International Monetary Fund to sell over 403 tons of gold
Published: September 19, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
The International Monetary Fund said its executive board endorsed the sale of 403 tons of gold, worth an estimated 13 billion dollars, to boost its lending capacity to poor countries.
The IMF said in a statement the sales would be “in a volume strictly limited to 403.3 metric tons, with these sales to be conducted under modalities that safeguard against disruption of the gold market.”
The 186-nation institution said the decision was a core element of a new income model to make it less dependent on its lending revenue to cover expenses, such as surveillance of members’ economic and financial policies, that the board had approved in April 2008.
The Group of 20 key developed and developing countries, at their April summit in London, agreed the gold sales should allow the IMF to offer favorable conditions on loans to the poorest countries.
The IMF decision comes ahead of a two-day G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that opens next Thursday.
Hosted by US President Barack Obama, leaders are to discuss efforts to recover from the worst global recession in six decades and financial regulatory reform.
“The new income model is designed to provide the fund with more diverse income sources that are better aligned with the variety of functions performed by the fund, with a central component being the funding of an endowment with the profits from these limited gold sales,” the 186-nation institution said.
The IMF said the sales “will also increase the fund’s resources for lending to low-income countries,” a strategy that won board backing in July.
“I am delighted that the executive board has given its overwhelming backing to a strictly limited sale of fund gold to put the financing of the IMF on a sound long-term footing, and enable us to step up much-needed concessional lending to the poorest countries,” IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in the statement.
“These sales will be conducted in a responsible and transparent manner that avoids disruption of the gold market,” he said.
The amount of gold to be sold is one-eighth of the 3,217 tons of gold currently held by the Washington-based IMF, the third-largest official holder of gold after the United States and Germany.
Board approval required an 85 percent majority of the total IMF voting power.
The United States, by far the largest stakeholder, gave its green light after Congress passed legislation authorizing the sale and President Barack Obama signed it into law on June 24.
The fund is required by its founding document to conduct all gold sales at market prices.
The IMF did not state the value of the gold to be sold but based on the current bullish near-record market price for the metal, it is estimated the sale would fetch 13 billion dollars.
Under the approved plan, the IMF would offer to sell gold directly to central banks “or other official sector holders if there were to be interest from such holders.”
A prime candidate could be China, which is sitting on the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves, topping two trillion dollars, and has been seeking to diversify away from the dollar.
China in early September agreed to buy the first IMF bonds for about 50 billion dollars and has been on a gold-buying streak, increasing its gold reserves by 75 percent from 2003 to 2008, according to official media.
The IMF said that if official demand is insufficient, it could conduct the gold sales “on-market in a phased manner over time,” in line with an approach already followed by central banks.
The IMF would be constrained by the overall ceilings agreed by the central banks, which currently is 400 tons annually for the next five years, starting on September 27.
The IMF said it “will inform markets before any on-market sales commence” and “report regularly to the public on the progress with the gold sales.”
In July, the IMF announced it would increase its lending to poor countries, mostly in Africa, to 17 billion dollars by 2014, including 8.0 billion over the next two years.
That compares with an annual average of one billion dollars in the 2006-2008 period to poor countries, and three billion dollars in the first half of 2009.
The IMF also had decided to cancel interest payments owed by poor countries through end-2011 and reform lending practices to make loans quickly available, at higher ceilings on amounts and with more flexible conditions.
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Their motive is more likely a desire to stem the price and support the sick dollar. Their loans are always predatory in nature, in any case.
China will snap it up though, so I’m holding on to mine.
It looks like all the fools that bought gold are in for a shock.
So, China, with @ $2 trillion in US and on a commodities buying spree (including gold, if you read the article) to rid itself of the collapsing US dollar, are “fools?”
Wow, a whole $13 billion in gold? yeah, THAT will sure “rock the gold market”…not.
That’s what, four days of what the US spends funding Iraq and Afghanistan occupation? Big deal.
Like another poster here stated, China will snap it up, and it will be a blip on the price of gold.
Do me a favor, hold onto your Zionist banker’s “Federal Reserve Notes”, but be careful: they are getting red hot from Bernanake’s “Qualitative Easing”, bwahahahaha.
Fuck the IMF. Fuck the WTO. Fuck the World Bank. Fuck the UN. Fuck NAFTA. Fuck GATT. and most of all FUCK WALMART AND GENERAL ELECTRIC..
Clinton’s “Global Initiative” is this guy campaigning to be President of the World?
For the historically astute. Are we returning to Mercantilism? ” Free Trade”
Didn’t your momma told ya? Ain’t Nothing free in this world….
Only if we were on a gold standard still…one can only dream. Our dollar is dying a slow death
This is the reason why gold was raised to a thousand dollars an ounce. Once the gold is sold, the price of gold will drop and those suckers who bought it will sell it before the price gets too low. Then, the price will go back up. Guess who keeps the money. The IMF.
$13 billion in gold sold won’t cause more than a temporary blip, sparkey. A trifle amount.
Desperation Time at The Fed and US Congress to try to re-float a falling US dollar. It won’t work.
Or, did you miss the part of the article stating that Obama and the US Congress approved this sale: the IMF is US-controlled.
Frantic manipulation, way too little, way too late.
The new Japanese government wants an Asian Reserve currency. They want US military bases GONE NOW from their soil. They didn’t invite the US to join the basket of currencies in the new Asian Reserve, and golly, the Yen shot up against the dollar on the news….
China holds $2 trillion in US debt, and is seething at Bernanke printing the money to repay them (and causing a falling value of their debt holdings), and really pissed at Obama for reappointing the thief.
Lets see, sell 403 tons of gold worth 13 billion dollars to help in LOANING out money. Don’t believe this shit, not at all believe me. To you and me 13 billion dollars is the mount everest of money, but to the world economy, it’s chump change. They are COMMENTING on selling the 403 tons of gold in order to bring down gold prices when markets open sunday night monday morning. Which in turn strengthens the US greenback/peso. Gold has been going up on a daily basis past 1000 dollars an ounce. It’s not a coincidence that they make this announcement. The reason why I say the are commenting on selling this much gold doesn’t necessarily mean they may sell it. If they get the reaction they want and then some, they may not start selling it undil sometime next year if ever.
The IMF today released a river of bullshit which, it anticipates, will drown poor countries in a sea of corruption. Vast quantities of lies and fabrications have been piled up into levees allowing the river of bullshit to flow at enhanced speed. IMF bullshit will capture the attention of media-created bogus economists who are expected to perform the play “end of recession” which ends with a graceful swan-dive into the bullshit river.
So, this is how you keep a fiat currency afloat, eh?
(nasty snickering noise goes here)
IMO, this is a continued sign of panic that the dollar may keep falling if they’re manipulating the price of gold on the market. Gold is always the barometer for how poorly the dollar is, and it seems whenever it hits $1,000, they dump reserves.
Of course, this would all be null and void if Tricky Nixon didn’t completely take us off the gold standard and set the stage for the Zimbabwe-ing of our currency.
Where in hell did the “International” monetary fund get 403 tons of gold? And why not lend the poor countries the actual gold instead of the pretend money loaned in its place?
Maybe this was the gold that wound up “missing” after the world trade center was demolished.
I think the United States meets all of the criteria for a “poor country” that the IMF would cover. After all, that medical organization that helps “poor countries” came to LA a few months ago and had so many people in line for free medical and dentistry they couldn’t help them all.
The funny thing is that the MSM doesn’t even show this on television (the medical organization going to LA and being swamped). I found out about it from online sources and later by Rachel Maddow. For the richest country in the world we have this organization (which has been coming into the US for years) coming here to help what should be third world countries helping americans, what does that say. It says that the US is truly a third world country with a first world facade. Gold was going up on a daily basis by 4 to 8 dollars and it was starting to gain momentum. There’s a break point where it’s better to have gold than the dollar, in fact it’s not that gold is increasing in value it’s that the dollar/peso is losing value and they are trying everything they can to hide that fact.
Joseph Goebbles Hitlers Propaganda guy said this “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”. What is happening now is that it’s getting harder and harder to protect the american people from the lies and delusions that they have allowed us to believe in, and eventually even the quakes will see that they where lied to also.
$13 billion would represent about 0.0065 of China’s dollar holdings. I think they could afford it, even at $1000 an ounce. $13 billion is so little on a global scale these days that there are several individual people with a net worth of more than that now. I don’t know what the IMF thinks they are going to accomplish with an extra $13 billion. On the other hand, gold pays no interest, you can’t eat it, heat your house with it, live in it, or run your car with it, so why not?
As for Clinton’s Global Initiative, it is a hugely diverse charitable initiative, working on stuff like disease eradication in Africa, advanced de-salinization plants for desert countries with a coastline, even inspirations like collecting used, discarded glasses and distributing them to poor countries where people that were close to blind could suddenly see well enough to learn to read. He’s not running for anything, but he’s doing a world of good because he likes doing it. If for some reason that’s a bad thing or a totally foreign concept, go back to Fox Noise, the commercial is over.
~ Ben’s Pump ‘n’ Dump ~
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Words are plentiful deeds are precious!
Selling gold on the world market is the beginning to the end of all currencies as we know to exist today. When the new one world currency is unveiled, only those fortunate and preferred insiders that bought gold will have access to the new currency in the conversion of the old to the new. Everyone else will be at the elitists’ mercy.