"ETF Price Suppression Mechanics" Bron Suchecki of the Perth Mint addresses the recent Andrew Maquire brain dump from TFMetalsreport. Having been lucky enough to sight the original draft, I have a fair idea of how much time and effort Bron sunk into this - a real gift to the metals community. It makes easy work of understanding the Exchange Traded Funds and the flow of gold. The bar lists are easier to understand in this context and I'll be referring to his diagrams to explain my Dark Bullion ideas. Bron made a set of follow-up observations on his personal blog as well. Most of Turdville never really commented apart from saying (paraphrased) 'it is obviously complex therefore more room for manipulation'. Perhaps they realize in their heart that to take Andrew Maquire's thesis at face value requires the metal in the vaults to be real (oops!!). Bron has the final word here http://goldchat.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/the-circus-moves-on.html with some great comments of his own about precious metals risk exposure and his views on ETF's.
"Facts, the enemy of the precious metals blogger" The Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) launched their new Exchange Traded Receipts program and was singled out as running a paper scam by many in the silver blogosphere. How weird, seeing as they are also the custodian for Sprott's metal. Kid Dynamite puts Dave in Denver to the sword ... if you enjoy a good public execution, this is well worth it.
"J.P. Morgan on Gold and Credit - what did he say?" Bullion Baron takes up arms against the oft-quoted quote and explains the details of the popular misconception with some useful observations. It is worth noting FOFOA (correctly) didn't use the misquote, in his recent post involving the topics money, credit and J.P. Morgan.
"Timeline to the Apocalypse" We all want to know when will the SHTF so we can get all on with our lives. Grundlemaster Jenkins takes a practical look at what the charts suggest based on real goods vs. bond yield, taking this even further with a specific analysis of Silver (The Silver Singularity) and Gold (The real real Interest Rate). The upshot is if the trend continues we can expect some fireworks in the next 12-24 months. Interestingly, the approximate dates seem to converge with a number of predictions from other commentators so perhaps we are all looking at the same thing?
p.s. the bar list work continues, but has been hampered by house renovations (which competes for my time).
3 comments:
Warren,
Could you or someone else comment on this post at ZeroHedge regarding the BOE gold vault video?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-09/inside-bank-englands-gold-vault?page=1
From one of the comments:
"Sure, why not. Looked at the video - they do a convenient freeze-frame when they discuss the current market value of each shelf.
Each shelf has 2 piles of 4 bars high and 9 bars across = 72 bars
Each shelf also has 2 'bookend' piles sitting in between of 4 bars high = 8 bars
This gives a total of 80 bars per shelf.
The video references briefly that there's a ton of gold on each shelf. Lets run the numbers. Assuming its a short ton, that's 32,000 ounces.
They also mention at the time the video was made, each shelf was worth ~$56,000,000 USD.
This would give a valuation of ~$700,000 per bar at 400 oz per bar, which implies a valuation per ounce of $1,750 when the video was recorded."
@Jim,
Thanks for the link to the ZH Article - I watched this from another source over the weekend (hat tip Robert LeRoy Parker). My notes (as this relates to my research):
- The serial numbers on the two bars he handles are not legible, so I'll be hunting down the HD version.
- The serial numbers we see on the shelf appear to be the same shelf shown three times. I guess the TV camera was confined to one room for security reasons.
- Sadly we can't glean much info from segment - most of the bars on the top layer are face-down! I wonder if that was done for security but I guess it relates to stacking ability (vault preference) - haven't seen that in other bar stacks. Perhaps Bron could comment on that.
- This guy gives an honest demonstration of how heavy that bar is. Or maybe Bob Pisani works out in the gym and the professor does not.
- The prof claims the room is one of many, with total holdings of around 300 billion - that's a lot of gold. $1750 is a decent average given the sideways price of late. Contacting the university to determine when the segment was filmed would be instructive.
- I would love to find evidence for some BOE bars in the GLD bar list, however I think this may not be conspiratorial because the BOE is a custodian for HSBC ... or something like that.
- I'm in possession of a high-res photograph which shows bars from the bank of England (from LBMA). I intend to use this to build up a visual library of bars where we can find matches, or get some insight into the numbering sequences of each refiner. This video, plus Pisani's from last year, will provide a basis for that. We have an approximate physical vault location for each list we track, but this information is not particularly useful as the overall picture is largely incomplete (i.e. vault locations are generally secret). However, I have an interest in compiling an index vault pictures and videos like this one, which may give us an aggregate picture over time. Again, it's on the todo list - there are other things which have a higher priority, but I'm collating materials nonetheless.
Regards,
Excellent post Screwtape Files!
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