A chief Austrian finding is that counterfeiting causes malinvestment. The fact that most counterfeiting is done by governments and called monetary policy does not change the consequences one iota. --Richard Maybury
Counterfeit n (15c) 1: Forgery 2: something likely to be mistaken for something of higher value.
Imagine if the Louvre crafted a near-perfect counterfeit Mona Lisa and hung it in the gallery behind bulletproof glass. Then imagine that the Louvre held a public auction selling the real Mona Lisa, but also refused to admit that the one in the gallery was a fake. Ridiculous! Isn't it?
In most cases a counterfeiter wants to pass off his work onto an unsuspecting and paying public or to a specific mark. This is true for works of art as it is for currency. The counterfeiter must make his work at least good enough to pass muster with the inteded mark.
But it is a special kind of counterfeiter that hides his deception as a prized possession within his own collection, only to sell the real thing in hopes of reducing its value. And I do mean special as in education, Olympics and central bankers.
Alan Greenspan
The Tungsten Story
I'm not going to say too much about this story yet because I am still skeptical. I'm not skeptical because it doesn't fit the context that we know. On the contrary, it almost fits too perfectly. But this, I think, is my main point in this post. What is most important as we observe this unfolding story is our clear understanding of the context that surrounds it.
We live today in a world of rampant fraud and misinformation. Not much is surprising. In fact, I fully expect some surprises which will DWARF this tungsten story. But still, so far this story relies on the credibility of only one analyst who has uncovered, and/or been given, some incredible information. If the story is true, then we will soon receive corroborating stories from other sources for reasons that I will discuss in a moment.
If this story turns out to be true, then the context discussed on this blog and delivered by ANOTHER 12 years ago explains it perfectly. This context stands alone and aside from this tungsten story. Also, if the story disappears or turns out to be false, it does not invalidate the pre-existing context that would have explained it.
Skepticism
Some believe this story is a myth because gold bars are melted down all the time to make coins, jewelry, or specialized gold disks for industrial plating used in commercial-grade electronics. This argument doesn't hold water with me. As I said in this comment, "You would not just set them loose on the market. You could not afford for them to get sold to the commercials who would melt them down..."
No, if this story is true then the delivery of tungsten bars to the Chinese was a fatal "leak". And not necessarily an accident.
What I am skeptical about is this part:
I know folks who have copies of the original shipping docs with dates and exact weights of “tungsten” bars shipped to Ft. Knox.
Not that Rob Kirby is lying, but this part of the story seems less likely to me. First of all, you would have to move the new gold in and the old (real) gold out at some point. It seems unlikely to me that you would do this in a way that would a) create shipping docs, and b) leave them existing in the hands of c) someone who was free to later talk about it to Rob Kirby.
I would like to see these documents released online to be scrutinized. I would be happy to release them here. ;)
The one other thing I would like to see before I attack this story with the deadly seriousness it deserves, is some sort of a corroborating story out of China that they indeed unearthed a tungsten scandal. Perhaps there already is one. If so, please post a link in the comments section!
The fact of the matter is that there should not have been any gold flowing in or out of Fort Knox during the mid-90's, let alone the whole enchilada. So "shipping docs with dates and exact weights" of the bars would be very interesting to see.
Larry Summers
On The Other Hand
On the other hand, like I said at the beginning of this post, the Kirby story fits the known gold manipulation paradigm perfectly. Let's have a quick review.
In his article, Rob Kirby says:
And here’s what the Chinese allegedly uncovered:
Roughly 15 years ago – during the Clinton Administration [think Robert Rubin, Sir Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers] – between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day.
The mention of Rubin, Greenspan and Summers especially caught my eye. It tells me that Rob is thinking the same as me if this story is really true. For the sake of this quick run-through, let's imagine the tungsten bar story is true.
If so, this epic journey of stupidity by these three men began way back at the beginning of the Great Depression in 1930 when John Maynard Keynes wrote in his "A Treatise on Money" that interest rates and general price levels (infation) were observed to be correlated. Keynes called this Gibson's Paradox.
John Maynard Keynes
58 years later, in 1988, while at Harvard University Larry Summers published a paper called Gibson's Paradox and the Gold Standard. In the paper he theorized that government bonds could be made valuable by manipulating the price of gold downward. GATA summarizes it like this:
Essentially, the scheme as implied by Summers' paper is to keep interest rates down and government bond prices up by rigging the gold market, gold and interest rates ordinarily being inversely correlated.
I've long had a hunch that the scheme became U.S. government policy because of President Clinton's resentment upon being told, soon after taking office, that the foremost objective of his administration should be to placate the bond market. There is a famous quotation about this in Bob Woodward's book about the Clinton administration's early days, "The Agenda." The full book isn't available on the Internet but the quotation appears in several reviews of the book that have been posted. Clinton says:
"We're Eisenhower Republicans here. We stand for lower deficits, free trade, and the bond market. Isn't that great? ... We help the bond market and we hurt the people who voted us in."
Bill Clinton
So Clinton was elected in 1992 and took office on January 20, 1993. Meanwhile Larry Summers, who is known for proposing brash ideas, had left Harvard in 1991 and joined the World Bank as Chief Economist. On April 5, 1993, less than three months after Clinton took office, Larry Summers left the World Bank to join the Clinton administration as Undersecretary for International Affairs in the Dept. of Treasury.
One month later, on May 18, 1993, Alan Greenspan made an amazing statement at a Fed meeting that has only now come to light:
"I have one other issue I'd like to throw on the table. I hesitate to do it, but let me tell you some of the issues that are involved here. If we are dealing with psychology, then the thermometers one uses to measure it have an effect. I was raising the question on the side with Governor Mullins of what would happen if the Treasury sold a little gold in this market. There’s an interesting question here because if the gold price broke in that context, the thermometer would not be just a measuring tool. It would basically affect the underlying psychology.”
--Alan Greenspan (05/18/93)
Less than three months later, on exactly Aug. 5, 1993, the (c)overt gold manipulations begin:
The appearance of the intervention in NY, repeatedly led by principal actors JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, is so marked that a particular day August 5, 1993 can be identified as the date of onset of the anomalous downward trade in gold on the NY Comex. [1]
How do we know the date when the systematic interventions began? By observing their execution times. These actions are not divided evenly throughout the day, but instead tend to focus on important time points such as the PM-Fixing and the New York closing price. Additionally, COMEX trading hours are preferred. This creates an intra-day pattern that can be statistically identified and allows us to pinpoint the starting date of the interventions on August 5, 1993 (*). [2]
Robert Rubin
Of course Robert Rubin joined the team as Treasury Secretary on January 11, 1995, promoting Larry Summers to Deputy Secretary. This lasted until July 2, 1999 when Summers took over Rubin's job as Secretary of the Treasury!
A few years ago a man named Frank Veneroso did some amazing reseach on the mid 1990's and the gold market. This report is a must-read. Here was his conclusion about the mid-90's:
What are the implications of all this dry statistical analysis for the claims of GATA? To our mind, it is very simple. There is much evidence that the consensus data on supply and demand is wrong and that the supply coming from the central banks is higher than the consensus estimates. In our opinion, the fact that the central banks do not acknowledge this but simply keep affirming the consensus data---despite abundant evidence to the contrary---represents considerable support for the allegations of GATA that there may be something deliberate and intentionally clandestine about the large flows of official gold that have been depressing the gold price.
Now, with all of this context in mind, let's take one more look at Rob Kirby's "conspiracy theory"...
Roughly 15 years ago – during the Clinton Administration [think Robert Rubin, Sir Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers] – between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in the USA [more than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day.
Can you see now how his mention of Rubin, Summers and Greenspan caught my attention? I am still a little skeptical of the details, but the story sure seems to fit. It will be interesting to watch what else develops.
Clash of the Titans
I mentioned earlier that I would talk about why I believe that more information will definitely be forthcoming if this story is indeed true. Well, here it is.
Us little people (the Lilliputians) tend to believe that "the Giants" have a master plan for controling us and stealing everything we have. This is simply not true, hard as it is to believe for us lilliputians. Just because things work out a certain way doesn't mean it was planned just that way. Yes there are many evil plans. Yes there are some really bad guys. But with all the players in the global scheme of things the law of probabilities says that some will come out way ahead and be dubbed... "the masterminds".
But the way it works in reality is that there is a battle royale raging between these "Giants". I call it the Clash of the Titans. And in this tungsten story, as it stands today, one of these Giants has royally screwed another, and maybe many more.
Any Giant sitting on a hoard of 400 oz. LGD bars today as his personal wealth reserve is checking them out very closely. Count on it! And this includes some very large investors in GLD (among other ETF's) that were certainly not "in on the scam".
So keep your eyes peeled for relevant stories and please post them here. I don't have time to read everything. Like I said in my linked comment above, "if this duped buyer found out what he had, he might be inclined to keep it a secret until he could unload the bad bars on someone else." But now this strategy has changed. Now that Rob Kirby has published his articles, these "duped buyers" will come to the conclusion that it is better to blow the lid off this scam and go after the perps.
My Conclusion
It has been speculated by many people over the past decade that once we are in the heat of the fire the US Treasury's gold will be employed in defense of the dollar. Perhaps this was what some of the Giants were counting on. Before 1971 the dollar was considered to be "good as gold". Since then it was considered to be "hard currency" amongst a world full of soft currencies. Perhaps now it will be considered to be "Good as Tungsten"? I wonder how this will affect the next move from the People's Republic of China. Hmm....
Sincerely,
FOFOA
_______________________________________________________
This post was based on Rob Kirby's article,
On Doing God’s Work
“Gold Finger” - A New Take On Operation Grand Slam With A Tungsten Twist
November 12, 2009
which can be found at the following websites:
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/kirby/2009/1112.html
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1258049769.php
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article14996.html
These next three were the articles leading up to the "Gold Finger" article. All extremely relevant must-reads:
Central Banking: A Blight On Humanity
October 9, 2009
Blight on Humanity Addendum
October 15, 2009
28 days before he published "Gold Finger", Rob Kirby published this email from an acquaintance in Blight on Humanity Addendum:
I discussed these irregularities with a very informed source [the same one who informed me of specific [allocated] trades settled last week] and the reply I received was as follows:
“What can I tell you that you don't already know?
They are all scrambling big time since a number of large interests have demanded audits. Independent auditors are NOW descending onto the various vaults to verify, validate and certify.
They can move this as many times in circles as they like to try to fool people.
In an Asian depository they’ve found “Good Delivery” bricks that had been gutted and filled with tungsten.
Soon, there will be xxxx hitting the fan all over place.”
10/20 Rob Kirby - Update to Addendum: Q and A
October 20, 2009
199 comments:
You write exactly what i was thinking. Even better you brought in Veneroso, as that fits even more in this picture.
The old saying comes to pass here: Where smoke is, is fire...
Things are definitely heating up.....
FOFOA; thanks for having the courage to grasp the nettle so quickly. Interesting thoughts. Bravo!
BB
One other thing that has bothered me. How could the Chinese have arrested someone so quickly, and yet be able to trace it all the way back to the nexus from these perpetrators? I first assumed this HK salted gold came from London (did that gold move yet?), but then Kirby said the first suspects were the Chinese themselves (because of their knockoff reputation). A bit confusing. We already know that US gold has been on the "uncontrolled" move with the finding that supposed LGD bars are actually 90% coin melt. Per Fekete, that has US circa 1934 all over it.
How fitting, Keynes looks like Nosferatu.
FOFOA; Good synopsis current understanding of tungsten alchemy. I must take issue with your dismissal of "the master plan" though. The events of which you speak were launched on Aug 15, 1971(if not long, long before).
Your analysis here, and previously, describes just such a formula or "master plan."
One that is a blueprint for the demise of fiat currencies going back thousands of years. So you dismiss the "master plan" before going on to describe some of its visible (if blurred) facets.
Everything discussed by FOFOA conforms to a grand srategy. You provide incremental understanding, piece by piece, to a vast mosaic whose theme slowly emerges.
Sure it is not linear. Titans will disagree and squabble as transitions or "paradigm shifts" occur. Birth pangs of NWO etc.
But the Veneroso piece, GATA, Gibson's paradox as discussed by Summers (to name few of thousands)
are threads to a clear, relentless, deliberate and successful strategem being played out in the cold light of day.
Cui bono? That is obvious.
Your Swiftian metaphor is apt. Understand, I am not emotionally vested either way. I only seek to understand the extraordinary (perhaps terrible) tapestry unfolding before us.
A lilliputian would term EVERYTHING discussed by FOFOA/GATA/sinclair etc a "conspiracy theory." He has been successfully conditioned to reject anything beyond his arthropodic experience. So lets dismiss this silly and self-diminishing reflex.
You FOFOA, however, know better!
Buster Bucani
Mr. Kirby has more on this topic posted at the top of his site however it requires a paid subscription to read the full contents. Ah,the life of the Lilliputian.
http://www.kirbyanalytics.com/
I'm reading a lot (a tonne perhaps ;-) ) of great information here. What I still don't understand, though, is who the players are. Everyone references CB's and bullion banks. But who are they? In the US you are takling about the Fed being the CB right? And a bullion bank? Who is that? If I wanted to go buy a few bars from the BB, where would I go tomorrow? And would they sell to the general public? TIA to whomever can help me out. :)
- Brad
JPM, HSBC etc. bullions. Pull up the CFTC reports and you can see that GS, JPM have huge positions in the PMs. This is probably a good place to link to those intel documents published on Zerohedge a while back which deliberated the move off the gold standard
(http://www.zerohedge.com/article/cia-chimes-gold-control-highlights-historical-gold-foreign-holdings-shortfunding)
Beyond price discovery, the single greatest threat looming is losing the ability to narrate. What is happening here is really no different than what occured in the Newspapers industry. Editorial control is relinqueshed to the a partial democratization of information. From there the tangled webs begin to unravel (see FT article in weekend section about the French lawyer moved off to Iceland to probe the financial complex/collapse).
Agree with FOFOA, there may be a grand plan but it is merely a mosiac formed from many self interested, and well intentioned, competing factions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hopNAI8Pefg
Mortymer:
1/ Could -> would -> should -> it did most likely happen.
As I mentioned here before - if the Fort Knox gold (partly or all of it) could help dollar in past by selling it straight, indirectly or via paper gold it was most likely done. Political will there certainly was, experienced people certainly were available also and chances to do so plenty.
So the question is how. If it was via tungsten or via some behind the door deals is not important. Once it will be known. This will certainly move markets how story will develop further, it is still young one with potential.
2/ I remember that before the communism fell down in my country the bad news started to leak more often, there was much of desinformation but the whole stuff, if true or not, the movement in the attitude of people, the real investigation, the whole effort made the difference. Then people declined the leadership.
3/ Have you realized how more and more stories come up each week? It is still very very far from the drop what broke the camel´s back but I find those stories enjoyable. I do not believe in everything and try to keep rational, trying to use critical thinking and recheck what I can but your latest story Fofoa, offers quite nice explanation, that has to be admitted.
4/Joke: Imagine that Clinton advisor gets this great idea: "Lets sell some gold to supress market!" ...The deal with BB is signed. Summers comes to Fort Knox to fix the last details and meets Rubin and Greenspan. They realize that there is no gold anymore. Sh*t! Great plan... Hmmm, what to do, what to do... Lets put here fakes and write certificates on them so nobody finds out, derivatives on gold! Huraaah! ... And Mr. Greenspan saved the day!
Re: The master plan
I find it hard to believe that someone trusts that the paper fiat was placed in order with good intentions.
I find is equally hard to believe that the tungsten salted bars were forged with good intentions.
I would agree that the details of the master plan were not known, meaning that when they created fiat money they didn't know how exactly they will execute the gold substitution.
But, I think that yes, there is undoubtedly a master plan, it is just not detailed. It doesn't deal with "exactly how". It is strategic. It sets a sequence of goals, and it is the work of tacticians to work out the details of each and every battle later on.
It his very difficult to judge how much credence to put into this story, although it does appear to be more credible than the ?counterfiet? US Bearer bonds intercepted on the Swiss/Italian border several months ago.
I find the reference to the Rothschilds in the Kirby article to be fascinating.
Gary North has a nice piece on the Rothschilds giving up their seat at the LBMA in 2004. I doubt that it was because it wasn't profitable because gold was just starting its long climb. Evidence would indicate a plan to get into position for a financial crisis, and probably to gain physical possession of as much gold as possible.
They are most likely all tied up together: Rothschilds stepping down from the LBMA, GLD being founded, tungsten counterfeit bars, CB's selling gold, gold long march to >$1000/oz.
On master plan.
Consider the booklet "The Occult Technology of Power".
http://www.rexresearch.com/articles/ocultech.htm
There are indeed broad guidelines for managing "subject populations and puppets". However the challenges of international peers could be formidable, the book suggests. In the closing section, it is written that "In the vast chess game with the peers there are no rules and no proven tactics". The last sentence is; "Perhaps our system will simply remain much as it is, secure on the national level and disturbingly pluralistic at the international level, until reason and egoism have developed among our populations to such an extent that our occult technology of money power becomes obvious to all who think and must yield to either anarchy or a more advanced form of deception."
-----
Since I am not privy to any information concerning the battles of these people, this is as far as I can advance. However, having some experience in playing chess, I can say that plans change as the game evolves. One selects an opening and has a knowledge of available middle game plans for two sides, however, every game has a character of its own, and one has to form new master plans as the position changes.
http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/en/alloy11.htm
Tungsten Alloy for Gold Substitution! CERTIFICATED ISO 9001:2000
"Nowadays, tungsten alloy is increasingly used in some field relevant to gold or platinum substitution, such as: jewelry, e.g. ring, ear ring, necklace, wrist chain, etc. Also, it is widely adopted in making faking coins, such as memorial crown."
http://emsnews.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/tungsten-filled-gold-bars-in-asia/
More skepticism
http://www.rapidtrends.com/2009/11/14/why-gold-bugs-are-considered-nuts/
http://www.periodictable.com/Items/074.36/index.html
"Museum-grade sample.
In early 2004 Max Whitby and I started selling individual element samples identical or similar to the samples we use in the museum displays we build. These are top-quality samples presented in attractive forms appropriate to the particular element. They are for sale from Max's website and also on eBay where you will find an ever-changing selection of samples (click the link to see the current listings).
This cylinder is made of solid tungsten, but plated with gold so it looks like solid gold. And unlike most fake gold, it actually weighs the right amount. Interestingly, the density of tungsten is virtually the same (to three decimal places) as the density of gold, so if you want to make fake bars of gold, using tungsten in the core would be a really good idea. Getting the weight right is important because gold, like tungsten, is extremely dense, nearly twice the density of lead. No one who knows their gold would be fooled by anything crude like gold plated lead. Remember those old Westerns where the bad guys sling a bag full of gold bars over their saddles and ride off? Forget it: The horse would never make it, those bars are a lot heavier than they look."
"Bill;
There are a number of Central Banks around the world that are known for "storing" appreciable amounts of other country’s sovereign gold bullion. Many of these store-houses have gladly accepted bullion over the past half dozen to 10 years or so as "certifiable and legit pure bullion". The Countries offering these ‘secure’ storage facilities have apparently been charging "an arm and a leg" – as much as 30 – 40 dollars per bar / yr. for storage. It was expressed to me today – by someone who shall remain nameless – what happens when the beneficial owners of "salted bullion" show up with a team of assayers and want to survey their metal that has been held in custody for them?
Think this through very carefully. Many sovereigns are doing this very thing RIGHT NOW.
Best,
Rob Kirby"
Tungsten flu epidemic. Does it slow down gold buying at the retail level? Any info?
Richard Russell is starting to sound like FOFOA...
(3) The world's central banks are now seeking to protect themselves from a falling dollar by buying gold. After years of selling gold, ironically, the central banks are now buying gold. In today's WSJ we see the headline, "Central Banks Join A New Gold Rush." Russell Comment -- This is indeed ironic. In swapping their own paper for gold, many central banks are admitting that gold is superior to the very paper they are creating out of thin air.
(4) Many nations are now seeking to boost the ratio of gold to paper in their reserves. The US has the largest ratio of gold to junk fiat paper, 77.4%. But the US stupidly only places the value of our gold at $42.22 an ounce. If the US marked our gold to market, it would be a tremendous help to our government's balance sheet. But the US prefers to live in a fantasy world where gold is worth less than $50 an ounce!
Germany has 69.2% of its reserves in gold.
Italy has 66.6%.
France has 70.6%.
UK has 17.6% (after idiotically selling most of its gold near the low below $300 an ounce).
Japan has 2.3% of its reserves in gold.
India has 4.0%.
Russia has 4.3%.
China has 1.9%.
It's easy to see that Russia, India and China are low on gold. All three would like to at least double the percentage of gold in their reserves. The race is on for these central banks to accumulate gold without running the price of gold sky-high.
(5) In the US, literally no one owns gold. Rather US citizens are selling their gold (jewelry) to companies who are advertising that they'll buy "your overpriced" gold for cash.
(6) A few nations are actively promoting the ownership of gold. China, the world's biggest miner of gold, has been encouraging its people to buy gold. In London, Harrod's department store is now selling gold coins and bars to anyone who has the paper to buy gold. Within a year or so, I expect public buying of gold to reach a crescendo. Interestingly, most Americans have never seen a gold coin…
Here's an interesting graph from Google that shows how many people searched for information about gold since 2004. There's a little spike around September 2008, but other than that the graph looks quite flat.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=gold
Yeah, but look at the trend for "where to buy gold": http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22where+to+buy+gold%22
what happened with the 64 tons of gold the turks stole from the french last year ? a good way to lose some fake gold
Ailu: Indeed, but the search volume for that term is quite low. Google doesn't give the absolute numbers, but if you enter more than one search term you can see a comparison:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=gold%2C+where+to+buy+gold%2C+buy+gold%2C+sell+gold&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
My point here is that this data suggests the general public is barely more interested in gold than a couple of years ago, and that there doesn't appear to be a gold mania as some analysts believe.
Two thoughts come to mind right now. The first is a dramatic save we saw in gold, where a last minute transaction between CBs miraculously saved the day. Such events happen when the gold isn't really there... which leads me to though two.
Supplanting false gold is of no risk if the bars will never be assayed. Assuming the bars went into a warehouse where the only intent was to store them as a false front, all would be fine. The real gold would move in and out as the market plays continued and nobody would be the wiser. One of two eventual outcomes could be expected though... eventually, someone would slip up and release the false bars in error. Or, and I think this most likely, a point would be reached that the false bars were all that remained. End of an era... end of the manipulation game.
Such a game could play many years. It would collapse rapidly once nations started to store their own gold and asked for what was held in trust to be delivered. Seems this is what we have happening today.
TomB:
Good point. I guess I was just being hopeful...
From LeMet:
U.S. Mint Annual Reports Correlate with Tungsten Filled Gold Bars
By Bryant Blake
Rob Kirby’s unearthing of the potential huge gold bar salting news got me thinking about all of the changes in the way the U.S. Mint categorizes their holdings of treasury gold...
...Custodial gold and silver reserves consist of both “Deep Storage” and “Working Stock” gold and silver.
Deep Storage is defined as that portion of the U.S. Government-owned gold and silver Bullion Reserve which the Mint secures in sealed vaults. Deep Storage gold comprises the vast majority of the Reserve and consists primarily of gold bars.
Working Stock is defined as that portion of the U.S. Government-owned gold and silver Bullion Reserve which the Mint uses as the raw material for minting congressionally authorized coins. Working Stock gold comprises only about one percent of the Gold Bullion Reserve and consists of bars, blanks, unsold coins, and condemned coins.
Treasury allows the United States Mint to use its gold and silver as working stock. Generally, the United States Mint will replace its working stock when used in production with purchases of gold and silver on the open market. In those cases where the gold or silver is not replaced, the United States Mint reimburses Treasury the market value of the depleted gold or silver.
What do all of these changes mean, and how does it fit in with Mr. Kirby’s revelations? Starting in 2000, the gold was divided into 2 categories with the working stock available to the Mint consisting of only 1.2% of the total amount of gold. Now the following is a hypothesis, but the shoe seems to fit. If the gold in Fort Knox and West Point was swapped with counterfeit tungsten filled gold bars, then the government could not have the mint accessing the tungsten bars and melting them down for coinage. By dividing the gold into 2 categories and only allowing the mint access to 1% of the gold, no one would ever know about the crime. Not only would no one know, but any senators or foreign central banks that were granted visual access would see room after room of bars that looked and weighed just like gold.
Since this division was made in 2000, not one ounce of gold has been added to or removed from the total of the operating inventory/deep storage gold. If all this is not weird enough, since 2005, there has not been any change to the quantity of working stock gold. I have no idea how the Mint can manufacture 100’s of thousands of gold coins per year and the amount of working stock remains the same year after year.
@BB - well said.
for remember the extremely well-connected FDR's words:
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
i'm not saying the police staters are going to win, but there are good reasons to be concerned they might at this point.
the more important thing is that there are plenty of people planning. one group will win, even if not according to a "master" plan with perfect specificity. I think i was reading that yo uhad implied that in your post. however, it seemed to be rhetorically contradicted by the point that there is no master plan, etc. not sure if that makes sense or not.
Hedge Fund sells Gold ETF and buys Barrick. Maybe they have some concers about their exposure to fraud.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aydy.U01wYx8
@anon 12:31 brilliant comment. so enlightening for me. so many lilliputians seem to be belive that no conspirator would ever be able to micro-manage so many little events, but fails to account for war as a brilliant metaphor. the general still has a general strategy even if every bullet isn't planned out.
thanks anon.
Hmm...
http://www.google.com/trends?q=tungsten+gold&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
Looks like Gold and Tungsten was first surfaced in January 2008, a very short blip, may-be a two and a half month long.
Then there was nothing, until the end of October 2008, from where it held "steady", and then doubled just now.
I like this tool, thanks!
The Kirby Story is false. he claims that tungsten has the same density as gold.
tungsten has a specific gravity of 15 and gold 19.3.
a 400 ounce tungsten par would be 28% larger than a 400 ounce gold bar. the difference would be obvious.
i am a gold assayer with 30 years experience.
the kirby story is dis information.
gold assayer
Pete
Pete: My information shows that tungsten has a specific gravity of 19.3.
GOLD: 19.30
Tungsten: 19.25
Difference: Tungsten is 99.7 % as heavy as gold.
*Not talking about isotopes here.
Source: Wikipedia
- I do believe that people are watching a fake Mona Lisa that is (1)
- I'm sure Italy, master in creating fake euro coins (and there are a lot of them) also mastered the Tungsten proces
- The problem is far worse than you might think (actually all possible coins have fakes, and the most fakes we find in the limited editions and rare years, with limited number of minted coints
- Hell in Belgium there is a stamp only 1 left (but you can buy like 1000 counterfeits if you search them)
- You just laser cut out the stamp and glue it back together upside down
(google upside down stamp belgium or sth, i don't know it is sth brown with a flyer)
- The only way to find the real one out of the many fakes (said to be in a private collection) is by
X-raying the stamp and looking to the paper pulp
So it would be logic to have more fakes
in silver !!!!!!! a lot more
ask china or google
fake chinese pandas
you see
you also better get a test and double check, if your gold is real gold
i bet some of it isn't !
Now, because a Gram (unit of weight in SI [metric]) is defined as a weigh of pure water contained in one cc (cubic centimeter)(which is one hundredth of a meter on a side), incidentally 19.3 means that gold weigh 19.3 times as much as pure water.
One bottle of drinking water filled with gold would be as heavy as a box of 20 bottles of water.
Here, catch you bottle, honey!
btw the story is fake just to make some attention to maybe this and other blogs
if i discover x oz of fakegold instead of real gold, i just buy the real gold x2
just because im 'madoff'
any person that has a lot of 12kg bars 400 oz bars
would surely just swap them and sell the fake to third party
do you start scanning your gold (as a doctor we have the facilities at work) so the entire coins and bars seem to be of the same content
don't know a lot about isotops
Anonymous Tekin said...
http://www.tungsten-alloy.com/en/alloy11.htm
Tungsten Alloy for Gold Substitution! CERTIFICATED ISO 9001:2000
"Nowadays, tungsten alloy is increasingly used in some field relevant to gold or platinum substitution, such as: jewelry, e.g. ring, ear ring, necklace, wrist chain, etc. Also, it is widely adopted in making faking coins, such as memorial crown."
lol
you rule
let's start melting that tungsten to jewelry !
women love it, yes that is 24k
bastard :)
use the knowledge don't ask is it true
it is heavy it "must" be gold
Gold's density is 19.30 gm/cc. Tungsten's is 19.25 gm/cc, not 15.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten
this may be coming from left field, but what do you make of this from google about news.goldseek.com being a malicious site? is this just random coincidence (as i've never had any problems there), or are they being setup to take their site down?
other options? just thought it was curious.
Google Safe Browsing Diagnostic Page
curiuos to know some of the more techie opinions (i used to work doing some tech stuff, but not knowledgeable enough
to feel to confident here.
I think financialsense got taken down by a malicious virus a while back too. IIRC they had to take the site down for a week or so and reprogram it or something like that.
these hacks coming from agency computers in your opinion?
@Mr. Ukraine:
what's your take on this article?
MILLION HIT BY 'PLAGUE WORSE THAN SWINE FLU'
Satya,
Man, its like some kind of Orwellian fantasy here. I live in West Ukraine, and it was crazy panic for the first week with people and the media spreading wild rumors. But then people started realizing that no one they knew had the flu or had died and everything they were hearing about death was coming from second hand or media sources.
Theres just no sick people.
I went to a big hospital on Friday for a minor injury. And it looked like a normal Ukrainian hospital.They werent over whelmed and were able to see me promptly.
Sure theres flu here, I got it last month before all this started happening. But its just normal flu.
The good thing now is that since people arent seeing dead people and no one really knows of anyone whos died. The people now think its just a political stunt for the elections in January.
I personally think its more about this countries financial situation. I believe Ukraine is real close to default and if it goes, how many Western European banks will go with it? So you see, its always good to have a flu epidemic handy when a region of the world descends into economic chaos.
On Friday Im going to check the prices on a few things that Im tracking, to see if a form of hyperinflation is setting in. All I know is that prices are going up but I cant tell if its a normal amount of inflation for this country or if it has picked up its pace.
Anyway all this said, dont worry about the swine flu. So far its just propaganda, rest assured I will be the first to put out the warning if it becomes real and people are really dieing.
Any ideas on why APMEX is selling their 1/10 OZ gold coins for almost exactly spot?
They usually have a pretty hefty premium attached to them. Is the physical buying now not keeping up with the paper spot prices? Why would APMEX not be updating their prices?
Maybe theyre making a big enough profit now because the price is increasing so rapidly that they dont have to charge the big premiums?
http://www.apmex.com/Category/292/Gold_Eagles___1_10_oz_2009__Prior__.aspx
FOFOA, awesome post!
I knew that the FEDs would tax the hell out of gold profits, I just never knew that they already did! I hope I don't get audited for profits on GLD that I took in 2008!
Gold is precious to the IRS, Too(From BARRON'S)
Investors have been pouring money into exchange-traded funds that buy gold and silver, and that has helped push the price of gold to a recent high of $1,123 an ounce. But fans of those ETFs might not realize that the tax consequences of their investments could be costly.
Gold and silver receive special treatment in the tax code. Considered collectibles, not capital assets, they don't qualify for the maximum 15% tax rate on long-term capital gains. Instead, gains on the sale of gold and silver investments, including gold- and silver-backed ETFs, and gold bullion and coins (except certain U.S.-issued coins), are taxed at a maximum rate of 28% when such investments have been held for more than a year. When these assets are held for less than one year, gains are taxed as ordinary income. Precious-metals ETFs are organized as grantor trusts. Investors in an ETF are treated as owning undivided interests in the metal owned by the fund. When an investor sells shares in the ETF, the tax code treats that investor as having sold a share of the metal backing the fund. Thus, the investor is subject to the maximum tax on collectibles. If the ETF sells some of its gold or silver, as funds typically do to pay expenses, including management fees, then gains or losses on such sales flow through to the fund's investors, though they receive no cash distribution. In the case of gains, the investors must include their share of the profit in gross income, which likewise would be taxable at the maximum 28% rate. The SPDR Gold Trust (ticker: GLD), a popular gold-backed ETF, instructs shareholders on its Website how to compute the gain or loss when the ETF sells metal to pay expenses. (See http://www.spdrgoldshares.com/media/GLD/file/SPDR_Gold_Trust_2008_Tax_Information.pdf.)
continued...
These tax rules also apply to other precious-metals ETFs, such as the iShares Comex Gold Trust (IAU) and iShares Silver Trust (SLV). But they don't apply to ETFs that use futures or derivative contracts to track the performance of metals, such as PowerShares DB Gold (DGL), PowerShares DB Silver (DBS) and PowerShares DB Precious Metals (DBP). Exchange-Traded Note funds (ETNs) also have different tax rules, as do ETFs that buy stock in companies in precious metals-related businesses.
Investors aren't allowed to own collectibles in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and other self-directed retirement accounts, including 401(k) plans. When gold and silver are purchased for such accounts, an amount equal to the cost of acquiring the collectible is treated as a distribution to the owner. It is included in gross income and taxed at ordinary rates, although an additional 10% penalty might apply if the owner is under age 59 1/2.
These rules apparently don't apply when gold or silver are purchased for a retirement account through an ETF, although the Internal Revenue Service hasn't stated its view publicly. Instead it has issued opinions in private-letter rulings and internal documents, including letters to the major precious-metals ETFs.
Based on such documentation, retirement accounts are treated as having purchased fund shares, not the collectibles held by a fund. Thus, the cost of purchasing a gold or silver ETF in a retirement account wouldn't be treated as a distribution to the owner.
The prospectus of the iShares Comex Gold Trust, for instance, states that the sponsor has received a private-letter ruling from the IRS; it provides that purchase of the fund by various types of retirement accounts doesn't constitute the acquisition of a collectible and won't be treated as resulting in a taxable distribution to a retirement-plan participant. There is one exception: If the fund was to sell its precious metals and distribute the metal in kind to shareholders, those transactions would be treated as the acquisition of a collectible.
A private-letter ruling is applicable only to the taxpayer who asked for and received the ruling. It may not be used or cited by other taxpayers as precedent in court cases. But it reveals the thinking of the IRS on an issue, and auditors generally follow it. In addition, most tax advisors believe a taxpayer in a similar situation can safely rely on the ruling.
Gold has rallied about 25% since the end of 2008, so precious-metals ETFs are likely to remain popular with investors. Thus, fund holders would do well to familiarize themselves with the tax issues pertaining to such holdings.
Put another way, a golden opportunity isn't always what it seems.
Anon @ 1:35am re: Apmex
I wouldn't call $200 an ounce over spot "almost exactly spot" lol
The coins near spot are not in stock.You can order them now and wait for delivery, just like Apmex did previously as they locked in their price. Apmex's profits are already locked in at this price since we've had this run up.
Good deal if you don't mind waiting but IMO now is the time to get the physical in your hands
This article argues that China's marked is also paper fluff. I tend to agree to a certain extent, although I would think that China is in better shape than the US. However, if China has been playing the paper fluff game on its economy too, that might be some incentive to at least not hammer the dollar too hard; once the paper system collapses China will suffer too.
It seems like the path is clear, but the timing is not. The US clearly wants to postpone collapse, China might want some more time to take precautions (I do believe they are at least somewhat proactive in this matter) and Europe is having some trouble on its own.
Did any of you guys already found a way to examine gold bars for tungsten without damaging them?
About the swine flu: In August, I went on holidays in Argentina, on the heaviest moment of swine flu peak (says the mainstraim media). Well, I've seen nothing... Also asked to the people: 'Do you fears the swine flu? And the average answer was no and everything is normal here... Now, I don't fears the swine flu, it's a government/corporatism hoax...
And an anonymous write this in an early post:
Hedge Fund sells Gold ETF and buys Barrick. Maybe they have some concers about their exposure to fraud.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aydy.U01wYx8
Are they not frauding now? They buys Barrick, when it's known their production is declining (peakgold)... Buying a bad share with people's money... Is this not frauding???
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/mining/6546579/Barrick-shuts-hedge-book-as-world-gold-supply-runs-out.html
@Martijn: Yes, I've tested it, all of mines were ok...
http://www.wikihow.com/Tell-if-Gold-Is-Real
For a chemical test, you can get
HCl (hydrochloric acid) or H2SO4 (sulfuric acid).
Be careful with low grade of purity gold (like 18K,...), these coud be damaged by chemical test. Only test it on 99,99% pure gold (no risk). If you're not certain or did know how to test, go to a numismatic for testing it...
Believe is believe, knowing is knowing... Believe me...
I believe jade has been rising as well. Jade used to be China's store of value comparable to the way gold was used in the West. Does any of you guys happen to know anything worthwhile on jade?
Martijn:
"Does any of you guys happen to know anything worthwhile on jade?"
If you collect jade, like porcelain, you have to maintain humidity in the display case. If not it cracks and crazes.
My knowledge of Japan in this area is from 25 years ago. Then jade artistry was highly valued. One of the key things was attribution (eg. who made the piece) but also the "pedigree" of the artist.
For example if one of the recognised Jade masters was named "Ono" then a more contemporary piece by "Tuo student of Ono" would tend to be more valued.
In parallel the artistic merit of each piece would be judged. Historical or cultural merit could also affect the perception of value eg. Does it celebrate an iconic Japanese value, ideal or event?
Jade, perhaps an investment not for the faint hearted or inexperienced in this market.
Thanks for the reply. I'm generally trying to run into things I did not consider before and jade was one of those. Didn't think too much of it, but one has to check in order to be sure.
China would like to buy Newmont mining:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_47/c4156insidewal295963.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories
and also this is a good report about China and gold:
http://www.dailywealth.com/archive/2009/oct/2009_oct_31.asp
@mr. ukraine:
actually you and i are in the same boat (in fact, we're sitting in the same damn seat...one of us needs to move over :) ). but we're on the same page. i'm in th US, and am working on a masters in public health and doing solid research which shows just how ineffective, unsafe, and a scam the vaccines are (and having to word it diplomatically for my professors and colleagues whose paradigm cannot understand why politics and economics would affect "pure science."
but i wanted your perspective just to see if something had radically changed there since your last post. thanks for your perspective!
moreover, i believe what's happeninig in your neck of the woods is likely to be comin' to my neighborhood soon. though if your suspicions about the timing hyper inflation are correct, we may differ a bit on the timing (then again, maybe not).
satya
It is rather interesting for me to read the post. Thanks for it. I like such topics and everything that is connected to this matter. I definitely want to read more on that blog soon.
Jimmy: I don't think that those testing methods are much better than checking the density. You can only check the surface of your bar with those acids, it doesn't detect whether the bar is filled with tungsten.
I think that unless you have some pretty expensive equipment at your disposal, there's no way to tell without damaging the bar.
not sure if someone posted this here or not the other day w/respect to kirby, and i'm not expert enough to vouch for this (maybe someone else can comment), but i pass Simple Techniques to Detect Fake Gold Coins, Especially the Tungsten Powder Fraud along in case it's useful.
Satya
apparently, one of the guys i read (mike adams) wrote an article about the ukraine "superflu" here:
H1N1 'super flu' plague in Ukraine spark concern, conspiracy theories about origins
@Satya:
Yes, it was me who posted this link about how to detect tungsten. (see the reactions on the older article of FOFOA: Gold Urinals or Smokes?)
The chemical test is indeed only accurate to detect the quality of gold on the surface. You can also make a scrath on the bar (best on the sides of the bar), if you see it is splintering (or shattering), then it's fake. There is only a scratch, it's real.
HSBC USA and JP Morgan are holding the two largest short positions on gold.
HSBC (not USA) is selling its real estate to generate some cash.
Guess we'll have to wait and see how things develop for HSBC.
Satya,
Ukraine is a fascinating nexus. GDP printed this am down 16% after a -17% ptint last Q. If you look at the Russia issues over the past few years as regards basing, ports and of course nat gas transmission, throw in the economy and then consider what a leg down in Eastern Europe means for the euor banks (see Evan Pritchard today re China and the paper overed Euro banking issues) - Ukraine is a supremely logical choke point. I believe wiki shows Ukraine as the 2nd richest country in arable land. A virtual breadbasket. Now consider what happens if the country goes into duress theoretically: (1) food production suffers; (2) Russia gas transmissions suffer; and (3) European banks could see a cascade if a default were to pass.
Russia is a perennial PIA for NATO and trouble or shutdown in the ukraine would cut both ways potentially - Russia comments this am talking about increasing theirnaval presence in the oceans and that port down there in Sevastapool is critical (as is the new port in the breakways near georgia). The disrpution would be attended to by the Euro area so the Russians seem a beneficiary of disruption net net. However food disruption could detract. The Eurozone could see a 3x zinger: higher energy costs, bank losses and food down.
Seems Ukraine is a logical choke point with cascading effects both east and west (think Austria 1930s).
Some suspect the US is left with 1 of 2 options: (1) aggression to protect incumbany and reassure world of supremecy; or (2) a disaster elsewhere to elevate the ugly above the pigs.
Current headlines suggest the following: (1) Sarkozy reported to have warned Assad on Israeli strike (iran) this am; (2) US accelerated order of massive ordance; (2)Aussy paper saying US has channeled a huge amount of money to ISI in Paksitan since 2001; (3) Japan moving away from US orbit slowly but headlines rankor over Okinawa and dollar holdings etc.. suggest the trend; (4) Fed/ECB chasm going back re Trichet and ZIRP. FOFOA details the ECB gold view etc..all there to read.
So who is the most logical tank candidate? Ukraine aside and much as the US would probably like to see ECB confront its bank issues more overtly, Japan is the most obvious alternative chokepoint. It is ironic that Einhorn (& Hugh Hendry) are out with short JGB calls which essentially give market endorsement to what seems the most logical way to blast the dollar up off its one way trajectory. The YEN is 13% or so od the DXY - so a reversal would act to stabalize the ship in the very short term. The US could also go the rout of capital controls/tarriffs which essentially jokes the Japanese all the more. Squeezed from the real and the financial.
China has essentially become a derivative bet on global macro - whcih looks increasingly like a bad bet. At least they are smart enopught to try and deploy their cash into the real, though it seems both sides are eyeing their spreadhseets to figure out where the inflection point rests where the revaluation balance tips one way or the other. M.A.D. in other words.
satya/s/ukraine; good posts. keep 'em coming. You will want to read (if you have not done so) www.theflucase.com, www.globalresearch.ca (especially the always lucid F. William Englahl), and www.engdahl.oilgeoplolitics.net on significant and troubling inconsistencies in the flu saga.
I agree..."nothing is accidental in politics." Satya.. my post was perhaps (deliberately) too elliptical. My apologies but I do feel that when one looks at the grand chessboard, one should be able to deduce a splendid neo-Clausewizian strategy! I approve of the Prussian flavor!
Is it just me, but have others noticed a recent uptick in "false claim" posts on fofoa? It was just a matter of time I guess before the proles/spoilers sniffed us out and swarmed aboard. Bash on regardless, I say. An overt paradigm shift is nigh... I can just feel it. The tungsten fuse is lit.
BB
absolutely MUST READ;
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2009/1113.html
@ SatyaPranava,
"Techniques to Detect Fake Gold Coins, Especially the Tungsten Powder Fraud" article is questionable at best. Numerous mistakes!
1. Tungsten is higher density then gold for the author of the article! This points to someone who doesn't know about gold, but only about gold jewelry which is half or at least quarter fake.
2. Tungsten powder would make the infill lighter, so it wouldn't even 19.25 anymore.
3. Again, electric conductivity test as described will fail.
@ Desperado,
Hell, you are trying to escape from being a subject of confiscation of your wealth by inflation, and you thought they will just let you?
Everyone pays. Especially all those stock gurus, thinking that they are inflation proof. Nope. Their wealth is producing lower returns (gross return - inflation haircut). Then taxes.
Same goes for bullion. 28 %, how about that!
You are not allowed to skip the collective fun, not even with pure gold, unless, you don't care for the collective anymore.
Sorry to hear that D.,(that you just found out). Do not despair, you'll be just this much stronger.
Always aim for free markets. (They replaced the defining word with "black", meaning that "not scrutinized under an examination light").
Howard Katz says that Dollar isn't going away anytime soon. And forecasts gold uptrend to continue till 2020.
He says that paper currency destruction is a rare event. He thinks that FED will be cautious enough to save the dollar.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/katz/nov162009.html
@Anonymous, November 16, 2009 11:01 AM
You said:
You are not allowed to skip the collective fun, not even with pure gold, unless, you don't care for the collective anymore.!
I am a dual US/Swiss Citizen and have been living in Switzerland for almost 20 years, faithfully paying my taxes to both "collectives"
Switzerland has no capital gains taxes. As you can imagine, I have had it up to here (holding my hand above my head) with the non-constitutional US collective's desire to spread my wealth. So I called the embassy today to make an appointment to ex-patriate.
A friend of mine expatriated a year ago, and had an appointment at the embassy in less than 2 months.
The US embassy in Bern told me today that they are completely swamped with people wanting to expatriate, and that the next available slot would be at the end of July 2010! That's more than 9 months away.
I am really tickled by the thought that after dutifully paying taxes to the US on my foreign income without having any representation, that those greedy bastards are now playing games to try to make me pay taxes at least an extra year, or until the parasites change the rules so that I have to feed US and Swiss tax eaters for the rest of my life.
PS. Any of you that feel like making a snide remark about me expatriating, please be aware that whenever I debate with US citizens about the blatant unfairness in the way the US treats us Expats, I am always confronted with the old "then why don't you give up your US passport". Well guys, I am finally taking them up on their sentiment.
FOFOA,
In your latest excellent post you remarked:
"The fact of the matter is that there should not have been any gold flowing in or out of Fort Knox during the mid-90's, let alone the whole enchilada. So "shipping docs with dates and exact weights" of the bars would be very interesting to see."
Q. While Rubin et al were cranking up the gold carry trade wouldn't there be lots of movement into and out of the Govt gold repositories?
I too am still approaching the tungsten tale with some scepticism. But the gold carry trade would be perfect cover for this scam ie. lend LGD or coin melt gold bars to bullion bank from Fort Knox and 30 days to 1 year later bullion bank dutifully "repays" gold "loan" with "gold bars".
FOFOA:
"... there should not have been any gold flowing in or out of Fort Knox ...."
Likely true in the years after Nixon's default until the gold carry trade began in earnest. In the 1990s, perhaps not.
Much thievery is opportunistic after all. Observing the gold carry trade could have given someone an idea. This also meshes with your Clash of the Titans conceptualisation of the relationships among the Giants.
We wait and see I guess.
Desperado,
I would be the last to disrespect your move.
It's an evil fnord that is being hammered in our heads, that we all must belong to some collective, and that it is "dishonest" to make a move from a collective that robs you naked to a collective that robs you less blatantly.
There is a wealth of information and fresh thinking if you look at "PPPP" (if I am not mistaken, this is the name of the newest edition of the book).
Be aware, that the latest approach to people escaping the collective is to declare that lower taxation "undermines" "fair" competition between the nation (I read it as the competition to rob their citizens more efficiently), and that a global effort must be taken (underway), to force all nations to apply comparable taxes, so that again, there is no escape.
Question, does Switzerland tax on foreign income as US does?
Anonymous @November 16, 2009 12:53 PM said
that the latest approach to people escaping the collective is to declare that lower taxation "undermines" "fair" competition between the nation (I read it as the competition to rob their citizens more efficiently), and that a global effort must be taken (underway), to force all nations to apply comparable taxes, so that again, there is no escape.
This is clearly the G20's and OECD's strategy, and the reason why they are bashing the "tax havens".
IMO, any income tax rate over 10% (tithing level) is property theft. The entire western world is stealing the property of their middle classes.
In Switzerland, the majority of taxes are paid to the canton and the community, not the federal government. This has led to the situation where having a domicile in a low tax capitalistic cantons (schwyz) can cut your income taxes by 50% over a high tax socialist canton (say Jura). It is fascinating to watch the snowball effect as the wealthy flee to the low tax cantons where they still pay more in taxes per capita than the middle class do in the high tax cantons. Rents and property prices then rise in the low tax cantons, making the inhabitants even wealthier, while land prices stagnate of fall in the socialist cantons leading to worsening finances and rising tax rates.
The problem is clearly the tax-eaters, who will always flee to the canton that provides the lowest rents and highest benefits.
you also asked: does Switzerland tax on foreign income as US does?
There is only one other country on the planet that taxes foreign income of their expats. If I dropped my US citizenship and moved to Monaco, not only will I pay no capital gains but also no income tax in Switzerland. Additionally, my estate would be passed on to my children tax free.
It's not hard to see why the OECD, G20, EU, US are all busy dog-piling on Switzerland and other even more non-taxpayer-raping countries.
What is amazing to me is how quickly the sheeple buy into their "get the tax-cheats" propaganda.
Desperado
"What is amazing to me is how quickly the sheeple buy into their "get the tax-cheats" propaganda."
I come into contact with a broad range of people. Some are wealthy, some not.
In talking about our tumultuous times I often pose this question to people on limited incomes:
If you believe that Govt is entitled to tax, WHO should pay more the rich or the poor?
After some gentle coaxing for an honest answer it is always "the rich".
I reply who decides whose rich? What happens if, one day, the Govt decides YOU are rich?
I echo the complaint you voiced in the passage quoted above.
I think most people cannot see the target pinned to their own back until the Govt betrays them.
That day is coming. As Govt revenues decline it will reveal their TRUE attitude to social welfare ie. me (Govt) first and f@#k everyone else.
BB - your comments weren't too elliptical at all. and i was intending the quote for FOFOA in light of a couple of the specific statements he made above (though i generally agree with him on many of these points).
re: burgermeister (flucase) and engdahl; they are both fabulous, and have informed my thinking quite a bit. even the very ungrounded but entertaining and definitely dedicated Len Horowitz and Dr. Sherry Tenpenny are good as well (among McBean and many others).
I just have to be that much more careful because i am presenting my evidence to people who are supposed to represent "universal' education (hence the term university). Rather, I feel like I attend Little Box Provincity :)
most are well-intentioned, but swallow the FDA, USDA, EPA, and other executive bureacratic rhetoric like a snake would a st. bernard.
alas, it's the path i've chosen for the moment. when i get more research done, i'll be glad to present any resources relative to the discussions here.
it'll be interesting, and probably ongoing.
thanks for the suggestions, however. great stuff!
Satya
Anyone care to comment on the following article vis-a-vis Freegold?
How to Invest in Copper as Bullion
http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/long/2009/1116.html
We have a gold/silver ratio. Why not a series of gold/every other store of value ratios?
Does Freegold benefit from bringing more people into the "tangible store of value" camp?
@anon 10:50am -
tungsten density is 99.74% of gold. that's pretty damn close.
moreover,i'm not an expert, just pass that along, though i have studied phsyics, general and organic chemistry, etc, and am curious to see a source that shows that tungsten is significantly higher in density than gold. i believe there is even a wiki link above that references what I say here.
if tungsten powder makes it lighter, then its density drops, but can still be mixed with something to mimic the gold bar (probably to various effectiveness levels).
i can understand the electrical conductivity argument, but there are still plenty of other options out there for determining the quality of the gold one has.
also...
@BB - yes i've noticed some trolling going on here since the seekingalpha article and request has been made. it goes w/the territory. after a while, i just tend to tune out the trolling, when I can sense it more intuitively.
@desperado -
you know it's interesting, when i ask friends of mine here if they want to leave, they say hell no.
then they ask where we might go, and I suggest a country that is preparing its currency for hyperinflation, is extremely corrupt both in business and in govt, is quickly eradicating the middle class into a neo-feudalistic group of plebescites, doesn't offer any health care on the state level, and so on (feel free to add things to my list, though it is much longer than this).
their reply? hell no! i'm not going to that country.
I always reply that you are going to that country, because that's the country you're choosing right now by staying in the US.
so congrats on leaving. i'm still holding out some hope that we can change here, but that hope is such a quantum-sized sliver at the moment that you never know when i may be on a boat somewhere (probably not to Bern, however :) ).
Satya
@desperado; can you not shop around and find a "less-oversubscribed" US embassy? Eg Monaco, Italy, France. The stock line maybe July 2010. Please let us know your thoughts on this. From recollection only the US and Somalia (I think) tax citizens on worldwide assets. great company.
BB
SELF-CORRECTION; the second (other than USA) country levying taxes worldwide on its citizens is not Somalia (apologies to that country for the slur)... it is in fact...
Eritrea. Much better company then.
BB
What a story!
At one time my first thought would have been, "the USA would NEVER do something as STUPID as this" but then I remembered how we had a RETARD for president TWICE and how we invadaded the wrong country and how we started redefining what constitutes torture and how we replaced the Retard with President Buckwheat whose 'solution' towards solving an economic collapse caused by excessive EZ credit problem is to issue MORE excessive EZ credit.
So now I'm thinking WHEN it's proved TRUE it could push the US & China to the very brink of WWIII, since I don't think the Chinese will take kindly to being ripped-off TWICE: once thru investing in our WORTHLESS dollars and now with this tungsten deal.
And quite frankly, I hope the Chinese then proceed to wipe the entire USA off the face of the planet.
@ SatyaPranava,
Yep. 99.74. This means if you deal 99.0 purity gold, you can't even tell by weighting it!
I like your approach on asking people if they would go to such and such country.
I am going to try that too.
"PS. Any of you that feel like making a snide remark about me expatriating, please be aware that whenever I debate with US citizens about the blatant unfairness in the way the US treats us Expats, I am always confronted with the old "then why don't you give up your US passport". Well guys, I am finally taking them up on their sentiment."
I congratulate you on the decision!
But I don't think you really need to 'expatriate'. Just make sure you have no property or other assets in your name within the continental US AND then settle your final bill with the IRS by paying for the LAST year in which you had assets and resided inside the USA. That's what I did when I left and became a Uruguayan citizen instead. The easiest way to do what you want to do is simply become a citizen of the country you're residing in (if you can!) and let your American citizenship lapse! You'll never have to pay taxes again although you won't be able to visit either. Or what I call a WIN -WIN!.
BTW, did you know that there's actually an 'expatriate tax' (I shit you not) required of any American citizen leaving the country definitively? Oh yeah!
The United States is a SHITHOLE of corruption and theft. FVCK IT and LEAVE IT! It won't be around much longer anyway at this rate.
"...then they ask where we might go, and I suggest a country that is preparing its currency for hyperinflation, is extremely corrupt both in business and in govt, is quickly eradicating the middle class into a neo-feudalistic group of plebescites, doesn't offer any health care on the state level, and so on (feel free to add things to my list, though it is much longer than this).
their reply? hell no! i'm not going to that country.
I always reply that you are going to that country, because that's the country you're choosing right now by staying in the US."
---BEST COMMENT of the YEAR AWARD for this one!!!
8000 tonnes of Gold have left the USA since 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URIhhyhmI-8
This guy - jberni1 is a good source.
Anonymous @ 3:52 PM,
What do you mean "lapse". A citizenship doesn't expire just because you don't reside in US. One actually needs to surrender the passport and to rescind the citizenship. A green card does expire, is that what you had?
And yes, you're correct, they will tax you "on exit" is they think that you expatriating purely to stop being taxed worldwide.
Anonymous on "Gold Urinals or Smokes?":
I can't comment on what happened to the price of gold in Russia when they defaulted, but I can say what happened to the price of gold in Argentina when THEY defaulted; it did VERY WELL THANK YOU!
Unlike what happened in Russia as per the author of the excellent article up above, in Argentina there was NO shortage of gold buyers at any time and prices were always paid at spot ..or ocassionally above!
Physical possession of gold or other precious metals was never restricted, prohibited or even specifically TAXED by the Argentine government. In fact owning gold and real estate are considered the two SAFEST havens in Argentina for difficult financial times and believe me Argentines know TONS about difficult financial times.
The video link is interesting, but it's just ANOTHER Johnny-Come-Lately jumping on the bandwagon to tell us what we ALREADY know; the dollar is TOAST.
How about a video link to the man who FORESAW this problem over 3 years ago?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0YTY5TWtmU
BB, i can't believe you made that mistake re: somalia and eritrea. get your head out of Djibouti! :)
"What do you mean "lapse". A citizenship doesn't expire just because you don't reside in US. One actually needs to surrender the passport and to rescind the citizenship. A green card does expire, is that what you had?"
One of the first true FREEDOMS you'll discover once you've decided to leave the US definitively is that you no longer have to play by THEIR rules anymore. Feel free to move about the globe now!
If & when you receive citizenship in your new country of choice you will either be;
1) asked to renounce your previous citizenship (you should have moved out and settled your affairs by this time!) or
2) allowed to keep 'dual citizenship' and THEN you CAN let it 'lapse' ..just like an old library card. YOU make it expire just by ignoring it.
What are they gonna do? Invade your new homeland just to kidnap you for not paying taxes on your new foreign-life earnings?
RELAX.
The U.S. government is so corrupt & stupid it couldn't find it's own ass right now even if it used BOTH hands to look for it!
@ Anon (4:17)
+1 on your vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URIhhyhmI-8
@ Anon (4:34)
Here's a new vid of Peter from today. Interesting because the CNBS producers obviously kept him live beyond his segment, probably telling him in his earpiece to feel free to jump into the convo...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkFg_04PMzw
"A green card does expire, is that what you had?"
Lol. It infuriates Americans SO MUCH to think that some of their native-born ex-brethren might not like living in the USSA that they constantly try to put us down with purposely demeaning comments like that.
Whatever.
At least I'M *NOT* living anymore in a country that taxes the average working Joe to death just to subsidize MASSIVE corporate speculative financial losses.
YOU on the other hand should be stock-piling ammunition right now if you have any gumption.
Re: The U.S. government is so corrupt & stupid it couldn't find it's own ass right now even if it used BOTH hands to look for it!
The USA is a sad joke and the history books will show how it blew itself up.
I can't believe Australia is not full of Americans....If i lived in the USA and had a little money i would be trying to get my family out of there asap.
@desperado. you are my hero! should've done it years ago. how does exit tax work? capital gains (15%?) on total possessions mark to market day before embassy visit? Appreciate mechanics.
BB
IMF sells more gold
The latest development in the gold bubble saga, and one which will likely cause the precious metal's price to spike even higher, comes from the tiny island of Mauritius which according to Dow Jones has purchased 2 metric tons of Gold from the IMF for $71.7 million. The price works out to approximately $1,115 per ounce. More as we get it. (and yes, this is a picture of Mauritius not some CNBC anchor hangout).
IMF press release
The International Monetary Fund announced today the sale of 2 metric tons of gold to the Bank of Mauritius, the nation’s central bank. The sale was conducted on the basis of market prices prevailing on November 11, 2009 with proceeds equivalent to US$71.7 million (SDR 44.7 million). This transaction is part of the total sales of 403.3 metric tons approved by the Executive Board in September 2009 (see Press Release No. 09/310), and it adds to the 200 metric tons already sold to the Reserve Bank of India (see Press Release No. 09/381).
Just TWO metric tons? Compared to India's recent purchase this is just chump change. Thanks for the pic of the babe tho!
Per capita they bought ten times more than India.
Waiting For The Train-Wreck
If expansionary monetary and fiscal policies are pursued regardless of market signals, the U.S. will head towards Weimar-style trillion-percent inflation. That would make the government's position easier as its mountain of Treasury debt became worthless, but devastate everybody else's savings and impoverish the American people as Weimar impoverished 1920s Germany.
As I said, a train wreck. Probability of arrival: close to 100%. Time of arrival: around the end of 2010, or possibly a bit earlier. And at this stage, there's very little anyone can do about it; the definitive rise of gold above $1,000 marked the point of no return.
Raul and others, you all beat me to the punch...but not the punch line! :)
IMF Announces Sale of 2 Metric Tons of Gold to the Bank of Mauritius
so india moved the market from 1040 over 1090, but Mauritius moved them from 1116 or so, all the way up to 1143 in one day!
I can't wait to see what happens when the CB of Palau or Nauru buys some IMF gold. :)
can anyone say Alf's #s? :)
If the USA enters a Weimar inflation - what then happens to all the other currencies around the globe?
Do they also enjoy Weimar debt relief?
SatyaPranava: The Alf Field numbers can be found in this article: http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/field112408.html
@tom - thanks for that, i remember reading that late last year sometime
here is his page of articles leading up to that last one.
what's so interesting to me, is that I've heard him say gold is likely to go up to $17,000/oz, and I've heard from others that know him that he says privately it's going much higher.
this is all separate from freegold, obviosly (FOFOA would be proud). some others on here speculated what it would be the other day (Shanti & Temkin)...
seek that here
forgot this...Alf Field Index
@ Anonymous @ 5:47 PM:
"Lol. It infuriates Americans SO MUCH to think that some of their native-born ex-brethren might not like living in the USSA that they constantly try to put us down with purposely demeaning comments like that."
Wow, you're easily infuriated. Personally, I couldn't care less if you moved out or not, why should it "infuriate" me? As it happened, I was in conversation with Desperado, and his act did not infuriate me.
And why a "green card" suggestion is demeaning for you? It is not demeaning for me, I used to have one, so what?
Hi All,
I had a few questions posed above by various anonymouses about expatriation:
1) Frankfurt refused to allow non-Germany based US expats to perform the expatriation there.
2) You DO have to officially expatriate to get "free" of your IRS tax obligations, and this is especially important if you plan to ever visit the US again. Nestman has a nice testamonial on expatriation.
3) US Customs has a complete computerized record of every time you enter the US and your passport is scanned, even foreign passports. The State Department recently set up a system overseas that passes on information on all non-US residents who renew their passports to the IRS to verify US income tax filing.
4) When I moved to Switzerland almost 20 years ago, I had no idea of the tax consequences, that took years (and an increased income) to drive home.
5) My two children (both dual citizens, one born in Switzerland) are now faced with having to become tax slaves to the US for the rest of their lives, or expatriating. I have advised them to hold on their US citizenship for now.
6) The outrageous complexity of the US tax system, and the impossibility of fairly being able to syncronize that with any foreign system, is as big a burden as the actual taxes I pay.
7) As long as all taxes have been legally paid, tax burden was less than $120K per year for the last 5 years, and net worth <$2M, then there is no exit tax. If the above is false, then there is a complete audit and all unpaid cap-gains have to be paid up. My guess is that a lot of wealthy expats want to perform the expatriation this year while the cap-gains rate is still 15%. Perhaps the IRS knows that the corrupt 535 are going to change the rules yet again, so they are postponing all expatriations until late next year....
^I agree with #6 above. The tax code is outrages and incomprehensible so I have not filed taxes. IF the IRS says I owe taxes they will tally up what I owe and send me a bill. That is what we pay taxes for right? So they can determine how much we owe them??
I will review the bill they send me and determine if it is fair or not. At that time if I disagree and wish to go to court they will need to provide me with a plane ticket to return to the U.S and a lawyer for my trial where me and a judge will determine what I exactly owe whether it be FRN's. Dollars, or some other form of currency.
I expect major defaults and changes within the system before all of this takes place though.
what me worry?
Desperado,
Good info!
To all Americans that want freedom just leave. Its so easy, your passport is still like Gold. You can go to almost any country and live. As for how to survive? If your brave and creative enough to leave, then you will be brave and creative enough to survive.
For some reason almost everywhere I go people love Americans. They may not like America, but they like Americans. And everyone wants to learn English. Its the language of the NWO so you have an advantage already. Go somewhere and teach English, while teaching English youll soon be teaching business people English and they will offer you work. Its really quite easy and adventurous.
I am a SOVEREIGN person. The collective, will not enslave me! And hopefully when Freegold arrives this will be proven even more so!
My advise:
Stop paying all fake paper debts. Withdraw all fake paper money from the banks and exchange for Gold, pick a country on the map and leave America now. Its really scary at first, but after a few days or weeks you feel a release from a huge burden.
It may be scary to leave now, but I think the alternative for staying in America is far more scary.
Just my thoughts.
Anon 11:57,
You are so right!
Look,
come to Australia - it is full of lazy bozos who know nothing - any American will outshine an Aussie.
Automatically you are interesting by being a foreign person...and so the opportunities increase because of this fact....good luck.
Mortymer:
From ZeroHedge comments:
by Rogue Economist
on Tue, 11/17/2009 - 02:54
#132943
"Hasn't anyone considered that Mauritius is no doubt entirely owned by the same folks who own the IMF? Selling Gold to Mauritius is likely just selling Gold to yourself, it hasn't really changed hands at all. Its just likely a means to send a message to the Golbugs to Buy, Buy, Buy and drive the price up further, thereby putting further pressure on the Dollar. It appears to me that this is a concerted effort on a number of fronts to force Bernanke to play his hand and defend the "strong dollar" by raising the fed funds rate. That WOULD unwind the dollar carry trade, and be just spectacular armageddon. Beauty here with this ploy is you never risk the Gold at all, since you are just selling it to yourself Publicly so everybody hears about it."
- Fofoa, please elaborate on this one if you find it as interesting as I do.
- It was Eder in one comment who was wandering what in exchange could India offer for the gold. Could real gold be it?
- Concerning taxes and harmonization. As my masters thesis I did comparative study of Finnish and Czech tax systems (unfortunately only in my language) but what I want to tell about harmonization - forget about it - there are national interests at least in EU which prohibit this. Look e.g. at tax for bevagares - France, Spain will never increase tax on wine to german level and vice versa Germany will never increase tax on beer. There is a huge effort in tax harmonization but notice more de-harmonization into "flat tax" for purpose of leveraging economies in countries like Slovakia, Baltics states, etc.
The most funny/sad example about US taxing its citizens on foreign assets is that a woman on mother leave getting a state benefit for a kid´s kindergarden has it taxed and has to pay to US its part.
Mauritius is part of the commonwealth, but it is difficult to determine who is really running the show there.
I do however wonder whether the message to buy buy buy is not already in the market without Mauritius buying.
The comment stating that China doesn't want to loose its face by buying above India holds water to me. Besides, should China buy above India that would send a rather bullish signal which would not be in China's interest if they aim to exchange more dollars for gold.
Mauritius buying could however send China a signal not to wait too long, so there might be a buy signal in the Mauritius purchase indeed.
It appears to me that this is a concerted effort on a number of fronts to force Bernanke to play his hand and defend the "strong dollar" by raising the fed funds rate.
If it is, that would imply that the IMF - which according to Volcker is "de facto run by the US" - is working against Bernanke. I would doubt that.
Forcing Bernanke out of his comfort zone (low interest rates and massive printing) migth however strengthen the dollar, as it would trigger deflation - the one Mish has been talking about - and that in term might give gold some rest or even force it in decline.
But I still do not believe that the IMF is trying to act against Bernanke and the best they could come up with was to have Mauritius buy 2 tons of their gold.
Finally, sticking to the topic, how much tungsten would you guys reckon Mauritius now owns?
Mortymer:
These new way of IMF-CB announcements stink to me.
Before CB sells could supress the market (no other CBs buying) but now the situation is totally opposite so the direction drives the price up.
IMHO IMF sells cos they have to not that they consider it good to do; they are forced to give up that pile painfully slowly so the IMF does not implode, the power of this organization seems to me going down for some time thought they are still praying (e.g. Romania, Hungary loans).
I am not in the 1 camp of xxx-flationists, what I care is the detoriating economics situation and what I see from point I sit (biggest telec. comp) sells quite down worldwide - not big surprise, you can read it everywhere, heh - is that no matter what is managed the price of gold goes steadily up. What I am worried is that the price will go too fast up and some part of (unhealthy) economy goes bellyflop one day.
The big question for me (as I do not understand IMF much) is why? I expected this when I listen to Soros taking about this option few months ago, he also told that US should allow China to share with the power but it seems the US does not like this option.
So the puzzling thing is what are those objectives that IMF sells?
Figurers today stated a decline in food and energy prices. If you guys wouldn't have convinced me that it will be inflation all the way I would have taken that as a sign of deflation.
@Jimmy
Interesting post if true. I was speculating on this before, as where many others.
I figured that as a result gold could decline since people might regard the renminbi as a safe haven also and might look for alternatives to gold due to its "high" price.
This might have been a reason for China not to buy the IMF-gold; perhaps they are expecting a lower price.
I thought there was a consensus that Gold sold by IMF until now has been sold to IMF-members ($-friends) and China is NOT a IMF-member.
Looks like China is on the member list though.
Sure China bought SDR's issued by the IMF, so IMF depends a bit more on China.
I don't know this makes China an IMF-member, but it is certainly not a $-friend.
India is given "more" a $-friend.
Wow! What a change in posts since 'Seeking Alpha'! A few weeks ago every post was about FOFOA's current piece and the discussion centered on FOFOA's questions and answers. There was a conversation between people posting ideas directly related to 'Freegold' and the concepts FOFOA had written about.
What happened people? How does a post about moving out of the United States have anything to do with the direction FOFOA is leading us towards?
Please, I ask because FOFOA is a gentleman, try and keep the comments relevant to the piece FOFOA wrote. I'm sure there are many other web sites where open ramblings about the fall of the US will be welcome.
Just my 1/50,000 oz. of gold...
martijn, the prob here is that the figures are so manipulated by the figurers, that we're all left to just go figure :)
but seriously, i'm not sure there's a single public statistic i feel i can trust from this govt.
my food prices have been skyrocketing over the past 2 years, by about 50% or so, and don't seem to be getting any cheaper. and with the fact taht the Midwest is a federal emergency disaster zone, w/many of the farmers having problems getting their crops out of the ground, and worldwide food issues and famine very well documented by Eric de Carbonnel, and with grain storage now at just about zero, in the US, I can reasonably believe that prices will be dropping. Again, especially when I see them rising.
The only explanation for this would be either: corporate oligopoly, so much of the system is controlled by so few that the companies are quietly raising the prices for their products while their costs are going down (not likely, someone is bound to cheat). or govt taxation: the fed govt has quietly by National Security Defense Directive, or some Executive Order, or Presidential Decree, ordered a huge tax on these food items, and are not including that in the cost of food that the consumer pays. moreover, they'd be regularly raising that tax, slightly, to out-compensate the supposed "drop" in food prices.
Sorry, Ockham's Razor suggests to me that the figurerers figure to confuse the shit out of us.
satya
@Desperado
Do you have a link for the claim State notifies IRS before renewing passports? TIA
@museice 0 you make a fabulous point and one i mostly agree with. then again, there are some people who woulc come here to share and seek wisdom that to them, goes hand in hand with these various topics. I'm figuring most believe there is a higher mindset here generally (though i've noticed the energy of the comments go down a bit, and much more distracted, including my own) and thus, can really come to some good conclusions with the people here. I know I have many of these questions, and think it's good to be discussed.
then again, you run into people intentionally distracting from the main issue and trolling, which makes your point all the more important. I'm not sure what to make of it or how to proceed. But yes, there has been a distinct difference in quantity and quality of posts since the seekingalpha posting.
strange observation of the day:
since 8am, the dollar has "rallied" pretty strongly (i.e. the bankers are defending the 75 mark on the $ like there is no tomorrow), BUT GOLD has actually rallied right along with it.
So the two are moving in tandem for the most part today. coincidence? part of a sign relating to the more recent (and immediate future) trend?
thoughts?
Keynes was a flaming homosexual and a con man. Everyone following him has a similar bent.
I remember during the Clinton administration a large military "training excercise" at Fort Knox which required the displacement of all non-military personnel for a few miles around. I always had thought it suspicious since this was actually the time when intervention tactics were being brought to bear...would have been perfect opportunity for the switch
@ Museice; Your first para I found agreeable.. I had recently noted an uptick in prole-level posts (erroneous, shallow, narcissistic etc). But then, the subject of your complaint caused my jaw to drop. Did you really mean the following;
"What happened people? How does a post about moving out of the United States have anything to do with the direction FOFOA is leading us towards?
I'm sure there are many other web sites where open ramblings about the fall of the US will be welcome."
I never thought that I would read such utterly naive pabulum on FOFOA. Forgive me, I do not wish to offend you here.Can you not apply the FOFOA theme to the real world museice? The posts by desperado/satya/S/ukraine et al. have actually been most pertinent, relevant and welcomed by all (except you, that is).
May I suggest that if you find the linkage between FOFOA and these broader "issues" tenuous, then it is in fact you who belongs in the smugly two-dimensional and under-informed seeking alpha community.
The monetary issues promulgated by FOFOA have an appallingly tragic and real reflection in the lives of most people. It is natural that they seek avenues of escape and protection from the coming storm. Your apparent blindness to this obvious linkage is most remarkable.
I suggest you check the iodine content in your alpine stream as a possible reason for your confusion (hint; the diagnosis begins with C).
Buster Bucani
Interesting points, FOFOA.
Very pleased to have discovered your blog!
I too am very curious to see what comes of this.
Normally, when it is time for an Empire to rot, it plays openly only against itself. The real opposition is so-called barbarian, i.e. forbidden to be compared with the empire because it is at a "lower level". Major "balancing" forces are all one and the same.
With this in mind, I think that I would still say that UN and IMF and BIS are all managed by US. China is the barbarian here, not to be compared to US because of it "lower" status. IMF sells gold to Mauritius to prompt Bernanke for something? Please.
Bernanke listens to exactly the same master as does IMF. So why then? I would say that right now, if you were to look at the inside of PTB, you would see a panic. And, you would see something else: you would see that those that were in control, have already filled their cellars with what they could roll away, and now, there are rats trying to take home what is left. I suspect there to be a "take what you can" going on, on a massive scale, with full realization that nothing could be done to stop the inevitable, and that when all is said and done, there will be nothing left, and nobody to ask from.
Exactly the same thing was happening before the fall of USSR. The mechanics, or rather, the psychology of participants is the same.
So, the sell to Mauritius is likely to be simply an attempt by someone still showing up in the office to take away a couple more bites. If I am right, we should see some more of that. We should see some parts of industry "sold" to private parties (just not on the open market).
Here is how giants fall. They have erected the system that was supported them well beyond the point of their own inability to support themselves. Flesh falls off the body as the body falls to the ground.
Anon 11:00,
Exactly! Everything now feels like what I learned about the USSR before and right after its collapse. All the big players are securing whatever wealth there is left and jumping ship before the collapse.
Here comes Freegold, whether the world is ready or not!
@moonmad.nomad
Sounds interesting, can you remember the date/year...?
TIA
The rot against a marbled tree
Lost in paper made with glee
Will fester and grow to no one’s delight
As the dollar bill fades into the night.
If tungsten 400 oz gold bars exist, they will not see the light of day. They will never be assayed. If push comes to shove, they will be lost at sea or mysteriously explode into nothingness.
China has not received tungsten bars.
Mauritius will not receive tungsten bars.
India did not buy tungsten bars.
ETFs do not hold tungsten bars. ETFs hold paper in the name of the custodian. The question is, how factional are the custodians?
The coin you buy – is gold. Any fake gold – distributed to the public – is detected in short order. If you buy something that you can’t hold it in your hand, you bought a derivative of gold.
If you want to hold your country together and support truth, place your savings in gold and defend it.
Ender
Paul asks
Do you have a link for the claim State notifies IRS before renewing passports? TIA
I read it somewhere, probably the sovereign society, but could not find the link. So a googled a little bit. Here are two sources, I am sure there are more...:
The U.S. Department of State must provide your SSN and foreign residence information to the Department of Treasury. If you fail to provide the information, you are subject to a $500 penalty enforced by the IRS. All questions on this matter should be directed to the nearest IRS office.
and
The 1,000 people contacted by the IRS only represented individuals who had made their existence known by trying to renew a U.S. passport or by registering in some way with a U.S.
agency abroad. Bad idea.
"If you want to hold your country together and support truth, place your savings in gold and defend it.
Ender"
Starve the beast.
GATA has taken notice of this post.
http://www.gata.org/node/8039
Until an entity in possession of some 400 oz bars of tungsten/gold reveals their existence, and/or evidence that holders of 400 oz LGD bars are testing their bars for authenticity, this story will remain, for me a "Good Read".
That is, a distraction; something better to do than watch TV but, outside of interesting speculations and fanciful connections, has not much else to offer.
Very good explanation of the dynamics of current gold rally :
http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/gold_prices_bubble_111620099
Points :
1. Gold not inflation hedge, but finance crisis hedge AND store of value
2. Current rally powered by big leverage. Possible short term correction.
"In the past three months, really since the end of summer, the move has been driven by leverage
....
If you look at the exchange-traded funds or businesses such as ours – yes, we're still doing very well, but we're not seeing the same kind of flood of new business that we saw six or nine months ago – it's very much about institutional traders instead. They're using the very cheap money they can now access.
"
3. It is not buble, cause the general public is not buying en masse. "Gold is still under-owned by individual investors, and it's certainly under-owned on an institutional basis"
The other thing I like is that this guy even that he owns the BullionVault, is not a gold-bully, but express very realistic logical arguments.
I have never posted before and am a first time reader here too. Being in the heating and cooling buisness,I meet a lot of interesting people.One gentleman years ago told me he was involved in the transfer of gold from Ft. Knox to New York. He said they prepared the trucks for a nonstop convoy with secret service (I think) over seeing the move. On the way they had a trailer break open and spill out some of the bars on the road.They closed off the area and repaired the trailer on site. He said they reloaded the trailer and got on there way.This was a very large shipment and I wish I could remember how many trucks he told me were involved.I can't remember the customers name either so being able to back this story is not possible unless I remember this guys name and go ask him about it.I do not live far from Ft. Knox.I could not remember what part this guy played through all this but I do remember it happened while the Clinton's were in charge.Sorry for such a long and questionable post. My memory is failing.
Another good one :
Gold & Hyperinflation: Seven Steps to Chaos
http://goldnews.bullionvault.com/gold_hyperinflation_100620092
the buttons for the next pages are at the bottom.
Buster:
You've proved my point. I don't think I have ever seen on 'FOFOA's Comments' one person insult another person directly until this thread.
FOFOA:
Congratulations on the GATA link. It appears the Tungsten controversy is gaining traction. The psychology of gold's increasing rarity, whether true or not, will help to increase demand.
@museice; it really was not my intention "to offend you" as I clearly stated. But if you so readily dismiss the most relevant and sincere questions and thoughts of others, be prepared to be taken to task with the occasional rhetorical flourish and barb.
I do hope you can regain your composure and understand that these are deeply harrowing times for many. And the party has really not begun in earnest!
Rather than seeking to minutely control the flow to your particular theoretical tastes and "proving points", perhaps try for a change to be more accomodating to the honest exchange of pertinent information on FOFOA in future.
B. Bucani
I'm scepticle, but intresting story. Could these tungsten bars be connected to the Canadian disappearing gold? Maybe the bars were part of a batch melted down and the tungsten went one way,while the gold went another. No one monitored the tungsten, because it should'nt have been there and they were'nt looking for it, but the gold came up short and therefore someone must have stolen it.Just a thought.
I'm scepticle, but intresting story. Could these tungsten bars be connected to the Canadian disappearing gold? Maybe the bars were part of a batch melted down and the tungsten went one way,while the gold went another. No one monitored the tungsten, because it should'nt have been there and they were'nt looking for it, but the gold came up short and therefore someone must have stolen it.Just a thought.
Which makes you think,how many more tungsten bars are still in the Canadian mint!
Interesting. Could you please, post a link to the story of "Canadian disappearing gold"?
Thank you.
http://www.canada.com/business/Mint+account+missing+gold/1656084/story.html
We're taking this very seriously. We're conducting a thorough review and we're expected to have that completed within the month. (It) includes the analysis of precious metal by-products and financial data. We've allocated all necessary resources to this review."
A GLOBAL BANK DISASTER RECOVERY EXERCISE TOOK PLACE IN LATE OCTOBER!!! (ALERT) THIS COULD BE A SIGNAL OF AN ANTICIPATED BANK SYSTEM FAILURE, OR A PLANNED BANK SYSTEM SHUTDOWN...
...Regard this event as a something BIG going on in the banking world.
A globally connected banker made a trip to Europe in late October. Upon return, a message was sent my way as an update on the deteriorating psychological condition among bankers on the continent. He wrote, "Greetings from Europe, the old continent. Yes, there is quite obviously something mega going on that is much bigger than governments can prevent from coming apart. The nervousness and tension is so thick that you can cut the air with a knife. I was in Geneva, Zurich, London, Berlin, and on my way out East. Everybody tries to find a safe harbor for whatever liquidity they hold. There are billions of US$ tranches out there that are frantically looking to be converted into Euros, Yen, Rubles, and Swiss Francs, or straight into hard assests. It appears that the guys on the A-deck of the financial USS Titanic finally realized that the lifeboat capacity is limited and that the ship is going down. This entire process is an exponential function accelerating with lightning speed. System failure is imminent and unavoidable. There is no market any longer, as 'they' are struggling to stay afloat with the first guys on the A-deck drowning and no one coming to their rescue. It will be total destruction and annihilation with no prisoners taken."
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12999
Thank you for the Canadian link.
Too bad they won't disclose the amount of unaccounted gold.
The story about the gold missing from the Canadian Mint dates from June, it's been a while since I last heard something about it. The amount of precious metals they lost was valued at $15.3 million, and they have no idea what happened to it.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/missing+from+Royal+Canadian+Mint+Deloitte/1743823/story.html
17500 oz of gold went missing,which is approxmately 43-44 400 oz bars with a current value of nearly $20 million dollars.
From Bix Weir on the Tungsten Taler (my pun intended):
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1258527840.php
"If all "Good Delivery" bars used in exchanges around the world are now suspect, I wouldn't be surprised if the world gold markets are preparing for a global "Force Majeure"?"
"Most of us know that the major ETF's have been set up from the beginning to avoid any legal responsibility for the purity or quality of their gold. Could this be the "get out of jail free card" for the fraudulent gold and silver ETF's."
Anyone think this is plausible?
My thoughts:
1. Not without blanket coverage, in the main stream media, of the fake bars story.
2. Confirmation from the Chinese who purportedly "discovered" the fakes.
The Canadian mint coducted its own investigation and did'nt find any individual or group of individuals reponsible for taking the gold from the mints reserve.
They then handed the investigation over to the Canadian police and since then the whole matter has gone silent.
The police must be able to ascertain the provinance of the gold bars in question, but maybe thats too much of a hot potatoe.
Still remains to be seen if the Crown mint has assayed the remaining reserve to quantify how much of it is tungsten gold.
Mortymer to FOFOA:
There were some words about keeping this discussion focused and about the increase of the newbies.
If I may boldly suggest, could you be please so nice and put somewhere in the next post a small article/part about the most fundamental writings/links/next intro which people should read as those could explain them more?
(e.g.: http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2008/08/i-love-this-intro.html; highlighting importance of FOA, Another;; picking up those of yours which you consider most important or reccomending people to read whole blog to know more)
The worst what could happen is to get into cycle explaining to newcommers the basics again and again not moving forward.
Kind regards & Thank you
Hello Mortymer,
I like your idea, if it was that simple. But I cannot say what someone should read. The thirst for more must come from within. I write about a few different topics here and different posts speak to different people. This is evident to me by the various sites that choose to highlight various posts. Sometimes one post is not so good for one of these well-known spotlight sites yet it becomes the post of the week on another. So I do not know what speaks to each person. I only know what speaks to me.
My advice is and has always been that people start with Another and FOA linked at the right side of this blog. But I can tell you that there are a lot more readers here than there are comment posters. And many are reading this blog from beginning to end. I hope they are also reading A/FOA.
So at least I am encouraged that I speak to some people. The message is quite simple. It is the full explanation of the message that is more complicated. Incidentally, 24hgold.com has now archived almost this whole blog, which I am happy about. He is based in France and just in case Blogger goes down, all my efforts will not be lost. Incidentally, we are 2nd to the top of "most read articles" on 24hgold right now!
I try to direct people to relevant posts I have written in the past when it is appropriate. It is easier than explaining myself over and over again. You can feel free to do the same if there is a post you think answers someone's question. But I cannot simply list out the posts that people should read. They should read them all! ;) Right after they read A/FOA!!
Sincerely,
FOFOA
FOFOA, i'm sure you remember me popping up last winter/spring...i read the first post on a search for "alf's #s" and found my way to your site, and (i guess like many), stopped reading and went straight back to the beginning. no other way to do it. it's a beautiful way to recap the "year's" events. a very beautiful way.
I can only think of the joy someone might find 2 years from now looking back...but this world will probably be a very different place in two years, if the energetic volatility is any indicator.
I have a feeling the world will feel like a different place in a few mos, if not sooner. can't wait to see the good and the bad, and just hope that we all have positioned ourselves and our communities accordingly.
because, for me community is the answer to systemic or currency collapse, not fear and tension. we all need to be able to help as many as possible, or at least that's how i see it.
mortymer, what a great little trip down memory lane contemplating...go start at the beginning...read all the comments...we'll see you here in a few weeks, or months. just pretend "now" is just a few weeks away. best of luck,
Satya
Satya,
Totally agree.
People that read this blog or comment section and think that "Gold Bugs" are greedy dooms day people are wrong. Gold is about monetary freedom from those that want to control and destroy our communities, even if our neighbors and communities dont know or appreciate it yet.
Good community brings life, protect your communities future from the destruction of fake paper money and get physical Gold.
Mortymer 1/2:
OK, my personal experiences,...
I studied economy and found out myself that not all is ok, did some research of my own and I wandered how things actually work since the common knowledge and university degree from economics did not satisfy me. It just did not made any sense.
I moved to another country in north Europe and put myself up from 0 in 5 years. During this time I inclined to different posts about global politics, also cos I like history studies and more and more I seen the link, the connection to the monetary policies countries have. This made me to want to know more. Well, and I also hated that it is very hard to save and why is it...
So about 2 years, and since the collapse of LB I started to follow also 321gold and energy sites, found out about oil peak and all this stuff and I wandered more and more what the heck is going on? The more I knew the more I wanted to know.
So a year ago I got a kid and I had more time to read and study more (books, blogs, tech stuff, graphs, etc) and I found about Fekete. That was a whoah! to me so I tried to verify his writings and suddenly I found also your page via someone posting it on zerohedge.
Mortymer 2/2
I could not read first all from your page but since I booked it under "high potential pages" then I returned and read most stuff, randomly, but about Another and FOA I found only from when I connected few dots and read your blog more carefully.
So, you see, I could not read all at once, I did not got the relevance first.
Later, when I got what is "A Tribute to the Thoughts of Another and his Friend", hehe.... (nicely thought)... I started to be more curious about A/FOA.
So reading the many posts from Another and FOA was a BIG step forward (I did it in 2 days over the night, sleeping almost nothing, re-checking, verifying data. I remember the Thursday/Friday when my body was full of adrenaline and it felt great) but if I found out sooner it would help me to understand also more of the stuff which is here. So I read the whole blog of yours again. And then I returned to A/FOA for more.
What I want to say is that it would help if it is again noted how important/interesting IT MAY BE for some to read more from your writings and "Links", to encourage readers to think more independently.
(If true or not I care not as much - your writings stimulate me as such and that is more than the gold I invested big part of my savings in)
The biggest problem for people after the Velvet revolution was the total loss of control of the direction, all in chaos and no stable point to hold on, the weak government was trying to show the direction but that was not working and those who had the advantage of understanding why and what happened and was going on were in much safer position.
My point is that situation is obviously getting more hot and reading requires time. A/FOA/FOFOA thoughts reach far and are worth to give them a chance, it may pay off if you give it a chance.
So thanks for all your words you share with us, I hope that you are getting the feedback you wish to have. You certainly have already quite an impact. Keep the direction and objectivity you try to have.
As most cab drivers in NY City plop their savings in the counter-fundamental, mostly sideways, mainstream media-driven gold "frenzy" (gold is up 7% over the last 21 months; silver is down 12%; platinum is down 38%) a lot of people ask me if I've changed my mind about the dollar continuing its surge higher, and consequently, asset prices continuing to crash.
The answer is simple: it's not my mind that needs changing. Objectively, the dollar trajectory remains on a 20 month-long rocket higher. Note, the next macro leg higher will last for years and be rather eye-watering; near vertical at times.
Quote from the comments section "Weimar Meets Zimbabwe"
Neither is the case. The critical difference is this: the US is controlled by commercial thieves; our government cannot print one dime.
Thus, inflation is merely a for-profit exercise. No profit to be made? No inflation.
This is in distinct contrast to the Weimar Republic, who printed and traded government sponsored cash (not private notes like the USA's entirely private, Bank of NY owned and operated Federal Reserve currency).
That is why the privately held Federal Reserve has been massively reducing the USA's currency supply, and deflation continues to ravage asset prices spanning all classes.
Quote from the comments section "Not a single asset class is inflating, all prices are collapsing."
"But it is Gold that will become increasingly valuable, not currency!"
Yes, gold is definitely in a mostly-sideways bubble, up a few percent over the past year and a half.
Precious metals, as a group, have plunged with the deflation, as they must, metal is no different than any other "thing" priced directly by the quantity of paper cash in circulation.
Quote from the comments section "Over the last year, yes assets have deflated.
Over the last 6 months, no. Assets have inflated."
Yes, down 54%, up 58% = down 38%
This is the just opening. Our depression is already more severe than the early 1930's, but it's only getting started. It will undoubtedly last longer than FDR's 25 year demolition of the US economy that didn't ease up until the Dow reclaimed 1929 levels in 1954.
Link
http://fdralloveragain.blogspot.com/2009/11/us-dollar-continues-its-21-month-surge.html
i just posted the above, what he is saying is that CASH as in physical Notes will be king in a deflationary scenario
its got me all confused
Anon 4:08am
FOFOA - All Paper is Still a Short Position on Gold
Gold will be King.
Exter's Inverse Pyramid
Yes i understand that, BUT, if everything (assets) goes down in price, Because of the great credit contraction Gold will do to, even though its value (as measured in ounces of purchasing power) will?
Rise?
or Fall?
If there is a drop in the POG Central Banks will snap up all they can get their hands on. They are no longer fighting for Dollars, they are fighting for Gold. CB's have made the switch and they will be the driving force behind the rise.
The Tungsten issue may be approaching critical mass. This post appeared yesterday on Benjamin Fulford's blog:
China has stealthily introduced a new financial system based on the renminbi which is well on its way to becoming fully convertible, according to a high-level Chinese source. In addition, China is purchasing 10,000 tons of gold to back up a new fund designed to develop and market heretofore forbidden and suppressed technologies. The fund will be based outside of China and will be controlled by prominent members of the Chinese overseas community. The gold purchase will take some time because of the logistics of transporting it and the Chinese wish to test it thoroughly. Both the Chinese government and MI6 now confirm reports that much of the gold sold by the Federal Reserve Board over the past decade is in fact gold plated tungsten.
For its part, the renminbi is now convertible with South American currencies, the rouble, Middle-Eastern currencies, the yen, South East Asian currencies and African currencies. “We will slowly introduce our new financial system in parallel with the old one and hope that people steadily migrate towards it,” the Chinese official says.
Meanwhile, the latest G20 meeting ended in acrimony and chaos. The leadership of the West is in total disarray and will remain so until the Federal Reserve Board’s bankruptcy becomes visible even to brainwashed section of the Western public. This is now expected by January or February. Both MI6 and a senior Chinese government source now predict the collapse of the Federal Reserve dollar by that time.
We are also hearing various reports that many Pentagon and other US alphabet suit agency figures with both US and Israeli citizenship have recently fled to Israel. Things are coming to a head.
Fulford also posted this today
US military faction seeks to start new wars in order to solve financial crisis
With the bankruptcy of the Federal Reserve Board imminent, a powerful faction in the Pentagon and the CIA would like to start several wars in a desperate attempt to keep the United States of Amerika corporation going, a CIA source says. The problem with this plan, of course is that wars cost money and the US has no money to pay for them.
The Black Dragon Society is offering a much better alternative: $6 trillion to invest in developing the over 6,000 patents suppressed by the Washington D.C. satanic establishment. The fund would be available only after the criminal organization known as the Federal Reserve Board is dismantled.
The short-sighted criminally insane gangsters who infiltrated and took over the United States have held back human progress by at least 100 years. Once they are gone, the genie of new technology will be released from its bottle.
Goldfreak "If there is a drop in the POG Central Banks will snap up all they can get their hands on. They are no longer fighting for Dollars, they are fighting for Gold. CB's have made the switch and they will be the driving force behind the rise."
Maybe but what if the value of the cash, ie physical ( but not the digital on computer screen) dollar stayed strong..? If Gold dropped to say $550/oz would not the cash dollar buy twice as much physical gold as today with gold at $1100 ?
Mortymer:
************
Another (4):
...Some say, "gold fall because noone was buying it". I say, "gold fall because many were buying it"! They buy as the "trading market" was made "much fat" with added paper! Understand this: The US$ price of gold could only fall if a market existed for paper gold priced lower each time of offer! If the price did not fall, this paper market "could not function" as "it would not be profitable to the writer"! It was, for many years, in the good interest of all, for the dollar to find a gold price close to production cost. That time has now much passed!
One day soon, this "paper gold item" may lose it's "integrity from oil" by way of "competition" from a new reserve currency! In that day, "paper gold" will rush to become "physical gold" as "dollar gold contracts" rush to become "Euro gold contracts". You see, the value of the gold lost from the Euro CB sales will return in the form of a "Euro strong in gold". The "gold reserves" held for the EURO will offer strength, but it will be the total destruction of the dollar gold market that does make " this currency go home"!
When the future comes, and one holds asset values in dollar terms, many may discover, there wealth was not as this currency said it was! In that day, you will know your assets, as expressed in the real money of our fathers! This new dollar/gold exchange rate will end your search for the
"the true value of gold"
Thank you
Another
************
And some of my silly little thoughts:
-> Gold rises as too many are buying it (still true but changinf as it moves higher).
-> So the change did not happen in 2000 but it is happening now. Was Europe still too weak for the big move so China as a leverage seemed to be used (BIS branch in HK)?
-> See how dollar tries to keep up with Euro 1:1,5 (Japan, China currencies pegged so far so the move is not so visible). Currency war. Dollar being defended at any cost. The beautiful chess move is to use the China who was kept in check for long.
=> For dollar to decouple and go float (down) down from its chains, the tie with Euro it needs to be broken first. This can not be done if others are still connected to the system. So other currencies slowly break their chains. That is also why there was so much liquidity poured into the euro system as a dollar defence.
-> I expect oil will move first very much; Russia will try to reprice this winter blaming again Ukraine; great volatility in general.
FOFOA,
The Central Banks could hold gold down for some time, even with massive buying. Watch oil! If it rises much and gold isn't sold off then the game is over.
We haven't seen that yet, have we? Will it be the signal to wait for?
You see, all currencies now compete with each other, not for value of wealth but for "USAGE". The game has now become "whose currency gets used the most for trading" not for value against goods! It was easy to know the currency that got used for oil would win this game. Today, all currencies are traded against the dollar for it's usage as a medium of oil exchange! Take away that link and the entire currency/ debt exchange system, as we know it will collapse! The US$ must be maintained as the "most used" if the other currencies are to have a chance to survive.
I read somewhere that China is allowing some countries to trade in renminbi. Isn't that interesting?
At this moment in time and space, the price of oil in US$ terms is about to roar! It will crush the Pacific Rim and South America. It will drive the US$ sky high in terms of other major currencies but the dollar will collapse in terms of gold! Short term interest rates in the USA will be driven thru the floor much the way they have been in Japan from the early 90s. This will be done to combat a imploding equity market. Long government bonds will almost stop trading as their yield soars from the oil price fears of "inflation"! Because of todays "new digital paper markets" this entire act will be played out in 30 days or less. Yes, you are right! During that time we will have inflation and deflation.
That did not happen yet, will it still be the scenario?
Bernanke is printing like a madman, Sinclair projected the dollar to be death a week ago. Will we still see it:
The dollar will soar as a final defense! As part of this defense they will allow oil to rise as oil is priced in dollars. How do you get oil to rise?
I told you guys before we are seeing deflation at the moment. Read Mish to find out why. However, gold is rising.
How can things get worse for a large bank in a deflation? Ans. Have an inflation hedge, gold, go up. The banks are the ones who have been shorting gold, if they have to liquidate positions to raise cash; uh oh.
Mish is too full of himself to ever admit he is wrong. I'll get my info elsewhere, thankyouverymuch.
Inflation in food, energy, taxes, medical care--things that most people must buy.
Deflation in housing, cars, other useless things.
The printing presses are running, running, running...and all fiat currencies go to zero.
I agree.
Any thoughts on the quotes from another I've posted above?
Martijin @ 11/18 09:27
Competing currencies
I predicted long ago on the USA Gold forum that the game would evolve to selling large quantities of currency for usage at a discount. This makes the payment of interest obsolete read as "the death of debt" (but not the settlement thereof). This is essentially what happens at zero debt but that is still buying at par...we have yet to lapse into buying directly at discount. No carry trade involved since the amounts are settled directly when purchased. Competitive discounting anyone? Is this not what is being done when for example China swaps for Brazilian Real? It has already started. I wonder what the dollar is really trading for on the unofficial official swap circuit?
Henri
I warned you for this:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/engineering/article6917828.ece
Mortymer to Martinj:
You are wandering about the same... Your quotes are same which I found important at this point.
I see it this way; recap:
- The paper gold market still works well, I would say there is much more paper gold now than ever... (in panic scams work the best)
- but CBs slowly go away from it and require real stuff; some (HK, Dubai, Germany, perhaps-also-others-informed) asked for returning their gold home from London & NY and are checking it finding some problems which surfaced now.
- other minor but still big holders continue hoarding paper gold + mining gold shares, ETFs,... but this is changing slowly (junior gold shares not up yet much).
-> I am asking all the time: How far are we from backwardation?
- Is the recent silver move up also an indicator to this?
[IMO before buying relatively expensive gold, many will try silver, then other useful stuff]
@ the Anonymous way above:
On Federal Reserve. FED is NOT private. It is a big mistake to believe in propaganda that the FED and the Government spew out about this matter.
The purpose of the FED is to be a party that "loans" money to the Congress. Do you understand this?
For example. If I draw a pretty banknote and give it to you in payment of your goods or services, you would not accept it. Why? Because, you would say "huh, smart ass, I can draw these all day long too, it has no value, because you made it". And you would be right.
What if I give you a banknote that I borrowed from someone else? You would be inclined to take it. Why? Because you would think that I would have to repay that someone else, and if I don't have the banknote, I will be ready to surrender what is necessary to acquire it again. Right!
But, what if I and that "someone" is one and the same? Oops! You see?
This is what FED is.
It is nothing but alter ego of the congress.
Everything else, is simply to make you glued to a fake trail. Sends you looping about weather the FED is private or a government organization, as if it necessarily has to be one or another.
Its a private for profit org that has contracted with the US Gov to provide currency/money/liquidity
If Another is correct, how smart would it be to move to Saudi or an other oil-rich state?
@Henri
I predicted long ago on the USA Gold forum that the game would evolve to selling large quantities of currency for usage at a discount
Could you elaborate a bit on your comment?
http://cryptogon.com/?p=12193 Cryptogon likes bullionvault so this is not totally neutral. Kirby has published some solid research over the years, but have you wondered what is pushing gold up at this time, and how long it will last ?
There are 2 good articles to read it...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6599281/Societe-Generale-tells-clients-how-to-prepare-for-global-collapse.html
http://www.thedailybell.com/598/IMF-Chief-Says-End-Dollar-Dominance.html
Sorry for not reacting on some questions/comments, but have not many time. Have much work to do...
If I see interesting articles, I'll post it here...
@ Jimmy
Thanks for the article links. I thought the comment by Alan Aungier to the Societe General advice was pretty good...made sense to me.
Henri
@ Martijn 11/18 12:27
If you were a govt entering a swap agreement with another country where there is significant trade back and forth, I would expect you and your partner in trade (as the official facilitators of trade) would both want to take a cut of the action and so would exchange at some discount to the "official exchange rates" that are posted for users. You then allow the foreign currency credits at a premium as well and keep the difference. Everyone wins and no one goes into hock.
A reminder of the recent timeline.
Zinc Dimes, Counterfeit Tungsten Gold and Lost Interest
@Henri
Thanks, I now understand what you mean. Might very well be the case, although I can't say for sure. Might have to think about this for a bit.
Henri,
Can you explain in an analogy what youre saying about countries and currency swaps? Its interesting but Im not quite getting it.
Thanks
@ Henri,
In a currency swap, only one side can gain an advantage if that is the game being played. You can't have two countries exchanging currency, both getting a discount. This is impossible, no?
What I understand is that currency swaps require remittance at the same exchange rate as the swap was made. Perhaps there are also permanent currency swaps with no remittance. Purely inflationary currency swaps? With China perhaps? This could create another way for the managers to profit perhaps.
Sincerely,
FOFOA
@Museice:
Thx for this great link... It's very horrorific...
Pete: You're wrong. Tungsten has a specific gravity of 19.62, clos enough to gold for government work :-)
Perhaps FOFOA's & Kirby's articles on tungsten are gaining some legs and shaking the trees. Here's something new to fall out:
http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=425922
"Austrians Seize False Gold Tied to London Bullion Theft
Published: December 22, 1983
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/22/wo...ion-theft.html
The Austrian police announced the arrest today of 5 men and the discovery of 10 counterfeit gold bars stamped with numbers and refiner's name to match 6,000 real bars stolen in Britain last month.
The police said the five arrested in Vienna on Tuesday night apparently planned to sell the counterfeit gold, passing it off as part of the haul of three tons of bullion stolen by masked gunmen from a warehouse near London's Heathrow Airport on Nov. 26.
A police spokesman said the police did not know how the men had discovered the numbers stamped on the stolen bars.
The police at first suspected the counterfeit bars were part of the Heathrow booty, but the spokesman said tests showed the bars were made of tungsten and only coated with gold.
The fake bars were seized in a police raid on a hotel where the five men - four Italians and an Austrian - were meeting."
Heres and interesting theory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebOTc-7shU
Oh, sigh. The more I read, the less credence I give this story. (Disclaimer: I am NOT an assayer.) Thus far in my readings, no credible authority (i.e. a credible metals assayer) has weighed in on this topic. Regarding grams/cm3 of the two metals:
Back-of-the envelope, figure a 400 oz bar of gold occupies 586.0366 cubic cm. The same weight in Tungsten occupies 586.9467 cubic cm.
It seems the bars are not precision-milled, but cast and irregular; this may "seem" to make it harder to detect the actual volume. But water displacement can precisely measure the volume, and simply, with an achievable accuracy of 1 part in 10000. The volume-to-weight ratio can be taken without having to melt down the bar.
So right there, you can assay the two bars with a water displacement test. You'd find a difference of about 0.9 cubic cm. (Bars of the two materials having identical weight will have slightly different volume.) A difference of this magnitude, roughly one part in one thousand, is measurable by a high school student using simple equipment of moderate precision of one part in ten thousand. (To spoof this, one could slightly reduce the weight of the Tungsten used (via an alloy?), to make it match the exact weight of gold in grams/cm3. I have no idea if that's possible.)
Why are you all considering only the mass of gold? Let's look at what can be gleaned from other properties of the two metals. As seen in the periodic table of elements on Wikipedia:
The melting point for gold (Au #79) is 1337K or 1947 degrees F.
The melting point for Tungsten (W #74) is a whopping 3695K or 6192 degrees F.
Quite a difference, eh? If you tried to pour molten tungsten into a hollowed-out gold bar, don't you think it would melt a hole through the bar? And when the tungsten shrinks on cooling, wouldn't it create a loose "clinker" bar, with a core that shakes?
And about this so-called well financed criminal enterprise that would have smelted/created this fakery (5,600 or so bars), it would have had to acquire significant amounts of gold, move, smelt, sell, and get into circulation a substantial number of bars without any assayer catching it. Hmmm, rrriiiight.
Other physical properties: the electrical resistivity of the two metals differs by a factor of 2:
Gold is 22.14 nano-ohms per m,
Tungsten is 52.8 nano-ohms per m. I think this creates properties that can be detected: probably not by a static DC ohm-meter resistance measurement, but by the time-domain reflectometry method, where the travel of a calibrated pulse through a transmission medium is affected by electrical properties of the conductor (the bar) from one end to the other. I'm not certain that TDR is applicable here, but suppose it could be. A TDR test would be non-invasive, using moderately expensive (on the order of the value of one genuine 400oz gold bar, to be sure) and portable equipment.
The thermal (heat-conducting) properties, I think, are represented by Heat Capacity, and differ by about 2.5 percent, which would make it possible for any college physics lab to discern the thermal capacity and conductivity of a genuine versus a heavily-doped bar. If I'd only paid attention in first-year college physics: either measure the rate of temperature transfer through the bar (with a heat source, a few thermocouples, some instrumentation and a stopwatch), or measure the total heat stored and released by the entire bar.
Not to mention the aforementioned X-ray or other examination mentioned by a doctor. These inspections would reveal different materials because of their different densities, and any interior voids, gaps, or slugs.
Post a Comment
Comments are set on moderate, so they may or may not get through.