A Swiss Bank Refuses to Hand Over an American Depositor’s Gold.

I totally understand your point, but with 2.2 MILLION home robberies per year in the US, it is your risk assessment I disagree with.

 

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Wow poor guy, why would he wanna keep gold in the bank in the first place?

 

There are too many suspicions and very little factual material presented. Very likely this is based on the type "Bank of China ~Gold account" where is touted as saving in gold, but once it is in the bank, you can't draw out the gold, only the paper ( Chinese) equivalent. I would be willing to bet that the person involved when he completed the paperwork for the account, he signed it and didn't read all of the details, just asked in an oral and nonbinding, non-recorded and quoted to reporters as he remembers it. Even the rich can be unassuming and dumb. Of course the tabloid presentation to sell to the conspiracy theory inclined succeeded in many cases.

 

Conspiracy or not...why doesn't he just take the Euros and replace the gold? :scratch:

Granted...that may lead to additional, undesired scrutiny of his finances but, other than that, what does he lose?

 

The ability to tell a story....and that's about it

 

Then again...if I let a valet park my BWM M5 and he brings be back Mercedes E350...I'm not gonna be happy...regardless.

 

Or one Gov't-Big Bank take over to robe 2.2 Million folks...

 

I have heard a lot of contracts are now settling in cash and not in gold. They probably don't have it.

 

You can't just settle a contract with delivery UNLESS you have purchased such a contract, and very few do so. As a contract is for 100 oz. of gold X contract price for May about 1453.60, it will cost you 145,360 + commission. Put that up and you can get your 100 oz. of gold when you pay fees to have it delivered by guarded transport and any storage fees. Of course it could be worth $1200 oz and you would have lost 25,000. For a much much smaller fee , you can buy options on gold contract, and you cost will be limited and fixed at that time. If gold goes to $1200, you just lost the option cost. If it goes to $2000, and then the option will reflect the increase, and you have more paper dollars. The Physical delivery has no leverage, but if one is "Daddy Big Bucks" they can play the physical game. Only those who actually need the gold at a certain date ( jewelers, coiners, etc.) would actually risk more loss when they play the leveraged game. JPM has no difficulty buying or selling physical gold as they have deep resources, The gold bullion bloggers most likely do not.

 

Geez Jim, you make it sound like the market works perfectly well for those who, you know, actually USE it. That just cannot be right, since an internet self proclaimed guru who has never participated in these markets has me convinced they are all rigged against me, even though I don't use them.

 

There's merit and drawbacks to holding PMs in the home and offsite locations. Most people make their decision based on their faith, or lack thereof, in the future of the economy. I hold some precious metals at home, under protection of a half ton safe, and think its prudent to do so. I also draw a line at how much PM I would hold in my home, based on how much I'm willing to lose in a theft or disaster.

People talk about securing PM's in their home from theft...it seems people often overlook disasters. I'm a firefighter and have worked numerous fires in which a homeowner lost significant amounts of cash or PMs because they were more concerned about securing (hiding) the asset than protecting it.

 

If you go to the follow-on King World News Blog article, this article reports that this guy's "friend" had his money in a "gold allocated account" and the inference is that his deposits are held in (and deliverable in) physical gold.

The point (true or not) is that withdrawal options are supposed to include delivery of physical gold, but the bank somehow changed its policy...presumably because they don't actually hold the physical gold promised by the "allocated account".

I understand there can be different types of accounts that do this, that, and the other...and this account may or may not be correctly characterized in the article...but, based on the information presented, it sounds like the guy deposited physical gold (or money for the purchase of physical gold) into an "allocated account", but can't receive his physical gold on demand.

How am I misunderstanding this?