The Bankers’ India Gold Grab: An Update

Updated on

The Bankers’ India Gold Grab: An Update by Jeff Nielson, Sprott Money

In previous commentaries , readers were warned that Western bankers were once again targeting the gold market of India with more of their fiendish plans. This time, they convinced (bribed?) India’s new, corrupt government – the Modi regime – into orchestrating a scheme to steal the gold from its own people.

The nexus of this scam was what was announced as “the gold deposit scheme.” Even the Conspirators themselves were unable to come up with a name to make this naked fraud sound legitimate. The fraud itself is simple, indeed utterly simplistic.

Indians “deposit” their gold into the clutches of their thieving government and are paid (paper) “interest” on those deposits. The fact that this was a naked fraud was immediately apparent. As the bankers tell us all the time, “gold generates no income.” How could India’s government pay the interest on the gold coins/bars/jewelry sitting in its vault supposedly held in trust for its depositors?

There was no immediate answer to that question, because there could be no (legitimate) answer to the question. Indeed, in legitimate bullion storage arrangements, depositors pay a fee to have their bullion safely stored for them, because while the gold generates no income, the costs of storing such gold are significantly greater than zero.

Finally, reluctantly, the Conspirators made explicit what was already totally obvious:

The deposited gold will be auctioned off from time to time to meet domestic demand for jewellery and coins. [emphasis mine]

The scam was now completely exposed.

  1. a) Indians “deposit” their gold.
  2. b) Indians receive (paper) “interest” on their gold while their deposited gold is sold off.
  3. c) Indians end up with the paper interest – and no gold.
  4. d) India’s jewellers and coin-makers then sell the gold they purchased at these auctions back to the same Chumps who originally deposited that gold.

In the eyes of Western bankers, it was the perfect “scheme” – hence their label for the plan. In the eyes of any sane, rational, human being, it was/is the most naked, clumsy fraud that one could possibly imagine. But the corporate media assured us there was considerable enthusiasm amongst India’s population for this scam.

With enormous media and government fanfare, the “scheme” was officially launched at the beginning of November. However, these same media and government mouthpieces were much, much quieter a couple of weeks later when they released details on the initial response to this obvious fraud.

A gold deposit scheme launched amid fanfare by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi two weeks ago has so far attracted only 400 grammes, an industry official said on Thursday, out of a national hoard estimated at 20,000 tonnes.

For those readers still less-than-comfortable with the metric system, let’s convert these numbers to the Imperial system of measurement. In two weeks, out of a population of more than one billion people, holding an estimated 40 million pounds of gold, the Conspirators only managed to net roughly one pound of gold from their intended victims.

Expressing these results in percentage terms, the Conspirators managed to steal less than 0.000002% of India’s privately held gold. At that rate, it would take India’s government (and the bankers) more than one million years to steal all of India’s gold.

The thieves were not daunted, at least not publicly. The media offered assorted excuses for the “slow” initial response to the scam. India’s government immediately added new inducements for the scam and pledged a “high-level meeting” to plot even more changes.

Last week, the government announced several steps to make the scheme more attractive for consumers, including measures such as eliminating capital gains and income taxes on the interest earned. The meeting on Tuesday is expected to focus on incentives for banks.

“Capital gains and income taxes”? Indians are having their gold stolen from them. They receive paper interest equal to a fraction of the value of that gold in return. And the media/government liars have the audacity to call this interest a “gain” or “income”? How magnanimous of India’s government to announce that it wouldn’t tax those “profits.”

With these new inducements in place, the Conspirators sat back and waited for the gold to start flowing into their vaults. Two weeks later, we got our next update :

The scheme has only attracted about one kilogramme [two pounds] in a month, prompting the government to nudge temples through banks to hand over their treasures

First we get news that the thieves managed to net another, whole pound of gold during the second half of the month, and were still on-pace to steal all of India’s gold in 1,000,000+ years. Then the language (and imagery) descends to surreal comedy.

We’re now told that India’s government sees “temple gold” as its best/easiest target for stealing. But then we’re told that India’s government isn’t going to approach the temples directly, despite its boasts of what a “great opportunity” the gold-deposit scam represented. Instead, we’re told that India’s government plans on sending in bankers to “nudge” the temples to “hand over their treasures.” Why?

Once upon a time, those individuals who could liberate the most wealth from institutions in the least amount of time were known as “bank robbers.” But those days are ancient history. This is the 21 st century, or as the corporate media likes to call it, all the time, “the New Normal.”

In the New Normal , the world’s premier wealth liberators are no longer bank robbers but rather bank er robbers. These wealth liberators of the 21 st century make the bank robbers of the 19 th and 20th century appear as nothing but rank amateurs.

Observe. First a banker (and bank) is given custody of (someone else’s) financial assets in order to “manage” those assets. Then, a blink of an eye later, the bank/banker proudly proclaims that the bank now owns those assets. The bankers call this method of wealth liberation “a bail-in.”

However, in this case, India’s new government was not calling upon its friends, the bankers, to engage in any direct wealth liberation. Rather, they were being sent in to engage in persuasion. Presumably the “bankers” assigned to that task had names like Butch and Knuckles, and instead of carrying briefcases, they were brandishing “implements of persuasion.”

A mere three days after India’s government sent in the bankers, the following announcement appeared:

Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak temple to deposit 40 kg of gold in monetization scheme

Here’s what is interesting about that announcement. First of all, the bankers had already invested many years of time and effort looking for some means to “gather” some of the thousands of tonnes of gold held by India’s temples – and failed. Meanwhile, just three days earlier, we had been told the following.

But Mumbai’s Shree Siddhivinayak temple, which is devoted to the Hindu elephant god Ganesha, said it remained unconvinced about the benefits.

What could have been said to (or done to) the leaders of this temple in order to get them to suddenly reverse themselves after years of resisting all efforts by the bankers to “gather” their gold? Only Butch and Knuckles can answer that question – but they probably won’t.

The strategy in strong-arming at least one of India’s temples out of a small portion of its gold is obvious. “Look!” hiss the bankers, “Your religious leaders are giving us their gold. That means that it must be a good idea.” Including the 40 kg of gold liberated from the Shree Siddhivinayak temple, this brings the total haul in the gold-deposit scam to 41 kg to date. Put in different terms, the total amount stolen has now risen from 0.000002% of the gold of India’s people all the way to 0.00008%.

Will the scheme by the One Bank and India’s government to steal some/most/all of the 20,000 tonnes of privately held gold in India be successful? If so, Butch and Knuckles will have to engage in a lot more persuading.

Leave a Comment