Man denied access to his gold at Swiss bank: "The gold was not there"

[Mira]

Dec 7. 2010

By Julie Crawshaw

A client of a major Swiss bank was recently refused access to his physical gold and had to hire attorneys and threaten to expose the bank publicly before finally getting it back in his own hands, according to Jim Rickards of Omnis.
“My inference is that that gold was not there,” Rickards told King World News. “The bank had to scramble, go out and find it somewhere before they could make good delivery.”

Rickards expects the world will eventually go to a gold standard-backed currency.
“To me, the big issue is, is it going to be intelligent or is it going to be ugly?” Rickards says. “Is it going to be something we think about, we have a public debate, hearing in Congress … we give some thought to, and then, over time … we do it in stages” so that markets can adjust.

Unfortunately, says Rickards, we’re on “the other path,” ignoring the issue and acting as if gold plays no role in finance, “which, of course, it does, keep printing money until almost spontaneous collapse of the dollar and then, in the midst of chaos, on an emergency basis, have the president announce that we’re back on the gold standard.”

Rickards' advice? Get your gold out now before other banks begin following suit.

Thestreet.com reports that gold prices “popped” after President Barack Obama's agreement to extend Bush-era tax cuts fueled investors’ concerns that the move would increase U.S. deficit problems and weaken the dollar.

source:

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Swiss-Bank-Refuses-Release/2010/12/07/id/379238

[Creative]

1. Returning to a gold standard-backed currency would take away the power of

of power hungry politicians around the world.

I wished we could, but it will never happen.

[Recursion]

9. How?

Gold isn't any more intrinsically valuable than currency. The only difference is central banks would lose all flexibility.

[sendero]

10. Flexibility?

Flexibility to DESTROY the economy and then give taxpayers the bill?

No thanks.

[Hawkowl]

13. Central banks ARE the governments

"Let me issue and control a nation's money supply and I care not who writes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild, 1790.

We are headed backwards in history, or the more things change, the more they stay the same.

[Art_from_Ark]

27. That is a grossly uninformed statement, to say the least

But if you are actually naive enough to believe that gold isn't any more intrinsically valuable than currency, then I will gladly trade you 10 Zimbabwe 100-trillion-dollar notes (that's a total of one quadrillion dollars*) for your ounce of .999 gold.















*Currently has an exchange rate of 0 because the notes were demonetized

[DCKit]

2. There's going to be hell to pay.

There is far more "paper" gold than gold out there. Silver, too and, probably, platinum.

Just one more scam that needs to be exposed.

[howaboutme]

7. Gold ETF (GLD) is also likely a similar scam

History is replete with bankers who not only charged depositors for storing and protecting their gold while they loaned it out to others and charged interest too. Financier is a synonym of scam. The bursting of the financial bubble proved it. This example is a proverbial double ended scam and I have no doubt this Swiss Bank played the same game with others. A statement of assets in the vault means nothing.

The only real gold is what you own and possess and have assayed.

Financiers have exploited naivety for centuries.

[Karenina]

12. Crash JP Morgan. Buy 1 silver coin. Holiday season is here! n/t

[rgbecker]

3. Here's some charts about Gold prices.

http://www.kitco.com/charts/livegold.html

[upi402]

16. Kitco was touting for Rand Paul

So I stopped using them. I did like their charts and site. Now I need a different firm.

[phantom power]

4. I've got an old friend who's been saying for years that the world's gold is being stolen.

He predicts that Fort Knox is now filled with about a trillion little sticky notes with "IOU" written on them.

[howaboutme]

8. Why does every thieve

have a resume or business card with Goldman in the name?

[Po_d Mainiac]

15. Only some work for the squid

JP Morgue has it's share also

[xfundy]

11. I've read--on the internets, so it must be right--

that the gold in Fort Knox was replaced a few years ago by tungsten ingots that had been dipped in gold.

True? I dunno.

The internets also said Bush won the 2000 and 2004 elections.

[Hoopla Phil]

5. K and R. This is a bit scary. n/t

[eridani]

6. Gold standard = bullsihit as long as "ownership" of gold is confirmed

--only by pieces of paper (or electronic blips) saying that you own gold. At least Rickards has a clue that actual physical ownership is key. But how would "owners" oif gold demonstrate that? And if he goes shopping with it, what does he expect to get back as change?

[Resistance Radio]

14. The banks...

...do not have the gold and silver that they claim to have, and have sold people via paper certificates. The prices of precious metals have been manipulated for years and are now being heavily suppressed to disguise the fact that the dollar is totally fucked.

Buy silver!

[eridani]

17. Do you mean "buy a piece of paper that says you own silver"?

Or do you mean having actual silver?

[Po_d Mainiac]

18. Buy hard and hold long

But don't get ripped off....99.99% pure ASE's and other bullion rounds/bars are available for melt/spot plus $2-3/coin.

90% pre-1965 circulated halves, quarters and dimes are trading at melt or a fraction above. To figure the silver price;
Face Value (X) 0.715 (X) spot/melt = silver value

[eridani]

20. And put it where?

A friend of mine lost a whole basement safe to robbers a couple of years ago.

[Po_d Mainiac]

21. You put it right behind a BF dog

in something/somewhere a little less obvious than a safe.

U can't hurt circulated coins. Bury them out in the back yard between the ex and the hampsters

[upi402]

19. Held gold is the way to go for risk mitigation IMHO

How can someone melt down silverware etc. into silver ingots? How do you get something like that assayed?

[Po_d Mainiac]

22. Silver bullion rounds and bars are 99.99% pure

Gold coins that were intended for circulation (Eagles, Half Eagles, Double Eagles, etc) are 90% gold-10% copper.

Sterling is 92.5% silver
http://www.ehow.com/how_5874096_value-sterling-silver-flatwear.html

[Art_from_Ark]

28. It probably wouldn't be worth it to melt sterling silver into ingots

Companies advertise in coin publications like Coin World to buy "sterling scrap" or "sterling flatware". Since they are advertising in a publication that has a lot of readers who are very knowledgeable about the precious metals markets, their prices tend to be more competitive. As long as your silver is stamped sterling, you don't need to have it assayed-- just weighed.

[AtheistCrusader]

23. KingWorldNews has been banging this 'there's no gold in the vaults' drum for a couple years now.

Not buying their claims anymore. Not without some evidence.

[Taitertots]

24. The gold standard is bad monetary policy and it exacerbated the Great Depression

The gold standard ties the money supply to international balance of trade deficits. The US would get fucked if we lost 1 trillion dollars in gold every year to foreign markets.

[Ikonoklast]

25. Might as well pick any other commodity to base your economy.

Because if it ever went to gold, we wouldn't last ten years.

Make it soybeans. We get more of those every year, and the rest of the world wants them.

[Art_from_Ark]

29. Economies based on farm products don't tend to last very long

The South tried that with cotton, and got screwed when England started importing cheaper cotton from India.

[Art_from_Ark]

26. We're going to get screwed anyway

How long will the world continue to accept $1 trillion worth of paper IOUs from the US? What has saved us so far is that the US dollar is the world's reserve currency and as such creates automatic demand for this unbacked fiat money. If we had been any other country running up such a deficit in such a way, we would have been screwed a la Zimbabwe/Mexico/Argentina/Brazil/Peru/Bolivia/Serbia/Indonesia et al a long time ago.

[droidamus2]

30. I was just reading

an article that says there are 100's of times the gold certificates out there saying people 'own gold' than there is actual gold to back them. What's even more ridiculous is the people holding these certificates end up paying 'storage costs' on gold that doesn't really exist except on a piece of paper. When push comes to shove if a particular person yells loud enough about seeing 'his gold' they can trot out enough to show him 'his gold' but if every holder of a gold certificate demanded to see their gold the whole scheme would collapse. Another scam to screw the little guys as brought to by the financial elite roaches of this world.

[eridani]

31. Here is a a relevant link

http://www.businessinsider.com/11-examples-of-recent-corruption-on-wall-street-2010-4#

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/bombshell-whistle-blower-comes-forward-with-solid-proof-the-price-of-gold-and-silver-is-being-manipulated-by-major-financial-institutions

An industry insider "whistle blower" has come forward with "smoking gun" evidence that major financial institutions have been openly and blatantly manipulating the price of gold and silver. But so far those who are supposed to be regulating these firms have been sitting back and doing nothing about it.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/11-examples-of-recent-corruption-on-wall-street-2010-4?slop=1#slideshow-start#ixzz190s9oyAs

It has also now come out that most "gold" that is traded on the markets is not backed by the actual metal itself. For years, most people have assumed that the London Bullion Market Association, the world's largest gold market, had actual gold to back up the massive "gold deposits" at the major LBMA banks. But that is not the truth at all. Industry insiders are now revealing that LBMA banks actually have approximately a hundred times more gold deposits than actual gold bullion. When most people think they are buying gold what they are actually buying is pieces of paper that say that they own gold. Meanwhile they are being charged huge storage fees to store the gold.