Update: A Test For Gold Bars To Determine Hidden Tungsten

Back in November the story arose [See previous post HERE] that certain banking institutions had been astonished to discover that what had been thought to be gold bars were actually gold encased tungsten. These bars were difficult to identify as tungsten has an almost identical density as gold. This story seemed to emanate from one source and there has been little confirmation since November from banking institutions. There is no doubt that this fraud happens; we are uncertain about the extent of the fraud. There has been a continued run up in the price of gold and central banks have been adding to gold reserves in recent months. This doesn't contradict the story.
The fact that authorities haven't debunked the rumor by now is interesting.
Very little information has surfaced on this problem since the initial stories. Here is a report of a non-invasive analytical technique that would determine the validity of any gold object. There is little detail and it could be a scam, but here is the LINK.

Quote of the Day

When Kung-hsi Hua was sent on a mission to Ch'i, Master Jan requested (of Confucius who was representing the government, the Ch'i family) an allowance of grain for Hua's mother.
The Master (Confucius) said, "Give her a fu." (cauldron, a nominal amount)
Jan requested more, deeming a fu not enough.
"Then give her a yi," (a measure, more, but still not enough to please Jan) said the Master.
Jan instead gave her five ping. (bundles, ten times what Confucius granted)
The Master observed, "When Ch'ih (Kung-hsi Hua) was proceeding to Ch'i, he had fine fat horses pulling his carriage, and wore shining furs."
"It is said that a gentleman, who is expected to be a superior man, helps the distressed, but does not enable the rich to become richer."

Confucius, The Analects, an amalgam and improvement (I hope) of various translations, primarily Legge and Waley, by John Bonanno

The Octopus, 1882 cartoon, a metaphor for the power of the trusts and corporations and specifically, Rockefeller's Standard Oil in the late 19th Century.

Do you have any 400 Ounce gold bars? Are you sure they are what you think they are?

Moo Hoo Hoo Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Nothing is what it seems.

And here's a shout out to you gold bugs: Maybe your gold coins are worth a lot more than what the market says. Many of the banks' gold bars may be worth a lot less.
There are reports this week of mysterious doings in the shadow world of gold bar transfers amongst banks. Tungsten, also known as Wolfram, is a useful metal in industry . It costs about $10 a pound. It also has a very interesting atomic characteristic that makes it useful to swindlers. Taking atomic weight and density into consideration, it has almost the same weight per volume as gold.
Certain unsavory characters have been coating tungsten cores with gold to make some very official looking gold bars that have been fooling some very smart (theoretically, but after the last year, maybe not) bankers.
This story involves the usual suspects: The Bank of England, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, The Clinton Administration, The Chinese Government, The Federal Reserve, NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd. It just doesn't get any better than this.
The banks and the governments now are feeding on each other, the people, in general, having been drained. Follow the link at the end of the tease and read the whole story. It's worth it.

State Street's SPDR (acronym for Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts) Logo, and what a Wonderful Logo it is! The original SPDR (SPY) was a stock designed to track and reflect the value of the entire S&P 500 basket of stocks. SPDR-GLD was designed to track at the value of Gold.

Story:

"On Doing God's Work"
“Gold Finger - A New Take On Operation Grand Slam With A Tungsten Twist”

By: Rob Kirby

"I’ve already reported on irregular physical gold settlements which occurred in London, England back in the first week of October, 2009. Specifically, these settlements involved the intermediation of at least one Central Bank [The Bank of England] to resolve allocated settlements on behalf of J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank – who DID NOT have the gold bullion that they had sold short and were contracted to deliver. At the same time I reported on two other unusual occurrences:
1] - irregularities in the publication of the gold ETF [Exchange Traded Fund-JB] - GLD’s[State Street Global Advisors SPDR Gold shares, Website LINK, Prospectus LINK traded on the New York Stock Exchange to "offer investors an innovative, relatively cost efficient and secure way to access the gold market" since 2004-JB] bar list from Sept. 25 – Oct.14 where the length of the bar list went from 1,381 pages to under 200 pages and then back up to 800 or so pages.

2] - reports of 400 oz. “good delivery” bricks of gold found gutted and filled with tungsten within the confines of LBMA approved vaults in Hong Kong.

Why Tungsten? If anyone were contemplating creating “fake” gold bars, tungsten [at roughly $10 per pound] would be the metal of choice since it has the exact same density as gold making a fake bar salted with tungsten indistinguishable from a solid gold bar by simply weighing it. Unfortunately, there are now more sordid details to report.

When the news of tungsten “salted” gold bars in Hong Kong first surfaced, many people who I am acquainted with automatically assumed that these bars were manufactured in China – because China is generally viewed as “the knock-off capital of the world”. Here’s what I now understand really happened: The amount of “salted tungsten” gold bars in question was allegedly between 5,600 and 5,700 – 400 oz – good delivery bars [roughly 60 metric tonnes]." The Rest: (LINK)

That's about 2 1/2 billion dollars worth of gold in question so far.
Now we know one of the ways the price of gold has been kept down.

Simple Good Old Fashioned Fraud!

And to all you gold standard guys: There just isn't enough gold in the world on which to base a monetary system. (Unless a significant portion of the population goes away.) And I don't know how you can make a fair monetary system at this point without blowing up the whole thing. (Heh Heh, Not literally guys, I'm too old to be a revolutionary.) But one thing we can all agree on is that the gold market has been played in a Big Way. And, here's another thing,... the very respectable people in charge of this world deserve the Ultimate Penalty because they are worse than any common criminal since they are in Authority, and they are abusing it. One would think they had enough by virtue of their positions, and their wealth, and their power. But "enough" is not in the vocabularies of these people. That's really funny: as if they could ever have "enough!" But let us have no fear. This will be carefully swept under the rug. But, damn, that rug is getting very lumpy.

Quote of the Day:

"I'm doing God's work."

-Lloyd Blankfein, current CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs Profile: (LINK)
Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson's replacement

Blankfein's proclamation begs the question: Who is his God?

And maybe the gold bugs better check their coinage after all. I must admit that I have a certain respect for a company that boldly advertises their ability to commit fraud.

"A Chinese company called Chinatungsten [LINK Whoops! It looks like the jewelry page is down.-JB] is advertising imitation gold merchandise on its website. The following quote is taken directly from their Tungsten Alloy for Gold Substitution page:

"a coin with a tungsten center and gold all around it could not be detected as counterfeit by density measurement alone ... We are well accustomed to exploit more innovative applications of tungsten products. Gold-plated tungsten is one of our main products."

This raises a few (somewhat rhetorical) questions. What kind of customer is this company looking to sell its imitation gold products to and for what purposes are they intended? Furthermore, what exactly are the "more innovative applications of tungsten products" that this company is hinting at" -Mike Hewitt, "Tungsten and Its Use In Making Fake Gold" (LINK)