Bloomberg News seemed surprised today as it reported that "gold in the Bank of England vault is trading at a discount to the wider market, as fears over potential Trump tariffs spark a scramble for bullion that's resulting in weeks-long queues to withdraw metal":
https://www.gata.org/node/23621
But it's hardly surprising that, amid the turmoil in the gold market, the bank's promise to deliver metal in a month or two is worth less than actual metal to be delivered today or tomorrow, especially since the bank's excuse for failing to deliver promptly is pretty lame -- that there are so many demands to buy or lease gold from the bank and from the governments and bullion banks that store gold there that the bank needs four to eight weeks to get the metal out of the vault and process the orders.
If a raging fire broke out at banker hangout Brasserie Blanc and was working its way down Threadneedle Street, showering embers on the grand old Royal Exchange building across from the bank, the Royal Marines would empty the bank's gold vault in about 35 minutes. They might haul all the metal around the corner to the Bank of China in Basildon House, ask to borrow the lobby for a few hours, and set the remaining pallets on the sidewalks outside with a heavy guard of armored fighting vehicles. (The British armed forces still have at least five of those left outside military museums.)
Indeed, at first, the tellers at the Bank of China might think the visit was just another delivery for transport to Shanghai.
If the Bank of England can't oblige gold sale or lease requests in less than a month or two, it almost certainly means that even if gold remains in the bank's vault, its owners are not willing to sell or lease it, having realized that the 50-year fractional-reserve gold banking system engineered by the United States and the United Kingdom is coming to an end, now that many central banks have stopped cooperating with it and have switched from leasing and price-suppression mode to repatriation and revaluation mode.
But Bloomberg News, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and all the other mainstream financial news organizations will be the last to report it.
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