ALL THAT GLITTERS, IS NOT GLD
Gold and silver represent honest money. When money can’t be trusted, you can bet that an entire nation/civilisation is its way down the gurgler.
Interestingly, if you collect Roman coins, you can measure the decline of the empire by the percentage of precious metal in the coins that they minted.
In its heyday, Roman coins were 100% pure gold or silver. Gradually over the course of a few centuries, the percentage of precious metal dropped until the coins contained hardly any precious metal at all.
Once upon a time, money in the Anglosphere was either 100% ‘specie’ (precious metal), or 100% backed by it.
This metal backed money was gradually corrupted until in August 1973, Richard Nixon interrupted the American Super Bowl to announce that the convertibility of the US Dollar into gold would be temporarily suspended.
Almost 50 years on, we are still waiting for a return of a US Dollar which can be converted into Gold at a fixed rate.
Just don’t hold your breath on that one.
From that time on, (early ‘70s), various schemes were invented which allowed Government and banks to ‘print’ gold and suppress its value.
One such scheme is the futures market where people buy a contract which promises to supply gold on a pre-arranged date in the future.
Usually, the contract holder will settle the contract in dollars at the expiration date. This sounds innocent enough but has the effect of naturally suppressing the gold price.
Why, you ask? Well obviously, when people buy a contract promising gold, instead of actually buying gold, it reduces the amount of gold being purchased.
Less gold bought, means less demand, which means a lower price. A lower gold price means that paper dollars, pounds and yen seem relatively more valuable. If you are in the business of printing these currencies by the boatload, that’s a good thing.
If you are an up and coming world power like China, that is acquiring as much gold as possible, that is also a good thing.
Why? Well, when fiat currencies melt down in a hyper-inflated heap, only gold and silver will be accepted in exchange for real goods like iPads, flat screen tellys and whipper-snippers.
That’s when the golden rule kicks in.
‘He who has the gold, makes the rules.’
Another way for our leaders to suppress the gold price, is by selling lots of gold into the market when demand is high.
No one knows for sure where this gold comes from but people have speculated about the various sources for years.
Central bank gold is thought to be a major source. Our globalist elites are looking after our national gold and assure us that it is safe. Good luck with that, is all I can say.
It has long been speculated that another possible source of gold for price suppression, is the exchange traded fund GLD.
Exchange traded funds are set up as ways for ordinary investors to speculate on price movements of various commodities.
They trade on share market exchanges so investors can buy and sell these commodities as easily as they can buy stocks and shares.
They are intended to track the price of a commodity. A reasonable assumption would be that the fund owners would purchase the underlying commodity and store it for you when you purchase the security. In reality, that is not always exactly true.
In the case of GLD, no one outside the company seems to know exactly how much gold the fund actually possesses.
Also, although the fund is based in the USA, the gold they own is held mostly in the UK. The fund doesn’t actually hold this gold either. It is held by ‘custodians.’
Sometimes the custodians hold gold in the vaults of ‘sub-custodians.’ It is all very complicated and opaque.
It is this opaqueness which has led to speculation that the fund does not hold the gold that it claims.
Nevertheless, the fund ‘claims to hold 40.8 million ounces of gold worth US$ 77 billion with custodian HSBC Bank plc in London, and a Trust whose only asset is “allocated gold bullion”.’
That is according to a recent article by Bullion Star. 40.8 million ounces is close to 1270 tonnes, which is more gold than most countries claim to possess. The article is a little long and technical for the Richardson Post, but if you have the patience, I recommend reading it.
The point of the article, is that GLD is behaving rather strangely for such a large and prestigious firm. Specifically, their Chief Financial Officer resigned one day before the company’s accounts were due to be filed with the Feds and did not sign off on those accounts.
She was replaced the same day with a new Chief Financial Officer who did sign off on those accounts. How he knew what was in those accounts is a mystery known only to himself.
There were a number of other troubling items from the company’s accounts which are listed in the article as follows:
• Why does the latest GLD 10-K withhold quantity data on how much gold the GLD held at the Bank of England between 15 April and 13 August, and only use the word ‘some’ which is contrary to the Full Disclosure Principle of accounting?
• Why does the latest GLD 10-K blank out the use of XBRL data tags for “Gold Held by Sub-custodian” that would show precisely how much GLD gold was held by GOLD at the Bank of England between 15 April and 13 August?
• What is GLD gold doing at the Bank of England for 121 consecutive days if the custodian HSBC is obliged to use “commercially reasonable efforts promptly to transport the gold from the sub-custodian’s vault to the Custodian’s vault “?
• Why has the GLD auditor KPMG (New York) suddenly added a Critical Audit Matter to its audit statement about evaluating “the evidence pertaining to the existence of the gold holdings“, when KPMG has been the Trust’s auditor since 2010 and has never done so previously?
Now perhaps the article’s author is misreading all of these signs. Maybe GLD is going along just fine, but I can see why he would be concerned, particularly as CFOs have been leaving GLD at a rate of around one per year for some time now.
If GLD were in deep trouble, if they actually didn’t possess all (or any of) the gold they claim to have, this could trigger a firestorm that could devastate the Western World (in my humble opinion).
The collapse of GLD could be met by one of two ways by the powers that be. Firstly, clients of GLD would find themselves as unsecured creditors of a bankrupt entity with little to no assets. That is what is supposed to happen.
Most likely, in my opinion, the Government would then step in and reimburse the creditors with freshly printed money to prevent fallout, maintain confidence in the system and help out their friends and campaign donors.
Printing US$77 billion is no biggie for our idiotic overlords.
Hopefully, this would stem the rot, but that is not guaranteed at all.
The problem, apart from the inflationary nature of the money printing, is that the collapse of GLD would badly damage confidence in other forms of gold contracts such as futures contracts and unallocated gold accounts at bullion banks.
These (unallocated) accounts hold gold for clients. However, the gold is ‘pooled’ and according to some commentators, these accounts probably don’t contain enough gold to pay out all of their clients (again, lack of transparency makes it impossible to be sure).
If there were a ‘run’ on these accounts, the quickest clients may get their gold whilst the rest would, most likely, be offered an IOU from a deeply troubled banking institution.
Once again, our brilliant financial elites would likely respond with characteristic genius and print yet more money to bail out the other brilliant financial elites who bought these contracts.
Quite suddenly, people holding the actual barbarous yellow financial relic would start to look very smart, whilst those holding pieces of paper, promising to supply this relic on demand would be looking less like geniuses and more like chumps.
In all likelihood, the value of these pieces of paper would start to plummet whilst the price of gold would head in the opposite direction.
With gold and silver rising in value, more and more people would be inclined to ‘trade in’ dollars, pounds and yen in exchange for rapidly appreciating gold and silver.
For the first time in a generation, we would have a crisis that couldn’t be fixed by printing more money. Sadly, that wouldn’t stop our globalist, elite overlords from doing it anyway.
“The problem is,” they will say, “that we just aren’t printing enough money.”
Pure genius.
Now this shouldn’t be too much of a concern to those of you who enjoy searching through trash cans for something to eat.
For the rest of us, we need to be holding these merchant bankers to account and hoping it isn’t too late.
Demanding a transparent audit of the gold holdings of our central banks and bullion banks would be a good start.
If you buy gold, then take physical delivery of it and arrange storage.
There is way way way more gold traded than exists. Essentially it is fiat gold the same as our fiat currency.
If you can’t hold it in your hand without much delay or inconvenience, don’t touch it!
Currencies values have little to do with gold any more. Under modern monetary policy exchange rates are set by the market and people’s appreciation of any values.
These markets are fiddled with by the worlds central banks using all sorts of mechanisms , The OCR in particular plus derivatives.
A couple of decades back the OCR was a major influence on currency value,NZ manipulated its dollar with the highest interest rates in the OECD.
The currency was yield driven at that time but now @ 0.5% yield is no longer relevant.
So the $ value relies on people’s appreciation of our economy.
Assets and commodities are mostly now regarded as the best most secure store of wealth. Gold is only another commodity.
There is cause for real concern.
…..”Gold is only another commodity”…..
Very true but it is a commodity that exists in finite amounts which is what creates its value. If one heeds the advice of Kea above I reckon that holding a small percentage of one’s wealth in actual gold ingots is a prudent hedge against any future financial meltdown.
Well no. Plenty of gold mined around the place, indeed you can go catch some yourself in your dottage.
Lots of gold used in various forms of electronic systems. They are all being melted down these days and the gol recovered and unsurprisingly sold.
The real issue here is WHO but the CCP own HBSC and many of the companies they spawn?
Along with the other Chinese Bank which Brash is chairman of?
Just like, who owns Envirowaste and who owns Waste Management?
Hong Kong registered companies.
Along with a lot of others in NZ. diary, electrical in Wellington, Farms, forestry, you name it and the chinks have a finger in the pie.
Oh and don’t forget our pollies. Both national and local, all colours of the rainbow.
Looking at what has happened to Hong Kong, Jack Ma and Alibaba and the affiliates we should be concerned.
NZ is nothing but will be collateral damage.
We need big friends.
China ain’t one.
Nasska ,
So is/does property!
Fair comment in that they’re not making a shitload of new land.
Yet depending in how bad things get with Labour governments & the spectre of a NWO casting gloom it’s a lot easier to shove a couple of ingots into your sock than a few acres should relocation be necessary.
Land is only a good investment when there’s a government prepared & able to back the title thereof!
Really about confidence.
Something we are a bit short of at the moment..
Governments can take your gold as well ( tax)
Carbon Credits are out performing gold, right now, don’t know about bit coin but suspect not.
Choose your commodity carefully but there is always risk!
Land is only a good investment when there’s a government prepared & able to back the title thereof!
That’s true so don’t count on this bunch or rag tag wankers will you.
We have been having an argument with Tauranga City Council over the theft of our property rights. Ok so its over rubbish.
Who owns the rubbish, is it the person who bought and paid for it or is it the TCC.
We would argue that it belongs to the person who bought and paid for the rubbish until that person decided who should remove it. At that point when the rubbish is either given or sold to the collector then the rubbish becomes their collectors property to own or dispose of.
The issue we then have is, does the person who owns the rubbish have the right to contract the collection to any company.
Tauranga is a little different to most places. We sold our council rubbish collection to private businesses over 25 years ago. The net is result we have a number of people who have supplied bins and collect according to the needs of each household. Down or up driveways, at a timetable, agreed. ( other than the council mandated days, which in of itself was foolish. Every Truck in the same area on the same day. Dumb as a bus timetable).
Most people have been happy as pigs in mud with this for a longtime.
Now the council has decided in its utter lack of awareness and contempt to attempt to socilaise the rubbish collection and hand the maney to the CCP and decided that those companies, who have built up their business over that time and with their own money and with good service, are no longer allowed to collect our rubbish.
This of course is straight out theft of that business property right. No compensation, no choice for the ratepayer, a once a fortnight pick-up, glass bin, green bin, food bins, (oh and you can imagine what that will be like in the summer and how many rats that will feed.), Recycle bin and so on complete with spending 8 million dollars of ratepayer funds (which they claim to be very short of.), to supply bins for Envirowaste to collect. Envirowaste being subsidised by the ratepayers (and note just the ratepayers) to the tune of $8 million dollars.
All this based on faulty information.
Ratepayers are not happy. I have no doubt that any “Commissioner” appointed by scribble face will try to enforce this.
Its a clear violation of property rights and theft of other peoples property.
Now sure we don’t want our rubbish but surely in 2021 we are responsible enough pick our own contractor.
That only part of the story of course. We cannot pay per drop but will be stuck with a $230.00 +GST rate increase to pay for their CCP connections. Apparently, they are proposing to do that next year at the same time that they will allow you to have different sized bins
I am told that out local transfer station, which is a hell of a busy place with people taking their recycling along, is to be shut down and that service discontinued meaning that to dump that stuff you will now need to travel to the Mount station. They can’t cope with the traffic at that intersection now. Such fools.
But such are the people councils employing that castle, brain dead university grads who like our PM lie and cheat and steal.
And of course spend their lives sucking off someone else’s tit.
All bullied through by paid sevants our ex Mayor.
It’s not going to end well for them.
” We suspect up to 15% of the Chinese hard bullion to be fake” Federal reserve spokesman after 83 tons of Chinese gold found to be fake after being used as collateral on $3000.000.000. loans
Stick to the housing market ,it’s probably safer.
I bought in to bitcoin when one cost $1000.
Bitcoin today $36000.
Never studied that but what backs it. If someone defaults then they default no matter what.
US $ !.40 down from 1.56 a few weeks ago.
Do you reckon King Donald has this organised?