Free Republic

Fifty years ago this Sunday, President Richard Nixon announced a bold economic plan, including the severing of the U.S. dollar’s ties to gold. Since then, the world’s monetary system has consisted of (mostly) freely floating currencies. The dollar nonetheless remains the primary legal tender used internationally for trade, finance, and as a store of value, which has conferred upon the U.S. enormous advantages. Whether that will continue for the next half-century is far from certain. The Bretton Woods system, in effect back then, reflected America’s economic pre-eminence after World War II. Currency exchange rates were fixed, relative to the dollar,...

ICBC Standard Bank just made a huge bet on gold. Although the details weren't disclosed, China's largest bank now owns one of just seven secret gold vaults hidden in London in what is something of an exclusive gold market. Here's what you need to know. A piece of the action China's ICBC is the world's largest bank by assets. And according to the BBC, China accounts for roughly 25% of global gold demand. So clearly, ICBC needs to be involved in the gold trade in a big way. However, China isn't the world's hub for gold trading; that distinction goes...

ICBC Standard Bank PLC said on Monday it is buying a precious-metals vault from Barclays PLC’s, in the latest move by the Chinese bank to increase its role in the market’s infrastructure. The move makes parent ICBC, the world’s biggest bank by assets, the first Chinese lender to own a vault in London and extends its influence in precious metals from pricing to storage. With China the largest consumer of many metals, the country’s banks have increasingly bid to own or help run the infrastructure in these markets. China accounts for more than a quarter of global gold demand, but...

In what is the most remarkable news of the day, which has so far passed very quietly under the radar, Fosun International, China's largest private-owned conglomerate which invests in commodities, properties and pharmaceuticals also known as "Shanghai's Hutchison Whampoa", announced in a statement filed just as quietly with the Hong Kong stock exchange, that it had purchased JPM's iconic former headquarters, the tower built by none other than David Rockefeller, at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza for a measly $725 million.

With JPM’s gold inventory plunging 66% Friday to an all-time low of 46,000 ounces, and with reportedly over 502,000 ounces still standing against JPM for the JUNE gold contract, is the long anticipated force-majeure event in progress?

20 Firetrucks, 4+ ambulance and police showed up There is zero media coverage about this beside Stopmotions stream of the event and a few locals tweeting about it This is supposedly where JP Morgan keeps their gold. The very same gold that has been dwindling down at astonishing rates lately. JP Morgan warehouse 100 feet below CMP 1 on Wall Street. Tons of Fire Trucks and even Ambulances on the scene. Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/breaking-massive-fire-reported-in-the-basement-at-the-jp-morgan-gold-warehouse-on-wall-street-why-so-many-firetrucks/#sk0CebEEMBlrj5fp.99

For Americans, financial and economic Armageddon might be close at hand. The evidence for this conclusion is the concerted effort by the Federal Reserve and its dependent financial institutions to scare people away from gold and silver by driving down their prices. When gold prices hit $1,917.50 an ounce on August 23, 2011, a gain of more than $500 an ounce in less than 8 months, capping a rise over a decade from $272 at the end of December 2000, the Federal Reserve panicked. With the US dollar losing value so rapidly compared to the world standard for money, the...

It would be way overstating things to suggest that there could be a run on the cache of gold that is kept in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. But in the wake of reports that Germany is undertaking a program to remove its gold from the Fed and return it to Germany, a bill has been introduced in the legislature of Texas to move the state’s gold bars held at a private bank in New York and transfer them to a depository in the Lone Star State. The bill has been introduced at Austin by...

When two weeks ago we exposed the heretofore secret location of JPM's London gold vault (located under the firm's massive L-shaped office complex at 60 Victoria Embankment) we thought: what about New York? After all, while London is the legacy financial capital of the "old world", it is in New York that the biggest private wealth of the past century is concentrated, and it is also in New York where the bulk of the hard assets backing the public money of the world's sovereigns are located, some 80 feet below ground level in the fifth sub-basement of the New York...

When Super Storm Sandy flooded lower Manhattan, it also flooded the vaults of at least one gold depository. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko Monday, the CME declared force majeure at a precious metals depository in New York, Manfra, Tordella and Brookes ("MTB") effective immediately. This depository is one of five locations listed by the CME for the warehousing of physical gold.

A few months back, the commander in chief of our Armed Forces, that erstwhile community organizer Barack Hussein Obama, denigrated a large cross section of Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement -- those who advocate for Essential Liberty and Rule of Law. Obama identified them as malcontents, "waving their little tea bags." Since then, the Obama administration and their Leftmedia sycophants have endeavored to characterize Tea Party attendees as rude, radical, racist, redneck, enemies of the state. They have attempted to tie high-profile acts of violence against the government to the Tea Party, including the pilot who crashed...