IMF urged to use surplus gold for debt relief

IMF urged to use surplus gold for debt relief

www.guardian.co.uk

The IMF's board will meet in Washington on Wednesday to discuss what it should do with the profits raised from disposing of just over 400 metric tonnes of gold, one eighth of the IMF's total stock of the precious metal.

When it announced the sell-off in September 2009, the IMF said the move was an important step in putting its finances on a "sound long-term footing". It added that important components of the strategy would be the creation of an endowment and a boost to concessional lending to developing nations.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Sure, sell-off gold reserves to put the long-term economy on a sound footing. Not majoring in economics I would tend to think that counter-intuitive but it appears I would be wrong, the IMF is reportedly doing just fine with that strategy. They are much better at dealing with the situations they help create.

"The IMF is doing very well out of the economic crisis it helped to create, with a windfall from gold sales and profit from lending," Jones said. "Yet, many poor countries have been forced into debt through no fault of their own, whether due to disasters or the financial crisis caused by western banks. The IMF should use its excess money to cancel such debts."

So civil groups are calling on the IMF to cancel-off some debt from poorer countries. What would those poor countries do with it, spend it on healthcare and infrastructure instead of paying interest on their debt? Or will their government leaders pocket it? The IMF is savvy to that, they have their own rich, greedy leaders to feed as well.

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by Erongaricuaro


I wonder who they sold the gold to...
IMO gold is a better investment than money in the bank..

Originally posted by backinblack
reply to post by Erongaricuaro

 

I wonder who they sold the gold to...
IMO gold is a better investment than money in the bank..

I would agree and I am sure the IMF as well, they know how much their bank money is worth. Selling gold reserves I don't believe make it any more valuable, it just makes there more of it, paper money that is.

Originally posted by backinblack
reply to post by Erongaricuaro

 

I wonder who they sold the gold to...
IMO gold is a better investment than money in the bank..

Are you sure about that? Your first statement seems to question the second statement.

Now why did they sell off the gold...? and why are there so many people trying to sell gold online/through TV advertising?

reply to post by boncho

Are you sure about that? Your first statement seems to question the second statement.

Now why did they sell off the gold...? and why are there so many people trying to sell gold online/through TV advertising?

Remember those that run the IMF don't own it..
If they sell gold to their mates it's no loss to them..

Well, I'd rather have gold than US$$ ATM...

More than 10 tonnes will greatly impact the gold price. 400 tonne would cut the price to 1/3, I think. This happened when the Swiss sold off a chunk of their holdings (nothing like 400 tonnes). Gold was under $300 p/ounce.

Mines will close down. Many closed before but these days mines are viable with small returns because of the high price. Probably half of the mines opened in the last few years will be forced to shut down and gold production will only trickle from places like Africa and New Guinea.

I must be wrong in my assumption. Declaring a sell off of 400 tonnes is suicide. Selling 10 tonnes and waiting for the price to recover is more prudent. If IMF are selling 400 tonnes like that something is afoot.

Originally posted by boncho

Originally posted by backinblack
reply to post by Erongaricuaro

 

I wonder who they sold the gold to...
IMO gold is a better investment than money in the bank..

Are you sure about that? Your first statement seems to question the second statement.

Now why did they sell off the gold...? and why are there so many people trying to sell gold online/through TV advertising?

Gold is no longer a good investment if the story is accurate.
Those ads will soon disappear and the companies will stop trading. The reason why there are so many ads is because a huge business in buying second hand gold has sprung up because of the high prices - that people are happy to get back more than what they originally paid. It's refined and... because of the huge prices, returned to the market.

Okay I read the report. Who bought it?

I think the Fed now has gold again and that was the purpose of the sale. Just a guess.

reply to post by squandered

More than 10 tonnes will greatly impact the gold price. 400 tonne would cut the price to 1/3, I think.

Now that would be a nice racket..
Sell off a part of your gold and forces prices down to 1/3 the previous price. then use the money to buy back 3 times as much and watch the price go back up when the $$$$ crashes..

reply to post by backinblack


The difficulty is finding the gold to buy - hint, hint - it's not there to buy, so...

If you buy back 3 x as much you will have tripled the price, lets say. There isn't always very much on the market.

That's why 100 year old mines in the abandoned gold fields in Victoria have become viable prospects. If the price doubles it will be worth while to rip up some quaint old towns and mine the ground! If the price is high there's a demand. They'll take whatever they can for whatever the cost.

If you add enough to create a surplus in the market the price will drop, but that's a direct result of your input. Take it away again and the price goes back up.

Originally posted by squandered
More than 10 tonnes will greatly impact the gold price. 400 tonne would cut the price to 1/3, I think. This happened when the Swiss sold off a chunk of their holdings (nothing like 400 tonnes). Gold was under $300 p/ounce.

Mines will close down. Many closed before but these days mines are viable with small returns because of the high price. Probably half of the mines opened in the last few years will be forced to shut down and gold production will only trickle from places like Africa and New Guinea.

I must be wrong in my assumption. Declaring a sell off of 400 tonnes is suicide. Selling 10 tonnes and waiting for the price to recover is more prudent. If IMF are selling 400 tonnes like that something is afoot.

Maybe the Western Nations want to ease back into the gold/silver standard? The only way to do that is to bring down the price of gold so it is more affordable to switch fiat money to gold backed money.

reply to post by korathin

Maybe the Western Nations want to ease back into the gold/silver standard? The only way to do that is to bring down the price of gold so it is more affordable to switch fiat money to gold backed money.

The IMF is part of the banking cartel..
The last thing they want is gold backed currency IMO...

reply to post by squandered


I have family in Ballarat..
Leave their land alone..

reply to post by backinblack


That's exactly the quaint town I was referring to ;-)

I think the IMF is party to the same banking cartel that prints the money we slave for. I can only believe that the 400 tonne deal was made with a quick handshake at the behest of big-money with lots of palms being greased.

reply to post by backinblack

I wonder who they sold the gold to...

CHINA the world's new super state.

Dec 3, 2010 ... China bought 209.7 metric tons of gold in the first 10 months of the year, a fivefold increase compared with the same period last year.

reply to post by squandered

I think the Fed now has gold again and that was the purpose of the sale. Just a guess.

Wrong guess.

The Great American Disaster: How Much Gold Remains In Fort Knox?

....The US dollar of August, 1971 is as of 2009 worth just over 18 cents, according to the Inflation Calculator. Thus, in purchasing power, the dollar has lost over 80% in the past 39 years.

Only foreigners were legally able to turn in their US dollars and get gold from the US Government from 1934 to 1971. August 15 of that year closed off that last power of convertibility.

In 1934, gold was confiscated from US citizens, melted from coins into bars, and gathered over the next few years into a new storage facility at Ft Knox, Kentucky....

The peak amount of gold held in Fort Knox reached 701 million ounces of gold. This was in 1949. This amount equaled 69.9% of all the gold in the world...

From then until 1972, at least 75% of official US gold left the nation in exchange for paper dollars which can be printed at will. However, I think the total amount of real gold which remains is even less. The exact amount that remains is now officially listed at 147.3 million ounces. From the peak, that is a decline of 79%....

When President Nixon closed the gold window exactly 39 years ago, Durell began hearing rumors that made him concerned about the amount and quality of the gold that remained in Fort Knox....

...on September 23, 1974 Mary Brooks, the Director of the US Mint, led six Congressmen and one Senator on a tour of Ft Knox. It was the first time since Franklin Roosevelt visited on April 28, 1943 that anyone except Mint and Treasury officials had been allowed inside of Ft Knox. Too my
knowledge, no outsider has been inside ever since.

The only audit that has ever been done of the gold inside Ft Knox was done days after Dwight Eisenhower became President in January of 1953...

The central problem was that it wasn't much of an audit. To sum it up:

1. Representatives of the audited group were allowed to make the rules governing the audit. No outside private experts were allowed.

2. Those government bureaucrats involved were inexperienced in their tasks, by their own admission.

3. The entire audit of the largest gold hoard ever concentrated in history lasted only seven days.

4. Only a fraction of the gold was actually tested. Later, the officials put this fraction at just 5%.

5. Based on that fraction, the official committee reported that, in their opinion, all the holdings would have matched their records if they'd all been tested.

6. If the audit was accurate, the fact remains that almost 80% of it went overseas in the coming years. If the audit was not accurate, the amount of gold lost could have been even more.

The shocking admission Ft Knox holds very little good delivery gold was made to Mr. Durell by the chief official of the General Accounting Office (GAO). This happened a few months after the September 1974 tour.

www.lewrockwell.com...

reply to post by boncho


They aren't trying to sell gold... they are trying to get you to sell your gold to them...... Which I think is an even scarier thought than the one you just had...

reply to post by DaMod


I believe that is short sighted.

The companies that are buying gold from people are buying heirlooms and old/unwanted jewelry from people and offering very little in return. They are making good profit off the increase of gold price.

But in general, Gold is the big thing that is being marketed to everyone right now. And why not? It's at record levels.
Note
Note 2
Note 3




So what is the long term plan? I don't know. Have people buy tons of gold, kill currency along the way, release major stocks of gold so it crashes and buy it back when both currency and gold are bottomed. *Something to think about.

reply to post by crimvelvet


My guess was based on a threat of an audit, with them trying to put something back into reserve and stave away panic.