aha, the count down beginns!! The messgage is not a surprise.

gigi

: Note: Reference #1 by Reginal Howe ( www.GoldenSextant.com )
: is long and detailed - References 2-4 are a good overview
: for now ---

: Rick

: (2)***http://207.138.41.133/message/gata/570
: From: GATA Committee  
: Date: Sun Oct 29, 2000 2:08am
: Subject: Help us sue the Bank for International Settlements

: 9:45p EDT Saturday, October 28, 2000

: Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Reginald H. Howe's analysis of
: the plan of the
: Bank for International Settlements to seize the
: shares of its private shareholders (GATA message
: no. 569) has caused the Gold Anti-Trust Action
: Committee Inc. to put at the top of its litigation
: agenda a lawsuit against the BIS for possible
: securities fraud.

: We believe that such a lawsuit would be able to
: implicate and depose all the parties to the
: collusion against a free price of gold and against
: restoring gold's traditional monetary functions
: generally.

: To that end GATA encourages you to re-read Reg's
: essay and distribute it, and we appeal for financial
: contributions to help us undertake this litigation. We
: just might get it going with $100,000 or so. And it
: might throw a monkey wrench in the works of a lot of
: gold's enemies.

: Thanks for your consideration.

: CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
: Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

: (3) ***http://207.138.41.133/message/gata/569
: From: GATA Committee  
: Date: Sat Oct 28, 2000 3:40am
: Subject: Bank for International Settlements may be against
: gold

: The BIS and Greenspan: Freezing Out the U.S. Constitution
: By Reginald H. Howe
: www.GoldenSextant.com
: October 27, 2000

: With this commentary, The Golden Sextant introduces
: another new site feature: "BIS: Bank for Intervention
: and Subversion." Today, with the U.S. Federal Reserve
: occupying and voting its two board seats at the Bank
: for International Settlements, both intervention in the
: gold market for the purpose of affecting prices and
: acts in subversion of the U.S. Constitution are
: prohibited activities for both organizations.

: This new project will focus on the recently announced
: plan of the BIS to freeze-out its private shareholders
: at an Extraordinary General Meeting scheduled for
: January 8, 2001. The proprietor owns several shares of
: the American tranche, making this matter one of
: financial as well as academic interest to him. Other
: shareholders are advised to seek their own counsel. All
: opinions expressed here are those of the proprietor. No
: assurance can be given that they will be accepted or
: upheld by any particular court or tribunal.

: Gold bugs have long considered the BIS an ally. Its
: shares, which pay a decent annual dividend, tend to
: trade in line with gold prices, making them an
: attractive proxy for bullion or mining shares. But
: accumulating evidence, to which the proposed freeze-out
: adds an important new dimension, suggests that for the
: past five years the BIS, with the active support of the
: U.S. Federal Reserve, has played a central role in
: trying to replicate the London Gold Pool of the 1960s.

: Until 1994 the BIS functioned as the principal
: organization for cooperation among Europe's major
: central banks, of which several were and remain
: friendly toward gold. But with the signing of the
: Treaty of Maastricht in 1993, and the formation on
: January 1, 1994, of the European Monetary Institute, a
: predecessor organization to the European Central Bank,
: the BIS faced the prospect of playing a rapidly
: shrinking role in European monetary affairs. Then,
: reversing almost 65 years of prior official non-
: involvement, the Fed in September 1994 decided to
: occupy the two seats on the BIS's board to which the
: American tranche entitled it.

: Shortly thereafter the BIS agreed to provide US$10
: billion for the Mexican bailout effected mostly with
: funds from the U.S. Exchange Stabilization Fund. Since
: then, the BIS has been heavily involved in establishing
: reporting requirements and bank capital adequacy
: standards for derivatives. Their recent use to
: manipulate gold prices is the subject of many prior
: commentaries at The Golden Sextant. The BIS has also
: sought to expand its activities beyond Europe by
: opening an office for Asia and the Pacific in Hong Kong
: in July 1998.

: According to reliable anecdotal reports received by the
: Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, the BIS worked
: closely with the Fed and the Bank of England to halt
: and then to reverse the rally in gold prices triggered
: by announcement of the Washington Agreement in the fall
: of 1999. Indeed, a careful review of reports in the
: European press about the genesis of the agreement
: suggests that BIS officials may have been deliberately
: excluded from the negotiations along with the Americans
: and the British. In any event, by supporting the Anglo-
: American response to the Washington Agreement, the BIS
: seems to have turned on its most important European
: members.

: When the Fed took its two board seats at the Basle-
: based bank in 1994, the event passed almost unnoticed.
: There were no congressional hearings. Nor was there any
: public statement by the President or the Secretary of
: State. Indeed, so far as I can determine, there is no
: record of any approval or assent to the Fed's action by
: the Department of State. Its silence on the matter is
: particularly odd. When the BIS was formed in 1930, then
: Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson expressly and
: publicly prohibited the Fed from participating,
: directly or indirectly, in the affairs of the BIS.

: The Fed's decision in 1994 was reported in an article
: by C.J. Siegman, "The Bank for International
: Settlements and the Federal Reserve," Federal Reserve
: Bulletin, October 1994, (p. 900 ff). This article is an
: important resource, but contains no mention of any
: legal authority or permission for the Fed's formal
: participation in the BIS. Not until almost a year later
: did The New York Times in a story by K. Bradsher,
: "Obscure Global Bank Moves Into the Light," August
: 5,
: 1995, Business, p. 1 (report that the Fed had
: "joined"
: the BIS).

: As the story noted: "[T]he bank is beginning to draw
: the attention of the same unlikely array of American
: populists who have opposed the new World Trade
: Organization." It continued: "Mr. [Ralph] Nader
: objects
: to the bank's unusual independence under international
: law, including an exemption from many Swiss laws. 'It
: is outside the rule of law,' he said. 'It's above the
: law.'"

: Nader has a point. If the BIS is indeed intervening in
: the gold market, either directly or on behalf of its
: member central banks, it is operating in opposition to
: current U.S. law mandating a free gold market. What is
: more, there are serious constitutional issues with
: respect to whether the Fed had authority to take its
: two board seats without more formal authorization from
: the President and the Congress. Should the freeze-out
: be effected, these issues become even more troublesome
: for the Fed.

: Legal and constitutional issues of this nature are
: frequently difficult for private parties to raise due
: to lack of standing. That is, there is a general
: principle of law that in order to complain in court of
: legal or constitutional wrongs, parties must have some
: direct pecuniary or other interest beyond that of all
: citizens in seeing that the laws and the Constitution
: are enforced. By attempting to freeze-out its private
: shareholders, the BIS has opened the door to potential
: litigation by private parties who by virtue of holding
: BIS shares have standing to raise any issue directly
: affecting the value or ownership of their shares.

: Precisely why the BIS has elected to run this risk of
: litigation is unclear. One possibility is that it is
: planning certain activities that it does not want to
: reveal publicly through its financial reports, such as
: buying or selling gold for its own account or engaging
: in substantial new gold lending for its central bank
: clients. In this connection, it can perhaps be argued
: that gold deposits by central banks at the BIS are not
: ordinary gold lending, thereby enabling organizations
: with prohibitions on gold lending, such as the
: International Monetary Fund, to permit some of their
: gold to reach the market through the BIS without
: clearly violating their own rules.

: Under Article 54(1) of the Statutes of the BIS,
: disputes between it and its shareholders "with regard
: to the interpretation or application of the Statutes of
: the Bank ... shall be referred for final decision to
: the Tribunal provided for by the Hague Agreement of
: January, 1930." This reference is to an arbitration
: tribunal established under Article XV of the Agreement
: between Germany et als. Regarding the Complete and
: Final Settlement of the Question of Reparations, signed
: at The Hague on January 20, 1930, 104 League of Nations
: -- Treaty Series (1930) No. 2394. The United States is
: not a signatory to this treaty, which it pointedly
: refused to enter. The arbitration provision provides in
: relevant part (104 L.N.T.S. 252-253): "1. Any dispute,
: whether between the Governments
: signatory to the present Agreement or between one or
: more of those Governments and the Bank for
: International Settlements, as to the interpretation or
: application of the New Plan shall ... be submitted for
: final decision to an arbitration tribunal of five
: members appointed for five years ....

: "9. The present provisions shall be duly accepted by
: the Bank for the settlement of any dispute which may
: arise between it and one or more of the signatory
: Governments as to the interpretation or application of
: its Statutes or the New Plan."

: The so-called "New Plan" for payment by Germany of
: war
: reparations arising out of World War I ended long ago,
: and with it any justification for the continued
: existence of the arbitration tribunal, which under the
: treaty had a mandate only to hear disputes between the
: BIS and signatory governments, not between the BIS and
: its shareholders. Perhaps when the tribunal was in
: existence a claim could have been sustained that it
: possessed appropriate ancillary jurisdiction over such
: disputes. But to recreate this tribunal today to hear a
: dispute not covered by the treaty seems a big stretch.

: While U.S. courts regularly honor agreements to
: arbitrate, it is difficult to order arbitration before
: a tribunal that no longer exists. Conceivably an
: argument could be made that the Permanent Court of
: Arbitration at the Hague should form a tribunal to
: substitute for that originally contemplated. Indeed, it
: is rather surprising that the BIS did not long ago
: update Article 54(1) along these lines. The PCA has a
: modern set of rules for arbitration between
: international organizations and private parties. Of
: course, even now this alternative is one to which all
: parties could agree.

: But without a creative judicial order or a voluntary
: agreement to arbitrate, the BIS could well find itself
: a party defendant in a U.S. court. The United States is
: not a party to any of the international agreements or
: conventions relating to the BIS, undercutting any
: claims that it might assert to immunity here. In the
: case of any proceedings to challenge the freeze-out
: brought by American citizens who own shares of the
: American tranche, strong arguments can be made for
: jurisdiction in U.S. courts, particularly if the Fed or
: its officials are made parties defendant in addition to
: the BIS. Indeed, the presence of important questions of
: U.S. constitutional law makes an American court in many
: ways the most appropriate forum.

: The principal purpose of this new site feature is to
: give other private shareholders of the BIS access to
: some of my research and analysis as I wrestle with the
: problem of how to respond to the freeze-out. Because
: the freeze-out raises important constitutional issues
: affecting the conduct of both monetary and foreign
: policy by the United States, many who are not private
: shareholders may also be interested. What is more, any
: litigation between the BIS and its private shareholders
: is likely to focus considerable scrutiny on recent
: official efforts to manipulate gold prices, especially
: through the use of derivatives. For this reason, GATA
: is considering whether to support this project as a
: follow-up effort to its Gold Derivative Banking Crisis,
: a document that has now been downloaded over 20,000
: times.

: For the next month, this project will be very much a
: work in progress. Readers should be guided accordingly.
: Currently, as indicated by the contents directory, the
: finished memorandum is projected to contain ten
: chapters or subparts. Initial or partial drafts of the
: first nine are being posted at the same time as this
: commentary, and the tenth will begin to appear in due
: course. All are subject to revision and enlargement as
: appropriate. Notations on the current status of each
: subpart will also appear in brackets in the contents
: directory. This procedure is not ideal, but seems under
: the circumstances to be the most efficient way to get
: as much material as possible posted quickly while
: allowing good opportunity for useful and timely reader
: input.

: -END-

: (4) ***Note regarding Reginal Howe's background and a previous
: post: http://207.138.41.133/message/gata/348  
: From:   
: Date: Tue Jan 25, 2000 11:07pm
: Subject: [GATA] Gold's suspicion shifts to the Treasury Dept.
: 11p EST Tuesday, January 25, 2000

: Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Here's commentary I've been
: eagerly awaiting, Reginald
: H. Howe's observations on both Fed Chairman Alan
: Greenspan's response to GATA and today's gold auction
: by the Bank of England. Reg is a lawyer from Harvard
: and a former mining company executive. He posts his
: essays at www.GoldenSextant.com .

: Please post this as seems useful.

: CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
: Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.