Do Western central banks have any gold left?
Somewhere deep in the bowels of the world’s Western central banks lie vaults holding gargantuan piles of physical gold bars… or at least that’s what they all claim. Collectively, the governments/central banks of the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, eurozone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are believed to hold an impressive 23,349 tonnes of gold in their respective reserves, representing more than $1.3 trillion at today’s gold price. Beyond the suggested tonnage, however, very little is actually known about the..........this author investigates whether Bazooka Ben & friends have... um, misplaced some gold...
This would certainly explain why "fake" gold bars have been showing up at reputable dealers. I think the central banks have now lost track of which bars are "fake" and which ones are "real". Or they have no "real" ones left.
Great.
Print gobs of currency, AND sell off the gold reserves.
Just fuc&ing wonderful.
Just when you thought it couldn't get any dumber...
And I thought those people who stockpile food and arms in their "ready rooms" were the crazy ones.
The Yukon allows the Chinese to mine gold using Chinese state slaves and to pay the territorial 5% royalty (est. 1935) in paper dollars. The WCB and greenies ignore Chinese mining (eco) and safety standards. The Feds send gobs of transfer $$ to the Yukon so everyone is 'happy' esp the Chinese elitists (unca Mo's pals).
Goldfinger........
China really does look like the only country poised to conquer the world when the SHTF.
Probably not worthwhile discussing in this thread, but something to ponder:
I still don't see gold being of any real value in a worldwide economic meltdown. Sure it's one of the commodities that holds it's value after a national economic collapse, but a global one? Nope. People will want food, security, medicine, and energy. Only the stuff that has intrinsic value because it's useful for survival.
Good thing the Lieberals sold all our stocks of gold off to finance the socialist dream,eh?
Didn't the Royal Canadian Mint come up short awhile ago in physical possession vs on paper?
Or was that resolved/memory holed?
Dan, anyone with a surplus of things useful for survival will want to trade it for gold. You know farmers and such. So unless you're a farmer I would buy gold.
Educate yourselves morons.
The Economic Crisis (The Fall of America and the Western World)
9 part video series http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DHmgM2MmFo&feature=related
Tradable items (food, fuel, ammo etc.) will be of immense value after SHTF, but sometimes, people won't have what is required for barter. That is where something like money comes in useful.its an intermediary for barter.
Whatever you choose has to have one fundamental property: It has to be very difficult for people to just manufacture. otherwise it becomes worthless.
That was why paper money was backed by gold. That is why, now that it isn't, and paper is so easy to print, that it is losing its value fast.
Anyone not sure of what is coming down the pike I suggest clicking on the following link.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/ess_germanhyperinflation.html
how do you cook gold????
Philip - my understanding is that gold was chosen as a currency because it was rare, portable *and* still desirable for it's physical properties. I just don't think people desire gold for golds physical properties anymore.
If Greece failed today, their gold would retain it's value. However,if economies all over the globe failed - who would want to trade something useful for useless gold? Also, if most of the gold is already stockpiled in China if/when the collapse occurs, why would any other government agree that gold should be the trading standard going forward?
I think oil, not gold, would most likely become the global currency. Countries would still have their own internal currency, but international trade would eventually resume based on physical oil reserves instead of gold.
The highly qualified economic "experts" had it all figured out.
The highly qualified "experts" keep diggin the same hole. They are not worried though since they can't see anything from the hole but the rim and think everyting is well with the world.
All the hot air and confidence is still around, though it is mostly hot air.
Who is responsible?
Nobody, it is after all a no fault society.
By the way Nobody killed the Centaur and has not been seen since.
Anyone ever watch mad max?
They were not fighting over gold !! that's for sure ..how ever no matter what everyone think's and say's people are pretty civilized and even though they would become less civilized if TSHTF.
There is no way that it will be a mad max type of situation as there is sooooo much infrastructure in place although it would be pretty damn rough for the city slickers thinking thier mercedes with it's road side assitence will save them...lol.
And all those hot women you know the models and just all in all genrally good looking women ...yeah they won't be going after the brad pitt's anymore they will be going after the biggest meanest MOFO out there on the road .
I still beleive silver and gold will alway's ...ALWAYS be a valuble commodity for bartering and exchange...however you can never have enough areable land , ammunition ,guns,livestock,garden supplies (seeds and tools) medical supplies,canned goods, sanitary stuff,access to water ...those thing's if it get's that bad (and i think it will) will trump playstations ,and ipods and all of the usless consumer materialized crap out there right now !!
so yeah call me nut's if you want but i am slowly building my bug out bags, i am going to get my gun lisenece , and start stocking up on ammunition, food storage, water, and medical supplies but of course this sh!t aint cheap anymore. becasue everyone is buying it!!
JJJeee i wonder why?
Yeah well if there's a zombie apocalypse and resources become scarce then sure gold will probably be worthless. Anything short of that though where major parts of society survive collapse and still produce necessities and you will find that gold will be in high demand. You need guns and ammo to protect the gold though.
Remember the 2 Liberal Economic Genius's Jean Poutine, the cheezy greasy French Fry and his Finance Minister Paul Martin. These 2 Genius's sold off all of Canada's over 700 Metric Tonnes of Gold Reserves over a period of 10 years. At bargain basement prices $250 per oz and less. None of the money from these sales were ever reported on the books of the Government of Canada or the books of the Central Bank of Canada. The IMF charts on National Gold reserves show the decline in Canada's gold reserves through these years, but do not show who it was sold too etc. I wrote my MP and Finance Minister various times and never recieved a straight answer. Over 700M Tonnes gone. At fire sale prices. And no accounting....
A number of years ago I began buying gold and silver bullion, not as an investment or because I am a gold nut, but because it was a useful way of hedging against inflation or currency value decline. I resisted selling the bullion last year when prices peaked, because I didn't buy it as an investment; for me, it is a tangible asset.
Personally I think that gold will always represent a store of value...if I'm wrong, well...my bad. But I won't lose any sleep over it.
Total holdings of 1.3 trillion in gold (supposedly).The U.S. yearly deficit is a trillion a year. Canada's total debt is around 600 Billion (and thats just the Feds). A Trillion is nothin nowadays.
$1.3 trillion eh?
Pocket change to Obama and his ilk.
Like fisheman said, it will just cover the US deficit for one year, so it isn't really all that significant.
The main thing one needs for a SHTF scenario is a diversity of stuff. It wouldn't hurt to have a few ounces of gold, but if one is planning on trading with gold, one needs a sensitive set of scales, precision volume measuring tools as well as a precision thermometer. It's just too easy to take a lead bar, put it in an easy to make mold and then cover it with a thin film of gold. That would result in overly light "gold" bars given that Au has a density of 19.3 gm/cm^3 vs only 11.3 for Pb. However, tungsten has a density of 19.3 gm/cm^3 and I suspect that small rectangular chunks of tungsten that could be readily electroplated with Au to produce "gold" bars which are identical to the real thing will be a hot seller. I guess one has to add an electrical resistance tomography unit to ones set of survival supplies (xray machines would be better but one has to draw the line somewhere).
That's one of the advantages of stocking up on ammo as a means of exchange as it's just too much work to make fake ammo and one can always offer to test a randomly chosen round in the sellers rifle. The other thing that is a must_have for the future survivalist is a 3D printer. Once 3D printers start being able to work in metal, then recovering from a societal meltdown will be considerably faster.
To spend most of ones survival budget on gold is simply foolish. The price an item fetches depends on how much someone is willing to pay for it and, in a place where people have chosen to buy lots of gold but neglected to buy generators and guns, that gold isn't going to be worth very much -- assuming the people one is trading with don't just decide to take it. I predict that in a SHTF scenario, antibiotics will be worth more than their weight in gold.
loki
About the fake gold bars...they are showing up in the US and Europe.
A jeweller in New York had bullion with Swiss stamps and got suspicious and tried to drill a hole in one.....the bit broke....tungsten is hard stuff...seems 85% of his stash was fake. I assume he is after the vendor(s).
Loki, that's why you buy gold coins and silver coins. It's pretty hard to fake a gold coin. I would never buy a bar of gold or silver.
A pattern usd in the past was for central bankers to "rent" physical gold to themselves @ 1% (after they switched hats to their private selves) then through sheer bad luck for their central bank selves see the price decline significatly and have the physical gold repaid @ the lower market price.
Having the capacity as central bankers to depress the market price by large unreported sales or swaps...what could go wrong? "Sheer bad luck" would never be manipulated for private gain would it?