Well, duh!

I really am beginning to wonder just how stupid I can be.

Of course there isn't enough physical gold (and silver) in the world to satisfy all of the paper claims against it.

I refer here to Trace Mayer's Run to Gold Blog (http://www.runtogold.com/2008/12/a-problem-with-gld-and-slv-etfs/) which very succinctly points out the inherent flaws in the GLD and SLV ETFs.

These are problems WITHIN the ETF itself, not just the difficulty surrounding the whole concept of someone depositing hard earned fiat currency in order to control spurious and specious "hard" assets.

Fiat currency, however much one may rail against it, does function to buy "Stuff". "Stuff" that cannot be printed, such as oil, bread, cars, houses, and gold. Real gold. Not the phony paper stuff being pimped by the World Gold Council on their SPDR GLD ETF.

(SPDR is an acronym that is pronounced "spider" as in arachnid. )

Spider would be the term for sure. A big, fat, hairy, venomous and bad tempered spider. Spinning webs of lies within lies, deceits within deceits.)

Well, of course there are problems (headslap).....these folks are direct descendants of the original goldsmiths/moneylenders that figured this whole charade out in the first place. Duh!

Fractional reserve "banking" which subsequently morphed into our present fiat currency BEGAN with gold. It began with some really bright little monkey figuring out that not everybody came for all of their gold at the same time. This monkey (I mean no insult to the primate orders here) then got the bright idea to lend out this gold, at interest, via his gold receipts. You know, those pesky receipts that informed the customer that his or her gold would ALWAYS be available? Yeah, those receipts.

Anyway, fast forward oh five hundred years or so, give or take a century, and these same monkey moneylenders now have a world stage upon which to cavort, computers to really speed up said cavorting, and hey presto! we have the self-same goldsmiths lending out gold receipts as money.

GLD and SLV - of COURSE they don't have the metals. Why would they?

Why would anyone in their right pea-picking minds EXPECT them to?

They (the monkeys) know from past, very lucrative, experience that they can get away with MURDER by burying the deed in the fine print, and spouting spin to whomever in the media will listen.

The Rule of Law in this country is in the process, as we speak, of being gutted, skinned, and hung out to dry. The present administration has demonstrated nothing but contempt for bond-holders, share-holders and any else who dare to question how law is being abrogated right and left.

The GLD SPDR Gold Trust Prospectus makes for some very interesting reading. I wonder how many buyers of baskets in this trust actually read it?

For instance, a Basket (which is the minimum purchase in the Trust) consists of 100,000 shares. The NAV (Net Asset Value) per share as of August 21, 2008 was $82.12. So if my math is correct, the purchase price of a basket at that time was $8,212,000.00. That self-same basket is 10,000 ounces of gold per basket. That equals out to one ounce of gold per 10 GLD shares. Sound familiar? There's that old 10 to 1 ratio again.

Per this prospectus, "The number of ounces of gold required to create a Basket or to be delivered upon the redemption of a Basket gradually decreases over time, due to the accrual of the Trust's expenses and the sale of the Trust's gold to pay the Trust's expenses." (Empahsis mine.)

They may want to print it out and read it before

a) Gold goes away entirely, into the vaults of the central banks
b) Gold, and derivatives thereof, are prohibited from purchase by individuals
c) The abrogation of the rule of law in this country makes the prospectus a curiosity piece only
d) All of the above