Free Republic

The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) is the world’s largest silver exchange. For the last nine consecutive months, the quantity of silver held in LBMA vaults have declined. The August 2022 report states that the vaults now hold only 916.5 million ounces of silver, the lowest total since July 2016. In November 2021, the LBMA vaults held 1.170.6 billion ounces of silver. Since then, inventories have fallen 21.7 percent. As dramatic a drop as that is, it becomes even more extreme when you consider only the LBMA inventories not owned by 13 silver exchange traded funds (ETFs) and the private...

Over the past week, we first noted that amid broad economic sanctions, there were numerous Russian gold refiners on the LBMA’s “Good Delivery” list, and subsequently we said that this “begged the question as to what would the LBMA do about the large number of Russian gold refineries on the LBMA Good Delivery Lists, refiners which are embedded with the Russian banks in the Russian gold market.”The question was answered today, when the LBMA – London’s gold market – suspended all Russian refineries from its accredited list, meaning their newly minted bars can no longer trade in one of the...