Posted on 01/29/2008 3:56:47 AM PST by Man50D
U.S. central banks may have less than half the gold they claim to possess in their vaults, charges a watchdog group in an ad scheduled for publication in the Wall Street Journal this week.
As WND reported, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, or GATA, claims the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury are surreptitiously manipulating the country's gold reserves by participating in undisclosed leases, according to an advance copy WND obtained of the ad running in Thursday's edition of the Journal.
GATA believes much of the borrowed gold out on lease will never be returned to the central banks.
"With the demand for gold so strong worldwide, it has become impossible to return much of the leased gold without driving the price to the moon," said GATA's chairman, William J. Murphy III.
"Most observers calculate central bank reserves are supposed to have about 30,000 tons of gold worldwide in their vaults, but we believe the amount of gold actually there may be more like 15,000 tons," Murphy said. "The rest of the gold is gone."
The U.S. Treasury denies the claim, insisting the stock is accounted for regularly.
"We want to expose and stop the manipulation of the gold market by the United States Treasury and Federal Reserve right now," Murphy said.
"The purpose of this ad is to wake people up in the investment world as to what is going on behind the scenes in the U.S. gold and financial markets," Murphy told WND.
He explained GATA has decided to pay the Wall Street Journal $264,000 for a one-time placement of the full page ad in the national edition because the financial press has not covered the story.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
That’s a classic!
Lincoln and Kennedy tried to reverse that - put the coining of money back in the hands of the American people, or, at least, their government. You know what happened to them.
Lincoln tried to reverse someting that happened in 1913? OK.
Technically, (wink wink), it will come back some day.
I invest $10 a week in Powerball! I'm gonna retire a zillionaire!
Mark
Almost as good as sitting on a pile of manure when everyone wants fertilizer!
” GATA’s chairman, William J. Murphy III”
Someone must be selling a gold investing newsletter.
Here’s WIkipedia, FWIW:
All of the gold in the depository, if pure, could form a cube 19.7 feet (6 m) on a side. For a comparison, all the gold ever mined in the world would form a cube 64.3 feet (19.6 meters) on a side.[1]
The United States holds more gold bullion than any other country, with about 2.37 times that of the next leading country, Germany.
Conspiracy theory
A popular and recurring conspiracy theory, as alleged by Edward Durrell, Norman Dodd, Tom Valentine, Peter Beter and others, claims that the vault is mostly empty and that most of the gold in Fort Knox was removed to London in the late 1960s by President Lyndon Johnson.[3] In response, on September 23, 1974, Senator Walter Huddleston of Kentucky, twelve congressmen, and about 100 members of the news media toured the vault and opened various cells and doors, each filled with gold. Radio reporter Bill Evans, when asked if it seemed like the gold might have been moved in just for the visit, replied that “all I can say is that I saw gold there” and that it seemed like it was always there.[4] Additionally, audits of the gold by the General Accounting Office (in cooperation with the United States Mint and the United States Customs Service in 1974 and the Treasury Department) from 1975-1981 found no discrepancies between the reported and actual amounts of gold at the Depository.[5] However, the audit has been described as a peculiar process because it was only a partial audit done over an extended period of time.[6] The report states only 21 percent of the gold bars were audited as of 1981 (the audit report’s issue date) and that the audit has “covered more than 212.7 million fine troy ounces of gold” which “represents over 80 percent of the total amount of United States-owned gold of 264.1 million fine troy ounces.”[5] A small amount of gold is removed for regularly scheduled audits to ensure the purity matches official records.[1] The theory continues to persist, however.
There’s a horse farm here I pass everyday on my way to work that has a big banner on it’s main fence “FREE MANURE!” I want to get a hold of a Hillary! ‘08 lawn sign and plant it right in front of that banner!.............
There will always be those who claim the gold is gone. According to this show I saw, Truman felt it necessary to visit Fort Knox himself to make sure that the rumors were false.
Like I said, the irony is that it would not be the end of the world if it was. In fact, the guys who want to sell off the oil reserve and the helium reserve would probably argue that there is no reason the government should own this gold to begin with. We could sell it, use the proceeds to pay down the national debt, and save the interest on $200 billion.
The Assay Office in question is on Water Street and not Wall Street as stated in the article. At the time I would pass it every work day and recall its closing as an active facility. There were of course rumors as to what was in that small building but no one knew for sure.
Does Jerome have to try to make himself look like a joke, or does it just come naturally?
LOL! Put down the drugs.
To generate income. If you hold $1,000,000 worth of gold in your vault, you earn no interest. If you lease it to say a gold mine company that wants to sell forward some of their production, you might earn $3,600 a year on the gold.
The gold mine company sells your gold now and in one year, the gold mine returns the same amount of gold to your vault.
Please note
Gold is quoted as being worth so much $$$$$$
$$$$$$ aren’t quoted as being worth so much gold
So what happens if the gold mine company just sends you a paper IOU, or doesn’t answer the phone?
I would guess the legal documents would mention some solution. Kinda hard to put a mine in a moving van in the middle of the night.
The u.s. government has no gold reserves to speak of and has not since the Carter administration. The vast majority of the gold held in Fort Knox is owned by other governments (like Saudis Arabia). We hold it here because we’re generally trusted to keep it safe. We also hold gold for central banks. Fedgov mints some gold coins for collectors. This gold is purchased each year on the open market, it does not come from any vast government stock. The real reason we’ll never return to a gold standard is that we don’t have any to speak of.
Interesting. I never thought about that.
I guess it’s cheaper for the gold company than trading futures.
What, I can’t trust the banks? This just can’t be.
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