Americans Armed Against Obama

From ATLAHWorldwide

From Euronews

Capital Account with former Fed VP James Savage

From CapitalAccount

Chilling Out Russian Style

With the temperature due to hit 35 - 39C in Sydney today I thought some of my local readers would like to see somewhere a bit cooler.

From RussiaToday

Queen describes the decision to sell UK gold reserves as ‘regrettable’

Queen to becomes first monarch for 231 years to sit in on Cabinet deliberations

From The Daily Mail

Original source

In a conversation with Chancellor George Osborne she described the decision to sell some of the gold reserves as ‘regrettable’.

Between 1999 and 2002, when he was Chancellor, Mr Brown ordered the sale of the gold when the price was at a 20-year low. He did so despite serious misgivings at the Bank of England.

The sale raised just £2billion. But the gold is now worth an estimated £13billion, meaning the fateful decision cost £11billion – three times the amount lost on Black Wednesday in 1992 when the UK left the European exchange rate mechanism.

Speaking to Mr Osborne, the Queen asked him about the ‘gold bars’ she had seen during a visit of the Bank of England last week.

Some of her words are indistinct on video footage of the exchange, but she was heard saying ‘regrettably’ in a reference to their sale.

The Chancellor told her: ‘Some of them were sold but we still have some left’.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2249858/The-Queen-wears-Tory-blue-historic-visit-sit-Cabinet-meeting-ministers-whip-round-buy-placemats.html#ixzz2FXOzfeAY

Reserve Bank of Australia Admits 99.9% of Australia's Gold Reserves are held at the Bank of England

Bank of England, City of London

Gold Scales in the RBA Museum, Sydney. Obviously they are kept behind glass as there is no longer any need for them.

After a campaign throughout 2012 to seek clarity in regards to the location of Australia's Gold Reserves the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has confirmed today in an email to me that 99.9% of their Gold Reserves are held in the gold vault of the Bank of England.

Please read below for the text of the RBA's email response to me dated 19/12/12:

Thank you for your email.

As at end-June 2011 the Reserve Bank of Australia held 80 tonnes of gold in London Good Delivery bars. The Reserve Bank holds 99.9 per cent of its gold reserves in the United Kingdom at the Bank of England. The remaining 0.1 per cent is held at the Reserve Bank’s Head Office in Sydney.

London is a major global gold trading market and the Bank of England provides a secure and cost-effective storage location for central banks and market participants. The Reserve Bank has processes in place to ensure that the gold reserves are maintained appropriately. It is not considered necessary from management, security or operational  perspectives to relocate the gold bars to a facility in Australia.

The Reserve Bank has reviewed its approach to releasing details about its management of the physical reserves of gold and decided to release the above information.

Please note that we answered your previous questions as a routine public enquiry.  The FOI Act concerns itself with the release of documents, rather than answering questions, so a request must seek documents to be valid. 

Regards

Chris Collins | Manager | Media & Public Relations Office
RESERVE BANK OF AUSTRALIA | 65 Martin Place, Sydney NSW 2000
p: +61 2 9551 9830 | f: +61 2 9551 8033 | w: www.rba.gov.au

I would like to thank Bullion Baron for their assistance in this matter and the encouragement and support of management and several clients of ABC Bullion, Sydney.

If you wish to view some of the gold stored in the Bank of England gold vault and see probably one of Australia's gold bars (the bar handled in the video made in Australia) watch this recent video tour of the vault.

From periodicvideos

Carney: 'We're Close' on 'Fiscal Cliff' Efforts

From AssociatedPress

Published on Dec 18, 2012
Just two weeks before the 'fiscal cliff' deadline, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are swapping offers of major compromise in hopes of a deal to slash future deficits.

Gerald Celente - The Trends Journal

From trendsjournal

Published 18 Dec 2012

Capital Account - GATA's Bill Murphy & Chris Powell call out Gold and Silver Market Manipulation Conspiracy Critics

From CapitalAccount

Gold and Silver Pre-Christmas Sale

Both Gold and Silver have experienced waterfall declines in New York trading, with gold declining $27 from the open and silver declining 60 cents.

Reasons cited for the decline are continuing "fiscal cliff" negotiations and US investors closing out winning positions prior to the end of the year, with many booking capital gains this financial year (US financial year ends 31 Dec) ahead of the expected rise in the US Capital Gains Tax rate in 2013.  

Charts from goldprice.org

Keiser Report: Monetized Genocide

Max and Stacy reference in the following report several news items also mentioned on this blog, if you wish to know more on these topics follow the links below:

Queen on decision to sell gold reserves
Queen in PR campaign for Bank of England's Gold Vault
Do Central Banks actually have any Gold left?
Central Banks admitting were they store their Gold
The brilliant Lars Schall

From RussiaToday

Published on Dec 18, 2012 In this episode, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert look at central banking monkeys performing cannonballs into the global dark pools, the backlash against quantitative easing and the Queen ticking orf the Bank of England. In the second half, Max Keiser talks to economist Sandeep Jaitly of FeketeResearch.com about silver backwardation and a monetary path that will throw us *all* into such poverty that none of us will be able satisfy our ends.