Posted on 03/01/2013 9:49:20 PM PST by JustTheTruth
The Mexican Government Audit Office has issued an official statement, criticizing the Bank of Mexico for not auditing the gold it has supposedly bought and stored at the Bank of England. The auditors ask the Central Bank of Mexico to “make a physical inspection with the counterparty that has the gold under its custody, in order to be able to verify and validate its physical wholeness and compliance with the terms and conditions of dealing with this asset.”
Global Financial Intelligence and the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee report that the actions of the Mexican Government Audit Office are the result of a long campaign lead by Guillermo Barba, a Mexican civil activist and investigative journalist.
. The Government Audit Office has concluded that 95% of the gold reserves of the Bank of Mexico are stored abroad and 99% of this gold is stored with the Bank of England. However, the Mexican central bank has never inspected the gold it bought, has not performed purity tests on it and doesn’t even have a list of all the gold bars stored in London. In their current state, Mexico’s gold reserves are no more than “paper gold” in the meaning that the Bank of Mexico doesn’t have any physical gold, but mere “claims” on a certain amount of gold supposedly held by the Bank of England.
Bill Gross, the Chief Investment Officer of PIMCO (the world’s largest bond fund) has recently said that “Central banks distrust each other”. The pending audit of the Mexican gold reserves is not a singular case of actions that show a high level of mutual distrust among central banks. The latest move of the Bundesbank, which demanded the repatriation of its gold holding from Bank of New York, Bank of England and Banque de France, is another sign of distrust in the world’s financial system. It is quite probable that after the audit, Mexico will decide to repatriate its gold holdings, possibly prompting other countries to follow suit.
"Hypothecated" is a fancy word for "I have a bridge to sell".
I think our central bank, the UK central bank and French central bank and some others.... have five different parties thinking the central bank gold bars belong to them
Think of time shares in gold bars. Schedule your inspection assay and count, check the serial numbers. Everything is hokie-dokie, yes?
But...does any one bother to check the serial numbers of other countries bars? Does Germany say, "Gives us the s/n lists of ALL the gold bars in depository.". Auric Goldfinger thought small.
Whose gold is it?
I suspect gold plated tungsten bars would just about fill the various vaults deemed lacking to the appropriate amounts. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
It sounds as if a bunch of impecunious, drunken alchemists have taken control of banking and finance the world over. It took a lot of international “cooperation” on some level to pull this off.
They’re trying to kill the “barbarous relic,” imho. Driving it into the basement in the late 90’s to early 2000’s didn’t do it so they’ve resorted to debasing it by spinning paper and base metals into gold.
Spain didn't hoard the gold and silver it looted from the New World, it spent it is as fast as it could, and as fast as it could borrow against future shipments of gold and silver. The flood of precious metal allowed the government to crush native industry under heavy taxes and moronic regulation, but still keep spending. It brought abroad the things its crushed domestic industries could no longer produce.
When the flood of precious metals from the New World, basically free money that the government and those close to it got to squander, slowed, and then dried up, Spain was screwed. Its whole system of government and economy was based not on production, but on grabbing a share of the government's money. When the government went broke the private economy, moribund from taxes and regulations, could not pick the slack, and the country spent the next several centuries in poverty.
Any resemblance the between the policies of the Spanish Hapsburgs and Bourbons, and the way the Democrat Party combines taxes, regulations, and borrowing/printing greenbacks, is chillingly apt.
It's the Americans that the Germans don't trust, not the British.
Don’t they have newspapers in Mexico? Gordon Brown (financial genius!) sold all the gold in England a few years back - at rock bottom price.
Or maybe they don’t want to pay the storage fees anymore. Got to be a few mills/year.
If you were to store something valuable at a friend’s house -for a fee- because you were threatened by the neighborhood bully, and the threat went away one day, wouldn’t you want your valuables back? Doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t trust your friend anymore...
I don’t understand why all the countries store their gold elsewhere.... and then what prevents the one storing it to simply tell each seperate country the same pile of gold bars is theirs.
if you truely believe that then a quick trip to your local walmart should strike fear into you for the future of our country.
I feel like I am on a special needs bus every time I venture out these days.
Tungsten bars would take too much plotting and it would leak out.....I think. The best way to steal those gold bars at Ft Knox and under the NY Fed Reserve bank is to do a sleight of hand. A quick confusing shuffle that looks 100% legitimate. I think I saw old photos of how the gold bars under the NY Fed Reserve were allocated. They had different bull pens, one would have a sign saying Germany, another saying UK, another saying Venezuela etc... Hugo Chavez was smart enough to demand his country's gold be sent home from NY. Did the gold in those bull pens honestly represent. the amount of gold that say Germany has being held for them under the NY Fed Reserve? Who knows but we sure are dragging our feet in returning their gold as Germany has requested
Think of time shares in gold bars.
These central banks are returning to the old banking scheme of the gold bank. Where the banker would have the paper money he issued backed up by gold he held. But only 20% backed up because he would issue five times as many notes (value) as he had gold (value) in his vaults
How Russian Gold Reserve Was Plundered
Investigation of embezzlement of 786 tons of gold lasts for half a year already. Russian Prosecutor’s Office already found the planes, countries and banks where the gold was delivered. The Soviet Union exported large oil supplies, earnings were exchanged for gold and never got back to the country; fourteen billion of dollars still remain unclaimed in Belgium. We know that so-called “shadow flows” at the rate of 20 billion dollars leave the country every year. However, no measures are taken to stop such crimes.
I know lots of detective stories, one of them concerns Russian Duma faction Yabloko. In accordance with the agreement on differentiation of authorities between Russia and the republic of Tatarstan of 1992, enormous oil supplies left Tatarstan. As a repay, 200 computers were sent to Tatarstan, but they never arrived to the republic. Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky preferred to hide for a month because of fear when the computers were stolen. In connection with this case and other facts, I can mention the assassination of Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova. Investigation of the crime is allegedly currently carried out, I also go to interrogations. But in fact, no measures are taken against the officials.
Let’s take Yegor Gaidar. It was he who was the author of the Chechen aviso made on 4 trillion rubles; this money was scattered about the country and sent to Siberia. Gold of the party and partially gold of artels was withdrawn from the country. The artels retained all gold within three years as the country experienced severe inflation, and gold always remained gold. But the gold was taken abroad, away from the country. However, Yegor Gaidar wasn’t brought into criminal account for such actions. Prosecutors are afraid to ask him questions concerning the case.
As for the money, it was used for privatization in the country. Those Supreme Council deputies who knew about the money, Vladimir Golovlev and Lezhnev are dead; Golovlev was assassinated in August this year. Investigator who carried out interrogations concerning gold of the party was killed at the same time.
Large supplies of oil, gold stolen from Magadan, Yakutia, Khabarovsk and silver from Russia’s Far East were withdrawn from the country; high-ranking officials such as Ministers for Internal Affairs Viktor Yerin, Andrey Dunayev, Anatoly Kulikov, Vladimir Rushailo were perfectly aware of the gold outflow. As a result of the criminal activity, 500 tons of gold were withdrawn from Russia, but no measures were taken in connection with the crime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/business/global/german-central-bank-to-repatriate-gold-reserves.html?_r=0
During the cold war, West Germany followed a policy of storing its gold as far west as possible in case of a Soviet invasion. While that worry is gone, there is still an argument for keeping some gold in financial centers like New York and London. It remains the one currency that is accepted everywhere. In the event of a currency crisis, the gold could be quickly deployed in financial markets to help restore confidence.The New York Fed stores the German gold without cost on the theory that the presence of foreign gold supports the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency. A spokesman for the New York Fed declined to comment.
The Bundesbank announcement follows a public outcry last year after a clash in Parliament about whether all the bank’s gold was properly accounted for.
Thanks for the history lesson! Spain and Portugal’s plunder of the New World for precious metals is very interesting. They came here to plunder and convert the natives. The English and Dutch and other North Europeans came here to exploit our vast land and untapped natural resources to further industry and agriculture. One example being forests to cut down to make iron and steel.
But the huge cojones on all these guys to come exploring to the New World and make the first European settlements!!
Great links. Thanks
During the USSR-Russia chaos of early 1990s all kinds of things and natural resources (such as smelted aluminum and copper) were looted and stolen. Sold abroad. Gold was no exception
Interesting article.
Not exactly on purpose. The French, English, Dutch, etc. wanted to find huge native empires and massive amounts of gold and silver to plunder. But there weren't any in the areas left available for them.
So they had to drop back to actual settlement, fishing, farming, etc. The irony being that in the long run this created much greater wealth.
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