Chinese Discover 5600 Gold Bars, 400 oz., With Tungsten Core; Arrests

[Testor]

Chinese Discover 5600 Gold Bars, 400 oz., With Tungsten Core; Arrests
SPDR Gold Trust Shares (NYSE: GLD) may represent a specious filum of specie.

The Market Oracle, Robert Kirby
Nov 12 2009

When the news of tungsten “salted” gold bars in Hong Kong first surfaced, many people
who I am acquainted with automatically assumed that these bars were manufactured in
China – because China is generally viewed as “the knock-off capital of the world”.

Here’s what I now understand really happened:
The amount of “salted tungsten” gold bars in question was allegedly between 5,600 and
5,700 – 400 oz – good delivery bars . This was apparently all
highly orchestrated by an extremely well financed criminal operation. Within mere hours
of this scam being identified – Chinese officials had many of the perpetrators in custody.

And here’s what the Chinese allegedly uncovered:
Roughly 15 years ago – during the Clinton Administration Greenspan and
Lawrence Summers] – between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks
were allegedly manufactured by a very high-end, sophisticated refiner in
the USA than 16 Thousand metric tonnes]. Subsequently, 640,000 of these tungsten blanks
received their gold plating and WERE shipped to Ft. Knox and remain there to this day. I
know folks who have copies of the original shipping docs with dates and exact weights
of “tungsten” bars shipped to Ft. Knox.

Gold Trust Indenture (Trust Agreement):
"Gold bars allocated to the Trust in connection with the creation
of a Basket may not meet the London Good Delivery Standards and, if a
Basket is issued against such gold, the Trust may suffer a loss. Neither
the Trustee nor the Custodian independently confirms the fineness of
the gold bars allocated to the Trust in connection with the creation of
a Basket. The gold bars allocated to the Trust by the Custodian may be
different from the reported fineness or weight required by the LBMA’s
standards for gold bars delivered in settlement of a gold trade, or the
London Good Delivery Standards, the standards required by the Trust.
If the Trustee nevertheless issues a Basket against such gold, and if the
Custodian fails to satisfy its obligation to credit the Trust the amount
of any deficiency, the Trust may suffer a loss."

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article14996.html

[NYC_SKP]

1. Gold's nice, but Tungsten is really cool, too. I have a little of both. n/t

[aquart]

2. You're saying the Clinton Administration .. defrauded ... us? China?

I need this in simple declarative sentences fit for a five-year-old.

[Nikki Stone1]

3. Me too.

:wtf:

[timeforpeace]

4. KO's your man then.

[anigbrowl]

7. It's hard to tell

The suggestion seems to be that a pile of fake gold was minted and the Fed bought a heap of it, but I'm not clear who was supposed to have sold this gold. There's also an implication that they knew but covered it up. Considering the guy is a gold salesman and gold salesfolk seem to really. really like money conspiracy theories, I'm a bit skeptical, but all the same...

[Generic Other]

5. And Clinton has the bling????

All the glitters is not gold. Please explain this strange post. Are you saying Clinton helped himself to all the gold in Ft Knox? And they turned it into cheap stuff that turns your finger green? And we are trying to pawn it off on the Chinese to pay our debts? Cool! So where's the other stuff? On sale at the Franklin Mint in the form of commemorative coins of the twin Towers?

[Earth_First]

6. What is Market Oracle?

Seems like this would be bigger news if this had two legs to the story...

[Vinnie From Indy]

8. I'll call bullshit on this story!

What a poorly written bit of nonsense!

[Electric Monk]

9. Prison Planet, which is like conspiracy theory central, has an article debunking this

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-rumor-about-london-good-delivery-gold-bars-that-are-allegedly-filled-with-tungsten.html

[Canuckistanian]

11. Prison Planet is DEBUNKING something?

You KNOW the theory is "out there" when Alex Jones is doing the debunking.

[Odin2005]

10. LOL, another Libertarian Gold Bug Wing-Nut conspiracy theory.

[eppur_se_muova]

12. No one could have predicted that China would ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7021296&mesg_id=7021545

[Confusious]

13. I can't believe someone who was spending that much money to buy gold

Would not weigh each and every bar on accurate scale that would go to the milligram. While gold and tungsten are similar in density, the weight is different:

Lead 207.2 g·mol−1
Gold 196.966569(4) g·mol−1
Tungsten 183.84 g·mol−1

That's weight in grams per mole. tungsten is lighter, so there has to be more of it to weigh the same as gold. Doing the math and converting grams per mole to pounds or whatever will tell you the same thing.

Lead would be better, since it's heaver, you could hollow out the gold and put a plug in the bar. That would have it's problems though, among them being balance and the spot you drilled the hole. Working with metals, it's hard to cover that up.


BullSite!

[LostInAnomie]

14. Tungsten is such a cooler metal than gold.

I wish they'd quit wasting it.

[ddeclue]

15. You sure the bars weren't wrapped in tinfoil too?

:rofl:

:crazy:

[Catshrink]

16. Supposedly we're "running out" of tungsten

so this may have a silver lining after all, value-wise. Well, maybe not silver. China controls 75% of the world's supply of tungsten. Production has been falling while demand rises.

While most of us only know tungsten as the wire in a light bulb (that is 1 meter long), its high melting point of metals (3422 °C, 6192 °F) makes is useful for the heavy metal alloys in turbine blades and wear-resistant parts and coatings. As tungsten carbide it is used as blades, drills, and other metalworking and woodworking applications. 60% of tungsten is used for these and the mining, petroleum and construction industries.

A chunk of tunsten ore (wolframite):

[YvonneCa]

17. Welcome to DU. n/t