I just love this exchange ....

http://www.gata.org/node/8429

Adrian Douglas and gold manipulation

CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Did I hear you correctly when you said that the gold exports in October appear to have come from the coffers of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York? Has anyone looked lately?

MR. TRUMAN. Well, I didn't want to tell too many secrets in this temple!

VICE CHAIRMAN CORRIGAN. Obviously, we knew what happened to the gold, but I don't think we knew what it did to exports.

MR. TRUMAN. What happens in the Census data is that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is treated as a foreign country. [Laughter] And when a real foreign country takes some of the gold out of New York and ships it abroad, it counts first as imports and then as exports. However, the import side is not picked up in the Census data. So there you get the export side of it.

MR. LAWARE. Great accounting!

MR. BOEHNE. Great confidence building!

MR. TRUMAN. That's because you haven't been filling out your import documents!

MR. ANGELL. Let me run this by again. You mean a country owns gold and has it stored in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and if they ship it out, that's an export?

MR. TRUMAN. And in the balance of payments accounts it also counts as an import, so it washes out.

CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. The Federal Reserve Bank's basement is a foreign country. When they move it out of the basement into the United States, it's an import. Then, when they ship it out again, it's an export.

MR. ANGELL. That makes sense!

MR. TRUMAN. And sometimes when they sell the gold, it might be sold into the United States, so it should count as an import. It doesn't necessarily always show up as an export.

MR. BOEHNE. That really clarifies it!

MR. KELLEY. Does it have to get out of your vault at all in order to be considered an import and an export?

VICE CHAIRMAN CORRIGAN. Well, I'm not even going to try to answer that. In this particular case I know what happened, so I think. ...

* * *

The most intriguing part of this discussion is the question by Kelley: "Does it have to get out of your vault at all in order to be considered an import and an export?"

While there is no explanation of the thinking behind Kelley's question (it was probably redacted), it is reasonable to extrapolate the inference that "ledger entries" for gold movements could be made to the import or export accounts without any gold having been physically moved.

At the May 18, 1993, FOMC meeting there was much discussion how gold influences public attitudes toward inflation. There were discussions about interfering in the gold market to change the public's expectation of inflation, and such postulated interference was even regarded as amusing by the FOMC --

http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/FOMC19930518meeting.pdf

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