Salted Gold or a Fishy Tale..?
A long-standing allegation that one sees all over the gold- and silverogosphere is that most of the gold in Fort Knox is 'salted'. In other words, it's been fiddled about with so as to have a tungsten core.
Tungsten is a good metal to pick, as it is not ferromagnetic (so won't be picked up by electromagnetic detection techniques), does not significantly alter the weight of the gold bar, and - most importantly - is much cheaper than gold (around $400 per metric ton, rather than $1660 per ounce.)
Stories have abounded of these salted bars turning up in Hong Kong, and making their way into western central bank depositories, ETFs, and just about everywhere else. A lack of evidence has done little to hamper the progress of this on-line meme. Surely, if this practice was so prevalent, then someone, somewhere, must have a photograph of a salted bar?
Well, the goldogosphere has been abuzz in an orgy of self-justification since this long-searched-for evidence finally appeared to turn up a few days ago. On Thursday, the obscure ABC Bullion website put out some photographs which seem to show a cut-in-half 1-kg gold bar that had been salted with five tungsten rods. The story was picked up by the popular Silver Doctors blog, and run without edit or critical examination. So what are we to make of this? Is this the smoking gun goldbugs have been waiting for? Read more
A long-standing allegation that one sees all over the gold- and silverogosphere is that most of the gold in Fort Knox is 'salted'. In other words, it's been fiddled about with so as to have a tungsten core.Tungsten is a good metal to pick, as it is not ferromagnetic (so won't be picked up by electromagnetic detection techniques), does not significantly alter the weight of the gold bar, and - most importantly - is much cheaper than gold (around $400 per metric ton, rather than $1660 per ounce.)
Stories have abounded of these salted bars turning up in Hong Kong, and making their way into western central bank depositories, ETFs, and just about everywhere else. A lack of evidence has done little to hamper the progress of this on-line meme. Surely, if this practice was so prevalent, then someone, somewhere, must have a photograph of a salted bar?
Well, the goldogosphere has been abuzz in an orgy of self-justification since this long-searched-for evidence finally appeared to turn up a few days ago. On Thursday, the obscure ABC Bullion website put out some photographs which seem to show a cut-in-half 1-kg gold bar that had been salted with five tungsten rods. The story was picked up by the popular Silver Doctors blog, and run without edit or critical examination. So what are we to make of this? Is this the smoking gun goldbugs have been waiting for? Read more