"Jim Reilly, a partner in Goldman Sachs and top
commodity dog, told a delegate at the FT conference
that if buyers came in to push up the price of gold
to $310 or $320, Goldman Sachs would offer unlimited
amounts of gold paper to keep the price from going
higher. "
You wondered who is backing Goldman Sachs' play and how long they've been doing it. I've also wondered who the free spending, damn-the-torpedos counterparty is. They've obviously been buying massive amounts of paper gold sold short, knowing (I think) that it's a losing bet.
Some people belive the counterparty is the Exchange Stabilization Fund, a secretive entity of the US Government responsive only to the Secretary of the Treasury and the President.
They might be secretive, but they're not above the law of the land. A targeted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiry might identify the well-heeled counterparty.
FOIA is not a license to go fishing ("Please send all paperwork generated during the past six months" is a non-starter), so an inquiry would need to be somewhat specific. However, one need only ask for gold counterparty transactions at times when the POG spiked above $290.00 and Goldman Sachs (or others in the club) sold it down.
Some documents are exempted from FOIA requests such as classified documents and those called "informal working papers". However, gold counterparty transactions, though potentially embarrassing to the US Government, are certainly neither national defense secrets nor informal papers.
If Larry Summers is sitting behind the curtain over at ESF holding his smoking gun, FOIA might expose him. |
