Saturday, February 13, 2010

The Bank Of England Engaged In Flagrant Gold Manipulation In The Interwar Period Via The New York Fed; Does History Repeat Itself?

by Tyler Durden

An article written by University of Tennessee professor John R Garrett, "Monetary Policy and Expectations: Market-Control Techniques and the Bank of England, 1925-1931", which describes in exquisite detail the gold falsification measures undertaken by the Bank of England in the interwar period in order to impact interest rates in a favorable direction, performed with the full criminal complicity of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, may mean paranoid "gold bugs" could soon be forever absolved of their "tin hat" wearing status as outright gold, and other data, manipulation by a major central bank is now proven beyond doubt. The implications regarding the possibility of comparable deceitful and treasonous acts by modern central bankers are staggering.

The Bank of England depleted its open-market portfolio by secretly sterilizing large gold inflows. Thereafter interest rates were influenced by manipulating reported gold flows.... A gold flow falsification was over two-thirds as effective as an open-market operation.


Falsifying critical gold data worked for Britain 70 years ago. Is it working now too? And is the BOE alone, or is Bernanke taking advantage of the Bank of England's experience? To be sure, the world was different with the Gold Standard the bedrock of monetary policy. Yet are the similarities between then and now not greater than the differences? With the shadow economy exposed as hinging on the investing community's desire to go with the prevailing "valuation" lie (a reason why the shadow economy in broad terms will take many years to return, if ever) the core asset is and always will be gold.

And yet the main question remains: why did the Bank of England openly and flagrantly manipulate critical data? Why did it mislead the citizens of the country it was supposed to serve? And if this happened in the past is it happening now? Is this the reason why the Federal Reserve is so opposed to exposing itself to public scrutiny and audits? If the BOE was engaging in outright fraud in the 1925-1931 period, why would today be any different?

Garett's mesmerizing report, published in the September 1995 issue of Monetary Policy and Expectations, has oddly not received much if any public notice, with not a single mention of the article or its implication in either the blogosphere or the mainstream arena. This is very unusual as Garret's disclosures would lend vast credence to not just gold bugs' claims that there is blatant (ongoing) gold data manipulation, but that Central Banks regularly engage in outright deception when it comes to achieving desired monetary policy results. To wit:

Montagu Norman, the Governor of the Bank of England... engaged in a large-scale deception that greatly over-stated the size of the effective open-market portfolio, understated the size of the gold stock, and misstated the size and even the direction of gold flows.


Not only that, but Garrett provides a direct link between secret gold market operations by the BOE and accumulation of US Treasuries: a critical concept not just in interwar Britain but more so currently, when faced with the need to finance trillions in budget deficits, the market is poised to decline by 25%+ should the US government experience a failed auction. Oh, and guess who was complicit in the BOE deception, and was used by the British central bank as a trading conduit? Why, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, of which Tim Geithner was president from 2003 to 2009.

Norman sold pound-denominated securities to sterilize the additional bank reserves created by the gold inflow. He simultaneously sold gold for dollars, lowering the Bank's reported gold stock, and bought U.S. Treasury bills with the proceeds. He also had all transactions carried out on the New York market by the New York Federal Reserve Bank so that they could not be traced to the Bank of England.


Read the full report here.

2 comments:

  1. It does seem Tyler may have overstated his case. The most common understanding of the word treason is that it involves acts "to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance." And history suggests the acts were in fact in support of the government (depending on how you define government). Although in the long run the act could result in the overthrow of the government as hyper-inflation often does. And if this is the expectation, the term treason seems quite appropriate.
    However, the first definition of treason in Websters is simply "the betrayal of a trust." And Tyler may have intended this more generalized meaning.
    My concern about Tylers article is that the first sentence is over 80 words long! By the time the reader gets to the short comment about treason he is exhauted and confused. What was the point of Tylers article?

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