Goldtent TA Paradise

BARRICK GOLD AND THE FORT KNOX AUDIT

1. Fullgoldcrown says:

   February 17, 2025 - 11:08 am at 11:08 am

   Hey Fully

   Gonna do some spitballing here…

   Lots of talk around a Gold audit in the States these days. To coincide
   with that, there has been confirmed reports of LOTS of physical Gold being
   brought into the States over the last few months. Note that the inflows to
   the U.S. began before Trump became President, and possibly before he was
   even elected.

   In parallel, there is the DOGE operation in full swing these days. They
   seem to be taking a wrecking ball to wasteful? spending of U.S. tax
   dollars to the tune of hundreds of billions. (I say wasteful(?) because
   obviously the people lining their own pockets with all these billions
   didn’t think it was “wasteful” at all – even if it was criminal in intent)

   And just lately, we have Trump demanding $500billion in reparations from
   Ukraine.

   Taking all this together, I am left wondering; If these were the actions
   of a large Corporation (which ironically the U.S. is), would anyone say
   these are the actions of a healthy company, or the actions of a company
   teetering on the edge of bankruptcy?

   Trump is also talking about “leveraging” the assets of the Nation. More
   accurately, he would be offering the very last assets the American people
   own, to creditors, in exchange for more loans. This akin to taking a 3rd
   mortgage on your home to keep up the minimum payments on your maxed out
   credit cards. It’s desperation.

   Back to the Gold… I have to assume there will be an audit because the
   creditors of the U.S. have finally demanded proof of assets. That would
   explain all the physical Gold that is being hastily moved to U.S, vaults.
   My “Bigly” question here is: who will perform the audit, and how honest
   will it be? Obviously there is going to be some Gold – the vaults aren’t
   “empty”. The major question is who has claims to it, and when some of the
   Gold is missing, who will be called upon to return the Gold they borrowed
   (and subsequently sold). These questions are mute if the audit is just for
   show and the deceptions continue as they have for the last many decades.

   So tying into all this is Barrick. Barrick was created by Peter Munk and
   went from a nothing Company to being the largest Gold company in the world
   VERY quickly. How did that happen? What stars needed to align for an
   unknown Hungarian immigrant to create the largest Gold miner in the world
   from scratch in no time at all? In the 80s no less, when acquiring capital
   was not the easiest thing to do. You can do your own research on that (you
   will quickly find out that researching Barrick is not as easy as you would
   assume).

   The reason I am highlighting Barrick is this: In the 2000s, Barrick was
   set to go bankrupt. With a rapidly rising Gold price, how in the world
   could the largest Gold miner in the World possibly go bankrupt???

   Because:”hedging”.

   Hedging is in quotes because it was never about hedging at all. Barrick
   was the main conduit for physical Gold sales in the 80s and 90s into the
   open market. Gold that Barrick didn’t have. In fact, many times more Gold
   than Barrick could ever dream of mining in a reasonable period of time.
   Sooooo…. who’s Gold were they selling? Obviously, the supplier of all
   those hundreds or thousands of tonnes of Gold weren’t concerned at all
   with the return of their physical assets. Assets that were sitting there
   doing nothing. Assets that were NEVER AUDITED.

   The scheme worked wonderfully as long as the PoG stayed on a sustained
   downward trend. The short term ups and downs would be papered over,
   because after only a few short years, Barrick had sold enough $billions to
   have quite the cash pile.

   And then the PoG doubled. Then it doubled again! And again!! OOPS! Now
   those margins weren’t looking so good. In fact; they were massively
   underwater. Shareholders started asking questions… investigations were
   being pushed… this was serious!!! The stock price was floundering when
   it SHOULD have been skyrocketing!

   SOMETHING needed to be done. Barrick was deeply compromised and the last
   thing anyone wanted was an investigation. An investigation that would
   expose the whole operation, and more importantly (or critically), expose
   the players.

   So what happened? Barrick made some public statements re; “everything is
   under control” – we have arranged a “special” solution with our creditors
   and now there is no more problem at all. Nothing to see here – move along.

   So supposedly, all those IOUs were mover to a special “green” book – off
   balance sheet. How the accountants and regulators squared that circle was
   never made public. But note that the Gold debts were never publicly
   forgiven – just moved out of sight. That was +/- 15 years ago. Lots of
   Gold has been mined/sold/returned since then.

   But wait! Just this week I see that Barrick is considering moving it’s
   operations to the U.S.. Why would they do that? Perhaps because they are
   being TOLD to move, by their creditors who are still owed many tonnes of
   physical, and they don’t want a certain 51st state governor nationalizing
   the very company that has a good portion of the Gold we intent to revalue
   and leverage. “Deep Storage Gold” that can’t end up in the hands of a
   government that sold all it’s Gold holdings previously.

   I saw an interview last week in which the speaker claimed that a large
   portion of all the Gold being imported in the last few months was imported
   by commercial hedgers. By and large, commercial hedgers are the Miners.
   With the rapid advance of the PoG over that last 2 years, you can be
   certain that certain large miners are feeling some pain in their hedge
   books (hedge books they swore off in the 2000s). I think all the movement
   around the world of physical Gold is basically the real owners of the Gold
   calling in their loans. The entities with “claims” on a lot of that Gold
   must be sweating right now.

   Like I said – spitballing… but if Trump actually does accomplish an
   honest audit of the Fed and the Treasury (a BIG “if”), then there is going
   to be lots of VERY interesting news in the Gold space.

   Chris

2. YYZ says:

   February 17, 2025 - 5:34 pm at 5:34 pm

   Wow, a compelling case indeed. Thank you both !

3. Columbia says:

   February 17, 2025 - 8:45 pm at 8:45 pm

   If I remember correctly Jim Sinclair told us that Barrick’s hedging was what kept the POG down. Not a friend to Goldbugs.

   Good comment.