Added: 3. März 2010
Tags: AIG, Bailout, Banks, Bill Clinton, Bubble, CO2, Commodities, Derivatives, Derivatives market, Economy, Financial Crisis, Global News, Goldman Sachs, Government, Henry Paulson, Internet, Larry Summers, Mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Oil, Oil Prices, Politics, Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner, U.S., Wall Street
Update: German TV Channel Finds 500 Gram Tungsten Bar At W.C.Heraeus Gold Foundry With Bank Origin
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I have posted this primarily to get your thoughts on this issue.
Brilliant comments please!
In Ethiopia it were just gold-plated steel bars (=stupid fraud):
- Fake fears over Ethiopia’s gold (BBC NEWS, 13 March 2008):
Ethiopia’s national bank has been told to inspect all the gold in its vaults to determine its authenticity.
It follows the discovery that some of the “gold” it had bought for millions of dollars was gold-plated steel.
- Gold scam suspects to defend their case (Capital Ethiopia)
With fake tungsten gold bars we are maybe talking about the ‘Premier League’ of criminals, if this is true.
It’s one thing to counterfeit a twenty or hundred dollar bill. The amount of financial damage is usually limited to a specific region and only affects dozens of people and thousands of dollars. Secret Service agents quickly notify the banks on how to recognize these phony bills and retail outlets usually have procedures in place (such as special pens to test the paper) to stop their proliferation.
But what about gold? This is the most sacred of all commodities because it is thought to be the most trusted, reliable and valuable means of saving wealth.
A recent discovery — in October of 2009 — has been suppressed by the main stream media but has been circulating among the “big money” brokers and financial kingpins and is just now being revealed to the public. It involves the gold in Fort Knox — the US Treasury gold — that is the equity of our national wealth. In short, millions (with an “m”) of gold bars are fake!
Who did this? Apparently our own government.
Background
In October of 2009 the Chinese received a shipment of gold bars. Gold is regularly exchanges between countries to pay debts and to settle the so-called balance of trade. Most gold is exchanged and stored in vaults under the supervision of a special organization based in London, the London Bullion Market Association (or LBMA). When the shipment was received, the Chinese government asked that special tests be performed to guarantee the purity and weight of the gold bars. In this test, four small holed are drilled into the gold bars and the metal is then analyzed.
Officials were shocked to learn that the bars were fake. They contained cores of tungsten with only a outer coating of real gold. What’s more, these gold bars, containing serial numbers for tracking, originated in the US and had been stored in Fort Knox for years. There were reportedly between 5,600 to 5,700 bars, weighing 400 oz. each, in the shipment!>
Tags: Ben Bernanke, China, Commodities, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Fort Knox, Freedom of Information Act, Gold, Government, IMF, India, Politics, Silver, Tungsten, U.S.
Loooong article!
See also:
- The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: The Terror And The Crash of 2010
Soybean field
If you read any economic, financial, or political analysis for 2010 that doesn’t mention the food shortage looming next year, throw it in the trash, as it is worthless. There is overwhelming, undeniable evidence that the world will run out of food next year. When this happens, the resulting triple digit food inflation will lead panicking central banks around the world to dump their foreign reserves to appreciate their currencies and lower the cost of food imports, causing the collapse of the dollar, the treasury market, derivative markets, and the global financial system. The US will experience economic disintegration.
The 2010 Food Crisis Means Financial Armageddon
Over the last two years, the world has faced a series of unprecedented financial crises: the collapse of the housing market, the freezing of the credit markets, the failure of Wall Street brokerage firms (Bear Stearns/Lehman Brothers), the failure of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the failure of AIG, Iceland’s economic collapse, the bankruptcy of the major auto manufacturers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), etc… In the face of all these challenges, the demise of the dollar, derivative markets, and the modern international system of credit has been repeatedly forecasted and feared. However, all these doomsday scenarios have so far been proved false, and, despite tremendous chaos and losses, the global financial system has held together.
The 2010 Food Crisis is different. It is THE CRISIS. The one that makes all doomsday scenarios come true. The government bailouts and central bank interventions, which have held the financial world together during the last two years, will be powerless to prevent the 2010 Food Crisis from bringing the global financial system to its knees.
Financial crisis will kick into high gear
So far the crisis has been driven by the slow and steady increase in defaults on mortgages and other loans. This is about to change. What will drive the financial crisis in 2010 will be panic about food supplies and the dollar’s plunging value. Things will start moving fast.
Dynamics Behind 2010 Food Crisis
Early in 2009, the supply and demand in agricultural markets went badly out of balance. The world experienced a catastrophic fall in food production as a result of the financial crisis (low commodity prices and lack of credit) and adverse weather on a global scale. Meanwhile, China and other Asian exporters, in an effort to preserve their economic growth, were unleashing domestic consumption long constrained by inflation fears, and demand for raw materials, especially food staples, exploded as Chinese consumers worked their way towards American-style overconsumption, prodded on by a flood of cheap credit and easy loans from the government.
Normally food prices should have already shot higher months ago, leading to lower food consumption and bringing the global food supply/demand situation back into balance. This never happened because the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), instead of adjusting production estimates down to reflect decreased production, adjusted estimates upwards to match increasing demand from china. In this way, the USDA has brought supply and demand back into balance (on paper) and temporarily delayed a rise in food prices by ensuring a catastrophe in 2010. Continue reading »
Tags: Commodities, Debt, Dollar, Economy, Environment, Farmers, Fertilizer, Financial Crisis, Food, Food Crisis, Food Prices, Gold, harvest, Society, U.S., USDA, Weather
Messages:
1. The Fed cannot control the created excess liquidity.
2. The US dollar is about to enter into a real currency crisis.
3. Obamanomics is a complete failure. The US will default on its debt.
4. Some people know or speculate that COMEX will run out of gold.
Gold and Silver are about to go ballistic.
(Now only a stock market collapse with a strengthening dollar could lead to falling gold prices. This would be your last chance to buy gold and silver at cheap prices. Maybe gold & silver (and also other commodities) will just continue to rise while everything else collapses around them.)
Gold ingots are stacked at the Argor-Heraeus SA gold producing and refining plant in Mendrisio, Switzerland
Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) — Gold surged to a record for a second day as investors stepped up purchases to protect their wealth against a slumping dollar. Shares of producers including Newcrest Mining Ltd. also advanced.
Bullion has risen 38 percent this year as the dollar has dropped 8.5 percent against a basket of six major currencies. Central banks, pension funds and individuals have bought gold as a hedge against potential currency debasement and inflation. The precious metal is climbing “like there is no tomorrow,” David Thurtell, an analyst at Citigroup Inc., wrote in a report.
“Gold prices will go up, as will other commodities,” Mark Mobius, chairman of Templeton Asset Management Ltd., said in a Bloomberg Television interview today from Hong Kong. “It’s basically the devaluation of currencies, which is ongoing and will be ongoing for many years to come.”
Spot gold climbed as much as 1.6 percent to $1,215.85 an ounce, and was at $1,214.39 at 1:52 p.m. in Singapore. Gold for February delivery in New York climbed to an all-time high of $1,216.90. Silver advanced to the highest since July 2008.
“It’s really a dollar story,” said Jerry Yoshikoshi, a senior economist with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. in Singapore. “As long as the U.S. authorities neglect a weak dollar, gold prices remain elevated.”
The Federal Reserve has kept benchmark interest rates close to zero since December in a bid to revive lending after the worst financial crisis since World War II. The U.S. government has boosted spending to combat the recession, pushing the nation’s marketable debt to more than $6.9 trillion.
The Dollar Index, a six-currency gauge that includes the yen, was little-changed today. Against the euro, the U.S. currency traded near a 16-month low.
‘Print Too Much’
“The main reason is that they continue to print too much money, and people don’t trust governments and banks,” said Jurg Kiener, chief investment officer at Swiss Asia Capital Pte in Singapore. “We keep buying” gold every day, said Kiener.
Tags: Commodities, Dollar, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Gold, Government, Politics, Silver, U.S.
The entire system is based on fraud:
- Global Warming Scam Exposed:
Prof. Ian Clark: ‘Rises in C02 lag 800 years behind temperature rises. So temperature is leading CO2 by 800 years!’
So the Al-Gore link is the wrong way round and CO2 can’t be responsible for rises in temperature and global warming.
- Study: CO2 levels remained constant since 1850! (University of Bristol)
It is all about the money!
The coal-fired Fiddlers Ferry power station in Warrington emits vapour into the night sky Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
“Why should it be different as a commodity to the way people trade oil or gas?”
As the man in charge of the world’s biggest exchange for companies, banks and hedge funds to trade permits to emit carbon dioxide, Birley is fed up with the environmentalists’ charge that dirty capitalists should not profit from the global effort to tackle climate change.
Ahead of the Copenhagen summit next week, campaigners such as Friends of the Earth have argued that the entire system is so flawed it may need to be demolished in favour of a straightforward tax on polluters.
Firstly, they insist, the European system has failed in its fundamental aim to reduce emissions, meaning its only effect is to redistribute wealth among companies and traders. Secondly, the market is a magnet for derivatives that few people understand, brewing up a second sub-prime bubble. Lastly, the opportunities for fraud are vast, given the intangible nature of the product. .
These well-worn concerns are resurfacing as the whole concept of carbon trading stands at a crossroads. This totally invented $126bn (£76bn) market has the potential to flare into a $2 trillion green giant over the next decade, if US President Obama manages to push his carbon trading bill through the Senate early next year.
Tags: Barack Obama, CO2, Commodities, Economy, Global News, Obama administration, Politics, Taxes
Mr Jen is an expert on sovereign wealth funds from his days at Morgan Stanley. The gold story - essentially - is that the rising economic powers of Asia, the Middle East, and the commodity bloc are rejecting Western fiat currencies. China, India, and Russia have all been buying gold on a large scale over recent months.
Why should that stop when the AAA club of sovereign debtors is pushing towards the danger threshold of 100pc of GDP?
These new players account for almost all the accumulation of foreign currency reserves worldwide over the last five years, so what they do matters enormously.
After crunching the numbers, Mr Jen found that the share of gold in their reserves is just 2.2pc compared to 38pc for the Old World (perhaps we should just call them the deadbeats from now on). They would have to buy $115bn of gold at current prices to raise their bullion to just 5pc of total reserves, and $700bn to reach just half western levels.
The killer-term here is at current prices since any such move in the tiny global market for gold would send prices into the stratosphere.
Tags: China, Commodities, Dollar, Economy, Gold, Hedge Funds, India, Politics, Russia
Explosion of debt: Japan’s public debt could reach as much as 270pc of GDP in the next two years. A bullet train is pictured speeding past Mount Fuji in Fuji city, west of Tokyo Photo: Reuters
In a report entitled “Worst-case debt scenario”, the bank’s asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems.
Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of “deleveraging”, for years.
“As yet, nobody can say with any certainty whether we have in fact escaped the prospect of a global economic collapse,” said the 68-page report, headed by asset chief Daniel Fermon. It is an exploration of the dangers, not a forecast.
Under the French bank’s “Bear Case” scenario, the dollar would slide further and global equities would retest the March lows. Property prices would tumble again. Oil would fall back to $50 in 2010.
Governments have already shot their fiscal bolts. Even without fresh spending, public debt would explode within two years to 105pc of GDP in the UK, 125pc in the US and the eurozone, and 270pc in Japan. Worldwide state debt would reach $45 trillion, up two-and-a-half times in a decade.
(UK figures look low because debt started from a low base. Mr Ferman said the UK would converge with Europe at 130pc of GDP by 2015 under the bear case).
The underlying debt burden is greater than it was after the Second World War, when nominal levels looked similar. Ageing populations will make it harder to erode debt through growth. “High public debt looks entirely unsustainable in the long run. We have almost reached a point of no return for government debt,” it said.
Inflating debt away might be seen by some governments as a lesser of evils.
If so, gold would go “up, and up, and up” as the only safe haven from fiat paper money. Private debt is also crippling. Even if the US savings rate stabilises at 7pc, and all of it is used to pay down debt, it will still take nine years for households to reduce debt/income ratios to the safe levels of the 1980s.
The bank said the current crisis displays “compelling similarities” with Japan during its Lost Decade (or two), with a big difference: Japan was able to stay afloat by exporting into a robust global economy and by letting the yen fall. It is not possible for half the world to pursue this strategy at the same time.
SocGen advises bears to sell the dollar and to “short” cyclical equities such as technology, auto, and travel to avoid being caught in the “inherent deflationary spiral”. Emerging markets would not be spared. Paradoxically, they are more leveraged to the US growth than Wall Street itself. Farm commodities would hold up well, led by sugar.
Tags: Banks, Bonds, Commodities, Crash, Debt, Dollar, Economy, GDP, Gold, Japan, Meltdown, Societe Generale, U.S.
See also:
- The Dow Jones Priced in Gold
Gold ingots are seen stacked at the Argor-Heraeus SA gold producing and refining plant in Mendrisio, Switzerland, on Oct. 14, 2009. (Bloomberg)
)Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) — Gold won’t fall below $1,000 an ounce again after rising 27 percent this year to a record as central banks print money to help fund budget deficits, said Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report.
The precious metal rose to all-time highs in New York and London today as the dollar weakened. The Dollar Index, a gauge of value against six other currencies, has declined 7.9 percent this year and today fell to a 15-month low. News last week of bullion purchases by the Indian and Sri Lankan governments raised speculation that other countries would follow suit.
“We will not see less than the $1,000 level again,” Faber said at a conference today in London. “Central banks are all the same. They are printers. Gold is maybe cheaper today than in 2001, given the interest rates. You have to own physical gold.”
China will keep buying resources including gold, he said.
Tags: China, Commodities, Economy, Gold, Marc Faber
- IMF Sold 200 Metric Tons of Gold to The Reserve Bank of India (Bloomberg)
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Gold rose to a record high Wednesday, extending gains from the previous session.
Gold for December delivery surged $5.60 to $1,090.40 an ounce in electronic trading after hitting an all-time high of $1,096.20 earlier in the session. On Tuesday, gold closed at a record $1084.90 an ounce.
Gold surged more than $30 in the previous session after the International Monetary Fund sold 200 metric tons of the precious metal to India’s central bank.
Tags: Central Bank, Commodities, Dollar, Economy, Gold, IMF, India
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Tags: Ben Bernanke, Commodities, Debt, Dollar, Economy, Fed, Federal Reserve, Gold, Healthcare, Inflation, Marc Faber, Politics, U.S.
