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Central banks let gold market coordination pact expire without replacement

Section: Daily Dispatches

10:37a ET Friday, July 26, 2019

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Today the European Central Bank announced the expiration without replacement of the latest central bank gold agreement. The ECB's announcement is appended.

What does it mean?

The announcement attributes the decision to let the agreement expire to the gold market's having become "mature," but how did the gold market suddenly "mature" when, upon the signing of the first central bank gold agreement in 1999, it was already a few thousand years old?

... Dispatch continues below ...



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Of course there were de-facto central bank gold agreements at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 and in various undertakings of the International Monetary Fund and the London Gold Pool since then. The agreements through the ECB are only the latest in the long history of central bank conspiracy against gold -- that is, against a form of money potentially beyond government control.

Does the ECB's statement today mean that central banks have nearly finished the redistribution of world gold reserves that the U.S. economists Paul Brodsky and Lee Quaintance suspected was under way seven years ago?:

http://www.gata.org/node/11373

Does it mean that central banks no longer are in enough agreement about gold to continue to coordinate their market interventions and that they will let the market alone determine the monetary metal's price, or let the anti-U.S. dollar faction of central banks determine the price through their own purchases and interventions?

The announcement says the parties to the agreement do not plan to sell significant amounts of gold, but what about interventions through swaps, leases, and derivatives, directly or through the Bank for International Settlements? The announcement doesn't say.

One thing is certain: Mainstream financial journalism will never ask any questions prompted by this announcement.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org

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As Market Matures, Central Banks Conclude that a Formal Gold Agreement Is No Longer Necessary

From the European Central Bank
Friday, July 26, 2019

The European Central Bank and 21 other central banks that are signatories of the Central Bank Gold Agreement have decided not to renew the agreement upon its expiry in September 2019.

The first agreement was signed in 1999 to coordinate the planned gold sales by the various central banks. When it was introduced, the agreement contributed to balanced conditions in the gold market by providing transparency regarding the intentions of the signatories. It was renewed three times -- in 2004, 2009, and 2014 -- gradually moving toward less stringent terms.

Since 1999 the global gold market has developed considerably in terms of maturity, liquidity, and investor base. The gold price has increased around five-fold over the same period. The signatories have not sold significant amounts of gold for nearly a decade, and central banks and other official institutions in general have become net buyers of gold.

The signatories confirm that gold remains an important element of global monetary reserves, as it continues to provide asset diversification benefits and none of them currently has plans to sell significant amounts of gold. ...

... For the remainder of the announcement:

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2019/html/ecb.pr190726_1~3eaf64d...

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