CNBC Visits SPDR Gold Shares' Controversial Vault

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

CNBC Visits SPDR Gold Shares' Controversial Vault
By ETF Daily News Sep 01, 2011 10:30 am

Conspiracy theorists often maintain GLD is a total fraud that doesn't actually own any physical gold. This may just put their concerns to rest.


CNBC's Bob Pisani brings in the CNBC cameras for a look inside the gold vault of the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD). GLD is the largest exchange traded fund (ETF) in the world, backed by gold in a secret location in London. This is the largest private gold reserve in the world with more than 1,200 metric tons. The reserve is valued at more than $70 billion. Almost no one outside the World Gold Council has ever seen all the gold...until now.

Conspiracy theorists often maintain GLD is a total fraud that doesn't actually own any physical gold. Hopefully this will put those concerns to rest. Undoubtedly there will still be those that will be unconvinced by the video, claiming that even though the video shows lots of gold, there is no proof at all that gold is there. Even if Pisani were to count all of it, theorists will still claim that the bars were not solid gold.

I guess the conspiracy theories will need to be tackled one theory at a time.

See the inside of this mysterious vault in the video below:

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000043030

[Anonymous]

I read that the serial number of the gold bar the reporter was handling was not theirs as it was registered to be somewhere else. Not 100% sure but somethng dodgy with the serial number. GLD is shit anyway, the value of the shares goes down 2% per year, as each year 1 gld etf is calculated out each year to be 2% less gold per share to cover storage costs and fees, if you held gld for 10 years, you would lose close to 25% of the quanity amount of your gold holdings. EFT'S are very poor ways to accumulate wealth over the long run.

[Anonymous]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_as_an_investment

Typically a small commission is charged for trading in gold ETPs and a small annual storage fee is charged. The annual expenses of the fund such as storage, insurance, and management fees are charged by selling a small amount of gold represented by each certificate, so the amount of gold in each certificate will gradually decline over time.

[Christopher Marlowe]

Two words: tungsten.

The GLD prospectus doesn't give anyone the right to inspect vaults of custodians or sub-custodians, but CNBC can take their cameras in the vault?  The lady doth protest too much methinks...and the wicked man fleeth, when no man pursueth. Yeth.

Yet. JP Morgan set up a trust that tracks the price of gold, but you can buy it in your 401K and avoid the gold tax, and you can't inspect or redeem for gold.  Yeth. And Goldman Sachs is starting an orphanage for blind children.

I don't get GLD. What if no one wants to buy your shares? How can share price continue to track gold?

Here is a good blog story on the GLD gold supply:
http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2011/01/who-i ... g-gld.html

There seems to be a misunderstanding in the gold market that when you buy or sell shares of GLD you are putting pressure on the price of gold. That selling shares of GLD into the exchange is somehow analogous to selling physical into the marketplace. Or that buying shares of GLD is somehow, somewhere down the chain, removing physical gold from the marketplace.

We often look at apparent correlation and assume a certain cause and effect. GLD is designed to track the price of gold. It is not actively managed to track the price of gold. Instead, it does so through opportunities that arise whenever it doesn't. Imagine GLD as a big lump of gold just sitting there in Town Square. The price of gold is "discovered" elsewhere and shares in this big lump just trade based on that elsewhere-discovered price. If the share price is too high, then an opportunity exists to sell your share and buy "gold" elsewhere. Likewise, if it is too low, there is an opportunity to sell elsewhere and buy into this lump on display.

Occasionally, lately, someone comes along and shaves a chunk off of the lump, reducing its overall size. And financial reporters and analysts everywhere are struggling to correlate the price of gold and the GLD holdings with some semblance of cause and effect:

The Street – Alix Steel
Gold prices were breaking even after another double-digit selloff Tuesday as investors dumped their holdings. The SPDR Gold Shares exchange-traded fund dropped more than 30 tons of gold on Tuesday.

Reuters
Traders in Asia reported strong physical gold buying, particularly from China, on Friday, but large bullion-backed exchange-traded funds continued to see outflows.

Reuters - Amanda Cooper and Jan Harvey
But investor sentiment towards gold has soured in the last few sessions, as evidenced by the largest one-day outflow in three months from the world's biggest exchange-traded gold fund. Holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust fell 10.926 tonnes to 1,260.843 tonnes on Jan 24.

Funny. When we're talking about gold, an outflow to one person is an inflow to another, is it not? Randy Strauss at USAGold.com rightly responded to these silly reports with the truth [emphasis FOFOA]:

RS View: Silly reporters. Instead of calling these "outflows" from the ETFs, it should be called what it is — a redemption of a basket of shares for physical gold by the Authorized Participants (e.g. bullion banks). Such share redemptions would actually be a bullish sign because it entails a reduction in the global supply of paper gold while at the same time signifying a preference by the redeeming party for having the metal over the ETF shares. That is, of course, unless the drawdown in physical gold merely represented the routine sales of the gold inventory that occur to cover the ETF's administrative expenses.

RS View: I've said it before and I'll say it again now, the reporters are getting it wrong when they equate outflows of gold from the ETFs with "sour" investor sentiment. What they need to work harder to understand is that these are NOT actively managed funds whose gold inventory is tweaked to ebb and flow based on public sentiment in the shares. Instead, the ETFs are more like a central coat-check room in which the various bullion banks have temporarily hung out their own inventories (i.e., meaning, their unallocated stock which they hold loosely on behalf of their depositors). And whereas the claim tickets (ETF shares) may freely circulate on the open market, any significant outflow of physical inventory is simply and primarily indicative of a bullion bank reclaiming the original inventory based on a heightened need or desire for physical metal in a tightening market — for example, to meet the demands emerging from Asia.

.....
But what if those other options are disappearing faster than a sack of currency left on the COMEX trading floor? If gold (in size) on the open market is scarce, the unallocated pool is spoken for (in other words, undergoing allocation) and the fraternity brothers are all suffering the same noose, what do you think becomes the most efficient and cost-effective option? Raiding the GLD reservoir perhaps?

Did you even know that you could take physical delivery from GLD? Apparently many didn't. I was just chatting (online) with one of my supporters yesterday, let's call him "Small Giant" (a term explained in my last post) because he is in that eight figure savings bracket that might find this information useful. On top of that, he makes his living assisting funds in their management of eleven figures.

So he says to me:

Small Giant [6:10 P.M.]: I think very very few people realize that you can convert GLD shares to actual physical
Small Giant [6:10 P.M.]: can't say I know of anyone who has ever done that

Okay, let me back up.

Small Giant [5:47 P.M.]: there is clearly panic in the ranks of the longs
FOFOA [5:47 P.M.]: The more it goes down, the bigger the pressure on physical. I think the draw down in GLD suggests other options for physical delivery in size are gone.
Small Giant [5:47 P.M.]: I agree
FOFOA [5:49 P.M.]: With $13 million, you could take possession of a basket of physical from GLD at a good price.
Small Giant [5:49 P.M.]: what is the minimum threshold?
FOFOA [5:50 P.M.]: 100,000 shares is a basket. Must be redeemed through an "Authorized Participant"...
Small Giant [5:50 P.M.]: wow this is getting very very interesting
FOFOA [5:50 P.M.]: Authorized Participants are: BMO Capital Markets Corp., CIBC World Markets Corp., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., EWT, LLC, Goldman, Sachs & Co., Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing, L.P., HSBC Securities (USA) Inc., J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp., Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, Newedge USA LLC, RBC Capital Markets Corporation, Scotia Capital (USA) Inc., and UBS Securities LLC
Small Giant [5:51 P.M.]: so how would that work?
Small Giant [5:51 P.M.]: you buy 100K shares of GLD
Small Giant [5:51 P.M.]: then what?
FOFOA [5:53 P.M.]: You've got to go to one of those APs and have them create a basket for you. That gold is then transferred from the GLD allocated account into your broker's unallocated account. Then you redeem your basket and have your broker allocate the gold to you.
Small Giant [5:54 P.M.]: so it's really is that easy?
FOFOA [5:55 P.M.]: I'm working on a post tentatively called "Who is Draining GLD" using a lot of snips from the prospectus. The entire world of confused financial analysts is misinterpreting the GLD inventory reduction as if it is gold negative. But it is precisely the opposite. GLD doesn't buy gold when it's going up and sell when it's going down. Doesn't work that way. But that's what everyone thinks.
FOFOA [5:57 P.M.]: GLD might be the last reservoir for the giants to drink from. That's my Thought of the day. Because there should be easier ways to buy a tonne of gold.
Small Giant [5:58 P.M.]: u lost me
Small Giant [5:59 P.M.]: count me as a confused financial analyst

........

Authorized Participants may act for their own accounts or as agents for broker-dealers, custodians and other securities market participants that wish to create or redeem Baskets. An order for one or more Baskets may be placed by an Authorized Participant on behalf of multiple clients. As of the date of this report:

BMO Capital Markets Corp.
CIBC World Markets Corp.
Citigroup Global Markets Inc.
Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.
EWT, LLC
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing, L.P.
HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.
J.P. Morgan Securities Inc.
Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp.
Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated
Newedge USA LLC
RBC Capital Markets Corporation
Scotia Capital (USA) Inc.
UBS Securities LLC

...have each signed a Participant Agreement with the Trust and may create and redeem Baskets as described above. Persons interested in purchasing Baskets should contact the Sponsor or the Trustee to obtain the contact information for the Authorized Participants. Shareholders who are not Authorized Participants will only be able to redeem their Shares through an Authorized Participant.

So now I offer up a scenario, not as a statement of fact, but as fodder for thought and discussion. In this scenario I am not assuming that the drain on GLD to date has been the direct redemption of ETF shares by Giants. I presume it is simply redemptions by Bullion Banks in order to meet the delivery demands of "important clients," real Giants, perhaps from Asia and the Middle East. And because the BBs would normally have better options than plundering GLD, I am assuming those options are either gone or far more problematic than legalized looting.

Also, following Lance Lewis' "puke indicator," one could be forgiven for suspecting that the Bullion Banks have some way to temporarily "pound" the price of gold down on the COMEX in order to buy back ETF shares during a "good price window" with the intention of redeeming those shares into deliverable gold for clients that purchased it at a higher price. Perhaps it would take, what, a month or so to churn such a profit from a Giant delivery? Reminds me of that fella Jim Rickards spoke of on King World News:

Jim Rickards - Swiss Bank Client Denied His $40 Million in Gold

Jim: "Correct and upon request to move the gold...the bank demurred, the bank said, 'Well, no, not so fast' and he said, 'What do you mean?' Anyway, long story short I could see that taking a day or two...This took thirty days to complete delivery. Now if the gold is sitting there it shouldn't take thirty days. Oh, and by the way I should add that the individual had to threaten to go public, in effect say I'll call Reuters or I'll call King World News or I'll call Dow Jones and let them know that you don't have the gold, you're not good for it."

Eric: "And he had his lawyers get involved?"

Jim: "Correct, and through all of that eventually the individual did get his gold, but this is something that should have taken two days, three days, a week at the most, although I would say even a week is a long time. But it took thirty days, and it took lawyers, it took threats of publicity, it took a lot of pressure to do that, which my inference is that that gold was not there. The bank had to scramble, go out and find it somewhere before they could make good delivery."

I wonder when that was. And I wonder if GLD "puked" any "baskets" around that time.

Someone is draining GLD of its gold. Someone is taking in millions of ounces and tonnes of physical gold at off-market prices while the paper bug cheerleaders call it "dumping" or "offloading" the gold. Again, one man's "outflow" is another man's pickup truck (or dump truck as the case may be) backed right up to the loading dock at the GLD depository.

As of 2008, some analysts estimated there were still 15,000 tonnes of unallocated (un-spoken-for) gold floating around the Bullion Banking system. Of course some of that is still there, along with a decreasing supply from the mines and a scrap supply that, after rising since 2006, appears to have plateaued in 2010. You can continue to go after that diminishing flow "on market" by playing the paper game like Dan Shak. But one day soon, it will all be spoken for. And you don't want to be left holding only paper on that day. And if the BBs are raiding GLD like it seems, that 15,000 tonnes may be closer to 1,200 tonnes than you or I would be comfortable knowing about.

Jim Rickards wrote about 100 tonne and 500 tonne lots being impossible to come by "outside of official channels" meaning off-market prices. But from what I can tell, there are still twelve 100 tonne lots or two 500 tonne lots available through one of the 16 dealers listed above. The instructions are all there. This isn't like the private sector trying to buy gold from the public sector, like Sprott being turned down by the IMF. This is the reverse! Go for it, I say. Why not?

And for those of you GLD fans that think you will simply hold onto your shares until the bitter end, I have a warning for you. These Giants don't need to over-bid your shares away from you. They can always buy them at the price of paper gold trading in London and New York. And there will come a point when you are watching the premium on physical coins jump from 5% over GLD to 50% on its way to 500% over the paper gold price. How long are you going to stubbornly hold onto your precious paper before you finally relinquish it to that last Giant's delivery "basket?" Remember, unless you've got $13 million, you've only got paper.

On the other hand, we have a reporter who was blindfolded and driven to a vault somewhere. The reporter got to point his camera at a bunch of shiny bars that he could not test.  

The reason why the reporter is there is because JP Morgan et al, the "authorized participants" are doing damage control.  Too many blogs have pointed out the insecurity of holding GLD.  If too many little investors pull their money out of their 401K/GLD account and buy real gold, that will put more pressure on the gold price, and the GLD will no longer serve its purpose: to keep the price of gold down.  

All the authorized participants are the big banks. They "sell" some of their gold to to the GLD trust, so it looks like GLD is buying gold. But really the GLD is just like a vault for the banks. Little investors can pretend that they have a share in that gold, but they can NEVER redeem.  The blog says an investor needs 13 million (and permission from an authorized participant) to redeem, but at the current gold price that is 19 MILLION.

I was wondering how GLD would finally be exposed, and now I have several scenarios:
1. The most obvious is that a big player tries to redeem, as in the Rickert story above, but the the GLD participants do not accommodate him.  
2. Class action lawsuit for fraud. But if the fraud was revealed in court, the shareholders would STILL lose:

http://www.marketforum.com/?id=1016385
One more point to emphasize here, HSBC is the custodian of GLD. (I am using the S1 prospectus filed with the SEC on 11/16/04). If it is the case that GLD is leasing out the gold in GLD, and if HSBC were to go bust, the GLD Prospectus clearly states on page 13 that "gold held in the Trust's unallocated gold account and any Authorized Participant's unallocated gold will not be segregated from the Custodian's assets. If the Custodian becomes insolvent, its assets may not be adequate to satisfy a claim by the Trust or any Authorized Participant. In addition, in the event of the Custodian's insolvency, there may be a delay and costs in incurred indentifying the bullion held in the Trust's allocated gold account." The unallocated gold accounts are the accounts used to hold gold being deposited into the Trust, or being redeemed from the Trust. That is not "segregated" from the Custodian's assets means that bars of gold are not specifically identified [as] gold that belongs to the Trust vs. assets that belong to HSBC. The prospectus further states that in the event of insolvency by HSBC, the Trust becomes an unsecured creditor of HSBC with respect to unallocated gold. Leased gold would either be held in unallocated accounts moving in and out of the Trust, or the physical gold might not even be in the Trust, as subcustodians as described below, could lease out the gold and no one would know or would have the legal ability to find out.

As for the "allocated" gold - that which has been specifically identified as property of the Trust and held in a segregate account - in the case of HSBC going insolvent, the Trust can claim ownership of the properly allocated gold, but will be subject to the liquidator freezing access to ALL gold in ALL accounts held by the Custodian, including gold held in the Trust Allocated Account.

It gets worse. HSBC has the ability to appoint subcustodians to hold gold for the trust, and the subcustodians can appoint further subcustodians (page 12-13). From page 12:

Because neither the Trustee nor the Custodian oversees or monitors the activities of subcustodians who may hold the Trust's gold, failure by the subcustodians to exercise due care in the safekeeping of the Trust's gold could result in a loss to the Trust.

Worse yet, the Prospectus states that there will be no written contractual agreements between subcustodians and the Custodian or the Trustee (page 11-12). AND the Trustee has no right to visit the premises of the subcustodian to inspect the gold or examine the subcustodians records.

Essentially, what all this says is that in the event of insolvency by HSBC, the shareholders of the Trust may in fact have no ability to capture ANY part of their investment in GLD shares. I have further work and analysis to do, but given what I have researched so far, I am quite stunned that anyone would invest money into GLD, as there are absolutely NO shareholder protections against the gold in GLD not being there, or for the shareholders to assert specific claims of ownership. Given that HSBC may be on the brink of insolvency as per Jessel's source, anyone who buys GLD thinking they are buying gold is risking losing everything - that is, being "Madoffed."

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

I keep going back to this link on the Populists... we've been here before almost 120 years ago... and we may go back again.... there's a reason why the American 'Populists' theories are derided in all "economics" courses...  they essentially cut out the scamming "Jew" between city and country.. now writ large between nation and nation.  Jews originally bailed out the USA with the Gold Standard in 1894-1897 during a Bankruptcy of the USA....  they'll do it over and over in the 21st century (EU/Arab/USA/S.America/Russia) unless "Goyim" tell them to STFU.... and basically stuff them. The Warburgs-Rothschilds lifted the entire design for a "Central Bank" from the "Goyim" Populists...and then secretly created the Federal Reserve... except they kept it under Babylonian-Talmudic Jew Control from 1913 onwards via Jew Paper... instead of Populist control... (i.e., like Lindbergh's father). Hitler's finance minister basically went back to the Populists' plan, for helping a bankrupt Germany, in 1933... just another "chapter" in the Protocols...  --CSR

----------

Populists jumped all over the issue, shouting that it was yet another example of Washington being in league with the international banks and Wall Street. To the Populists it was the perfect example of a conspiracy against the common man. There was an Anti Semitic thread to their argument as Populists railed against the Rothschilds House (a bank which was a member of the syndicate) as the source of the conspiracy, trying to suggest that Washington and Wall Street were in the hands of the Jewish banking houses of England, and that soon all of America would be as well.

Anti-Semitism


by Ben Macri, Vassar '99


In the cultural climate of nineteenth century America anti-Semitism was an acceptable form of social prejudice. There has been a history of anti-Semitism in western society for centuries, and the United States is no exception to that fact. The political uses of anti-Semitism had been well proven before, and would be proven again in the 1896 presidential campaign. No political party was above using anti-Semitism, especially to appeal to Christian constituents, but it was the Populist party who used anti-Semitism most distinctively.

Since the origins of the Populist movement, anti-Semitism had found its way into Populist doctrine. Many important Populist thinkers considered Jews to be at the root of problems for the farmers who made up the Populist party's rank and file. Of course not all Populists were anti-Semitic, and some even attacked the party for its prejudice, but anti-Semitism was definitely a theme in Populist ideology. Jews were an easy villain for the Populists to use, since the party was dominated by rural farmers and other small businessmen, people from areas of the US where there were few Jews. It was easy for the Populists to suggest that it was these unseen Jews who were responsible for farmers' financial difficulties. Since many of the Populist party's rank and file had never seen a Jew they only had stereotypes of Jews to base their opinions on. It was an easy jump from those stereotypes to a political platform with anti-Semitic tendencies. It was easy to blame local financial problems on large, unseen groups.

Anti-Semitism was not something which was confined to the early history of the movement, or to its rank and file. William Jennings Bryan was adept at switching between coded anti-Semitic language, and preaching people's need to get past racial prejudice. The most notable example of Populist anti-Semitism can be found in the novel A Tale of Two Nations, written by the Populist thinker "Coin" Harvey, who was also the author of Coin's Financial School, one of the most popular pro-silver arguments to be published during the Populist period. A Tale of Two Nations was the story of a wealthy London banker, Baron Rothe, who engineers a plot to keep the United States from ever using a silver as currency. In the novel Rothe sends a henchman to the US to `encourage' congressmen and economists to support the gold standard. The henchman, Rogasner, falls in love with an American girl, who is in love with a Nebraskan congressman of the pro-silver variety. The characters in the book are either thinly disguised historical figures or thinly disguised racial stereotypes. Rogasner, the dark European was clearly a Jewish villain out to ruin the Caucasian race. His love was a shixa goddess, protecting herself from the threat of miscegenation by falling in love with the literary equivalent of William Jennings Bryan. And the Rothe character was a symbol for the Rothschild House. All of this fit neatly into Harvey's Populist theory of history which saw the Jewish banking houses, and therefore the Jewish race, as the source of the common man's problems.

Populist anti-Semitism worked its way into the 1896 campaign through the Morgan Bonds scandal. When the public learned that President Cleveland had sold bonds to a syndicate which included JP Morgan and the Rothschilds house, bonds which that syndicate was now selling for a profit, the Populists used it as an opportunity to uphold their view of history, and prove to the nation that Washington and Wall Street were in the hands of the international Jewish banking houses. The currency issue itself was loaded with anti-Semitism as the Populist returned again and again to crucifixion metaphors to argue against the gold standard. The reference was clear. The same Jews who were responsible for the death of Jesus were responsible for the currency crisis. The message was clear to the many Protestants who filled the ranks of the Populists.


...

"Even more significant, Populists strengthened their cause by using religious metaphors to link money with a Jewish conspiracy. Thus, in 1896, Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, speaking in an idiom Protestant Fundamentalists were fully conversant with, could easily intersperse biblical imagery with economic necessity when he thundered, `You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.' The antisemitism evoked by the metaphor of the crucifixion was powerful and appealed to rural Protestants who possessed a similar religious and cultural heritage with other Americans in the South and the West." --Leonard Dinnerstein, from Antisemitism in America (p.49-50).

...

We are not attacking a race, we are attacking greed and avarice, which know neither race nor religion. I do not know of any class of our people who, by reason of their history, can better sympathize with the struggling masses in this campaign than can the Hebrew race." --William Jennings Bryan, in a speech to a Jewish audience, from The First Battle (p.581).


...


"Redemption money and interest-bearing bonds are the curse of civilization. We are paying tribute to the Rothchilds of England, who are but the agent of the Jews." --Mary Elizabeth Lease, a Populist speaker, as reported by The New York Times on August 11, 1896.

"There was no longer any common ground for understanding between the silver and gold forces; and the agrarian regions were suffering too keenly to reason calmly. Bryan, denouncing the sale in the House, had the clerk first read Shylock's bond. The World declared that the syndicate was composed of bloodsucking Jews and aliens. [...]. By hundreds of thousands, hard handed Americans believed that Cleveland and Carlisle [Cleveland's Secretary of Treasury] had sold the credit of the republic to the Morgans and the Rothchilds, and had pocketed a share of the price. Their vituperative anger was additional evidence of a sectional and class bitterness that now made even armed revolution seem far from impossible. But Cleveland... was unmoved by abuse when he felt he had done right." Allan Nevins, from Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (p.665-666).

http://projects.vassar.edu/1896/morganbonds.html

[LordLindsey]

http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/Prot ... protocol12

"We Control the Media
4.  Not a single announcement will reach the public without our control.

Even now this is being achieved by us due to the fact that all news items are received by only a few agencies, and their offices are a focal point for news coming in from all parts of the world.

These agencies will already be entirely owned by us and will only publish what we dictate to them.

5.  We have effectively taken possession of the minds of the Goy communities to such an extent that they have all come to look upon the events of the world through the colored glasses which we have placed on their noses."

Nothing but propaganda in a frenzied attempt to "prove" that the non-existent gold is there.

LINDSEY