Even as the Bank for International Settlements was refusing on Tuesday to answer GATA's questions about the bank's activity in the gold market --
http://www.gata.org/node/17793
-- the bank's economic adviser and head of research, Hyun Song Shin, was addressing a conference at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, giving a speech titled "Can Central Banks Talk Too Much?":
https://www.bis.org/speeches/sp171114.pdf
And:
http://www.gata.org/files/BIS-HyunSongShinSpe...-11-14-2017.pdf
Shin echoed the 2005 remarks of another BIS official, William R. White, who said a major objective of central banking is "to influence asset prices (especially gold and foreign exchange) in circumstances where this might be thought useful":
http://www.gata.org/node/4279
Shin told the ECB conference: "If central banks talk more to influence market prices, they should listen less to the signals emanating from those same markets. Otherwise, they could find themselves in an echo chamber of their own making, acting on market signals that are echoes of their own pronouncements.
"On the other hand," Shin continued, "talking less is hardly a viable option. Central bank actions matter too much for the lives of ordinary people to turn the clock back to an era when silence was golden. Accountability demands that central banks make clear the basis for their actions."
In fact at the moment accountability seems to mean little at the BIS, whose press office replied as follows to GATA on Tuesday: "We do not comment on specific accounts / holdings of central banks or of the BIS."
(See: target="_blank" http://www.gata.org/node/17793)
So much for "the lives of ordinary people," who, instead of being told how the BIS is meddling in the markets, can just drop dead.
