The Great Gold Heist

[Eric J (Viking)]

USER’S GUIDE TO RESTRUCTURING THE GLOBAL TRADING SYSTEM

US apparently buying gold from UK

Matt Smith lives on a ranch in Uruguay, produces a series of videos with Doug Casey, and co-hosts the YouTube show Doug Casey’s Take. He talks the run on gold, devaluation of the dollar, economic reset, what he feels the Trump administration is attempting to do, and much more.

Full video here

https://rumble.com/v6jowb4-coffee-an...-global-t.html

Source: https://www.rumble.com/video/v6hgzmp

[Dilettante]

We're talking finance, so we need to be quantitative! Remember, DYOR (Do Your Own Research). Put the discretion back into discretionary trading.

Here's a good tool for looking at futures positioning: Commitment of Traders.

The look for gold is as follows:



Notice that the Managed Money traders are most at odds compared to the Swap Dealer currently. It's a casino, so the house usually wins, and I bet with dealers over money managers (they think themselves smarter than they are). But we need to more technical about how we go about comparing the two.

Since the chart is actually interactive, the data is embedded in it, and we can parse it out. Too complex to explain here, but that's what I did (You'll want to find the <map> node in the inspector if you know what you're doing).

We take the square root of [manager longs over shorts] divided by [dealer longs over shorts] and plot that logarithmically (I can help you math that out if you want me to):



BASICALLY, "dumb money" is as long over "smart money" as it has been during only extreme highs around 2010 and March of 2020. Not a great bet from a pure positioning perspective.

But, just to confirm, let's look at what happened to price during those times:



Not bad. Could actually be a decent 1-2 year trade. But notice, from the level positioning was this extremely bullish, it eventually settles back down to this level in the future. So we have some price action to chew through before I would get really excited.

Very rarely are there big swings in a short period of time, everything is controlled over time. Remember, processes, not events!

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/chrismartenson/status/1890433911047455089

https://peakprosperity.com/can-a-mar...=ap_c3fplvpewb


Can a Market Meltdown Be Avoided?

Trump’s bold actions could well lead to a recession simply due to cutting off flows of fraudulent, unnecessary, and/or wasteful spending. At the same time inflation is still kicking around, so the Fed is less likely to re-spike the punchbowl. The result? Stagflation possibly, which is the worst outcome for the average person.

The Trump revolution is going to have an enormous impact on everyone’s finances and sense of wealth.

Will things simply take off from here, crash, or crash first and then take off?

Paul Kiker and I discuss these possibilities and how he approaches managing money during times like these.

With all of the DOGE efforts by Trump and Elon, coupled to the most bitterly divided and dysfunctional DC political landscape of my lifetime, the chance of a government-led recession are pretty high.

Complicating the recovery plans is inflation which just came in hotter than expected and is headed the wrong way (higher) over the last 6 months.

Despite dishonest, or ignorant, attempts by democrats to pin the sour report on Trump, the fact is it’s Biden’s report card. After all, it was January’s CPI report and Trump wasn’t even sworn in until Jan 20th.

During the Biden tenure, inflation kicked everyone’s butts:

The rest of the article here,

https://peakprosperity.com/can-a-mar...=ap_c3fplvpewb

[shaberon]

The window I was talking about, more or less coincides with Trump's Day One:

"The period of time that extraordinary measures may last is subject to considerable uncertainty, including the challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the U.S. government months into the future," Yellen said in the letter.

Yellen said the Treasury would suspend investments in two government employee benefit funds through March 14, to claw back borrowing capacity under the $36.1 trillion debt ceiling. As of Thursday, the Treasury reported borrowings of $36.08 trillion.

That is to say, we are in a two-month period mandated by the decree, which may become longer.


I may have gotten the impression that it mean stopping the issuance of all securities. This is not yet the case, but may be the result, as per this description from the Government Accounting Office:

Delays in raising the debt limit have occurred in 12 of the last 13 fiscal years. As a result, Treasury has often used extraordinary actions, such as suspending investments or temporarily disinvesting securities held in federal employee retirement funds, to remain under the limit. Once it has exhausted all extraordinary actions, Treasury may not issue debt without further action from Congress and the President. If Treasury does not have enough cash on hand to meet its financial commitments, Treasury could be forced to delay payments until sufficient funds become available. Treasury might eventually be forced to default on legal debt obligations, which would have devastating effects on U.S. and global economies.

So, it is precedented that they have stifled *some* of the borrowing, and it is a question if now it is worse. This is what was dumped on the desk of the new administration by Treasury:

The extraordinary measures currently being considered are: (1) redeeming existing, and
suspending new, investments of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal
Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund; (2) suspending reinvestment of the Government Securities
Investment Fund; (3) suspending reinvestment of the Exchange Stabilization Fund; (4) suspending
sales of State and Local Government Series Treasury securities; and (5) entering into a debt swap
transaction with the Federal Financing Bank. These measures will continue to be evaluated on an
ongoing basis.

They give some FAQs if, for instance, you think they just spent your retirement fund. You can delve into those specific examples.

But without further information, we are stuck with what Yellen said, for another month.


The sense I got from the OP was more along the lines of a drawdown on paper contracts.

I have seen some strange things happen. Take the example of an Australian mining company. It may have its gold futures marketed and traded. And then the company appears to go out of business. But it never was. No one ever picked up a pan. It was just a business plan. And yet it was a profitable financial entity. Because it is profitable, it may look better than a real company where you have to pay actual workers and might suffer liabilities and losses. Because it performs well, it affects prices. It can do all that based on nothing more than a map which shows where some gold probably is.

On the other hand, I know where a lot of gold physically was, on the American people, and now it is on the Indian people.

I know because I did this, or, functioned as a vassal of one of the foundry houses that produces Good Delivery Bars, and there are not that many. I can't remember the name of it, it's in Philadelphia or something like that.

I never found anyone who was interested in hearing about the fact that most of the extraction would be showing up in private Indian hands and with the Chinese government, which had changed its mind about Treasury Bonds. That seems to remain a correct cultural assumption in this case.


If there is something to this besides some kind of a quick run, then, the next question would be about the parity of gold to oil. Despite price fixes and fluctuations, the value of an ounce of gold to a barrel of oil has remained in a fairly consistent ratio since the 1930s.

It's sort of like a triumvirate of Bretton Woods, gold, oil, and Treasuries. Something like a juggling routine where no part operates in isolation. The main unprecedented part is Saudi Arabia unsubscribing from the petrodollar.

[onawah]

Speaking of gold heists, keep in mind China's reputation when it comes to fake gold:
Inside The Biggest Counterfeit Gold Scandal In Recent History
By Zero Hedge - Jun 30, 2020
https://safehaven.com/commodities/pr...t-History.html

"Over the years, we have periodically reported of the occasional gold bar discovered as counterfeit in Manhattan's Diamond District which instead of containing the yellow precious metal would be filled with gold-plated tungsten or in some cases copper. The news would spark a brief wave of outrage, prompting physical gold holders to run ultrasound spot checks of their inventory, at which point interest would wane and why not: buyer, after all, beware in gold as in every other market, and if someone is spending thousands to buy fake gold, well that's Darwinism in action.

Yet one market which seemed stubbornly immune to any counterfeiting was that of physical gold in China, which was odd considering that over the past decade China had emerged as the world's biggest counterfeiter of various, mostly industrial metals used to secure bank loans, better known as "ghost collateral", and which adding insult to injury, would frequently be rehypothecated meaning often several banks would have claims to the same (fake) asset.

All that is about to change with the discovery of what may be one of the biggest gold counterfeiting scandal in recent history. And yes, not only does it involve China, but it emerges from a city that has become synonymous for all that is scandalous about China: Wuhan itself.

With that preamble in mind, we introduce readers to Wuhan Kingold Jewelry Inc., a company which as the name implies was founded and operates out of Wuhan, and which describes itself on its website as "A Company with a Golden future."

In retrospect, it probably meant "copper" future, because as a remarkable expose by Caixin has found, more than a dozen Chinese financial institutions, mainly trust companies (i.e., shadow banks) loaned 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) over the past five years to Wuhan Kingold Jewelry with pure gold as collateral and insurance policies to cover any losses. There was just one problem: the "gold" turned out to be gold-plated copper.

Some more background: Kingold - whose name was probably stolen from Kinross Gold, one of the world's largest gold miners - is the largest privately owned gold processor in central China’s Hubei province. Its shares are listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York (although its current market cap of just $10MM is a far cry from its all time highs hit when the company IPOed on the Nasdaq around 2010) . The company is led by Chairman Jia Zhihong, an intimidating ex-military man who is the controlling shareholder.

What could go wrong?

Well, apparently everything as at least some of 83 tons of gold bars used as loan collateral turned out to be nothing but gilded copper. That has left lenders holding the bag for the remaining 16 billion yuan of loans outstanding against the bogus bars. And as Caixin adds, the loans were covered by 30 billion yuan of property insurance policies issued by state insurer PICC Property and Casualty and various other smaller insurers.

The fake gold came to light in February when Dongguan Trust (one of those infamous Chinese shadow banks) set out to liquidate Kingold collateral to cover defaulted debts. As the report continues, in late 2019 Kingold failed to repay investors in several trust products. To its shock, Dongguan Trust said it discovered that the gleaming gold bars were actually gilded copper alloy.

The news sent shockwaves through Kingold’s creditors. China Minsheng Trust - another shadow banking company and one of Kingold’s largest creditors - obtained a court order to test collateral before Kingold’s debts came due. On May 22, the test result returned saying the bars sealed in Minsheng Trust’s coffers are also copper alloy.

And with authorities investigating how this happened, Kingold chief Jia flatly denies that anything is wrong with the collateral his company put up. Well, what else could he say...

As Caxin notes, the Kingold counterfeiting case echoes China’s largest gold-loan fraud case, unfolding since 2016 in the northwest Shaanxi province and neighboring Hunan, where regulators found adulterated gold bars in 19 lenders’ coffers backing 19 billion yuan of loans, or about USD $2.5 billion. In that case, a lender seeking to melt gold collateral found black tungsten plate in the middle of the bars.

In the case of Kingold, the company said it took out loans against gold to supplement its cash holdings, support business operations and expand gold reserves, according to public records. It then appears to have decided to apply a gold-layer to tons of copper and pretend it was money-good gold collateral. And even more shocking, for years nobody checked the authenticity of the pledged collateral!

In 2018, the company beat a number of competitors in bidding to buy a controlling stake in state-owned auto parts maker Tri-Ring Group. Kingold offered 7 billion yuan in cash for 99.97% of Tri-Ring. The Hubei government cited the deal as a model of so-called mixed-ownership reform, which seeks to invite private shareholders into state-owned enterprises. But Kingold has faced problems taking over Tri-Ring’s assets amid a series of corruption probes and disputes involving Tri-Ring.

After obtaining the test results, Minsheng Trust executive said the company asked Jia whether the company fabricated the gold bars: “He flatly denied it and said it was because some of the gold the company acquired in early days had low purity,” the executive said. In a telephone interview with Caixin in early June, Jia denied that the gold pledged by his company was faked.

“How could it be fake if insurance companies agreed to cover it?” he said and refused to comment further. Well, the answer is simple: the insurance companies were in on the scam, but that's a story for another day.

In early June, Minsheng Trust, Dongguan Trust and a smaller creditor Chang’An Trust filed lawsuits against Kingold and demanded that PICC P&C cover their losses. PICC P&C declined to comment to Caixin on the matter but said the case is in judicial procedure. A source from PICC P&C told Caixin that the claim procedure should be initiated by Kingold as the insured party rather than financial institutions as beneficiaries. Kingold hasn’t made a claim, the Caixin source said.

In total, Kingold pledge tens of thousands of kilograms of gold to no less than 14 creditors amounting to just under 20 billion yuan.

Caixin learned that the Hubei provincial government set up a special task force to oversee the matter and that the public security department launched an investigation. The Shanghai Gold Exchange, a gold industry self-regulatory organization, disqualified Kingold as a member as of last week.

Following Dongguan Trust and Minsheng Trust, two other Kingold creditors also tested pledged gold bars and found they were fake, Caixin learned. A Dongguan Trust employee said his company reported the case to police Feb. 27, the day after the testing result was delivered, and demanded 1.3 billion yuan of compensation from PICC P&C’s Hubei branch.

Meanwhile, Kingold defaulted on 1.8 billion yuan of loans from Dongguan Trust with an additional 1.6 billion yuan due in July.

The 83 tons of purportedly pure gold stored in creditors’ coffers by Kingold as of June, backing the 16 billion yuan of loans, would be equivalent to 22% of China’s annual gold production and 4.2% of the state gold reserve as of 2019.

In short, more than 4% of China's official gold reserves may be fake. And this assume that no other Chinese gold producers and jewelry makers are engaging in similar fraud (spoiler alert: they are.)

Founded in 2002 by Jia, Kingold was previously a gold factory in Hubei affiliated with the People’s Bank of China that was split off from the central bank during a restructuring. With businesses ranging from gold jewelry design, manufacturing and trading, Kingold is one of China’s largest gold jewelry manufacturers, according to the company website.

The company debuted on Nasdaq in 2010. The stock currently trades around $1 apiece, giving Kingold a market value of $12 million, down 70% from a year ago. A company financial report showed that Kingold had $3.3 billion of total assets as of the end of September 2019, with liabilities of $2.4 billion.

Jia, now 59, served in the military in Wuhan and Guangzhou and spent six years living in Hong Kong. He once managed gold mines owned by the People’s Liberation Army, which means he likely has connections all the way to the very top.

“Jia is tall and strong,” one financial industry source familiar with Jia told Caixin. “He’s an imposing figure and speaks loudly. He is bold, reckless and eloquent, always making you feel he knows better than you.”

Several trust company sources said Jia is well connected in Hubei - the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic - which may explain Kingold’s surprise victory in the Tri-Ring deal. But a financial industry source in Hubei said Jia’s business is not as solid as it may appear.

“We knew for years that he doesn't have much gold ? all he has is copper,” said the source, who declined to be named.

Local financial institutions in Hubei have avoided doing business with Kingold, but they don’t want to offend him publicly, the source said. Why? Because of his extnesive connections with the Chinese army.

“Almost none of Hubei’s local trust companies and banks has been involved in (Kingold’s) financing,” he said.

That explains why most of Kingold’s creditors are from outside Hubei. Caixin learned from regulatory sources that Minsheng Trust is the largest creditor of Kingold with nearly 4.1 billion yuan of outstanding loans, followed by Hengfeng Bank’s 3.9 billion yuan, Dongguan Trust’s 3.4 billion yuan, Anxin Trust & Investment Co.’s 1.9 billion yuan and Sichuan Trust Co.’s 1.8 billion yuan.

But wait, counterfeiting gold is just the tip of the company's fraud iceberg: several industry sources told Caixin that the institutions were willing to offer loans to Kingold because Jia promised to help them dispose of bad loans.

Hengfeng Bank is the only commercial bank involved in the Kingold affair. The bank in 2017 provided an 8 billion yuan loan to Kingold, which in return agreed to help the bank write off 500 million yuan of bad loans, bank sources said. Kingold repaid half of the debts in 2018. But the loan issuance involved many irregularities as access to the pledged gold and testing procedures was controlled by Kingold, one Hengfeng employee said.

The loan was pushed forward by Song Hao, former head of Hengfeng’s Yantai branch. Song was placed under graft investigation in March 2018 in connection with the bank’s disgraced former Chairman Cai Guohua, whose downfall led to a major revamp in the bank’s management. In 2019, Hengfeng’s new management sued Kingold for the unpaid loans and moved to dispose the collateral. But a test of the gold bars found they are “all copper,” the bank source said.

It is still unclear whether the collateral was faked in the first place or replaced afterward. Sources from Minsheng Trust and Dongguan Trust confirmed that the collateral was examined by third-party testing institutions and strictly monitored by representatives from Kingold, lenders and insurers during the process of delivery.

"I still can’t understand which part went wrong," a Minsheng Trust source said. Bank records showed that the vault where the collateral was stored was never opened, the source told Caixin.

The falling dominos

Public records showed that Kingold’s first gold-backed borrowing can be traced back to 2013, when it reached an agreement for 200 million yuan of loans from Chang’An Trust, with 1,000 kilograms of gold pledged. The two-year loan was to fund a property project in Wuhan and was repaid on time. Before this, Kingold’s financing mainly came from bank loans with property and equipment as collateral.

It appears that one way or another, the company realized that it could fabricate gold ownership and receive money in exchange for what were basically worthless copper bricks painted as gold; and thanks to Jia's military connections nobody would ask any other questions.

As a result, starting in 2015, Kingold rapidly increased its reliance on gold-backed borrowing and started working with PICC P&C to cover the loans. In 2016, Kingold borrowed 11 billion yuan, nearly 16 times higher than the previous year’s figure. Its debt-to asset ratio surged to 87.5% from 43.4%, according to a company financial report. That year, Kingold pledged 54.7 tons of gold for loans, 7.5 times higher than the previous year.

It is now safe to assume that most of that gold never existed.

A person close to Jia said the surge of borrowing was partly due to Kingold’s pursuit of Tri-Ring. In 2016, the Hubei provincial government announced a plan to sell Tri-Ring stakes to private investors as a major revamp of the Hubei government-controlled auto parts manufacturer.

In 2018, Kingold was selected as the investor in a deal worth 7 billion yuan. According to the investment plan, Kingold’s purchase of Tri-Ring was part of a strategy to expand into the hydrogen fuel cell business, which is obviously a "logical" fit for a company involved in gold jewelry. Sources close to the deal said Kingold was attracted by Tri-Ring for its rich holding of industrial land that could be converted for commercial development.

Yes, at the very bottom of the fraud we finally get to the one true and endless Chinese asset bubble: real estate.

A Dongguan Trust investment document showed that Tri-Ring owns land blocks in Wuhan and Shenzhen that are worth nearly 40 billion yuan.

The deal drew immediate controversy as some rival bidders questioned the transparency of the bidding process and Kingold’s qualifications.

And here things get even crazier: according to Kingold’s financial reports, the company had only 100 million yuan of net assets in 2016 and 2 billion yuan in 2017, sparking doubts over its capacity to pay for the deal. Despite the fuss, Kingold paid 2.8 billion yuan for the first installment shortly after the announcement of the deal. The second installment of 2.4 billion yuan was paid several months later with funds raised from Dongguan Trust.

In December, Tri-Ring completed its business registration change, marking completion of Kingold’s takeover. However, the new owner has since faced troubles mobilizing Tri-Ring’s assets because of a series of corruption probes surrounding the auto parts maker since early 2019 that brought down Tri-Ring’s former chairman. As Caixin the notes, a majority of Tri-Ring’s assets were frozen amid the investigation and subsequent debt disputes, limiting Jia’s access to the assets.

The fraud is finally exposed

Hobbled by the Tri-Ring deal, which cost billions of yuan but has yet to make any return, Jia’s capital chain was eventually broken when Hengfeng Bank pushed for repayment, triggering a series of events that brought the fake gold to light, said a person close to the matter. Insurers’ involvement was key to the success of Kingold’s gold-backed loan deals. The insurance policies provided by leading state-owned insurers like PICC P&C were a major factor defusing lenders’ risk concerns, several trust company sources said.

“Without the insurance coverage from PICC P&C, (we) wouldn’t issue loans to Kingold as the collateral can only be tested through random picked samples,” one person told Caixin.

PICC P&C’s Hubei branch provided coverage for most of Kingold’s loans, Caixin learned. All the policies will expire by October. As of June 11, 60 policies were still valid or involved in lawsuits.

PICC P&C faces multiple lawsuits filed by Kingold’s creditors demanding compensation. But a PICC P&C spokesperson said the policies cover only collateral losses caused by accident, disasters, robbery and theft. Not fraud, and certainly not losses when the collateral never even existed!

Whose fault

Wang Guangming, a lawyer at Dacheng Law Offices, said the key issue is what happened to the pledged gold and which party was aware of the falsification. If Kingold faked the gold bars and both the insurers and creditors were unaware, the insurers should compensate the lenders and sue Kingold for insurance fraud, Wang said. Insurers are also responsible to compensate if they knew of Kingold’s scam but creditors didn’t, Wang said.
Related: Economic Reopening Backfires, COVID Surge Snaps Recovery

If Kingold and creditors were both aware of the fake collateral, insurers could terminate the policies and sue the parties for fraud. But if insurers were also involved in the scam, then all the contracts are invalid and every party should assume their own legal responsibilities, Wang said.

A financial regulatory official told Caixin that previous investigations of loan fraud cases involving fake gold pledges found there was often collusion between borrowers and financial institutions.

Earlier this year, PICC P&C removed its Hubei branch party head and general manager Liu Fangming. Sources said staff members involved in business with Kingold were also dismissed. PICC P&C said Liu’s removal was due to internal management issues. It didn't answer Caixin’s question about whether Liu was involved in the Kingold scandal.

The above story is shocking in exposing just how multi-faceted fraud is in China: capitalizing on pre-existing cronyism and connections with China's powerful army, the founder of Kingold was allowed to basically do anything he wanted, no questions asked, including counterfeiting over 83 tons of gold bars to get billions in funds to participate in China's housing bubble, only for a series of unexpected events to unwind the frauds one after another and expose the type of sordid scandal that is at the heart of most Chinese "enterprises" and business ventures.

As for the gold, yes - several billion in gold bars never existed and yet resulted in a cascade of subsequent cash flow events allowing tens of billions in funds to be released, "benefiting" not only founder Jia, but China's broader economy. Which is, needless to say, terrifying: because whereas just after the financial crisis China was engaged in building ghost cities, everyone knew these were a symbol of demand that would never materialize, even if the cities themselves did exist. However, it now appears that a major part of China's subsequent economic boom has been predicated on tens of billions in hard assets - such as gold - which simply do not exist.

As for what this means for the price of gold... well, Kingold is certainly not the only Chinese company engaging in such blatant fraud, and the consequences are clear: once Chinese creditors or insurance companies start testing the "collateral" they have received in exchange for tens of billions in loans and discover, to their "amazement", that instead of gold they are proud owners of tungsten or copper, they have two choices: reveal the fraud, risking tremendous adverse consequences and/or prison time, or quietly buy up all the gold needed to literally fill the void from years of gold counterfeiting.

Something tells us option two will be far more palatable to China's kleptoculture where one domino cold trigger a collapse of the entire financial system. What happens next: a panicked scramble to procure physical gold, one which even our friends at the BIS will be powerless to stop from sending the price of the precious metal to all time highs."

By Zerohedge.com

[Abondance]

Rumble still banned in France, I do not have access to this interview. I know there are Avalonians following Armstrong, if you could be so kind as to summarize the important points from this interview ( at least if there is new data, because he tends to repeat the same thing often during these interviews)... thank you very much!



Why the Central Banks are in Trouble: Gold Panic, Debt Reset



https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/a...ic-debt-reset/

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Abondance (here)
Rumble still banned in France, I do not have access to this interview. I know there are Avalonians following Armstrong, if you could be so kind as to summarize the important points from this interview ( at least if there is new data, because he tends to repeat the same thing often during these interviews)... thank you very much!

Why the Central Banks are in Trouble: Gold Panic, Debt Reset

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/a...ic-debt-reset/

Here's the interview on Brighteon:

https://www.brighteon.com/1c1b9994-e...3-603f026c5281

Source: https://www.brighteon.com/embed/1c1b9994-ea01-4f70-9513-603f026c5281


- Gold Market and Central Bank Issues (0:01)
- Gold Standard and Political Systems (3:26)
- Tariffs and Geopolitical Tensions (6:44)
- Economic Collapse and Government Credibility (10:11)
- USAID and Government Accountability (19:17)
- Multipolar World and US Foreign Policy (24:21)
- AI and Technology Competition (30:47)
- AI in Trading and Decision Making (35:45)
- Consulting and Global Experience (48:44)
- Future of AI and Economic Forecasting (54:35)
- Closing Remarks and Website Information (54:49)

[norman]

Posted by Abondance (here)
Rumble still banned in France, I do not have access to this interview. I know there are Avalonians following Armstrong, if you could be so kind as to summarize the important points from this interview ( at least if there is new data, because he tends to repeat the same thing often during these interviews)... thank you very much!



Why the Central Banks are in Trouble: Gold Panic, Debt Reset



https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/a...ic-debt-reset/

The Armstrong interview I posted in this thread IS on Brighteon. There's a Rumble version of Mike Adams' videos too.

But, to cut through the confusion ( I hope ) here's an audio version of it via Podbay. The stream probably still comes from a Brighteon server but maybe the podbay intermediary will get it to you ok. If it doesn't, let me know and I'll upload the audio to my box account for you. ( I can't do videos there, my free account file size limit is too restricted for that )

https://podbay.fm/p/the-health-range...9373900?t=2503

If it doesn't start at around 42 minutes, go there manually.

[Abondance]

Un grand merci @Bill et @Normand !!

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/GoldTelegraph_/status/1791091950419898604

https://x.com/burrytracker/status/1798072227146899489

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/Dioclet54046121/status...85127172915661

Text:
What is happening in China?

Gold trading volume in China is now 400% LARGER than the average seen in 2023.

The trading activity in gold on the Shanghai Futures Exchange spiked to 1.3 MILLION lots on the peak day of trading last week.

This came at the same time that gold prices broke above a record $2,400/oz.

Last year alone, China's central bank acquired more than 225 tonnes gold.

Since October, gold is nearly 30% posting one of its best 6-month performances in history.

Why is there so much gold buying in China?


https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1783162397219230021

https://x.com/TNR_Gold/status/1890131350038167741

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1866140804462280847

[Sirus]

https://x.com/DougAMacgregor/status/1890929840590664131

[Ravenlocke]

November 2023

Text:
Has the US debt crossed the Rubicon?

Central Banks around the world are now net sellers of US treasuries (bonds).

China, once the biggest buyer (2002-2014) has been dumping US bonds.👇🏽

Japan was the biggest buyer from 1986-2002, but it has its own debt problems now.

US banks are maxed out. The only options left are printing money or raising taxes or cutting spending. All bad news for US economy.

But Americans are living in a delusional world…


Ponzi scheme of US Empire

$6 trillion — That’s the amount of US bonds that will mature over the next year. But guess what?

America cannot pay that amount! So, it will issue new bonds to pay back those old bonds!

It’s like you borrow from
MasterCard to pay Visa! But here’s the…

https://x.com/Kanthan2030/status/1723380649405341974

Text:
China has been dumping US Treasury notes recently, and with Japan also doing so analysts are beginning to worry about the funding of a rising US budget deficit plus the refinancing of $7.6 trillion of US govt debt over the next 12 months.

Who is going to buy our debt? China, Saudi Arabia ... even the Fed are all sellers. So rates much increase to attract investors.

Consequently, in the face of an economic downturn, bond yields are soaring, as the next two charts of US Treasury and German bund 10-year maturities illustrates 🔥🔥🔥

https://x.com/WallStreetMav/status/1707843850004271216

[Ravenlocke]

January 2024

Text:
🚨🚨🚨BRICS is now moving to gold as trade payment settlement for oil.

The foreign central banks (of emerging market economies) are dumping their dollar reserves (end of petrodollar),

The U.S. Dollar is now being repatriated back to the U.S. Treasury.

For every dollar that is repatriated on the U.S. Treasury’s asset side (dollar loans), one dollar must be removed from the Treasury’s liabilities side (pumped financial assets).

This is how the dollar collapses because,

The U.S. Treasury created more *foreign dollar reserves (loans) than the $34T in national debt,

Which will show up as (Ponzi financial assets) on the U.S. Treasury’s liability side.

Stock and bond market crash here we come.

Oil in dollar terms will skyrocket as OPEC rejects the dollar for oil trade payment.

The strengthening of emerging market currencies will come from the renminbi’s internationalization as foreign central bank reserves as gold is now used for oil trade payments vs Dollar.

@GoldTelegraph_

@GoldSwitzerland

@rawsalerts

@federalreserve

@ecb

@Lagarde

@JoeBiden

@MattWallace888

@RandPaul

@Prolotario1

https://x.com/MikeCristo8/status/1750175308563804359

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/z_meisel/status/1889493923455787083

[Ravenlocke]

Text:

Almost everyone is dumping US Govt treasuries, including the Fed.

1) China’s treasury holdings are the lowest since 2008 and down by a whopping $500 billion from the peak in 2013.

2) The biggest holder of USTs: Japan’s appetite to buy USTs is the lowest since the GFC as yields become attractive back in Japan.

3) Saudi Arabia’s treasury holdings are the lowest since 2016 🚨🚨🚨

Source:
@SagarSinghSetia

Also one of the biggest sellers of US treasury debt is Social Security.

From 1984 to 2009, Social Security ran a surplus, meaning it collected more in annual revenue than it paid out every year in benefits. That surplus was borrowed and spent by the rest of the government and, in exchange, Social Security got special Treasury bonds it kept in its reserves to redeem in the future.

Since 2010, however, Social Security has been running an annual deficit, meaning it has been collecting less in revenue than it pays out in benefits.

As a result, Social Security redeemed the bonds held in the trust funds to pay out the full benefits. When the federal government repays those bonds, it must borrow from the public to obtain the funds to do so.

Social Security owns about $2.7 trillion in US govt treasury debt. That is gradually being redeemed to pay benefits, forcing the US Treasury to sell more debt on the open markets.



https://x.com/WallStreetMav/status/1691913145915216060

[Ravenlocke]

Text:
The Bank of England is in crisis.

They’ve leased out more gold than they actually hold, and now the paper market is falling apart. Buyers are facing 4-8 week delays for bullion, when they should be getting it in days….

With around 5,000 metric tonnes supposed to be in reserve,
@bankofengland
has effectively defaulted on delivery. This is a serious issue.

https://x.com/AdameMedia/status/1884775240254800070

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/WallStreetMav/status/1797004510377734588

https://x.com/Indian_Analyzer/status...59334867124572

[Ravenlocke]

Text:
Just re-reading the BRICS Improvements to the International Monetary and Financial System report and wanted to share this table.
BRICS are accelerating toward new systems for the 7 billion beyond Bretton Woods/BIS dominion. Why? Looters.
$31 TONS GOLD stolen from Venezuela by UK to please the US overlord Bolton.

https://x.com/Kathleen_Tyson_/status...24529186041914