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Oh right. So is there a test for tungsten in good delivery bars?

Yes it is some sort of electrical test. Gold has a higher conductivity than tungsten. I saw a write up on it I will try to find and post.

 

I did email James Turk about the Rob Kirby story, he hasn't replied yet, but I am sure he will at some point. Will post when he does.

 

This is from lemetropolecafe;

 

After reading the café daily for more than a year now, I am happy to make a hopefully useful small contribution myself. Being an analog electronics development engineer with a few decades of activity now, I can confirm that it is definitely possible to use an electrical resistance measurement for separating real gold bars from tungsten-filled ones, like Adrian proposed.

 

This is done by using a 4-terminal resistance measurement (see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-terminal_sensing) rather than a 2-terminal one. In this way a reference DC current of for instance 1 Amp is sent through the gold bar between both ends with 2 current probes, and the voltage drop over the length of the bar is measured by means of 2 separate voltage probes at almost zero current. So the voltage drop caused by the contact probes carrying the current is completely eliminated. This is the way all micro-ohm measurements are done if some precision is required.

 

A gold bar of 26x5x5cm at 20°C would have an end-to-end resistance of 22.14 nanoOhmmeter x 0.26m / 0.0025sqm = 2.3 microOhm. Because the probes are pointed rather than contacting the whole bar end surfaces, the actual measured resistance will be somewhat different.

 

In any case all genuine gold bars measured at the same 4-terminal connection points and temperature should give a reading within a couple percent difference, while a fake tungsten-filled bar would show roughly twice that resistance depending on how thick the gold edges still are. The same 4-terminal technique can be used for coins and smaller bars, measurement time is less than one second with the right contact probes.

 

In this way it would be possible to test the whole Fort Knox deposit pretty fast, it would probably be much harder to make the bar count match to the official number…

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Gold and silver both showed some real strength today in the face of a dollar rebound of .5 on the USDX. I think the cartel must really be up against it at the moment trying to keep a lid on prices. I expect to see one day soon a exponential rise from a squeeze induced short covering.

 

Will be interesting to see how options expiry goes this month.

 

 

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Hi all,

 

I don't know how widely this was picked up, but since I'm in the region I thought I'd share it: Mauritius purchased 2 tons of IMF gold this week. OK, 2 tons isn't a lot, but then Mauritius isn't very big: only 1.25million people with an GDP per capita of around $7000. The equivalent in population terms would be the UK buying 100 tons of gold. In terms of economic weight, it is as if the UK had purchased 700 tons of gold - so, pro-rata, a big investment.

 

This had been discussed a couple of years ago but they didn't buy. Why buy now at twice the price? Interestingly, Mauritius has a pretty good history of getting things right and is closely allied economically to India. Draw your own conclusions I suppose.

 

Wanderer

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It's cheaper to buy gold four months in the future than it is spot now!!!!

 

Got Gold Report: COMEX commercial shorts in retreat for silver

 

Backwardation in both gold and silver again

 

Just as we saw two weeks ago in the last full Got Gold Report, both gold and silver futures ended the week in backwardation, where the cash or spot price was higher than the front active contracts. In the case of gold, cash gold closed at $1,119.20, which is $2.50 above the December contract as shown in the table below courtesy of Barcharts.com. Notice also that the cash price finished higher than the February contract by more than $1 and was just a whisker below April.

 

Note that silver futures are also in backwardation, which is rare and unusual in the metals futures markets. Backwardation suggests that demand for physical metal is immediate and material. Cash silver finished the week higher than the December and March contracts. We are witnessing the early stages of metal scarcity or at least the immediate perception of it. Actual scarcity will almost certainly follow – if the world holds it together. The only question is when. The irony is that long-time veteran metals traders scarcely believe it – yet.

 

As we have said previously, while backwardation by itself does not guarantee that the metals will advance in price, most analysts and traders view backwardation as a much more bullish than bearish condition. All else being equal, both gold and silver should, repeat should, remain well bid on most any dip in the near term, especially given interesting and unusual developments in the commercial net short positioning detailed below in the Gold and Silver COT sections.

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Hi all,

 

I don't know how widely this was picked up, but since I'm in the region I thought I'd share it: Mauritius purchased 2 tons of IMF gold this week. OK, 2 tons isn't a lot, but then Mauritius isn't very big: only 1.25million people with an GDP per capita of around $7000. The equivalent in population terms would be the UK buying 100 tons of gold. In terms of economic weight, it is as if the UK had purchased 700 tons of gold - so, pro-rata, a big investment.

 

This had been discussed a couple of years ago but they didn't buy. Why buy now at twice the price? Interestingly, Mauritius has a pretty good history of getting things right and is closely allied economically to India. Draw your own conclusions I suppose.

 

Wanderer

Interesting, thanks.

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Interesting, thanks.

There was some interesting comment last night about this on lemetropolecafe. It turns out that both Sri Lanka and Mauritius has previously had listed as the gold reserves with the IMF 5.3 Tons & 1.9 Tons respectively. So the two central banks bought IMF gold in amounts that effectively doubled their previous holdings. There was comment about the possibility that the "purchases" replace gold that was leased out by them and cannot now be returned.

 

It will be interesting to watch the next IMF report and see how their reserves are listed.

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Where have you been over the last ten years that is exactly what they have been doing. Gordon Brown topped them all with selling half of the UK supply at the very bottom on behalf of the cartel.

And you believe UK govt figures?

 

He was probably very busy playing Quake 2 or something...

 

How's the economic modeling coming along msparks? Or are you not allowed to say? Secret squirel and all that!

Good stuff, slight memory leak issue at the moment with some of the more advanced stuff which is my job for today, but most of the critical bugs are now fixed, hopefully fully delivered on the pharma requirements now, so its back to the grindstone on things I had planned for the start of the year.

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Just FYI, and I don't want to come across as "OMG SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET", but India bought that IMF gold at a $100 discount to the average spot price over a 2 week period, or $949 per ounce. So for anyone to theorize that there is some sort of floor at $1,045 is wrong.

Do you have a link to back up what you are saying?

 

Here is a reuters report which says the average price paid was $1045

 

CORRECTED - CORRECTED-IMF sells 200 tonnes of gold to India central

 

* IMF sells 200 tonnes of gold to Reserve Bank of India

 

* Sale is part of total of 403.3 tonnes to be sold by IMF

 

* India paid an average of $1,045 an ounce for the gold (Adds details from conference call)

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Do you have a link to back up what you are saying?

 

Here is a reuters report which says the average price paid was $1045

 

CORRECTED - CORRECTED-IMF sells 200 tonnes of gold to India central

 

* IMF sells 200 tonnes of gold to Reserve Bank of India

Article Controls

 

* Sale is part of total of 403.3 tonnes to be sold by IMF

 

* India paid an average of $1,045 an ounce for the gold (Adds details from conference call)

 

The conference call did not say this, it said that the reference price was $1,045. If you go into the details it says that there was an agreed discount to the reference price. If you then work out the size of the sale and the overall price paid (which I assume is right) it divides through and the maths gives an uncannily even $100 discount to the average REFERENCE price of $1,045.

 

[e] I'm not in the slightest surprised that the IMF wanted to imply that India paid $1,045 an ounce. But unless the overall sale value is wrong (which I very much doubt), they didn't pay that at all.

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The conference call did not say this, it said that the reference price was $1,045. If you go into the details it says that there was an agreed discount to the reference price. If you then work out the size of the sale and the overall price paid (which I assume is right) it divides through and the maths gives an uncannily even $100 discount to the average REFERENCE price of $1,045.

Can you post where it says there was a $100 discount, I can't find it and have never heard it discussed elsewhere.

 

200 tons = 6,400,000 ounces

 

6,400,000 x $1045 = $6.7 Billion

 

 

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Just FYI, and I don't want to come across as "OMG SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET", but India bought that IMF gold at a $100 discount to the average spot price over a 2 week period, or $949 per ounce. So for anyone to theorize that there is some sort of floor at $1,045 is wrong.

Also very interesting, although it would be good to have a source for this.

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Also very interesting, although it would be good to have a source for this.

Jim Sinclair and many others have it wrong, some internet poster has the scoop but can't back it up with any proof.

 

 

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I can't find the exact stuff I was looking at now but there's a quote in the press release that makes it very clear there was a discount to market prices. It'll be on the IMF website. The Reuters story alludes to it as well:-

 

"The Reserve Bank of India said the purchase was an official sector off-market transaction and was executed during Oct. 19-30 at market-based prices."

 

i.e. market based prices not market prices.

 

 

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I can't find the exact stuff I was looking at now but there's a quote in the press release that makes it very clear there was a discount to market prices. It'll be on the IMF website. The Reuters story alludes to it as well:-

 

"The Reserve Bank of India said the purchase was an official sector off-market transaction and was executed during Oct. 19-30 at market-based prices."

 

i.e. market based prices not market prices.

If it was true the story will would be well documented in the press. Do the maths 200 tons / $6.7 billion = $1045 x 6,400,000 ounces.

 

 

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Just FYI, and I don't want to come across as "OMG SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET", but India bought that IMF gold at a $100 discount to the average spot price over a 2 week period, or $949 per ounce. So for anyone to theorize that there is some sort of floor at $1,045 is wrong.

 

This whole concept of having a floor is wrong in my book. Remember Central Banks are masters of smoke and mirrors.

 

When the US FED stop printing money, then we might be able to have a meaningful debate about where support and resistance zones are.

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The conference call did not say this, it said that the reference price was $1,045. If you go into the details it says that there was an agreed discount to the reference price. If you then work out the size of the sale and the overall price paid (which I assume is right) it divides through and the maths gives an uncannily even $100 discount to the average REFERENCE price of $1,045.

 

[e] I'm not in the slightest surprised that the IMF wanted to imply that India paid $1,045 an ounce. But unless the overall sale value is wrong (which I very much doubt), they didn't pay that at all.

Here is the transcript of the conference call, it doesn't mention anything about a discount.

 

http://www.imf.org/external/np/tr/2009/tr110209a.htm

 

 

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Here is the transcript of the conference call, it doesn't mention anything about a discount.

 

http://www.imf.org/external/np/tr/2009/tr110209a.htm

Yeah the conference call guy seemed a bit clueless to be honest.

 

http://mostlyeconomics.wordpress.com/2009/...t-more-details/ makes it clear it is a "market-based" number not a market price.

 

Sadly I can't find the press release that I found the other week that made the discount explicit, but from a practical point of view a discount makes sense.

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