All central banks swap gold, Venezuelan central banker says, but who asks why?

In the report excerpted below Reuters reminds us today that in February the president of Venezuela's central bank, Nelson Merentes, discussing gold swaps such as those the bank had begun, told the news agency: "It's normal. All central banks do this."

Seven years ago the U.S. Federal Reserve confessed to GATA, if inadvertently, its own participation in gold swaps, though, unlike Venezuela's central bank, the Fed insisted on secrecy for its swaps:

http://www.gata.org/node/7819

But if "all central banks do this," what is their objective?

In Venezuela's case the objective is plain: The kleptocratic regime that has driven the country into the ground needs foreign currency, for which the national patrimony is being pawned. But what are the Fed's purposes with gold swaps? And if Morantes is correct that "all" central banks undertake gold swaps, what are their purposes? What are they doing in the gold business? Is the objective similar to that of gold leasing by central banks, which, as Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress in 1998, was undertaken to hold the gold price down?:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testi...98/19980724.htm

That is, are gold swaps often undertaken to move gold around as necessary to intervene surreptitiously in the currency markets and thereby manipulate and rig them? For example, do exchange-traded funds like GLD participate in gold swaps with central banks to prevent shortages from developing in the gold market and thus to hold the price down and to defend government currencies and bonds?

And, of course, since the story has practically been hurled in their face, why aren't Reuters and other mainstream financial news organizations asking about those other gold swaps? In spite of these admissions, do the news organizations really believe the pontifications of Casey Research founder Doug Casey and others that central banks couldn't care less about gold?