Loading ...What are all those monetary metals derivatives held by a few big U.S. banks?
Submitted by cpowell on 03:55PM ET Sunday, March 18, 2018. Section: Daily Dispatches
11:03p ICT Sunday, March 18, 2018
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
GATA’s and gold’s old friend Larry Parks, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education (FAME, http://fame.org), calls attention tonight to the third-quarter 2017 report of the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, which shows that just several government- insured U.S. banks hold $45 billion in derivative positions related to monetary metals.
The chart disclosing these positions, appearing on Page 32 of the OCC report, is reproduced at GATA’s internet site here:
http://gata.org/files/PreciousMetalsDerivativesAtFDIC- InsuredBanks.jpg
The full OCC report is posted at GATA’s internet site here:
http://gata.org/files/OCC-Q3-2017- ReportOnBankTrading&Derivatives.pdf
Parks asks: Are these derivatives a “pass-through” on behalf of bank customers or are they held by the banks on their own behalf?
Of course the probability is that these positions are actually the positions of the U.S. government and other governments using the banks as intermediary cover lest more explicit public records of gold and silver market intervention be created.
After all, filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission already have documented that governments and central banks are receiving discounts from CME Group, operator of the major futures exchanges in the United States, for surreptitiously trading all financial and commodity futures contracts offered by CME Group exchanges:
http://www.gata.org/node/14385
http://www.gata.org/node/14411
In January GATA published CME Group’s discount schedule for such trading by governments and central banks:
http://www.gata.org/node/17976
How likely is it that a few U.S. banks would be so involved with the monetary metals derivatives without the approval or instructions of the U.S. government?