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 Replies: 10 / Views: 398 |
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New Member
United States
20 Posts |
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/...olombia.htmlA New York Times subscription may be necessary to open the link but basically the article claims that: "Congress in 1985 prohibited the Mint from making bullion out of foreign gold because it wanted to insulate the process from human rights abuses, primarily in apartheid South Africa." "But a New York Times investigation has found that the government's program of gold sales is based on a lie. The Mint is actually the last link in a chain that launders foreign gold, much of it illegally mined, for an insatiable market." *** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum.  ***
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Bedrock of the Community
 United States
10470 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
6449 Posts |
Not terribly surprising. Demand for physical gold is high, and requiring that it all be sourced from U.S. mines is very restrictive. The article claims that the Mint hasn't really audited the incoming supply rigorously for at least 20 years.
The gold could also be melted and combined with "good" gold. Only the paperwork would matter. That seems like a traceability nightmare.
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Moderator
Australia
16805 Posts |
Gold is, effectively, fungible - one piece of gold is just as good as any other, and functionally indistinguishable from any other piece. Certainly once it's refined to .9999 fine, trying to chemically analyse that .0001 for trace elements to try to prove the origin of the gold is way more trouble than it's worth, especially if the gold is of "mixed" origin. You might be able to chemically determine that a certain specific piece of gold came from a Colombian gold mine, but you could take a lump of gold from Colombian drug cartels, another lump from an African dictatorship, and another from a Nazi holocaust loot hoard, mix and melt everything together into one big lump of gold, and no-one would ever be able to tell that's where it came from. The only intrinsic proof of "origin" of gold bullion is the form it's stamped into, and gold is ridiculously easy to melt and re-shape.
There's an awful lot of "just trust me, it's all good" in the gold trade. The criminals, warlords and dictators all know this, which is why they like to fund their operations with things like illegal or stolen gold and gemstones. Gold is, essentially, a self-laundering form of money.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Valued Member
United States
451 Posts |
Here, here!
And crypto goes a step beyond.
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Valued Member
United States
465 Posts |
This is old news that was repackaged.
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Moderator
United States
187446 Posts |
In other news, water is wet.
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New Member
 United States
20 Posts |
In other words,
"Move along, nothing to see here."
Not a problem, just thought that some of the gold aficionados might be interested.
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Moderator
United States
187446 Posts |
After 12,000 years of human civilization, nothing is clean.  |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
5238 Posts |
If you have the raw gold in the form of nuggets/ flakes, or as ore imbedded in the rock, you could probably ascertain the origin, or have a high degree of confidence.
If you think about the gold jewelry that comes into a LCS, melt it together and purify it, it probably has gold in it from all over the world.
I know that my LCS gets quite a bit of gold jewelry of Indian, Mid-east as well as European origin.
Edited by oriole
04/27/2026 12:20 pm
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
19108 Posts |
Thanks for bring this forward--'old' news or not...
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Replies: 10 / Views: 398 |
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Posted 04/26/2026 5:32 pm
