braindeadoldguy wrote: The Real Financial War Is In The Gold Market
April 9 (King World News) – Eric King: “Alasdair, there is this continued financial war with Russia. There used to be this flow of gold from Russia into the LBMA. That’s been cutoff. Talk about how Russia might setting up the gold market for a short squeeze.”
The Remarkably Strong Ruble
Alasdair Macleod: “Yes, Eric, it’s a fascinating situation because there was this announcement last week from the Russian Central Bank that they were prepared to stand there and buy gold from Russian banks at a fixed rate of 5,000 rubles per gram. And then this morning we had a change in that. They said we’re no longer buying at 5,000 rubles/gram, but we will buy it on a case by case negotiated basis. Now the reason this has happened is they obviously didn’t expect the ruble to be so strong. The amazing thing is that if they had stuck to the 5,000 ruble bid with the ruble going down at one stage very close to 75 to the dollar today, that was the equivalent of about $2,070 for the price of gold. Obviously if I was in the position of the Russian Central Bank I would say, ‘Hold on a minute, I think we better revise what we’ve been saying (laughter).’
No Russian Gold = Massive Short Squeeze In The Gold Market
So this is not bad news (for the gold market), this is actually pretty good news. The other side of it of course is London has shot itself in the foot in terms of supplies. It’s cutoff the Russian refiners. So there is now no gold coming in from Russia. That is assuming the Russians would want to supply London anymore. But until last year, the supplies from Russia were increasing. Bear in mind this is the largest mining nation and virtually every ounce of gold the Russians sell into the West was actually cleared through London. In 2019, it was about 7-8% of the total supply coming into London. But in 2021, Russian gold flow into the LBMA totaled (a staggering) 28% of all the supply coming into London. That’s now been cutoff, and this isn’t a good time because there isn’t a lot of stock around (of available physical gold). So the liquidity in the market has dried up significantly. And if you watch how the gold price has been behaving…to continue listening to Alasdair Macleod discuss Russia setting up the gold market for a massive short squeeze