The New London Gold Fix and HSBC to Close Gold Vaults

When you visit with Alasdair Macleod from GoldMoney.com and FinanceandEconomics.org, you should be prepared for a lesson in global economics. Our visit started with the very explosive new London Gold fix and discuss the implications of how this will effect, not only traders, but the retailer buyers as well.

As Alasdair explained Friday in his article “The new London Gold Fix and China“:

This month the physical gold market will undergo radical change when the four London fixing banks hand over the twice-daily fix to the International Commodity Exchange’s trading platform on 20th March.

From 1st April the Financial Conduct Authority will extend its powers from regulating the participants to regulating the fix as well. This will transfer price control away from the bullion banks allowing direct access to the fixing process for all direct participants and sponsored clients.

As the markets are attempting to digest the new London Gold Fix, HSBC announces they are closing 7 of their London gold vaults!! During our conversation, recorded on Monday March 9, it was not clear which vaults had closed and the impact this would have on the GLD – SPDR gold-backed ETF fund, as well as the ETF Securities gold-backed fund. HSBC is the custodian bullion bank for both of these very large gold ETF funds. During the editing of the video below Alasdair sent me an email and here is what we learned Tuesday March 10, about the closed vaults:

“Spoke to HSBC ‘customer relations and PR’ today

They are saying that it’s just their ‘retail safe deposit facilities’ now – yes they are closing all 7 but nothing to see here. They don’t accept that these are vaults despite them using that terminology with my bullion dealer.”

What is really interesting is we have all this gold-focused activity going on while China is placing billboards in Bangkok announcing the RMB (Renminbi) as the “new choice” and “The World Currency”. If you look at the image below, you will see a gold coin in place of the “O”. Very interesting indeed.

Quick recap–We have a new gold fix, London is closing the gold fix on March 20, 2015, HSBC has closed 7 retail gold vaults and China has billboards in Bangkok announcing the RMB as the world currency!

This should be more than enough for any one person to digest, but we decided to dive deeper and take a look at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and what role it will be playing in the very near future. With approximately 50% of the world’s population, over 60% of the world’s natural resources, including most of the world’s gold, what impact will this have on the remainder of the 21st century in the Western world? That is the $18trillion dollars in debt question! The Western – Anglo world is debt soaked. The global economy is slowing to a crawl. China, Russia the other members of the SCO are only interested in one thing – conducting business and generating more business for their countries. The only thing the Western world seems to be interested in is war.

Mr. Macleod does an excellent job of explaining all the above in a relaxed atmosphere. We hope you enjoy and we hope you learn a lot!