Ronan Manly: El Salvador's gold reserves, the BIS, and the bullion banks

Gold market researcher and GATA consultant Ronan Manly has studied El Salvador's recent liquidation of most of its gold reserves and concludes that it is likely a small example of what the governments of bigger countries are doing surreptitiously in the gold market.

Manly writes: "The case of the El Salvador gold sales demonstrates that central banks can and do use the gold depositing facilities of the Bank for International Settlements and the gold-lending services of London Bullion Market Association commercial bullion banks such as Barclays, the Bank of Scotia, and Standard Chartered among many others. The case of El Salvador also shows that central banks actively use derivatives such as put options within the management of the gold component of their reserve portfolios.

"It would be naive to think that the bullion banks and the BIS are just providing these services to small emerging-market central banks in Central America. It would be more realistic to suggest that the bullion banks and the BIS are providing these gold reserve portfolio services (with scale) to many central banks."

Manly's research is headlined "El Salvador's Gold Reserves, the BIS, and the Bullion Banks" and it's posted at Bullion Star here:

https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/ronan-manly...old-reserves...