Could The Central Bank Vaults Be Empty, of Gold? (GLD, IAU, SLV, UGL)

Is it possible that the vaults of the world’s central banks, believed to be stacked with gold bullion, are really empty?

Is all the gold actually there?

Something about the numbers doesn’t seem to add up.

Eric Sprott, of the estimable Sprott Asset Management, enters the discussion, asking some inconvenient questions. Because something about the gold numbers — supply and demand — doesn’t seem to add up.

In a one-time partial audit that the Federal Reserve resisted mightily, the Government Accounting Office found that from Dec. 1, 2007, through July 21, 2010, the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion — a sum equal to America’s entire visible national debt — in secret loans to some of the world’s most politically powerful banks and companies.

Among the major recipients of the windfall were Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs. But the beneficiaries weren’t just American financial institutions.

At one point (in October 2008), 70% of Fed loans were to foreign banks. Foreign recipients of the windfall included powerful European banks: Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Credit Suisse and others.

And with the new, third round of quantitative easing under way, it may not be long before the money-printing game collapses entirely. At that point the calamity will compound if Americans turn to the vaults where the gold was purported to be, and find that they have long since been cleaned out.

[link to etfdailynews.com]



Last Edited by No Dhimmi on 10/10/2012 06:57 AM