Do We Goldbugs Finally Have Your Attention?

Seeking Alpha ^ | 11/13/2009 | Andy Sutton

[Toddsterpatriot]

The money commodity is just used for trading.

So how much of that commodity is sufficient?

[Publius6961]

I am confused.

The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 64th Edition, lists both Gold and Tungsten as 19.3 to one decimal place.

How would one go about checking a variance of 0.155% on a 400 oz bar (without destroying it)?

[Francois Marie Arouet]

..........a Gold bug is someone who understands Gold’s historical role as money .................

This means that a world without gold is anomaly. The last hundred years or thereabouts are a historical digression. The world in now reverting to the mean where the natural order of gold is the standard.

[Travis McGee]

Put the drill through the middle, TP. The fraud will be exposed after a few holes. Much easier than detecting Korean “super bills,” for example. And whoever provided the fake bars will be arrested or at least put out of the business. Once the rumor of a tungsten fraud has gotten around (and it has) then detecting fake tungsten cored bars will be easy.

The GLD ETF may have a big problem with their credibility, if folks wonder about their physical gold. One of the many reasons I never touched PM ETFs. PM ETF just scream fraud potential in a dozen different ways. The only real gold is physical gold that you own.

[Travis McGee]

If you read my other posts, you will notice that I call gold “flight capital.” People own gold for the same reason they have insurance, a gun, and a fire extinguisher.

It’s so they are not left high and dry IF the dollar blows up....like many other unbacked fiat currencies have, since at least the Romans.

[Travis McGee]

How would one go about checking a variance of 0.155% on a 400 oz bar (without destroying it)?

Specific gravity is only one measure of gold and tungsten, and it's the only one where they are similar. In hardness, thermal qualities and electrical properties they are very different. Once the fraud of tungsten coring is suspected, it will be very easy to detect, with thermal, electrical and hardness testing. For example, a simple 1/16" drill bit will go into gold like butter, then hit the tungsten and stop or break.

For anybody in the big leagues who is buying gold at 400 oz a pop, these tests will be as simple as telling a hershey bar from a piece of dog turd....even though they are both brown and both have similar density.

[WKL815]

I think the “ammo bugs” have the more realistic outlook. If this economy collapses we’ll be trading in bullets, beans, and bandaids, not gold.

+1!!1

[Toddsterpatriot]

Put the drill through the middle, TP.

If the tungsten slug is only 10 oz in a 400 oz bar, it might take you more than a few holes to hit it.

[Petronski]

How would one go about checking a variance of 0.155% on a 400 oz bar (without destroying it)?

Consult the men who stare at goats?

[dollarbull]

People complain about inflation/deflation a lot these days but what we got now is heaven compared to what we had with gold.

Now that's funny. "what we got now" is $1100 gold - that is heaven isn't it? "what you got" is federal reserve toilet paper - and that is the monetary instrument with the MOST UNSTABLE price, and what's worse it only goes down. LOL. paperbug morons.

[dollarbull]

As much as people love $1,114/oz gold now, with inflation it's only twice what the price was in 1935. That same time frame saw a 120-fold increase in the real value of Dow Industrial stocks.

None of us here was alive in 1935. How about something relevant, like "how has gold performed over the last 10 years". Gold is an asset that, like any other, has it's time and place. That time is now. Have fun watching it from the sidelines.

[dollarbull]

All irrelevant. No one reading this forum owns or will ever see or touch an LBMA 400oz bar.

Stick to 1oz coins and gold mining stocks and you won’t have a problem.

If it turns out that the banksters have salted a significant amount of circulating LBMA bars with tungsten, who cares? That will just precipitate a much faster run on real gold.

[dollarbull]

So how much of that commodity is sufficient?

how much federal reserve toilet paper is sufficient? A trillion every few months? LOL

[dollarbull]

As opposed to paper fiat currencies, which have always been a reliable store of value.

Gold has been money for 5000 years. Gold cannot go to zero value. In all recorded history there hasn't been a fiat currency that lasted more than 2 generations. ALL fiat currencies end up in the toilet.

Expat - which is "more stable" LOL Sounds like you need a new dictionary.

[Swing_Thought]

So how much of that commodity is sufficient?

Sufficient for what? Are you implying that the "right" quantity of money in knowable or can be calculated? I don't get your question.

I look at money as a commodity, the value of which is determined by it's trade value. Right now the dollar isn't very good money, because it's trade value is diminishing and seems likely to continue to continue to do so over the long run given the propensity of the government to borrow, "print" and spend.

Gold is better money right now. It's perceived as a better store of value than the dollar. That's why its price in dollars is rising.

[Toddsterpatriot]

So how much of that commodity is sufficient?

Sufficient for what?

Sufficient to back the money supply.

[Swing_Thought]

Sufficient to back the money supply.

Whatever the market decides. It's the market that should decide, not a group of statist academic economists wallowing in their fatal conceit.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Whatever the market decides.

The market should decide how much gold there is to back the money supply? Is the government still printing the convertible notes you want? Or do you want private coins and notes? Or both?

[Travis McGee]

If the tungsten slug is only 10 oz in a 400 oz bar, it might take you more than a few holes to hit it.

You are so funny, TP, as you get walked back into logical corners.

Let me save you typing your next "come back."

"What if there is only one atom of tungsten in the gold bar? How are you going to find it then?????"

You always give me a good laugh.

[Atlas Sneezed]

A simple drill would discover the fraud.

---

So would a needle, pushed by a thimble.

Ever see the cartoon (I think it was the Underdog opening titles) where he bites the coin? I think that was an old habit to test if a coin was gold and soft to the tooth, or fake.

My read is that it has never been alleged that anything other than 400 oz. bars have been the subject of Tungsten fraud. Coins are not a factor, although lead fakes are well-known, and easily detected with a scale and a caliper.

This would make an interesting plot element in a novel, however. Presidents funding their corrupt future by defrauding Ft. Knox ad the Chinese. James bond-level of clever field detection of fakery. Etc.