Gold and Silver Snips

By: Rob Kirby

Earlier this week, I wrote about possible “incongruities” in the gold bar registry of GLD. Specifically, here is what has happened to the GLD bar list which is published each Friday at approximately 4:30 pm EST. An alert reader I communicate with [who shall remain anonymous] has been documenting the length of the published GLD bar list:

• on Friday, Sept. 25 – the list was 1,381 pages long
• on Friday, Oct. 2 – the list was 208 pages long
• on Friday, Oct. 9 – the list was 195 pages long
• then, on Wednesday, Oct. 14 – after questions were being raised about the strange machinations with the bar list in chat rooms on the internet – the list was back up to 855 pages long

Something TRULY stinks here. No explanation has been offered for the DRAMATIC swings in this list. Where gold is concerned nothing happens by accident.




How Precious is Settled in London:

Loco London clearing is the daily paper unallocated transfers between London clearers; the transfers of gold and silver only across accounts held between clearers for their own accounts and third parties; and, as mentioned earlier, the clearing out of Zürich for the platinum group metals. It avoids security risk and the cost of physical movement of bullion; has standard market practices…

[However] Both allocated and unallocated account agreements are available. There are allocations for credit purposes, bilateral credit agreements between clearers, and London good delivery….


Some short definitions: an unallocated account is an account where specific bars are not set aside, and the customer has a general entitlement to the metal. This is the most convenient, cheapest, and most commonly used method of holding metal. The allocated account, on the other hand, is an account opened when a customer requires metal to be physically segregated, and this needs a detailed list of weights and assays….


To Summarize:

• GLD gold bullion inventory is principally held in London
• I’ve already written about some large [allocated] physical transactions that were settled last week in London under VERY strange circumstances indicative of a shortage of physical gold bullion for good delivery.
• At the same time, significant irregularities appeared in the GLD bullion bar list

Conclusion:

- is the correlated timing of these unusual events a coincidence???? Could GLD inventory have been utilized to effect these physical settlements, which in turn, would have required the “sanitization” or doctoring of the GLD bar list to avoid MANY obvious, easily detectable, duplications of bar numbers?

I discussed these irregularities with a very informed source [the same one who informed me of specific [allocated] trades settled last week] and the reply I received was as follows:

“What can I tell you that you don't already know?

They are all scrambling big time since a number of large interests have demanded audits. Independent auditors are NOW descending onto the various vaults to verify, validate and certify.

They can move this as many times in circles as they like to try to fool people.


Hope you’ve all got some physical gold already.


SOURCE