Report: Swiss Bank Refuses to Release Gold to Client

moneynews ^ | Tuesday, 07 Dec 2010 01:26 PM | By Julie Crawshaw

[shield]

The raid of safety deposit boxes in New Orleans after Katrina should give everyone a hint what can and will come...

[screaminsunshine]

There is not enough Silver or Gold to replace the paper. Shhhh!

[screaminsunshine]

Mattress S&L is where I am. Fixing up and stocking up my sailboat. Better investment.

[Kellis91789]

But are you sure the “gold” you have in your hands is really gold ? Hasn’t there been counterfeit gold bars and coins discovered ? Made from tungsten with a heavy gold plating applied ? I’m not sure I’d believe it was really gold unless it was gold dust.

[RobRoy]

>>But are you sure the “gold” you have in your hands is really gold ? Hasn’t there been counterfeit gold bars and coins discovered ? Made from tungsten with a heavy gold plating applied ?<<

I agree. You can google “gold”, “Tungsten” and “China” and get some scary results. Apparently Tungsten is virtually identical in weight to gold.

It is why all my precious metals is junk silver. It’s danged bulky though.

[panaxanax]

>>”...if you don’t hold the ACTUAL metal in your hands, you may not have a nickel...”<<

Perfect screename for you, my FRiend! I, too, am a graduate of the ‘old-school’ way of thinking. If I don’t have it in my hand, I don’t own it.

[traditional1]

You can "own" all the paper you want, but the way the Courts are today, "Contracts" don't mean a thing.....they've already forced folks to renogotiate, simply when the Judge feels one Party was "taken advantage of", even though a signed Contract was executed.

Handshakes used to be binding contracts, but today, even sworn/Notarized Contracts are being thrown out.

Yeah....I'd sure feel confident that my "Gold Futures" contract would deliver if I called for payment.....LOL

[panaxanax]

Not only gold, but silver coins as well. Morgans, Peace and Trade all key dates and fake.....from China.

Another popular one is the 1942/1 Mercury dime.

Check out eBay search words: “replica, Morgan, 1903-S” etc. They’re damn near perfect.

http://www.silver-coins.org/counterfeit_dollars.html

[Yaelle]

I am not inclined to believe this guy. I have experience with Swiss banks. Any branch in a major metropolitan Swiss area would have enough for one person (not a world’s richest) to pull their gold out in total. I’ve seen the gold. I used to make large withdrawals and deposits for my company when I worked in Switzerland.

I believe there is something else to this story.

[Politically Correct]

But are you sure the “gold” you have in your hands is really gold ? Hasn’t there been counterfeit gold bars and coins discovered ? Made from tungsten with a heavy gold plating applied ? I’m not sure I’d believe it was really gold unless it was gold dust.

They used Tungsten to counterfeit large gold bars. Unless you own large bars it's unlikely that you have that problem.
As for the coins the ones being counterfeited are the rare coins not the common coins sold by the mint and most gold brokers. No one has ever found a tungsten coin, too tough to fabricate and too expensive.

[Erasmus]

My thoughts exactly. There has been speculation for a few years now that those that do not take possession of their physical gold may find out, if they ever try to collect it, that they don’t have any. The accusation was being floated that there is more gold being sold that actually exists and the same tons are being sold over and over again.

Something a little like that happened to me about 35 years ago. Later, I got a letter from the state's Attorney General asking for information about my dealings with the broker in question. I knew that there were a number of much larger clients with big lawsuits against the broker and that I wouldn't be able to add much to the AG's case.

I never found out if they eventually nailed the broker.

[3niner]

Rickards expects the world will eventually go to a gold standard-backed currency.

There is nowhere near enough gold to back all the world's currency. It might be a good idea to come up with a basket of asssets, which could collectively back all the world's currency, but it's doubtful that that would be practical.

The answer, for individuals, is to acquire hard assets on their own, if they see a need to do so.

[3niner]

Many ‘banks’ got taken by the gold-plated zinc ‘bars’.

Not possible, zinc is much less dense than gold. You are probably thinking of tungsten.

[dennisw]

I’ve long had a feeling that these places where people invest in gold don’t have nearly as much gold as they’re selling. They turn around and invest your money in stocks, just promise to give it back to you based on the price in gold. They just hope there isn’t a run to expose them.

GLD is the huge gold ETF. If you want to make a straight bet on the gold bullion price going up you can buy a share at $136. Are they buying and selling gold bullion each day to keep their books in line with customers buying and selling shared in GLD? 
Not completely so. GLD does own/buy/sell gold bullion but they are also always screwing around with gold futures and gold derivatives to keep their "gold ownership" in line with how many shares in GLD are bought/sold each day.
You can short GLD if you say gold price is going down plus the options market in GLD is liquid

There are gold funds that do invest in straight physical gold with no monkey business.  Sprott is one. So is Central gold fund and Perth Mint (Australia)

[3niner]

As for the coins the ones being counterfeited are the rare coins not the common coins sold by the mint and most gold brokers.

This illustrates an important point. It is safer to invest in common coins which carry very little premium over the gold value. This eliminates most risk from counterfeiting, and rough handling.

[Atlas Sneezed]

But are you sure the “gold” you have in your hands is really gold ?

---

Assuming you are talking about popular bullion coins like Eagles, Maple Leafs, and Krugerrands, the fakes that have actually been found are trivially easy to detect with a scale and calipers costing less than $20 (because they are lead).

Tungsten fakes would be much more difficult to detect, but are so impractical to create that they, well, never have been created. Moreover, if they were created, you’d have the means to detect them on the market in no time.

Here’s an easy way to detect the fakes that have been out there: http://www.fisch.co.za/operation.htm

[Kellis91789]

“There is nowhere near enough gold to back all the world’s currency.”

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but there is supposedly less than $800B of US paper currency in circulation. Most of the money in the world is just numbers in computers. Fort Knox holds about $200B in gold at today’s prices. I don’t know how much the US has in gold in other locations, but clearly US paper currency in circulation could not be redeemed for gold without gold going to $6,000 an ounce.

[An Old Man]

"But are you sure the “gold” you have in your hands is really gold ?"

You better believe I am! When I first started out buying Gold and silver bars a long time ago I took one of the Engalhard bars to a metallurgist to find out what was in it.

In addition to pure gold, there were about 15 other impurities in the bar. However when I read their report, the 999.9999990 gold content indicated an almost pure bar.

So much for worrying about purity. Make your purchases face to face with someone you trust. That way you can always look them up if something bad transpires.

[Kozak]

Buy a safe.

[djf]

IMHO, the whole “invest in brass and lead” thingy is silly. Just plain silly.

I’m not sure what part of the world you live in, but where I live, there are probably 3.5 million people within 40 miles of me.

So even if you live near a town, let’s say a “small” town of 100,000 people, what you gonna do when your measly 500 rounds run out?
OK, so you have 1,000 rounds - same question.
Now I’ll got out on a limb and speculate that you have 10,000 rounds - what you gonna do when you break a firing pin?

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a couple guns and a few hundred rounds, but really, let’s be honest here.