Adrian Ash of BullionVault.com writes that "the International Monetary Fund said it has completed the gold bullion sales program begun in October 2009," and now 403 tonnes of gold have been sold.
I bring this up all the time because the whole thing pisses me off because we gave those IMF bastards the gold to provide gold-standard legitimacy for their stupid fiat currency, the Special Drawing Right (SDR). And yet here they are selling the gold we loaned them! Gaaahhh!
Mr. Ash is apparently not particularly interested in how I have such a low opinion of the IMF and its little empires of crooks and liars, probably because, at the root, they are just more corrupt bankers, and it is always bankers who are the source of all economic problems, as they are the ones who can create money out of thin air just by making an accounting notation.
Oddly enough, early in my career, I tried this "accounting notation" approach with my boss as a way to "fix" the problem of my poor work performance and dismal results, instead of firing me on the spot, which was her original plan.
The way I explained it was that my Brilliant Mogambo Plan (BMP) was inspired by the fact that We're Freaking Doomed (WFD) because the foul Federal Reserve is creating so much money. Thus inspired, I suggested that we likewise bring sales forward by creating them out of that selfsame thin air, we book the sales as a profit, thus showing that I am highly profitable, and not incompetent as implied in those lying Quarterly Employee Performance Evaluations.
When she asked, with this stupid look of confusion on her face, "Huh? What? How did you get into my office?" I allayed her natural suspicions by telling her that I figured that this would be offset by subsequent cancellations of those sales, along with our "paying" penalties for breaking the contracts, meaning that, in effect, we would deduct these additional phantom expenses from income to shelter real income from taxation, turning a loss into a profit, everybody's happy, and we would both get all kinds of terrific bonuses and awards and promotions, and make a lot more money, too!
I remember leaning in towards her and whispering, "All it would take is for the accounting department to 'play ball' with us to somehow create money out of thin air, and it is your job to get their compliance and complicity, like Wall Street lobbyists extort compliance from Congress!"
The rest of the story is too ugly to talk about, and suffice it to say that it did not turn out well for me, the moral of which seems to be that creating things out of thin air, like money or sales, is a Very Bad Idea (VBI).
I could tell by the look of puzzlement on Mr. Ash's face that he probably wonders what in the hell some stupid story, by some stupid guy, about some stupid tax fraud proposed a long time ago, and that probably never happened at all, has to do with gold, or the IMF, or anything that anyone cares about.
Suddenly, I realized he was right! So I sat down and shut up, and was pretty embarrassed until he said, "Some 57% of the 403-tonne total was bought directly by central banks, led by India."
Inquisitive and suspicious, I wondered, "How much gold is that in terms of ounces?" Quickly, my Agile Mogambo Mind (AMM) set to the task of multiplying 32,150 ounces per tonne times 403 tonnes, only to realize I have no idea what I am doing, and sure to be wrong, as I have been so, so wrong so, so many times about so, so many things, including, and especially, math, ranking, as it does, second on the list of Things That Confuse The Mogambo (TTCTM), losing the top spot to, "What women want and why they just don't shut up when I tell them to shut up about my not knowing what they want like I am some kind of stupid mind-reader or something."
That is why I am happy to report that, thanks to some help, we know that 32,150 ounces times 403 tonnes is just under 13 million ounces, which actually ain't much at $1,400 an ounce, amounting to a lousy $18 billion, which is so little money in an age when the word "trillion" and "trillions" appears so many times in the literature, including that magazine reader who wrote in to say that he liked the beautiful Miss February so much that he could stare at her for a trillion years and never get tired of it.
The point is not that I am rambling and apparently have forgotten to take my pills this morning, but that central banks, Junior Mogambo Rangers (JMRs) and everybody else is buying gold, gold, gold, which should indicate to you that you should, too.
And if you don't, you will learn that life can be hard, instead of easy, and which is so easy to achieve because merely buying gold and silver is enough, making it so, so easy that you giggle as you say, "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!"