After two days of hectoring the U.S. State Department by telephone and e-mail, and doing so as a newspaper editor, your secretary/treasurer today recruited his U.S. representative's office to try to extract from State an answer to the question of whether the U.S. government has taken custody of Ukraine's gold reserves, as suggested by news reports like the one cited here:
http://www.gata.org/node/13754
At last at noon today came this cordial reply from Katherine Pfaff in State's press office:
"We refer you to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on this."
Of course the New York Fed yesterday already had deflected the question to the National Bank of Ukraine:
http://www.gata.org/node/13761
All along your secretary/treasurer also has been querying not only the National Bank of Ukraine but also the Ukrainian embassy in Washington and the Ukrainian mission to the United Nations in New York. Of course no reply is expected, except maybe something like "Перейти ебать себе."
The difficulty in getting a straight answer here is pretty good evidence that the Ukrainian gold indeed has been sent to the United States.
We may have to leave further inquiry to bigger news organizations with greater resources, organizations that, unfortunately, remain too scared or controlled to get into the gold issue.
But what's really noteworthy here is how easy important journalism about gold would be for anyone attempting it. All one has to do is put the right critical and specific questions to central banks and other government agencies, whereupon they can only refuse to answer and run away, incriminating themselves.
No one in financial journalism or gold market commentary who has not attempted to put such questions to a central bank or other relevant government agency is worth listening to.
