Take a gander at this article. Or don’t, it’s a free world.
It’s a short article that does nothing to explore the actual story. It has the practiced ignorance of all that’s relevant that turned modern journalism into a punch line. Still tl:dr? Fine, here’s the Cliffs Notes version:
“Gold bars stamped with fake logos of major refineries have been circulated into the global market and landed in the vaults of JPMorgan Chase & Co….
…Bars worth at least $50 million stamped with the logos of Swiss refineries that did not produce them…
…at least 1,000 of the bars have been found — a small share of output from the gold industry, which produces about 2 million to 2.5 million such bars every year.
But the forgeries are sophisticated, so thousands of additional ones may have gone undetected…”
Out-fucking-standing! This is a classic “tip of the iceberg” situation. I read that article and just couldn’t stop chuckling. It’s a small factual situation that indicates something really weird went down (or is still going down).
I love me a convoluted conspiracy and this one’s dripping with potential. I’m like “what in the name of Pirate Booty and Chinese waffle irons led to forged gold bars that are made of real gold?” There’s just no good legal, logical, non-spastic excuse for shit like this. Options range from money laundering at a level that includes the Illuminati and space aliens to “the Joker is fucking us”. Pick your poison.
Yet everyone’s chill. “You know Chad, this small fact draws into question an entire cascading system in ways that could be deep and meaningful. Perhaps we’d best forget about it and watch ‘Ow My Balls’.”
WTF REALLY HAPPENED!?!
Keep in mind… this is real gold. This isn’t some “plate lead with gold” bullshit. (That would be a lot more understandable.) This is real gold. Big gobs of it; to the tune of at least $50 million. It’s got “sophisticated” forgeries that obscure where it’s coming from. Am I the only one who’s a mite interested?
How many truckloads of gold can someone show up with before it’s necessary to forge the origin? And why are the banks so good at not knowing jack shit? Don’t they have a paper trail? When someone deposits bars of physical gold en mass banks don’t just stack it like cordwood. Every bar should have a name, rank, and serial number. They should, in theory, know where every friggin’ bar came from. The information is available and it’s time for some sleuthin’! “This particular ton of gold was deposited by a dude who showed up in an unmarked van and answered to the name ‘Captain Whackdoodle’, maybe we’d best investigate.”
I happily bask in the overall weirdness of the whole mess. Real gold from source X has been been swapped for real gold from source Y and this happened among people who are supposed to be grown ass bankers with software and tracking and stuff. Didn’t the smart dudes with the clipboards keep an inventory?
When some fleabag with a folklift steals an ATM it’s theft. When someone forges truckloads of gold bars and inserts them into the banking system it’s… I don’t even know what the heck to call it. It’s presumably money laundering of some sort. But whom? And why? And how? And do they live on a secret island protected by sentient armed Roombas? Why not? Once you get over the idea of forged gold bars how much further does it take to get to James Bond villain?
I can’t help but breathe deep of the shenanigans of this little story and know that God made for us a universe that’s infinitely interesting. We’re seeing the tip of the iceberg and I’ve no clue whatsoever it might mean. Someone’s stuffing obfuscated gold into major banks for the purpose of… Yeah, I’ll wait. Tell me why they did this bullshit thing?
Go ahead. Make up a story that explains it. “You see, me and bubba found a mountain of space alien gold on planet X and needed to turn it into greenbacks to buy beer so we forged origin stamps and…” And what? Do people just walk up to JP Morgan and say “I’ve got this truckload of bullion, check the stamps… it’s legit. I found it in my couch cushions.” Epstein offing himself ‘aint nearly as juicy as this. Who’s yanking gold from big ass banks and then replacing it… with gold? WTF? To what end? Are they using it on the weekend to buy hookers and blow, day trade, bet on the ponies? And then they’re returning real gold but from the mine they’ve got in their backyard? Really?
Delightfully inexplicable! The world has wheels within wheels and I’m charmed by the unexpected. This situation, if we ever hear the whole story, will be hilarious.
I can amuse myself with stories about Abba and talking squirrels all day long but this one exceeds me. I can’t imagine whatever nefarious shit just went down in the physical gold market. My best guess is that it’s all organized by this guy:
By the way, this isn’t the first hint of crazy ass shit going down. There’s another one that’s only half a decade old and it already seems to be disappearing down the memory hole.
You may not know this but Germany kept much of it’s gold overseas during a little kerfuffle we call the Cold War. Some of this was in New York.
In 2013 Germany was like “Russia ‘aint Soviet anymore and the wall’s been down for decades, we’re all stabilized and shit… so let us have our gold back.” Keep in mind, they asked the bank to return the actual physical gold that was theirs and had been in the bank for half a century of safekeeping.
The US responded with the craziest level of bullshit I’d ever heard. They literally said something to the effect of; “Yeah, cool. We’ve got every ounce you put in our care and of course we’ll give it right back to you. But first we’re going to melt down the physical bars you gave us and re-cast them so that we all know it’s on the up and up. It’ll take 8 years. ‘Cause like our van is broke down and we’re busy people.”
Germany should’ve been “Are you fucking kidding me? Return our property or we’ll kick your fucking shins.” But they didn’t want to notice the Emperor was wearing no clothes and the US was certainly avoiding saying something like; “Yeah, we spent that shit in the 1970’s”.
Everyone pretended nothing was happening. Germany agreed that it made perfect sense. “I’m so glad you’ve stored all that physical gold for decades and now, rather than being all silly pants and just tossing the same physical bars on an airplane… you’re going to melt them down and make new ones out of the exact same molecules. That’s a whole lot nicer than just dusting them off with some Pledge of something.”
The US was like; “I knew you’d understand. You’re our BFF”. Germany was like; “I knew I could trust ya’. Thanks for not just stealing it outright”. I was like; “Everyone assumes we spent their damn gold like a drunk cashing a paycheck at Vegas. So we made up a bullshit story and delay while buying new gold as fast as we can to cover our ass? That’s pretty chickenshit. It’s less ‘world reserve economy’ and more ‘why you don’t loan your car to crackheads’.”
We eventually bought our ass out of hock. Some 583 tons of gold left New York and Paris and wound up in Frankfurt. Everyone agrees it was the exact same molecules that left Germany for safekeeping so many years ago.
Also, the tooth fairy lives in Tokyo and plays poker with Santa on Wednesdays.
The relaxing thing about the “we’ve got your gold but you can’t see it but we’ll remelt it and deliver it but it’ll take several years” story is that it seemed so obvious. I think we can safely say the physical gold of origin had been parceled out. There’s no non-naive alternative explanation for an 8 year delay. Also, thanks to Germany for giving us half a decade to fill the order (it was many tons of gold). Everyone playing along just sorta’ makes sense.
What’s a bit nerve wracking is that if you search Google you’ll find most of the media from the initial “what the fuck” 2013 phase is gone. Lots of articles about the 2017 “the deliveries are done” phase are plentiful. I clearly remember the story about “we’re going to remelt the original molecules for reasons that aren’t clear” but I can’t find that official statement. It was memory holed. Why? Because “shut up”, that’s why.
Anyway, in case you thought life wasn’t weird enough, now you know that supervillains in 2019 are stashing tons of real gold under fake sources. You also know that in 2013 the US said “oh crap, Germany wants their shit back” and everyone pretended that spending years to deliver freshly remelted gold is the same as shipping a dusty 50 year old bar to Frankfurt. Nothing to see here:
Have a nice day.
A.C.
Update: The whole ‘net is gaslighting my ass and it’s pissing me off. I clearly remember the “remelt the gold” situation. Luckily, Silicon Greybeard shines through. Check out: The Curious Case of the German Gold.