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Last week, Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov confirmed that about $300 billion of Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserve cushion had been frozen as a result of Western sanctions. On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the move "theft." The collective West's decision to freeze Russian reserves abroad constitutes the bankruptcy of their obligations before Russia, and undermines faith in their currencies, President Vladimir Putin has said. "In the past weeks, a number of Western countries have taken illegitimate measures on the so-called 'freezing' of Russian assets. The collective West has factually drawn a line under the reliability of its...

Here is just ONE example, although its a very good example, of why Hillary should be convicted of failing to secure CONFIDENTIAL government foreign-affairs documents... This one is from Sid Blumenthal to Hillary on April 2, 2010. Clearly from the subject matter, it does not belong on any unsecured computer system. It hints at the upcoming killing by the US, France, and NATO of Mohamar Qadaffi, and it even implys WHY this has to be done: Because Qadaffi is creating a 7-billion dollar fund of gold-backed dinars, which will be the only currency allowed for middle-east oil purchases. The message...

Tyler Durden March 3, 2016One month ago, when looking at the latest Canadian official international reserves, we noticed something strange: Canada had sold nearly half of its gold reserves in one month. According to the February data, total Canadian gold reserves stood at 1.7 tonnes. That was just 0.1 per cent of the country’s total reserves, which also include foreign currency deposits and bonds. As we noted, the decision to sell came from Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s office. “Canada’s gold reserves belong to the Government of Canada, and are held under the name of the Minister of Finance,” explained a...

To begin with, Russia has no need to sell gold. In fact, Russia added 150 tonnes of gold to its Central Bank holdings in August, September and October. It didn’t make any sense that Russia would then turn around and sell gold. Why? Russia runs a current account surplus - LINK. It has cash on its balance sheet. Something the U.S. can only dream about, as the U.S. Government has to issue debt every hour to fund itself. The last time the U.S. sniffed a positive balance of payments was in the 1980’s. Second, Russia just got through paying down...

Report of 1 Kilo Gold Bar Filled with Tungsten Found in UK March 26, 2012 “What appears to be a tungsten filled gold bar has been found – this time in the UK. It is believed that a scrap dealer bought the Metalor 1 kilo gold bar of 99.98% purity from a member of the public. Metalor are a leading international gold refiner and bar manufacturer, headquartered in Zurich. The bar appears to have been tampered with and may have had holes drilled into it or melted out and then had tungsten rods inserted or tungsten poured into the holes....

On January 16, 2013 Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, said it will ship back home all 374 tonnes it had stored with the Banque de France in Paris, as well as 300 tonnes held in Manhattan by the US Federal Reserve, by 2020. Fast forward a year and Buba, as the Federal Bank of Germany is affectionately (or maybe not) known, has only managed to bring home a paltry 37 tonnes of gold. And a mere 5 tonnes of that came from the US, the rest from Paris. The US Fed holds 45% of the total 3,396 tonnes German gold....

The German central bank, or Bundesbank, said Monday that it stepped up the repatriation of its gold reserves from overseas storage last year. “The Bundesbank successfully continued and further stepped up its transfers of gold,” the central bank said in a statement. “In 2014, 120 tonnes of gold were transferred to Frankfurt from storage locations abroad: 35 tonnes from Paris and 85 tonnes from New York.” Germany’s gold reserves are the second-biggest in the world after those of the United States and totaled 3,384.2 tonnes this month, according to the latest data compiled by the World Gold Council. …

First they purloin the savings and bank deposits in Laiki and the Bank of Cyprus, including the working funds of the University of Cyprus, and thousands of small firms hanging on by their fingertips. Then they seize three quarters of the country’s gold reserves, making it ever harder for Cyprus to extricate itself from EMU at a later date. The people of Cyprus first learned about this from a Reuters leak of the working documents for the Eurogroup meeting on Friday. It is tucked away in clause 29. "Sale of excess gold reserves: The Cypriot authorities have committed to sell...

LONDON, Aug 3 -- Central banks of emerging market countries such as Korea and Thailand added more than $10 billion of gold to their reserves this year. International Monetary Fund data for June showed Thailand bought gold for the second time this year, raising its reserves by nearly 19 tonnes to over 127 tonnes, while Russia bought another 5.85 tonnes, bringing its reserves to 836.7 tonnes, the world's eighth largest official stash of the metal. So far in 2011, emerging market central banks have bought nearly 180 tonnes of gold, more than double the roughly 73 tonnes purchased by central...