However, gold has also been long associated with crimes of theft. Perhaps the most common form of these over the years has been the "clipping" of small portions from a gold coin. These added up. It prefigured fractional banking. Theoretically, a government could allow a privileged class to "clip" money to "expand" the national currency to meet growing demand. A well known alternate option, of course, would be to send out pirates under the nomenclature of "buccaneer" to steal gold from another country (which may have stolen it from still another country or nation).
Let's face it! The nations of the world don't have a very good record for ethics or morality. The wealth of other nations has typically been "fair game." A nation doesn't earn the title of "perfidious Albion" by chance.
In the United States the record of gold as "coin of the realm" reflects the sort of criminal mischief that one might expect. As a scarce commodity, its value could be manipulated by withdrawal or infusion. Naturally, banks were in the best position to do this. Some did it "big time" and were sufficiently large to initiate "panics." The combination of sudden scarcity and of "calling in" loans by banks characterized the descent into panic by debtors. At the bottom of the panic, the buying power of gold had increased substantially, allowing those who possessed it a "once in a lifetime" opportunity. Since these panics were so lucrative for the few, they insured that there would be more of these than "once in a lifetime."
The naive supposed that the Federal Reserve Act would straighten all this out. Dah! The Federal Reserve System was planned by the biggest financiers in America, guiding by some of the richest of Europe. Wherever wolves gather, the sheep are in peril.
Many years ago, a Virginian wrote and published a paperback booklet entitled, "Mr. President, Where Is Our Gold?" I read it with interest. At the time I was the most naive sheep on the block.
One of the net events of America's combination of natural resources, industry, and involvement in European wars was the accumulation of a vast amoubt of gold bullion. Most Americans assumed that it was safely tucked away at Fort Knox. The Virginian's booklet challenged this assumption, noting that no annual audit occurred.
The last audit had been under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. Since then, no public accounting.
Forced by a swelling curiosity, a woman, holding some position such as Secretary of the Mint, or the like, surrounded by friendly media, opened one of the many vaults which held the nation's gold. "Here it is," she beamed to the media cameras. Non-media observers thought the color of the "gold" bars was funny - it was not quite right.
To this day there is great suspicion that "criminals within government" have managed to "shanghai" the national gold bullion. Where the gold went no one knows. It is known that the French and some other nations began to demand gold bullion in exchange for the U.S. dollars that had collected through trade, etc. This eventually led to Richard Nixon severing the link between the U.S. dollar and convertibility into gold.
At that point all Americans should have become suspicious of our leadership in regard to finance.
Now, it seems, the entire world is becoming suspicious of our leaders and financiers, especially the likes of Goldman Sachs, which has been one of President Obama's biggest supporters and advisers. Consider:
"The gold scandal first surfaced two years ago when millions of dollars in 'gold' at the central bank of Ethiopia turned out to be bogus. What were supposed to be bars of solid gold were nothing more than gold-plated steel. The bars the Ethiopians allegedly received were so obviously phony - gold-plated steel weighing a few pounds less than half of what each bar should weigh - that a few experts speculated the Ethiopian bankers knew that they had been ripped off and were simply trying to pawn it off on South Africa. It didn't work, and the South African banks returned it." [American Free Press,Feb. 15, 2010, Issue 7, page 4]
I believe that small episode demonstrates the descending ethics in international finance. It was not the only incidence of "funny" gold bullion. Consider:
"This leads us to 2010 and the mysterious report concerning phony gold bars dating to the Clinton administration some 15 years ago. As we reported in the Feb. 1 issue of American Free Press, the Chinese government discovered it had been swindled last October after analyzing nearly 6,000 gold-plated tungsten bars received from the U.S. that had reportedly been stored in Fort Knox.
"The chief suspects immediately became Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan and Lawrence Summers, all top U.S. financial officials during the Clinton administration and all strong supporters of Israel, undoubtedly spawning the account about the real gold from Fort Knox having been secretly taken to that country.
"[Gold expert Theo] Gray added that such 'top-quality fake London gold delivery bars' would cost thousands of dollars apiece to produce because such a bar has a considerable amount of real gold in it.
" 'You'd still make a nice profit considering that a real one is worth closer to $400,000,' added Grasy. 'A lower-budget version could be made. Such a bar would still feel and sound right and be only very slightly underweight, while costing less than $500 to ptroduce in quantity. It wpould not pas X-ray fluorescence, and whether it passes a chemical test would depend on how thick the electroplating.' " [supra]
Now, it seems to me that such doings are entirely in the spirit of gold clipping, which I mentioned above. Any international currency is certain to be manipulated by the likes of George Soros, who is a sort of modern buccaneer enriching the Queen of England among others. [She had entrusted a billion dollars with him to "increase and multiply.] But the story of fake gold doesn't end with Ethiopia and China. Consider:
"Amid international accusations that U.S. officials in the Clinton administration replaced gold in Fort Knox with phony, mostly-tungsten bars that were later shipped to China and other olaces yet unknown, a German refinery has now discovered that it has received a bogus 'gold' bar as well.
"The video proof was shown on the German television station ProSieben that ran the news story covering W.C. Heraeus in Hanau, Germany, the world's largest privately owned refinery.
"In the story, Wilfried Horner, head of the gold foundry, shows a 500-gram bar (16.0755 tro ounces) received from an unidentified bank. The bar had the right physical dimensions to be an authentic gold bar, but one of the Heraeus employees suspected something. After the bar was cut in half, the TV audience could plainly see that the dark insides were tungsten, with only a coating of gold on the outside." [supra, March 29, 2010, Issue 13, page 5]
There are expert counterfeiters in certain locations and among organized criminal groups. One wonders if the U.S. may be doing this itself, or, as with the C.I.A., contracting with known criminal groups who were known to have expertise in phony gold bullion. However it goes, there seems to be little doubt that the U.S.A. continues to be plagued by criminals in high government positions. Further, since the U.S.A. is not the only place where ethics in government is low, does this prefigure massive international swindles as corrupt governments vie to cheat each other?
In the articles cited above there was a paragraph noting that the Rothschild firm that has been on the London Gold Board since its formation, was "withdrawing" from the gold bullion business for the time. This suggested that one of the most sophisticated companies in the world may believe a great scandal is inevitable regarding gold bullion and doesn't want to be caught up in it.
In regard to America and its representatives, one cannot help but think of Pogo, the old cartoon strip, and its legendary comment: "We have met the enemy, and they are us."
April 04, 2010
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