Half of gold in central banks gone?

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Watchdog: 'We want to expose and stop the manipulation'

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Posted: January 29, 2008
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com

U.S. central banks may have less than half the gold they claim to possess in their vaults, charges a watchdog group in an ad scheduled for publication in the Wall Street Journal this week.

As WND reported, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, or GATA, claims the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury are surreptitiously manipulating the country's gold reserves by participating in undisclosed leases, according to an advance copy WND obtained of the ad running in Thursday's edition of the Journal.

GATA believes much of the borrowed gold out on lease will never be returned to the central banks.

"With the demand for gold so strong worldwide, it has become impossible to return much of the leased gold without driving the price to the moon," said GATA's chairman, William J. Murphy III.

"Most observers calculate central bank reserves are supposed to have about 30,000 tons of gold worldwide in their vaults, but we believe the amount of gold actually there may be more like 15,000 tons," Murphy said. "The rest of the gold is gone."

The U.S. Treasury denies the claim, insisting the stock is accounted for regularly.