The market does not price a meaningful difference between physical & paper gold. It's something you hear about when the price is falling, those same punters did not complain the price was being manipulated on the way up.

Of course not — the price of gold is the price of gold. But when only "paper" gold is selling, what is being bought and sold isn't really gold at all, yet it will affect the price.

The folks at GATA have been documenting unequivocal manipulation for years, and they did not stop when the price was going up. A suggestion to the effect that they did is an act of ignorance.

Bankers — especially central bankers — have something to gain from low gold prices, primarily through actions taken with "paper" gold. What they've done with fiat paper "money" and fractional reserve banking, they are also able to do with "paper" gold...

Forbes: Gold Will Get The Last Laugh On Central Banks

Jim Sinclair: Swiss Bank Refused To Give Friend His ("Allocated") Gold

Max Keiser: $20 Billion Paper Gold Sell Orders Trigger Stop Loss Selling

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"Live every day as if it were going to be your last; for one day you're sure to be right." — Harry Morant

People have been testing markets for over 500 years, put in a big order & see what happens, it's just what a market is all about.
If you want to buy a a position of anything, it's often cheaper to heavily short an illiquid market & wait for the sellers to run to you screaming! Thats jus how the market works.

GATA have existed for less than 20 years......I have been investing longer. BTW 20 Billion was not in percentage terms of total gold that big an order, shows how fragile the bubble was if thats all it took.

i'm not sure why the gold conspiracists make a big hoo-ha about 'paper' gold. we don't make a big fuss about coins versus electronic representations of money when we use our credit cards etc.

so the amount of gold traded is more than physical gold. of course! what else would you expect?

the amount of money flowing around is also much more than physical notes and coins.

I'm not to much into conspiracies, but this made for some interesting reading.

http://divinecosmos.com/start-here/d...l=1&limitstart=


and part 2 final sections

http://www.divinecosmos.com/start-he...-tyranny-final

in short: there's a chance that there's a little bit more physical Gold around than most people are made believe. Maybe some 2 Million++ metric tons of gold

For someone claiming to not be much into conspiracies, that website had my loony-bonkers-tinfoil-hat-wearers alarm going off at 11... Just the name (Divinecosmos) gives a fair warning, but pyramids, knights templar, masons, suspicious murders, nazis, the illuminati... This guy is really aiming to get it all in there!

seriously, i saw this and left:

OK this gets better and better - I'm now down to the trillion dollar US bearer bonds, the orchestration of a global financial meltdown by the Rothschilds, and he's started telling me he has proof that UFO's, teleportation and time travel are all true. He's also disproved Darwin.

Anyway, to summarise I'm not sure your source for the quantity of physical gold is entirely reliable...

Ha - I knew this had to come. I can't change the context. It's the parts about the "black gold" that makes it interesting. The bonds issued by FED, all the gold taken by the FED in in the 30ties and 40ties, the bullion stashed away, the "Cease and Desist" letter (to UBS / Kaspar Villiger) and much more. (some of the readers comments make interesting reading as well). If there is some truth to all these claims, then - I don't know.

Because (like I've already said ) what bankers have done with fiat paper "money" and fractional reserve banking, they are also able to do with "paper" gold. If you own "paper" gold when the music stops, all you'll have is ... PAPER — like most everybody else.

Such games can't — and historically NEVER DO — go on for ever. Artificially multiplying "wealth" (e.g., fiat 'money', 'paper' gold) is always based on DEBT. Today's central banks are manufacturing both debt and "money" at higher rates than ever. When the music stops — as it ALWAYS HAS — there's a crash, a depression, and those whose "investments" were based solely on paper are left with just that — PAPER — while whole nations find themselves saddled with insurmountable DEBT, courtesy of their rulers and central banks.

This cycle has been repeated numerous times in modern history. It's not hidden. Of course, nay-sayers will be ignoring history and saying 'nay' right up until it actually happens — and they'll be the ones sitting on piles of worthless paper, when history repeats itself AGAIN.

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"Live every day as if it were going to be your last; for one day you're sure to be right." — Harry Morant

You could also argue that giving gold any value is also manipulation, it's not as if industry needs the gold we have for the next 500 years! All you can do with Gold is look at it

Texaner! - It lies in the nature of things that at certain times donkeys and asses start making hee-haw, hee-haw noises. Don't let it concern you! It most probably means they are irritated about something.

Today I decided to buy a small quantity of gold. Not because I know something...there's a lot of things I don’t know. I don't know how long the world will continue to accept bits of paper with pictures on them of silly old statesmen, kings and queens ...or bridges, or so-called famous people I've never heard of. Nor do I know whether the gold price has bottomed yet. That said, in a world with so many unknown things, gold seems ok to me right now.

This afternoon I bought 10 old sovereigns at CHF 305 a piece at UBS.

The logical end of that argument is that giving anything any value is manipulation, rendering the very term "manipulation" devoid of valid moral or judicial import. There will always be some form of market-influence on the price of any commodity. Take your own chances on what will be worth more after the current program's inevitable hyper-inflation has kicked in — a kilogram of paper or a gram of gold — and handle your affairs accordingly (as I will mine).

The same could be said of Paper.

To be honest if you invest in a large supply of paper, it would possibly be a better hedge against inflation than Gold as the price of paper has not subject to a bubble, it will always be in demand.

I wasn't referring to paper as a commodity, but as a fiat paper-/digit-based currency (e.g., Dollar, Euro, Yen...).

Well you can spend paper money rather than just look at it! I see gold is below 1200, 1198.30 as I type

You can only spend paper 'money' when it's credible. Doesn't work with currencies collapsing under impossible debt burdens (among other things).

A great time to buy!

I'm nothing near a big-time investor, but I've avoided fiat-currency-based stocks, bonds, funds, etc., etc., for as long as I can remember. Instead, I buy tangible goods and commodities (including precious metals) that I believe will outlive the West's fiscal/monetary/economic collapse.

FWIW I think it's still hugely overpriced. Stocks do fine during times of inflation as they can increase prices, it's safe bonds & cash that are dangerous.

This is an entirely valid comment. It is up to every individual to decide what value something has, and everyone combined together creates its price discovery...that is, if no powerful individuals are not manipulating it.

Gold rush as Lao prices drop
That said, as the yahoo article above and many other like it show, in Asia there are many people who have not been convinced by Western economists, politicians and the Wall-Street press et al that gold 'is an archaic artefact' and still snap it up when the prices are right. Personally I find it hard to argue with over 5ooo thousand years of humankind's experience.

I would agree that present times look grim and the chances of a financial collapse of some sort are quite high. From what I'm reading it could well start as a sovereign debt crisis.