Zero Hedge tonight publishes a long excerpt from what may be the most
recent serious treatment of the Bank for International Settlements, the 2013
book "Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank That Runs
the World" by Adam LeBor --
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-11/meet...roup-runs-world
-- and while it's worth reading, it may not convey much new to people who
have been following GATA for more than a few months, since GATA often has
called attention to the bank's crucial role in rigging the gold market on
behalf of its member central banks.
Indeed, the BIS was the lead defendant in GATA's first litigation about gold
market rigging, brought in December 2000 by our consultant Reginald H. Howe:
http://goldensextant.com/BIS-PFcase.html
Also called to your attention since then by GATA:
-- In November 1983, 30 years before LeBor published his book, the
financial journalist Edward Jay Epstein went over much the same ground in an
article about the BIS for Harper's magazine:
http://www.gata.org/node/8773
-- A president of the Netherlands Central Bank who was simultaneously
president of the BIS, Jelle Zijlstra, wrote in his memoirs in 1992 that the
gold price was suppressed at the behest of the United States, a discovery
made by gold researcher Jaco Schipper and conveyed to GATA three years ago:
http://www.gata.org/node/11304
-- William R. White, then the director of the monetary and economic
department of the BIS, told a BIS conference in Basel in June 2005 that a
primary purpose of international central bank cooperation is "the
provision of international credits and joint efforts to influence asset
prices (especially gold and foreign exchange) in circumstances where this
might be thought useful":
http://www.gata.org/node/4279
-- The BIS actually advertises to prospective members that its
services include secret interventions in the gold market:
http://www.gata.org/node/11012
-- According to its annual reports the BIS functions largely as a gold
banking and gold market intervention service for its member central banks. On
Page 110 of its report for 2013 the BIS says: "The bank transacts
foreign exchange and gold on behalf of its customers, thereby providing
access to a large liquidity base in the context of, for example, regular
rebalancing of reserve portfolios or major changes in reserve currency allocations.
The foreign exchange services of the bank encompass spot transactions in
major currencies and Special Drawing Rights (SDR) as well as swaps, outright
forwards, options, and dual currency deposits (DCDs). In addition, the bank
provides gold services such as buying and selling, sight accounts, fixed-term
deposits, earmarked accounts, upgrading and refining, and location
exchanges." See:
http://www.gata.org/node/12717
In the part of his book excerpted tonight by Zero Hedge, LeBor notes that
the enormous power, secrecy, and unaccountability of the BIS are inconsistent
with the democracy purportedly maintained by some of its major members.
But reviewing LeBor's book two years ago for The New York Times --
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/books/re...l-by-adam-le...
Michael Hirsh was probably right that the BIS "has been more of a
witness to history than a maker of it, more Forrest Gump than Superman."
For, as Hirsch observed, "International finance is now largely dictated
by global banking corporations, the Federal Reserve, the European Central
Bank, and the other major central banks that make up the membership of the
BIS. More often than not, they base their policy on national or regional
interest."
That is, offensive to democracy as its secret operations are, the BIS is
more the servant of its members than their master. The big problem is not the
BIS but that the political systems of the bank's major members have been
taken over by their domestic financial classes. To recover its democracy each
country will have to wage its own struggle. Satisfying as it might be, nuking
Basel tonight wouldn't really accomplish much. The bankers quickly would find
themselves another clubhouse somewhere else, equip it with the most
sophisticated computers and market-rigging programs, and be back in business
in a week, with the trading room of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
picking up the slack in the interim -- at least until some financial news
organizations dared to attempt the sort of journalism they've long been
leaving to Zero Hedge.
