Gold

Interesting article in Bloomberg with respect to Gold and the possiblilty that multiple financial claims exist for the same caches of gold.  This is something I have written about previously and every Gold investor must be actutely aware of what, precisely, do they "own" when entering into these contracts...because all manner of useful idiot have surfaced to drum up eschatological fantasies of the end of society and the re-emergence of Gold as "the" currency of value.

Boehringer speculates that individual bars may have several owners, perhaps as the result of bars being leased, sold, or subject to complicated financial arrangements. “I can’t prove it,” he adds, saying the onus of proof should be on the central bankers, not him. He isn’t alone in raising doubts. John Hathaway, co-manager of the $1.3 billion Tocqueville Gold Fund, says Germany might need the slow, seven-year repatriation window to unwind complex financial arrangements by which the gold was loaned out, perhaps several times. Their questions about multiple owners aren’t completely out of left field, as there is a loan market in which gold bars are put up as collateral and then sold to third parties for the duration of the deals.