The Goldsmiths--Part XVII

By R. D. Bradshaw

At the end of WWII, the US owned most of the world’s gold supply (then valued at about $25 billion at the $35 per ounce peg). At that time, the US dollar was as good as gold. Today, that picture has totally changed. To appreciate what has been happening to the use of gold to back money, it is imperative to first look at the Swiss Franc.

The Swiss Franc Situation

In recent years, Switzerland has had one of the strongest currencies in the world with its 40% gold backing of the Franc. While the Franc was not totally backed by gold, it was sufficiently backed by gold that the Franc was one of the world’s best. So what happened?

Well, the power of the controlled media, controlled Swiss government and privately owned Swiss central bank took over to persuade the Swiss people to vote for an end to the statutory gold backing of the Franc. So now, the Franc joined the rest of the world with a trip to worthless fiat money.

To address the situation in Switzerland, Escapeartist.com had an article by Ron Holland on “Has Switzerland Sold Out to Washington, London & Wall Street?” While Holland did not necessarily disagree with the end of the gold backed Franc, he did raise some good points on what has happened in Switzerland in terms of her own monetary independence.

His position was that the value of the Franc, in terms of gold, was materially affected because there was weakness in the gold market and because the value of the Franc was more dependant on the Swiss central bank policies and actions (i.e. in linking the value of the Franc to the EURO).

While this writer believes that it was a mistake to abolish the statutory gold backing, Holland’s perception on the role of the Swiss central bank is on target. Yes, Switzerland sold out to Washington, London and Wall Street. But I must hasten to say that this sell out was inevitable because just as the Rothschilds and their plutocratic banking colleagues own the central banks in the US, England and the EU, the same is true in Switzerland.

An article on Central Bank Reserves (from gata.org) says that about 31,000 tons of the world’s gold supply is held by central banks (the date for this article was not clear to me, but the last figures cited were for the year 2005). Specifically, here are the alleged major holdings for 2005:

USA 8136.2 tons

Germany 3433.2 tons

IMF 3217.3 tons

France 2977.8 tons

Italy 2451.8 tons

Switzerland 1332.1 tons (in 2000, Switzerland had 2590 tons)

Probably, the ECB holds/controls the gold from Germany, France and Italy. Though these remarks are some three years old, there is a hidden question therein which needs to be addressed here in 2008.

Perhaps because the Franc has been cut loose from gold, we have heard stories the past several weeks that the Swiss have been secretly selling some of their gold (which seems to be one of the reasons why the gold price has fallen). For months now, the EU has been selling its gold on the open market as well. England sold most of her gold years ago. And now there is doubt that the IMF owns the gold she is alleged to have.

US Gold

On the US, the picture is even more dismal. While the US pretends to own some gold, the question is have we been lied to about US gold holdings? In other words, are the gold reports from the US (and the other alleged owners) all paper stories which lack any presence in actual physical gold?

Starting in the late 1960s and continuing on until the 1980s, a number of prominent Americans began to question the official US government and Fed news releases about the status of the US gold supply--most of which was allegedly secured in vaults at Fort Knox, KY. The following comments are taken from a related story at apf.net.

In his book on “Critical Path,” the well known and respected Buckminister Fuller argued that most or all of the gold allegedly stored at Fort Knox had been whisked out of the US by the late 1960s. Journalist Tom Valentine picked up on the story in the 1970s and said that all of the world-trade gold had been removed from Fort Knox in 1968, leaving behind only some poor quality, orangish-looking, melted down, gold coin metal from the government seizure of 1934.

Also, in the 1970s, a vey intelligent and perceptive man named Edward Durrell began looking at the official US and Fed statistics and data on gold. He did some simple arithmetic of starting with the alleged balances and adding and subtracting additions and removals. Inevitably, he kept coming up with ending balance numbers which did not equal the alleged balances per the US authorities.

Durrell went to the authorities and even members of Congress with demands for an explanation of why the numbers didn’t add up. As can be expected, he was given the run-around and brush-off. The government and Fed were totally belligerent and nasty and refused to cooperate with Durrell. His efforts accomplished little beyond alerting some of us that we were being grossly lied to by authorities. But as was true with others, Durrell did establish that some major US gold holdings did vanish in late 1967 and 1968. He thought the gold went to London.

However the most prominent person to speak out on the missing gold was Dr Peter Beter (1921-1987), who was an official with the US government during the rule of JFK in the early 1960s. As was true with others, Beter claimed that most of the Fort Knox gold had been removed and was no longer stored there.

Beter’s assertions prompted a Congressional visit to Fort Knox to see if the gold was there as claimed. The Treasury showed the Congressmen a couple of vaults containing some melted down gold coins. That was enough to pacify the gullible voters. So the question died out.

To get his message out, Beter released a series of audio tapes from 1975 to 1982. While they were good on addressing the gold question, some of them transitioned into some pretty far out and kooky ideas which would go on to discredit almost everything Beter had said.

And the latest questions have surfaced in a report from the Free Market Gold & Money Report #288 (from fmgr.com). This one notes a so-called smoking gun in a discovery of a discrepancy between two different Federal Reserve reports, supposedly on the status of the US gold reserve supplies.

In the details, the Fed balance sheet showed it owned gold certificates of 261.6 million ounces of gold. In another Fed report, it showed the believed same gold was listed as the US Treasury’s international monetary assets. The conclusion drawn was that this same gold was doing double duty—both with the Fed and with the US Treasury. But in going on with its findings, the report said that the exact amounts of gold were slightly different on the two reports.

Apparently, the correct US gold reserve with the Treasury included gold with the Exchange Stabilization fund (which allegedly may be used for gold swaps [as cited by the FOMC] and gold market manipulations). To add to the confusion, the Treasury in 2001 reclassified its gold reserves by saying that the US gold at Fort Knox, West Point (earlier called Custodial Gold) and other depositories is now called Deep Storage Gold (instead of US Gold Reserve or Custodial Gold).

To add still more to the confusion, the NY Fed also stores some gold in NY that is ostensibly owned by foreign banks. The involved article set this figure at 9,235 ounces in 2001.

Regardless of the source for the movement of gold from NY to overseas destinations, large amounts of gold reportedly have been leaving the US monthly (which, per the report is gold from the IMF or the US Treasury).

I don’t pretend to be able to decipher this mess which the Free Market letter revealed. But as minimum, it is a confusing bag of worms. And as the report concluded, the US officials have been lying about the truth and reality of US gold.

But I have mentioned it here in context with the reports from Messers Durrell, Beter, etc to demonstrate that there is much skullduggery associated with the real US gold supply, whatever level it is. So the questions are—what is the amount of US gold owned by the government/Fed; what is it called; and where is it stored?

My own gut feeling is that there have been so many lies and deceptive reports from the Fed and US Treasury that one simply cannot depend upon their numbers. It would take a periodic audit and physical count by a responsible, independent, third party to ever be able to put any credence into any figures on US gold. At the moment, I would not dare suggest how much gold the US has at all.

Since the same deceptive Rothschilds and other plutocrat goldsmiths own/control the IMF, the ECB, the Bank of England, the Bank of Switzerland and most of the others, one would have to also be careful about accepting or believing reports from those other entities as well.

The problem is that for years all of these banks under the thumb of the Rothschilds and related goldsmiths have been raiding and selling their gold in order to manipulate and depress the price of gold. Since this team of workers have walked a mile to deceive and mislead the public, who is to say exactly how much gold they may still have on hand.

I mention this dilemma in the context of the actions of Switzerland to remove its legal statutory gold backing for the Franc. Once the Swiss cut their legal ties to gold, it opened the door for the Swiss central bank to join in with the same crowd of crooks and swindlers who have been selling gold regularly on the open market for years now to manipulate and control the price of gold.

What a tragedy it is that the once gold backed Swiss Franc is now on the path to becoming a worthless fiat currency, as is true with many of the other world currencies.

For More Reading/Information

For more reading on this issue, the reader may wish to check these sources:

The bestseller: “None Dare Call It Conspiracy,” by Gary Allen and Larry Abraham, first published in 1971, still available on eBay, Amazon and other book outlets.

“Tragedy and Hope,” by Carroll Quigley. At the 1992 Democrat Convention, Bill Clinton’s acceptance speech cited Quigley as Clinton’s mentor.

An Internet presentation on the Plutocrats, at Volume XXII of “Ezekiel and YHWH’s Judgment for the Good People,” at www.age-end.com on the net.

Disclaimer: None of the above is for investment advice. It is for information purposes only.

The author is not involved in the securities or financial market business and has no financial interest in presenting the information herein. Thus, the preceding information on this subject is presented for general information only and not for purposes of investment advise or recommendations. What the reader does on investments is his own personal decision and responsibility.

Finally, the writer of this series is a retired CPA, living in the Idaho Mountains, and still optimistic for the future of gold and silver. He is also a veteran of the Korean and Vietnamese Wars.

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