Bullion Vault research director Adrian Ash notes that the fourth European Central Bank Gold Agreement takes effect today, extends for five years, and removes any limits on gold sales by the 21 signatories while acknowledging that "they do not have any plans to sell significant amounts of gold," because the limits contained in predecessor agreements had come to look silly, such sales having ended long ago. Ash's commentary is headlined "End of the Central Bank Gold Agreement" and it is posted at Bullion Vault here --
https://www.bullionvault.com/gold-news/centra...-gold-092620143
-- but from GATA's perspective the agreement's latest incarnation, announced in May, remains significant for two other reasons.
That is, the agreement, posted at the European Central Bank's Internet site here --
http://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/201...r140519.en.html
-- renews the proclamation of conspiracy that Western financial news organizations and most purported gold market analysts refuse to see.
"The signatories," the renewed agreement says, "will continue to coordinate their gold transactions so as to avoid market disturbances."
That is, first, the participating central banks will continue to meet secretly to consider manipulating the gold market, which is disguised as a matter of avoiding market disturbances -- or at least avoiding disturbances the central banks don't like. Financial journalists and market analysts will not be invited to these meetings, nor will any mere member of the public be allowed to attend -- not even CPM Group's Jeff Christian or Doug Casey of Casey Research, who purport to know everything central banks do in regard to gold.
And second, the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department continue not to be signatories to the agreement and thus do not even pretend to want to avoid disturbing the gold market.
The latest European Central Bank Gold Agreement is not "conspiracy theory" but conspiracy fact, not so much hiding in plain sight as residing in the open with the participants having full confidence that financial news organizations and purported market analysts will never dare to explore what it really means, the first rule of mainstream financial journalism being that no critical questions about gold may ever be put to a central bank and that a central bank's refusal to answer critical questions about gold may never be reported.
