Saturday, ZH broke the story that JPMorgan’s secret Manhattan gold vault (the largest vault in the world) was directly across the street, and connected via underground tunnels to the NY Fed, which supposedly houses over 25% of the world’s central bank gold reserves.
Today via our friend Pining from TFMetals, we offer readers a rare glimpse inside the secret (until now) tunnel between the NYFed & JPM’s gold vaults.
Click here for a look inside the JPM/NYFed gold vault tunnel:
Hint: Because it’s the Credit Default Swap of the Next Financial Crisis
Credit default swaps were the insurance—the hedge—against exactly what happened in 2008: Bonds threatened to default, during the Global Financial Crisis. So the CDS’s insuring those bonds rose in value—until suddenly, they didn’t: CDS’s stopped rising in value just when the markets collectively realized that the counter-parties to those CDS contracts might not be able to pay up.
What if the price of gold is drifting not because the markets don’t trust the world’s reserve currencies to continue to devalue, but because the market doesn’t trust gold?
Since everyone with any sense realizes that this is the endgame of the current race to the bottom, gold ought to be rising dramatically, but that is not happening. Gold rose steady and strong from 2000 through September 2011—but since then it’s been drifting jaggedly.
So why would gold—which is an actual, physical commodity—be acting like credit default swaps did right before the 2008 crisis?
For the same reason: Gold buyers don’t trust the counter-parties selling gold.
Click here for more on the market’s distrust of paper gold:
By Jim Willie
The typical human reaction to any infection, vermin, danger, or toxicity is to stand back, to isolate the agent, to trap it, to prevent its further spread or release, then to remove it in a safe secure way if possible using trained professionals. Eventually decisions must be made on the level of acceptable risk on the removal, like what is willing to be lost or damaged or killed in the process. Risk analysis, cost trade-offs, and minimization decisions must be evaluated and executed. The toxic agent in global trade, global banking, and global bond market is the USDollar. In 2009, the Jackass began making a certain firm point. Those nations that depart from the entire USDollar system early will be the leading nations in the next chapter, with stronger foundations, richer solvency, emerging economies, healthier financial markets, efficient credit engines, growing wealth, stronger political helm activity, and better functioning systems generally. Imagine a contaminated blood system that infects, corrupts, and destroys all interior organs from the spread of the toxin. Those nations that stick with the crumbling USDollar system stubbornly will find a horrible fate with devastating effects, rampant economic damage, broken financial markets, sputtering credit engines, tremendous loss of wealth, wrecked supply lines, poverty spreading like wildfire, ruined political structures, social disorder, isolation from the rest of the world, and a fast ticket to the Third World. That is EXACTLY what is happening in the last several months. A division has begun, as the East has been busily installing the next generation platforms, as related to trade, banking, and commercial integration.
By Jim Willie
The global financial crisis is better described as a global monetary war to defend the toxic USDollar, whose sunset can be seen.In the last 12 to 18 months, the monetary war has again morphed, this time into a far more serious and financially violent global Gold War. Nations are fast realizing that their only true liquid assets of value are their gold reserves, and even they have been tampered with or stolen in a vast re-hypothecation scheme.
The Gold War is on, having moved to a higher gear, but nowhere near a climax gear. The true value of gold is being realized. The strength of gold during insolvency crisis is being observed. The resistance and rescue from the plague of insolvency is being made clear on a global stage. The new important part of the Gold War comes with the Allocated Gold Account scandal which will dwarf the LIBOR and MFGlobal scandals. The demands for repatriated gold accounts, primarily from the criminal bank sectors in London and New York, have amplified. Germany has finally joined with demands for gold repatriation. The demands will continue to grow even as tampered gold bars add to the motivation to repatriate. If only Chavez of Venezuela knew that he was to start a global trend to call gold home, in a Gran Aletazo de Mariposas. The grand butterfly flapping has caused a whirlwind that will turn into a tornado to wreck the central banks in a final death blow.
By Jim Willie, GoldenJackass.com
-The powerful gold factors are aligned and in place, led by permanent ZIRP and unlimited QE
Click here for more from Jim Willie on the coming global gold war: