adrian douglas exposes the gold etf (gld) as a scam. it is not yet clear if the silver etf is just as worthless. that is not to say that slv actually does have silver backing, only that the silver etf has not been conclusively proven to be bogus...yet

Right from the inception of the gold ETFs GLD and SLV, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee has deduced from studies of the ETF prospectuses that these funds very likely do not hold gold and silver to fully back the issued shares because the prospectuses don't categorically require it. (See footnotes 1 and 2.) In fact, the ETFs may have no gold or silver at all.

What seemed bizarre to GATA at the time was that the two mega-short anti-gold investment banks, JPMorgan and HSBC, would be involved in the launch and operation of precious metal investments that, on the face of it, would create huge investor demand for the very metals in which the banks hold massive and clearly manipulative concentrated short positions.

Now all becomes clear. The system is the ultimate alchemy. If ETF shares are NOT backed by gold but are accepted by the COMEX as equivalent to physical gold ... presto! You have turned paper into gold -- and paper is a lot cheaper than lead.

A futures market is supposed to provide price discovery for a commodity. In the gold market this notion has been hijacked because settlement can be made with a derivative instrument, such as an unbacked or partially backed ETF share. If that derivative instrument is not backed by gold on a 1:1 basis the scheme allows an artificial apparent increase in the supply of gold and so distorting price discovery toward lower prices.

Such a scam would be in grave danger of becoming exposed if anyone knew the true inventory condition of the vaults of the ETFs. That problem is easily solved by having HSBC be the custodian of GLD and JPMorgan be the custodian of SLV.

I have not found anywhere that COMEX accepts ETFs as an equivalent to physical silver for an EFP transaction, which probably explains why silver warehouse movements are much larger than those of gold, and perhaps may indicate that physical silver is the cartel's Achilles heel.

We have all wondered how GLD could have amassed a stunning 1,100 tons of gold in less than five years without the gold price exploding. This represents buying 10 percent of all global gold output each year. What's more, in the last nine months the ETF holdings almost doubled, adding approximately 500 tonnes or 23 percent of annual global production. And this when the signatories to the second Washington Agreement on Gold have reduced their gold sales to a trickle, from 500 tonnes per year. If the GLD shares are unbacked or only partially backed by gold, the alleged 1,100-tonnes gold holding would be easy to achieve with just the use of a printing press for the share certificates.

http://www.gata.org/node/7586