Cooking the Gold Books

http://dailyreckoning.com/cooking-the-gold-books/

That is, the “physical price” becomes much higher than the “paper price” on CNBC’s ticker. The catalyst, we suggested, would be when a major metals exchange defaults on a gold or silver contract — settling in cash, instead of metal.

Result: If you wanted real metal, you paid a substantial premium over the paper price. In silver, these premiums were off the charts. On Thursday, April 25, spot silver was $23.94… but a Silver Eagle from a major online dealer would set you back $29.54 — as high as the paper price before the mid-April crash!

Sprott Asset Management chief Eric Sprott believes Zero Hour is made inevitable by Western central banks “leasing” their gold to commercial banks at less than 1% a year. The commercial banks then sell that gold and plow the proceeds into higher-earning investments.

The data show that net exports from 1991-2012 totaled 5,504 tonnes.

Here’s the problem: During that same period, U.S. supply mine production and recycling totaled 7,532 tonnes, while demand was 6,517 tonnes. That left only 1,015 tonnes available for export.

Where did the other 4,489 tonnes come from? “The only U.S. seller that would be capable of supplying such an astonishing amount of gold,” says Mr. Sprott, “is the U.S. government, with a reported gold holding of 8,300 tonnes.”

“If the Sprott analysis is accurate,” says our friend and Crash Course author Chris Martenson, “there’s a lot of missing gold in the U.S. equation, and it had to come from official sources, either of U.S. origin or belonging to other countries. Either way, the leased gold represents a tremendous liability of the Fed and the bullion banks to which it was loaned.”

“In this context,” Mr. Martenson continues, “the gold slam begins to smell like an operation designed to shake as much gold as possible out of weak hands so that the bullion banks can begin to recover it to square up their accounts.

“GLD, the gold ETF that so many small investors participate in, is one large, obvious target,” he adds, “as it was sitting on 1,350 tonnes as of January 2013.”

 “Gold and silver,” Mr. Martenson suggests, “are getting closer to the day when you or I will not be able to purchase physical bullion at any price.”

The endgame is getting closer. “What I believe is going to happen, probably in the not too distant future,” says Eric Sprott’s right-hand man John Embry, “is that the pricing mechanism of the gold and silver markets will swing to the physical market, which cannot be manipulated, because, basically, either you’ve got it or you haven’t.

But that’s when you won’t be able to get any metal at any price. Best act before then: “The current sell-off in gold,” says Eric Sprott, “should be viewed not with extreme trepidation, but as an unbelievable opportunity to buy the metal at an artificially low value.”