GoldMoney

Gold, politics, and Venezuela

Markets were abuzz last week with Chavez’s recall of Venezuela’s gold reserves not currently held in Caracas. Bulls are excited by the thought that withdrawing some 150-200 tonnes from the Bank of England and the bullion banks will force a bear squeeze on the LBMA, where gearing between the physical and paper markets are assumed to be 100 to 1. This stretches the relationship between paper gold and physical gold even further. They are also excited by the possibility that others might follow Venezuela’s example.

These concerns are real and should not be dismissed lightly, and the announcement could not have come at a worse time for LBMA members, who also face being caught up in a European banking crisis. Fear dominates, but the real trigger for this market emotion, and therefore its outcome, is global politics. Chavez is not just recalling his country’s gold to protect its integrity, he is waging an idealist’s war against the capitalist system and the US in particular. This is why he has threatened to move gold and foreign reserves to the countries he says he trusts, principally Russia and China, and why he is proposing to nationalise Venezuela’s gold mines.

He has picked the capitalist system’s weakest point. He has been told by his central bank that the Fed, the BoE and the Bank for International Settlements hold gold for the whole central banking community in the main trading centres, and that much of this gold exists only as a ledger entry and is not backed by physical metal. Whether or not Venezuela’s gold is held in these fractionally-backed sight accounts, or in earmarked accounts where the gold is held separately, we do not actually know; but there is little doubt that this move is designed to encourage other central banks to demand that their gold is also repatriated.

Chavez has a point. It is a fair bet that the International Monetary Fund’s 2009 sales of 212 tonnes of gold to other central banks are held in sight accounts as a condition of sale. India, Mauritius and Sri Lanka, who bought this gold, must be very nervous. Interestingly, India and Sri Lanka are also associated with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which was set up by China and Russia with the eventual goal of establishing an Asian supranational state.

This little-known connection is extremely important. The SCO even has a website. The central banks of its member states, observer states and dialogue partners are nearly all buying gold, overtly or covertly. This is more likely to be a co-ordinated economic attack on the West than just a purely random event.

Until Chavez’s intervention, China and Russia – who run the SCO – were gently turning the screws on the gold market: Russia by announcing regular purchases and China by encouraging its citizens to buy. They appear to have put the word about through the SCO that gold will have an important role in the SCO’s future, and those involved should have some. This is a world Chavez wants to be part of, and by removing his country’s gold from capitalist markets he is declaring his credentials.

Underlying this extreme socialist action is the Marxist belief that capitalism will destroy itself. Chavez believes it is his duty to give it a helping hand.

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Bullion Bank Run - Pressure from the Top and Bottom

August 21, 2011 3 comments

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The largest physical movement of gold in recent history is under way.

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s President wants to move his country’s 211 tonnes of gold (over $12B at Friday’s close) currently stored in American & European banks back to Caracas.

Major upward moves in gold prices over the past couple of years have been tied to central banks’ activities in the gold market, like the big purchases by India, China & Russia.

However, this recent move by Venezuela is rather unique. Instead than buying more gold, Venezuala merely wants to repatriate what is already hers. Unlike central bank purchases, which could involve just a ledger entry, this is the real thing. Physical gold is being moved around. What’s more significant is the discovery that after accounting for the 99 tonnes and 11.2 tonnes being held at the Bank of England (BoE) and Bank of International Settlements (BIS) respectively, about half of this huge stash are held in bullion banks like JP Morgan Chase et al - all major gold shorts. The move has left them scrambling for the real stuff.

This has led many to believe that the “Golden Retrieval” may have been a contributing factor to the most recent spike in gold price. It hits at the core of what GATA has been highlighting for over a decade - that bullion banks have been working hand in glove with central banks to suppress the price of gold, and that much of the physical gold at bullion banks and central banks are encumbered, leased or sold many times over, resulting in multiple claims for each bar of physical gold.

Bullion Bank Run - Pressure from all sides

When a major “client” like Venezuala suddenly decides to take physical possession of her gold, it may cause a run on the bullion banks, not unlike the much feared bank run for cash. Bank runs start when depositors begin to lose confidence in the banks holding their cash. All it takes is a a few large depositors withdrawing at the same time, thereby creating the initial stress in the fractional reserve banking system. Soon, the panic hits the masses and long lines form outside the banks.

Where is Germany's Gold held?

We have to depend on what the west often refers to as rouge nations - and there are good reasons to believe that there are several out there in a position to take the cue from Venezuala. That’s because it is common practise among central banks to hold their gold outside their countries at ”trading centers” where the bank conducts “its gold activities” - according to a report by GATA citing a comment from Bundesbank. Take a look at this list and see how many potential rouge nation triggers you can spot among the larger holders of gold. As highlighted by Adrian Salbuchi in the video above, there is a political element to Chavez’s radical decision. I can see several rouge nations in that list having similar political motives.

With increasing awareness that the perils of wars, global poverty and social injustice can be attributed in part to our present fraudulent monetary system, there have been many calls to help speed up the inevitable demise of the failed experiment to run a global economy on a debt-based monetary system. All adopt the common strategy of advocating the purchase of physical gold & silver (especially the latter) to protect oneself financially while helping to create stress in the supply of physical bullion to bring down the banking cartel. They include:

The set up before us is interesting. While the masses apply pressure from the bottom, we have the deep pocketed boys, institutional investors and money managers primed to move big time money into gold & silver following the recently concluded GATA’s Gold Rush 2011 London conference.  That’s pressure from the middle. Now, with the likes of Venezuala starting to apply pressure from the very top, we may see the tipping point for a bullion bank run soon.

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Updated:

Aug 22, 2011
Libya Down: The link between Libya’s swift regime change, its 144 tonnes of gold & Venezuela’s gold repatriation.

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