Does The Decline In BIS Gold Swaps Hint At The Collapse Of The West's Fractional Gold Reserve Manipulation Scheme?

“The accuracy of Lambourne's calculations about the BIS swaps repeatedly have been confirmed by the bank's annual reports, though the bank long has refused to explain why and for whom it has undertaken the swaps, or even to provide the volume of its gold swaps clearly in its monthly reports. As with its central bank members, the BIS relies heavily on obfuscation, lest the ruled discover what their rulers are doing with the world's money.” - Chris Powell, GATA Treasurer

I want to emphasize “relies heavily on obsfuscation” because the Central Banks and bullion banks shroud the physical gold bullion market in as much secrecy as possible to prevent the ability to uncover the truth but releasing just enough information to mislead the uninformed.

The quote above by GATA and the commentary below is from GATA’s latest dispatch which discusses the recent BIS gold swap numbers and analysis provided by GATA’s consultant, Robert Lambourne.

Here’s the link GATA’s dispatch: BIS gold swaps collapsed in January, hinting at collapse of market-rigging system

Gold swaps undertaken by the Bank for International Settlements collapsed in January, according to calculations drawn by GATA consultant Robert Lambourne from the bank's statement of account for January, published today:

https://www.bis.org/banking/balsheet/statofacc250131.pdf

Lambourne writes that the BIS' reported swaps as of January 31 totaled only 16 tonnes, down 62 tonnes from the 78 tonnes reported at the end of December, for which the BIS filed its monthly report strangely late and without explanation last week amid turmoil in the London gold market:

Latest BIS report, released later than usual, shows decline in swaps

Lambourne writes today:

"If you recall our discussions over the years, such a fall was the expectation if we were moving toward a time when gold was going to be revalued, as it always seemed sensible to eliminate the swaps before a reset.

"Our conjecture was always that the swaps were sourced from gold exchange-traded funds, and they were possibly a return route for gold that was subject to multiple claims originating from the Federal Reserve, the swaps being used to hide the multiple claims."

Slide 15 here charts the long decline of BIS gold swaps from 2021 through last October --

https://www.gata.org/sites/default/files/NOIC-Powell-Slides-11-21-2024.pdf

-- a decline that seems to correlate generally with gold's rising price and suggests a retreat by many if not most central banks from gold price-suppression policy. Indeed, the collapse of the swaps may indicate the collapse of the entire longstanding Western central bank system of controlling the gold price through unbacked derivatives, a system perhaps first outlined by the British economist Peter Warburton in 2001: LINK

Or maybe the BIS is just frightened about the prospect of tariffs on international trade. Such an interpretation might be more appealing to mainstream financial news organizations and the governments that control them.

In any case GATA will alert those news organizations to this development about what is really going on in the gold market so that, as usual, they can be the first to ignore it.