September 11 Commission Report - Gnostic Liberation Front

7
GOLD TRADING AND MONEY LAUNDERING INVESTIGATIONS
CANCELLED BY DESTRUCTION OF THE WTC
The 23 rd floor of the North Tower of the WTC held FBI records pertinent to
investigations of international gold movements and violations of the US Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act. The stimulus for the FBI investigation was a lawsuit initiated by GATA
against a number a major bullion international banks and the former US Secretary of the
Treasury. The lawsuit alleged that these banks conspired to manipulate and artificially
depress the price of gold. The evidence presented by GATA was quite compelling, and
suggested that 1) these parties had used national gold reserves to illegally regulate the
price of gold, 2) these banks had created a significant risk that threatened the liquidity of
all of the key players, and 3) that the national gold reserves had been illegally depleted as
a result. The basis for this suit was analysis of gold market prices and trades that
suggested approximately 14,000 tonnes of paper gold had been artificially created to keep
gold prices depressed. This report speculates that gold prices were not being
manipulated, but rather 14,000 tonnes of stolen gold was being illegally laundered.
The logic of what GATA called a scam ‘on the American citizens and individual gold
buyers’ was this. Bullion banks “loan” gold to each other at 1% or 2% interest. When
they borrow gold to cover needs, they buy a gold future and assign it the lender. Thus the
lender always has the “same” amount of gold, except some is ‘paper gold.’ According to
GATA, these banks would loan gold to each other, and then sell the real gold, using the
proceeds to invest in equities, which paid a higher return. This is a good deal when the
investment’s return on the equity is greater than the costs of the increased price of gold.
The GATA claim is that this process had been going on secretly for a number of years,
with US private banks making hefty profits using US treasury gold. This process is not
illegal – fixing-prices is. At some point in the process, these banks had loaned out more
gold than could be produced by all the gold mines in the world in the next two and a half
years. Because the world started viewing the dollar as overvalued, there was a move
towards gold, which stood to drive the price of gold up – dangerously so. These banks
then had to borrow and sell even more US gold, and then (it is contended) brought in the
London banks to support them, to keep the price of gold artificially down. The prices had
to be kept artificially low because if there was an actual call on the gold loans by one
bank, it would bring them all down like a house of cards. There was not enough physical
gold available to make good all the futures being held by the banks.
It has been speculated that it was these banks – with a focus on the American banks -that
somehow brought about an attack on the FBI office, using the cover of the airliner assault
to destroy the evidence against them. According to this theory, the attack needed to
happen before October 9, 2001, when this lawsuit opened in court. It may be fair to
speculate that U.S. bank executives were not worried about being convicted for violation
of dubious and ambiguous laws. However – win or lose, this report speculates there was
at least one group of bank executives that had plenty of reason to worry if this lawsuit
THE SEPTEMBER 11 COMMISSION REPORT Page 151