Tag Archive: Uncategorized

Central Banks Care about the Gold Price – Enough to Manipulate it!

2018-03-30

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2018-03-30

Gold for Oil
In early March, RT.com, the Russian based media network, asked me for comments and opinion on the subject of central bank manipulation of gold prices. The comments and opinion that I supplied to RT became the article that RT then exclusively published on its website on 18 March under the title “Central banks manipulating & suppressing gold prices – industry expert to RT“. This article is now transcribed below, here on the BullionStar website.

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Why the World’s Central Banks hold Gold – In their Own Words

2018-03-22

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2018-03-22

World Official Gold Holdings, February 2018
Collectively, the central bank sector claims to hold the world’s largest above ground gold bar stockpile, some 33,800 tonnes of gold bars. Individually within this group, some central banks claim to be the top holders of gold bullion in the world, with individual holdings in the thousands of tonnes range.

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US Gold Reserves, Of Immense Interest to Russia and China

2018-01-22

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2018-01-22

Russia China Real Gold Standart
Recently, Russian television network RT extensively quoted me in a series of articles about the US Government’s gold reserves. The RT articles, published on the RT.com website, were based on a series of questions RT put to me about various aspects of the official US gold reserves. These gold reserves are held by the US Treasury, mostly in the custody of the US Mint. The US Mint is a branch of the US Treasury.

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Gold Prices Rise To $1,326/oz as China U.S. Treasury Buying Report Creates Volatility

2018-01-11

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2018-01-11

Gold Price in US Dollar, 10-11 January 2018
Gold prices rise to $1,326/oz on concerns China may slow U.S. Treasury buying. Equities fell sharply on the report as did Treasurys and the U.S. dollar. Chinese officials think U.S. debt is becoming less attractive compared to other assets. Trade tensions could provide a reason to slow down or halt U.S. debt purchases. U.S. dollar vulnerable as China remains biggest buyer of U.S. sovereign debt. Currency wars to return as China rejects U.S....

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10 Reasons Why You Should Add To Your Gold Holdings

2018-01-10

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2018-01-10

Gold Price and S&P 500 Index, 2000 - 2017
10 Reasons Why You Should Add To Your Gold Holdings. Gold currently undervalued. Since 2000, the gold price has beaten the S&P 500 Index. A ‘a once-in-a-decade opportunity’ as gold-to-S&P 500 ratio is at its lowest point in 10 years. Reached ‘peak gold’ as exploration budgets continue to tighten. $80 trillion sits in global equities, a ‘ticking time bomb’. Gold remains an appealing diversifier in the current environment of high valuations and...

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Russia, China and BRICS: A New Gold Trading Network

2017-12-12

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2017-12-12

Deputy Governors
One of the most notable events in Russia’s precious metals market calendar is the annual “Russian Bullion Market” conference. Formerly known as the Russian Bullion Awards, this conference, now in its 10th year, took place this year on Friday 24 November in Moscow. Among the speakers lined up, the most notable inclusion was probably Sergey Shvetsov, First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s central bank, the Bank of Russia.

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Bailins Coming In EU – 114 Italian Banks Have Non Performing Loans Exceeding Tangible Assets

2017-12-09

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2017-12-09

Banks with Texas Highest Rate
Bailins Coming In EU – 114 Italian Banks Have NP Loans Exceeding Tangible Assets. Italy opposes ECB proposal that holds banks to firm deadlines for writing down bad loans. Italy’s banks weighed down under €318bn of bad loans. New ECB rules could ‘derail’ any recovery in Italy’s financial system. Draft proposal requires banks to provision fully for loans that turn sour from 2018. ECB insists banks have better access to collateral on delinquent debt...

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China Gold Import Jan-Sep 777t. Who’s Supplying?

2017-11-14

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2017-11-14

Gold Supply and Demand Data, 2013 - Q3 2017
While the gold price is slowly crawling upward in the shadow of the current cryptocurrency boom, China continues to import huge tonnages of yellow metal. As usual, Chinese investors bought on the price dips in the past quarters, steadfastly accumulating for a rainy day.

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Neck and Neck: Russian and Chinese Official Gold Reserves

2017-10-17

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2017-10-17

Russian Central Bank Gold Reserves, 1994 - 2016
Official gold reserve updates from the Russian and Chinese central banks are probably one of the more closely watched metrics in the gold world. After the US, Germany, Italy and France, the sovereign gold holdings of China and Russia are the world’s 5th and 6th largest. And with the gold reserves ‘official figures’ of the US, Germany, Italy and France being essentially static, the only numbers worth watching are those of China and Russia.

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The Gold-Backed-Oil-Yuan Futures Contract Myth

2017-10-16

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2017-10-16

Share of Global Payments, Oct 2010 - Jul 2017
On September 1, 2017, the Nikkei Asian Review published an article titled, “China sees new world order with oil benchmark backed by gold”, written by Damon Evans. Just below the headline in the introduction it states, “China is expected shortly to launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan and convertible into gold in what analysts say could be a game-changer for the industry”. Not long after the Nikkei piece was released ‘the story’ was...

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The West lost at least another 1000 tonnes of large gold bars in 2015

2017-08-14

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2017-08-14

Kilobars
Over the last number of years, one of the most interesting trends in the physical gold world is the ongoing conversion of large 400 ounce gold bars into smaller high purity 1 kilogram gold bars to meet the insatiable demand of Asian gold markets such as China and India.

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Estimated Chinese Gold Reserves Surpass 20,000t

2017-08-02

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2017-08-02

Shanghai Gold Exchange Vaults, Jan 2009 - June 2017
My best estimate as of June 2017 with respect to total above ground gold reserves within the Chinese domestic market is 20,193 tonnes. The majority of these reserves are held by the citizenry, an estimated 16,193 tonnes; the residual 4,000 tonnes, which is a speculative yet conservative estimate, is held by the Chinese central bank the People’s Bank of China.

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Did The Dutch Central Bank Lie About Its Gold Bar List?

2017-07-25

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2017-07-25

The-Netherlands-Official-Gold-Reserves-Locations
Head of the Financial Markets Division of the Dutch central bank, Aerdt Houben, stated in an interview for newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad published in October 2016 that releasing a bar list of the Dutch official gold reserves “would cost hundreds of thousands of euros”. In this post we’ll expose this is virtually impossible – the costs to publish the bar list should be close to zero – and speculate about the far reaching implications of this...

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New Gold Pool at the BIS Basle: Part 2 – Pool vs Gold for Oil

2017-05-26

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2017-05-26

Gold Price, Spetember 1979 - April 1980
This is Part 2 of a two-part series. The series focuses on collusive discussions and meetings that took place between the world’s most powerful central bankers in late 1979 and 1980 in an attempt to launch a central bank Gold Pool cartel to manipulate and control the free market price of gold. The meetings centered around the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basle, Switzerland.

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New Gold Pool at the BIS Basle, Switzerland: Part 1

2017-05-21

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2017-05-21

“In the Governor’s absence I attended the meeting in Zijlstra’s room in the BIS on the afternoon of Monday, 10th December to continue discussions about a possible gold pool. Emminger, de la Geniere, de Strycker, Leutwiler, Larre and Pohl were present.”  

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An update on SGE Vault Withdrawals and SGE Price Premiums

2017-05-20

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2017-05-20

SGE Gold Withdrawals, 2008 - May 2017
In 2016, withdrawals of gold from the Shanghai Gold Exchange totalled 1970 tonnes, the 4th highest annual total on record. This was 24% less than SGE gold withdrawals recorded in 2015, which reached a cumulative 2596 tonnes (See Koos Jansen’s 6 January 2017 blog at BullionStar “How The West Has Been Selling Gold Into A Black Hole” for more details of the 2016 withdrawals).

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Bank of England releases new data on its gold vault holdings

2017-05-04

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2017-05-04

An article in February on BullionStar’s website titled “A Chink of Light into London’s Gold Vaults?” discussed an upcoming development in the London Gold Market, namely that both the Bank of England (BoE) and the commercial gold vault providers in London planned to begin publishing regular data on the quantity of physical gold actually stored in their gold vaults.

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Death Spiral for the LBMA Gold and Silver auctions?

2017-04-17

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2017-04-17

In a bizarre series of events that have had limited coverage but which are sure to have far-reaching consequences for benchmark pricing in the precious metals markets, the LBMA Gold Price and LBMA Silver Price auctions both experienced embarrassing trading glitches over consecutive trading days on Monday 10 April and Tuesday 11 April. At the outset, its worth remembering that both of these London-based benchmarks are Regulated Benchmarks, regulated...

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German and Swiss Precious Metals Refiners join forces as Heraeus acquires Argor-Heraeus

2017-04-04

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2017-04-04

Singapore Germany Silver Bullionstar Bar 1kg
German precious metals group Heraeus Precious Metals (HPM), part of the Heraeus industrial group, has just announced the full acquisition of Swiss precious metals refining group Argor-Heraeus. Heraeus is headquartered in Hanau, just outside Frankfurt. Argor-Heraeus is headquartered in Mendrisio in the Swiss Canton of Ticino, beside the Italian border.

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Germany’s Gold remains a Mystery as Mainstream Media cheer leads

2017-03-06

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2017-03-06

On 9 February 2017, the Deutsche Bundesbank issued an update on its extremely long-drawn-out gold repatriation program, an update in which it claimed to have transferred 111 tonnes of gold from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to Germany during 2016, while also transferring an additional 105 tonnes of gold from the Banque de France in Paris to Germany during the same time-period.

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