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PAGE is Dead. New Allocated Silver Exchange in the Making.

March 3, 2012 8 comments
Pan Asia Gold Exchange (PAGE) Building, Kunming City, Yunnan, China

Pan Asia Gold Exchange (PAGE) building in Kunming City, Yunnan, China

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The much awaited China-based Pan Asia Gold Exchange (PAGE) was scheduled to start trading this June after a ‘soft’ launch at the end of 2011. This exchange that could potentially bring down the Ponzi bullion banking system has been killed before it could see the light of day, according to recent disclosures by Ned Naylor-Leyland and London whistleblower Andrew Maguire.

So “dangerous” was this exchange to the status quo that it faced interference from “a New York based entity with very strong Chinese relationships” soon after the much publicized soft launch. Another factor that helped derail PAGE was the People’s Bank of China’s (PBoC) announcement about control over domestic Gold trading outside of Shanghai.

Before we go into the details of this news, let’s revisit why PAGE managed to send chills down the spine of the powers that be. Consider the following:-

  • Currently the prices of gold & silver bullion you pay at your favorite bullion dealers are pegged to or based on the prices of gold & silver contracts transacted at the COMEX in NY and the LBMA in London.
  • These contracts are merely paper or electronic representations of gold & silver with little or no physical metals actually changing hands. They are highly leveraged, with approximately 100 oz of paper gold contracts backed by 1 oz of physical gold. For silver, the ratio is about 350:1
  • A very very small number of bullion banks (2 to 4) control up to 95% of these paper contracts, and hence are able to influence the price of physical bullion. As ridiculous as it sounds, this is the current price discovery mechanism - virtual paper metals setting the price for physical metals or the classic “tail wagging the dog” mechanism.
  • These contracts are denominated in USD.
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Enter PAGE…
  • PAGE was designed to trade in 100% allocated gold & silver contracts with metals backing paper contracts on a 1:1 ratio.
  • The contracts would be denominated in RMB
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What could have happened had PAGE gone “live”
  • Investors would switch from COMEX/LBMA to PAGE because of the 1:1 ratio. When they enter into a long (buy) contract, they can be sure there’s physical metals available when they want to take delivery. This is especially so after the MF Global failure. That’s loss of business from the former to the later.
  • The price discovery mechanism will no longer be a monopoly. Your bullion dealers would most likely peg their prices closer to the 1:1 contract price than the 350:1 contract price. After all, they are dealing with the real stuff - physical bullion. Without a monopoly in price discovery, the bullion banks will be less effective in their interventions of the gold & silver markets. The decades long price suppression of these political metals may finally come to an end.
  • Investors need to sell USD to buy RMB when entering into these RMB denominated contracts. Another “commodity” bites the dust as far as dependence on the USD is concerned (after Japan, China, Russia, India and Iran joins the Asian Dollar Exclusion Zone to trade using their national currencies).
  • Physical gold & silver would be moving from west to east at an even more rapid rate, speeding up the transfer of economic, financial and political power in that direction. Whichever way you look at it, gold and silver are political metals. Recall what Nixon did after physical gold started flowing out of the US following Charles de Gaulle’s demand to exchange dollar for gold.
Intervention

When such a potential game changer was being conceived, something had to be done, and sure they did. In his recently published research notes “P.A.G.E. Squashed: And now for something completely different…“, Ned Naylor-Leyland of Cheviot Asset Management explains how PAGE was killed.

Just after the publicized ‘soft launch’ (with Central government mandarins in attendance) and the noise made on the internet about its implications, the one shareholder in PAGE that had a foreign listing (in the US) suddenly and stealthily increased its share-holding from 10% to 25%, acquiring additional board directors along the way. The rationale for this sudden change in the weighting of shareholders is shrouded in mystery, however what we do know is that this entity then insisted that they be allowed to build the trading platforms for PAGE from the ground up, rather than buying a working platform off the shelf to get PAGE operational in a timely manner.

This blocking tactic at board level effectively stopped the progress of the fully-allocated spot contract in its tracks, and it was immediately clear to the international-facing people that something fundamental had changed internally. Interestingly, the key Independent Director of this small listed entity that blocked the timely roll-out of PAGE is a well-known Western banker within China, whose CV includes work for the Federal Trade Commission, the Sloan Foundation (related to MIT) and his wife is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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London whistleblower Andrew Maguire told King World News:

I’d like to briefly remind King World News listeners just what PAGE (the Pan Asian Gold Exchange) was going to be.  This was going to be a Chinese Exchange that was to completely change the way gold and silver trade globally.

If you recall from our previous interview, it posed an immediate threat to the current fractional reserve bullion banking system.  It was the competition of a brand new fully allocated gold and silver contract being pitched up against unbacked paper contracts.  It’s not a stretch to imagine what a threat these contracts posed to the bullion banks.

The whole thing was killed and we recently found out how PAGE was interfered with.  Within hours of our King World News interview last July, I mean you sure get some hits on your show, Eric, the interference stemmed out of a New York based entity with very strong Chinese relationships.  It delayed it enough to kill it and it was killed.

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Silver Lining

All is not lost. The people originally behind PAGE have begun work on developing another independent exchange which is more streamlined and better funded, focusing on 1:1 silver contracts to bypass the new PBoC ruling on gold. According to Ned, it is expected to go ‘live’ this summer (northern). Let’s give the bullion banks a few more months!

The aforementioned change in domestic Chinese rules mean that along with every other regional Precious Metals exchange, the new unnamed 1:1 allocated exchange is launching with Silver initially, which of course is the Achilles Heel of the Bullion banking system. This in my opinion is far more bullish and exciting short and medium-term than the Gold contract would have been, as the physical Silver market is so tight.

Furthermore, all the regional exchanges mothballed by the PBoC rule change can switch, and are switching to Silver trading which is not covered by the change in rules. The contract itself will be, as before, an international rolling 90 day spot one, denominated in RMB, and the new entity is supported by the same serious players within the Chinese political and military establishment as before. The physical will be acquired ahead of closing each monthly tranche and will be vaulted entirely outside of the Bullion Banks (i.e. private vaulting facilities). From there the allocated receipts will be recorded on an electronic register and the issue will be tradeable in the secondary market with the register adjusted real-time.

This is extremely good news for holders of real Silver and extremely bad news for holders of fake paper Silver who rely on the 350:1 leverage being maintained as the world’s sole price discovery mechanism for large purchases of the white metal. This effectively will be like dealing in an RMB-denominated and fully allocated version of some of the popular Silver Bullion Trusts, but rather than trading at a premium, the premium will price the issue ahead of purchase, affecting global price discovery, as previously mooted.

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Read the rest of Ned’s report at TFMetalsReport.com. There also an podcast of Ned’s interview with Turd Ferguson on the same page. Listen to Andrew Maguire’s interview with Eric of KingWorldNews here.

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Today’s Silver Slam Down: Profit Taking or Intervention?

March 1, 2012 2 comments

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If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’d have noticed that I don’t usually post anything when there’s a sudden upward spike in PMs prices (there’s more than enough cheer leaders out there!), but will almost always have a comment when there’s a sudden smash down - and here’s the latest.

It’s the classic picture of taking the staircase up (red line) and the elevator down (green line). The gradual climb over an entire trading session at the COMEX on Feb 28 has been attributed to short covering and/or new demand. That looks like how genuine buyers in a normal market would behave - buying at a rational pace to prevent sudden price spikes.

Now, take a look at what happened just a few hours ago. We see a series of waterfall declines in just over an hour bringing the price down by over 9%. Does that look like a normal market to you? The mainstream media attributed this to profit taking. The timing coincided with the U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s  testimony to the U.S. Congress.

Here’s a shorter version with Ron Paul’s comments on the Fed followed by questions to Bernanke after his testimony.

To many market watchers within the PMs community, there’s more than meets the eye.

Whichever way you look at it, this is another classic example of using a piece of news as trigger to execute trades in a manner that results in the sharpest price decline possible in order to paint the tape (scaring away speculators & momentum traders) or to generate negative publicity in the MSM (scaring away retail “investors”). I tend to agree that it’s yet another example of high handed PMs price manipulation and extreme volatility Jim Sinclair and others have been warning about.

Movements in gold will become so violent that gold will become untradable to individuals.

It applies to silver as well, if not more so. Ever wondered what is meant by that? To find out, try buying from some of the smaller web stores or walking into your favorite over-the-counter dealers during or shortly after a major price slam to take advantage of the unusually low prices. Chances are you’ll be greeted with an unusually high premium or an “Out of Stock” message. They could have genuinely ran out of stock, or may just want to temporarily hold back sales fully aware that this slam down is an abnormally and is short lived.

If indeed the PMs market is being manipulated and their prices are so volatile, does it actually make sense to invest in gold & silver?

Here are some articles to address the above question, some commentaries on previous price take-downs and PMs manipulations.

Silver Manipulation - The latest from Ted Butler

February 10, 2012 Leave a comment

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In 2011, silver averaged a loss of 6.8% against 75 selected fiat currencies, while gold charted a corresponding gain of 14.3%. That occurred in a year when gold itself saw a plunge of 20% in USD terms from its high of $1920.

Was there any fundamental change in the silver market that could account for such a drastic plunge in silver prices? I know of none, and industry watchers concur.

Not once, but twice in 2011 did the silver market plunge by 35% in a matter of days on deliberate price moves lower. It is impossible for a world commodity to suddenly plunge 35% in days without some radical change in real supply and demand in a free market. Aside from proving that the silver market is still manipulated, these price plunges would not have occurred had the Commission acted expeditiously in concluding its current silver investigation - Ted Butler.

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Market manipulation. Price suppression. That’s why silver’s prices in all currencies did what they did in 2011. Ted Butler, in his most recent article “Enough is Enough” recounts the history of CFTC’s investigations into complaints of price suppression in the silver market.

The journey to justice and truth is often long and arduous, but must never be abandoned. The alternative is to live a life lacking substance. But neither should the journey be unnecessarily prolonged. These things tend to creep up on you day by day, but we have passed the point of the CFTC taking too long for deciding if the silver market has been manipulated in price. Enough time has passed.

Having started in August 2008, we are now at the 3.5 year mark in the current investigation into silver by the Enforcement Division of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Never has a similar investigation taken this long. Considering that the current silver investigation is the third such inquiry by the Commission into alleged downside price manipulation by large commercial participants on the COMEX, the agency has spent most of the past decade investigating silver. As recently as this past November, the Commission reaffirmed that the silver investigation is ongoing. Still, the issue is unresolved.

The current silver investigation began due to revelations I discovered and wrote about in the CFTC’s Bank Participation Report of August 2008. This report indicated one or two US commercial banks held a concentrated short position which was unprecedented and uneconomic in terms of real world supply and demand. I asked the question – how can one or two US banks holding a short position equal to 25% of annual world production not be manipulative? That question has not been answered by the Commission to this day. Later, I discovered that it was basically only one US bank, JPMorgan, which was the big COMEX silver short.

Not for a moment do I believe that the CFTC initiated the current silver investigation (or the previous two) just because I wrote a few articles. The key was that so many readers took it upon themselves to write to the Commission and their elected officials about the issues of concentration and manipulation in the silver market. Simply put, there would have been no silver investigations had not great numbers of you petitioned the regulators. Please think about that for a moment. It is beyond extraordinary that the agency has investigated and continues to investigate such a small market like silver. That can only be because of public pressure and that the evidence was compelling. Most remarkable of all is that the core allegation in all three silver investigations has remained the same – manipulative short selling by large commercial interests on the COMEX.

In the two prior investigations of May of 2004 and 2008, the Commission’s Division of Market Oversight (DMO) concluded that the silver market was not manipulated.

Particularly puzzling in the 2008 report was the contention by the DMO that the concentration on the short side in COMEX silver wasn’t unusually large and that the biggest short sellers regularly changed places, so that there wasn’t one big permanent short. The report was issued on May 13, 2008 or two months after JPMorgan acquired Bear Stearns and its concentrated short position in COMEX silver. How the DMO could overlook the transfer of the most concentrated short position in the history of the commodity markets is beyond comprehension. Subsequently, I have come to believe that Bear Stearns’ forced acquisition was caused by the giant silver short position going against it (silver was at a 27-year price high at the time of the takeover) and not mortgage-related difficulties. In this article, I accused the DMO of lying.

Unlike the current silver investigation, the previous investigations were concluded by the Commission in months, not years. Timing aside, all three silver investigations share a commonality apart from stemming from the same basic core allegation of manipulative short selling. That commonality is the Commission’s refusal to conduct a fair and balanced investigation. I confess to being the instigator behind all three silver investigations (with you being the enabler). Not once, in any of these investigations has the agency ever contacted me or anyone I know who is familiar with the allegations. I even complained to the CFTC’s Inspector General about the one-sidedness of the process. How can you conduct a balanced investigation on manipulative short selling when you only question one side, the shorts?

The real problem with the findings of the CFTC of no manipulation in their previous investigations is two-fold. First, it provides a shield and comfort to the perpetrators of the manipulation in that they can continue to hide behind the agency’s findings in the furtherance of an active crime in progress. The longer the CFTC takes to act or report on its current investigation the comfort to the manipulators is maintained, at a cost to nearly everyone else. Second, the prior findings put the agency in a tricky spot. Because the Commission had previously found nothing amiss in the silver market on two separate occasions, if the agency uncovers any wrongdoing in silver in the current investigation it will, effectively, contradict its former findings. Obviously, it will be loath to do so.

The fact that the Commission will contradict its former findings should it now find something wrong in silver may explain the unprecedented delay on the part of the Enforcement Division to act. But the reluctance to reverse the former findings is a weak excuse for the Commission to fail in its most basic mission, namely, preventing fraud, abuse and manipulation. Most importantly, the silver manipulation is a crime in progress and the Commission’s delay in terminating it has allowed for untold continuing damage to thousands of market participants at the hands of the manipulators.

Full article at SilverSeek.com

Related articles:The latest on Silver Market Manipulation

The latest on Silver Market Manipulation

November 5, 2011 1 comment

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More than 3 years into an investigation over alleged manipulation in the silver market, the CFTC released the following statement yesterday.

CFTC Statement Regarding Enforcement Investigation of the Silver Markets

Washington, DC – The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today issued the following statement:

“In September of 2008, the Commission announced the existence of an enforcement investigation into the possibility of unlawful acts in silver markets. Since that time, the staff has analyzed over 100,000 documents and interviewed dozens of witnesses and obtained expert advice. It has been a long, detailed, and thorough investigation, and it continues in an appropriate and considered manner.”

Bart Chilton, one of the commissioners of CFTC was interviewed, I believe for the first time by Eric King of KWN yesterday:

I can tell you based on what I have been told by members of the public and reviewed in publicly available documents, I believe that there’s been violations of the law, The Commodity Exchange Act.

What was he told by members of the public that convinced him to believe that the silver market has been illegally manipulated? Probably referring to whistle blower Andrew Maguire’s emails to CFTC in February 2010, Chilton had this to say:

But when people email me and say, ‘You watch the market (silver) between 9:15 and 9:45 tomorrow and it’s going to tank or it’s going to do this or it’s going to do that.’  I hold on to it and I watch the market and what they say happens, and I’m not saying this always happens, but it happens even 50% of the time, 60% of the time, there’s no way that doesn’t raise my antenna, like major, electric antenna goes up.

With the derivatives market on the verge of implosion in the wake of the Eurozone crisis, any further announcement implying JP Morgan et al may well be what’s required to nudge us over the tipping point. The next few weeks/months could turn out to be very interesting times. However, updates will be few and far in between while I’m taking a break in the Andeas until Feb 2011.

Stay prepared.

Update: 

ZeroHedge just reported a very significant event that may affect global markets next week:

… the CME just made the maintenance margin, traditionally about 26% lower than the initial margin for specs, equal. For everything. Which means that by close of business Monday, millions of options and futures holders will be forced to deposit billions in additional capital to the CME just so they are not found to be margin deficient, and thus receive a margin call. Naturally, since it is very unlikely that this incremental amount of liquidity can be easily procured in one business day, we anticipate the issuance of hundreds of thousands of margin calls Monday, followed by forced liquidations of margin accounts across America… and the world. Just like when Lehman blew up, it took 5 days for Money Markets to break. Is this unprecedented elimination in the distinction between initial and maintenance margin the post-MF equivalent of the first domino to fall this time around?

Update:

There’s another update from ZeroHedge based on a clarification from CME following yesterday’s release.

Yesterday, in what is the worst-phrased and most misleading press release to ever come out of the CME, the exchange issued a notice that going forward all Initial margin would be equal to Maintenance margin. Our gut interpretation was that “Unless we are completely reading it incorrectly, it is nothing short of a margin call for tens if not hundreds of billions worth of product.” Judging by the broad response, our initial reaction is what a prudent, logical human being would assume: after all, it is precisely the undercollateralization of customer accounts, and general underfunding at MF Global that is what brought that particular company down. Well, we wrong wrong. The CME, it appears has taken a page right out of the European playbook, and less than a week after an exchange-cum-Primary Dealer collapsed due to excessive risk taking, the CME has followed up its vague press release from yesterday by inviting even more risk in lowering the initial margin. Why is this a cause for even greater concern? As the CME itself says, “Initial margins are set to provide an additional buffer against future losses in the account” - so going forward that buffer has been reduced by about 30%. But what is the reasoning provided by CME: “The intent and effect of these changes is to decrease the size of any margin calls resulting from the bulk transfer of MF Global customers to new clearing members, not to increase them.” So basically the CME is implicitly putting all of its existing and current clients and customers at further risk by onboarding the accounts of those clients who, like lemmings, held on to their MF Global accounts until after it was too late. Because while the lower Initial margin may apply to MF accounts, it will also apply to any Tom, Dick and Harry beginning Monday, who will suddenly see a 30% reduced gating threshold to put on a position. Any position, no matter how risky. Read full report here.

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Why I don’t invest in Precious Metals

October 17, 2011 15 comments

Sharing some thoughts about gold & silver with KH of InvestSilverMalaysia.

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KH (InvestSilverMalaysia): Hi CK Diong. Can you share with us how you started investing in Precious Metals?

CK (PoliticalMetals): I have been staring at this question for quite a while, not knowing how to respond. Fact is, I’ve not invested, and if I did, certainly not in Precious Metals.

I happen to be planning for early retirement around the time of the global financial crisis of 2008. It was so violent and swift that I quickly realized it was no ordinary crisis. That was when I decided to invest considerable time into understanding what actually was going on.

My research convinced me that what happened in 2007/08 was not another of those boom and bust economic cycles which will soon come to past, and that we will all be happily riding the next wave up again. I realized for the first time that what’s ahead of us in the next few years will be unlike anything we’ve seen in the past. The global debt-based monetary system is like a house of cards whose time has come.

Hence, I wanted to play safe and decided to take my retirement savings OUT of this precarious monetary system. I converted paper & electronic money into gold and silver, not as an investment, but as a store of value. I view them as Monetary Metals or Political Metals rather than Precious Metals.

KH: What do you think of investing in silver today?

CK: I don’t understand why anyone, save for the most die-hard speculators, would want to invest in something as volatile as silver. Why would anyone invest in something whose price can drop from $40 to $26 in less than 72 hours? And, if you know who’s behind the curtain making the silver prices so volatile, you’d want to stay away from this investment.

Having said that, I hold a substantial portion of my assets in the form of silver. I don’t invest in it, I just own it, and yes, that makes a lot of difference. I believe it’s a good asset to hold because like gold, it is a monetary metal that is a good store of value and it has no counter-party risk.

KH: What made you start PoliticalMetals.com?

CK: Going by what I’ve just said above, maybe I should just answer “to explain the difference between investing in and owning gold & silver”!

More seriously, PoliticalMetals was set up to educate and prepare readers for the trying times ahead. Being aware of the impending financial turmoil unlike anything we’ve experienced, I wanted to highlight that owning gold and silver is a flight to safety more than a fight for profits, especially for people under similar circumstances as myself.

I also wanted to help expose the political nature of these 2 monetary metals. Understanding that gold and silver are Political Metals (whose prices have been and still are being manipulated and suppressed by governments through their central banks) rather than Precious Metals makes all the difference. If I had viewed buying gold and silver as investments in Precious Metals, I don’t think I would have taken the step to invest my hard earned savings back then when gold was in its 3 digits and silver in its low teens. Why? Because they looked very expensive at that time! As an investment, they looked so risky to me, especially at the nadir of the 2008 crisis.

After I understood them for what they really are – Political Metals and Monetary Metals, there was no turning back, and I just wanted to share this with the wider audience.

KH: What is your view on having physical metals vs paper metals?

CK: Again, if it’s for investment or short term speculation, paper metals are great, provided you are prepared to do battle with professionals. But if you’re buying gold and silver for the reasons I mentioned above, paper metals are the last things you’d want to touch.

KH: What methods would you recommend on buying silver?

CK: That’s a tough one in Malaysia! Bullion (not numismatic) coins or small bars are must-haves despite their high premiums. I think you’ll just have to bite the bullet and pick up some well recognized brands from your trusted dealers. Alternatively, get a few friends to pool together your funds and make a larger order directly from online US dealers who offer much more competitive prices.

For larger amounts, you could consider buying professional-grade bullion bars directly from the London Bullion Market and storing them in private vaults outside the banking system, ie not vaults belonging to banks. You get them at spot price plus a small commission by the dealers and you don’t have to worry about theft. For example, if you’re looking at RM100K, that’s about 30kg of silver. Would you risk storing that at home considering the high break-in rates in Malaysia? Ramp that up and you get the picture.

KH: From your blog, you have done comparison on Precious Metals investment with a few countries. What are the differences you find among these countries?

CK: Generally, premiums are much higher in Malaysia, especially for silver. Since the market is relatively young, many of the dealers are new and small. They may not be able to handle large orders (especially silver) and even if they do, would you trust them with large upfront payments?

In contrast, you get some very established dealers offering much lower premiums in countries where the market is more mature. That’s why I mentioned you should look beyond your borders if you are dealing in larger quantities.

KH: What improvement would you like to see in Malaysia?

CK: Development of a more established network of independent dealers outside the banking system.

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Decoded: Is there Any Gold in Fort Knox?

October 12, 2011 2 comments

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In 1933, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlawed the private ownership of gold by American citizens, forcing them to sell any gold bullion in excess of $100 to the Federal Reserve at $20.67 per troy ounce. To store the huge stockpile of confiscated gold, the US Treasury built the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in 1936. This vault has a 25″ thick casing with a 21″ vault door made of the latest torch and drill resistant material weighing 20 tons.

There must be something very valuable in there to justify this level of security.  Official records say there’s 4,577 metric tons (147.2 million oz. troy) of gold bullion worth over $200 billion at current prices. Of late however, there’s an increasing number of respectable people questioning the notion that the stated amount of gold is actually still there, and if so, that it remains unencumbered.

In this History Channel documentary Decoded, Brad Meltzer attempts to answer the question “Is there any gold in Fort Knox?”. Featuring interviews with notable figures like Chris Powell of GATA,  Law Professor Kevin Goldberg, Senator Dee Huddleston, former US Senator of Kentucky and many more, it’s an eye opener.

Part 1 “What if I told you that Fort Knox is empty.The last time anyone was allowed inside was in 1974. Many experts today believe the soilders stationed here are protecting absolutely nothing.They point to numerous theories to explain their believes.., but if you tell me that no one’s been allowed to see this gold since 1974, I want to know if it’s there and I want to know what else is inside. It is time to decode Fort Knox.”

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Part 2 Craig Hulet, a returning veteran charged with issuing weapons to guards at Fort Knox was told by his Officer In Charge not to issue any ammunition because there was no gold inside. As for potential armed intruders - there’s a policy of “Let them in and zip them up”.A Financial Engineer from Princeton who spoke on condition of anonymity discusses the implications of an empty Fort Knox. He compares his work on financial derivatives at Wall Street to the Manhattan Project.

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Part 3-

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Is there Gold in Fort Knox?

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