Got any Leased Bars?

Recently my database work hit a critical threshold and I'm working through how to present these results as well as re-checking the underlying data. I wasn't ready for the volume of data and it's only been recently that I've gotten a handle on it. The silver database records currently have over 104 millions rows (and 27 million for gold) - most of that is repeated information but it is a lot of data points to manage and index.

I am still fascinated by the clash of experience and opinions when it comes to the popular meme that SLV has no silver, and the ideas around this vary in complexity. In June 2012 I was involved in a conversation over at Dave in Denver's blog. Referring to SLV’s inventory, Dave agrees the bars are real but decides from his own interpretation that the bars are leased or at least have the potential to be leased because of the vague wording in the prospectus:

‘Yes the bars do exist. The serial numbers are not faked. Again, it comes down to what is leased/hypothecated and what isn't. Also, how can you be confident that the bars are all sitting in a JPM vault? Have you visually seen all of the bars.”

He may have a point, but he proceeds to ruin it:

“Here's a project for you and I'm not posting any more comments on this until you come back with an answer: Call Blackrock and ask them if you can go compare the list they provide to about.ag with the actual physical bars in the JPM custodial vault. THEN tell them once you've done that, you would like to inspect ALL records at Blackrock and JP Morgan with respect to all legal documentation which shows that SLV has legal entitlement to every bar on the list and that every bar is sitting in JP Morgan's vault IN a segregated section that is exclusive to SLV.”

Rightio then - I'll just contact JPM and get them to hand over all their documentation, then armed with that I'll go into each of the 6 x SLV vaults and audit every bar individually. If I can audit one bar every minute and work 8 hours a day, 365 days a year then it will only take me 1.8 years to complete the audit job. That's assuming they'll let me into the vault every day Saturday and Sunday included. No, some things are not possible in a practical sense, and we have to make do with data that we do have access to. But the biggest gain is from formulating the right questions to ask.

So here’s a practical solution to Dave's conundrum – if any of you silver investors out there have title to a specific LBMA grade silver bar which you think may be leased, then just send me a copy of the document and I will compare the bar(s) signature to the millions of data points in the database. If there is enough good evidence the bar is present in a fund when it shouldn’t be, then you can potentially make a ton in lawsuits (or not, depending on the level of fraud involved).

After all this method is how I found Bob Pisani’s GLD bar, long before Ned Naylor-Leyland figured it out (old news but couldn't resist pointing this out). You can email me: bullionbars (at) hotmail.com. Let’s be clear: I think the ENTIRE modern banking establishment is fraudulent, that the banksters have a long-standing monopoly on the types of trickery used to manipulate the social contracts which are the framework of today's invisible slavery, but I digress ...

Currently I've got a year of bottled up questions, observations and data, the only way to get through it is to let it out slowly. The discussion will form part of a framework for the analysis of the data, with the goal of the research being both documented and discoverable for anyone curious. What started off as just tracking SLV data, has grown. Currently, we have bar list data feeds for the following silver funds. The data is in various stages of processing, but the ones highlighted have all been verified and are the focus of my next articles.

We have 320 historical source documents for SLV, 61 for Perth Mint Pool Allocated Silver, but only TWO for Sprott's PSLV.