Though the French central bank is, like other Western
central banks, the agency of a nominally democratic government, its gold and
currency market interventions will remain secret, the bank's director of
market operations, Alexandre Gautier, wrote yesterday in a reply to our
friend Fabrice Drouin Ristori, chief executive officer of Goldbroker.com.
In presentations to the London Bullion Market Association
in 2013 and last year, Gautier reported that the Banque de France has been
trading gold for its own account and the accounts of other central banks
"nearly on a daily basis" and that central banks lately have been
managing their gold reserves "more actively":
http://gata.org/node/13373
http://gata.org/node/14716
Citing those presentations, Ristori last week wrote to
Gautier asking for details about the Banque de France's gold trading,
including its objectives and counterparties:
http://www.gata.org/node/14942
https://www.goldbroker.com/news/french-gold-reserves-letter-alexandre-ga...
Replying yesterday, Gautier refused to elaborate on those
presentations, writing: "I cannot expand beyond their contents because
Banque de France does not make public the management of its foreign exchange
reserves. Furthermore, we very seldom give interviews."
Of course this particular episode of the unaccountability
of central banking will not surprise anyone who has been following GATA. The
question that now should be prompted by Gautier's reply to Ristori is: Why
doesn't the Banque de France disclose its "management" of its
foreign exchange reserves? We may assume that the answer is that the
objective of this "management" is largely market manipulation and
that transparency would defeat the objective.
Secret intervention in markets by central banks -- the destruction of
markets, what even some central bankers themselves have called
"financial repression" -- is such a big financial news story, the
only one that matters anymore, and would be so easy for mainstream financial
news organizations to pursue. They would need to ask only: Are central banks
secretly trading in the gold, currency, bond, and stock markets, directly or
through intermediaries, or not? If they are doing such trading, is it
just for fun or does it have policy purposes? If it does have policy
purposes, what are they? And to be successful do these policy purposes
require deception and expropriation of certain investors?
Gautier's acknowledgments -- that the Banque de France trades secretly in
the gold market "nearly every day" for itself and other central
banks and that the bank won't account for it -- are great gifts to
journalists. He practically writes the story for them. Of course GATA can
provide much more documentation for such a story:
http://www.gata.org/node/14839
But journalistic courage in the West lately seems to consist mainly of
publishing juvenile and gratuitiously insulting cartoons of the Prophet
Muhhammad -- peace be upon him -- and daring the religious crazies to do
something about it. Who in Western journalism has the courage to put to
central banks some specific questions about their secret market
interventions? Such questions are easily formulated --
http://www.gata.org/node/14606
-- and if enough journalists started asking, the government security
agencies couldn't get away with killing them all.
At least Ristori is still alive as of this hour -- peace be upon him too
-- and he has posted his reply from Gautier at Goldbroker here:
https://www.goldbroker.com/news/alexandre-gau...estions-abou...
