CNBC - HSBC - GLD - Public Relations Backfire

GoldSilver.com
SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

Late last month, the cheerleaders of Wall Street from CNBC ran a special report on the inner workings of the gold and silver industry entitled, Gold and Other Money Metals.

The highlight of this report had to be the bizarre public relations backfire involving HSBC, the paper SPDR Gold Trust GLD, and CNBC's "hard hitting" financial journalist, Bob Pisani:

Briefly appearing as if he were being kidnapped, Bob was transported throughout London in a blacked out van. Then, once supposedly within the HSBC gold vault, Mr. Pisani flashed a 400 ounce gold bar with serial numbers belonging to a totally different ETF than GLD.

Click here to see the video.

So what was the big deal?

Well, contrary to Bob's report, not all the ounces in this particular vault are from the GLD fund and as you can see in the image below, CNBC was quick to cover their inaccuracies by adding an additional clause to the video's description:

The fact that GLD is now forced to launch PR spots to ensure confidence is interesting indeed.

It would not surprise us, nor many other experts within the gold and silver community, if one day this overbought trust melted down due to a growing skepticism and understanding of how this "investment" vehicle operates. A great price separation and disparity between physical bullion and paper vehicles such as GLD is something we are certain of.

Among savvy investors in gold and silver, the idea of holding ETFs like GLD or SLV over physical gold/silver bullion is laughable and silly.

Take for example the following frequently asked question copied and pasted directly from GLD's website:

Can you take physical possession of the gold?

The Trustee, The Bank of New York Mellon, does not deal directly with the public. The Trustee handles creation and redemption orders for the Trust’s shares with Authorized Participants, who deal in blocks of 100,000 shares. An individual investor wishing to exchange shares for physical gold would have to come to the appropriate arrangements with his or her broker.

In other words, today one has to have a minimum position of over $18,000,000 in GLD and then have access to the aforementioned Authorized Participants in order to hopefully arrange a conversion of said shares into real physical gold.

The expression Possession is 9/10th's of the Law didn't come about by mere chance.

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and the Special Report :

6 Precious Metals Scams To Avoid

Our company founder and CEO, Mike Maloney, has been warning folks for years, "If you can't hold it, you don't own it!"

Unlike bullion you can wholly own in your hand or by direct title ownership in a segregated private vault, ETFs are fraught with counter-party risks, questions of ownership, etc.

In this comical video below, Chris from the WeeklyTelegram examines the convoluted maze that is the GLD prospectus:

Management fees extracted from shareholders' holdings for ETFs like GLD (annually 0.4 percent of share values) are way too expensive given the trust's risks and the lack of direct title of its shareholders to the underlying bullion they claim to hold.

Ignorance is not bliss, especially when one risks their safe haven holdings AND in doing so, overpays in the process!

Additionally, from the Gold and Other Money Metals report, CNBC misinformed their readers on industry prices for storing gold in a depository, citing fees ranging from 0.33 to 1.25 percent, depending on the depository and account value.

For years now, many customers of GoldSilver.com have been paying as little as 0.07 percent of their segregated gold vault account value in Salt Lake City. And now our customer's vaulting options are expanding, better yet, fees are going down in price!

This week, GoldSilver.com is formally launching a new direct vaulting option with Cube Global Storage in Canada.

Now gold investors can privately vault their bullion north of the border, directly in their title, in a fully insured, segregated private depository for as little as 0.01 percent of the account's value.

Yes, you read that correctly! You can vault up to 1250 ounces of gold or over $ 2,300,000 in value for a mere $ 20 Canadian per month.

Given these facts, why would anyone choose to pay 40 times the fees for a paper gold fund versus outright safe and secure physical bullion ownership in a fully insured private vault?

Given these facts, why would anyone think CNBC knows anything about the gold industry and or trust their "special gold report"?

Cube Global Storage Ltd.
Victoria, British Columbia - Canada

Click here for more details on this exciting new service!

In the years ahead, we believe many shareholders of gold ETFs and silver ETFs who did not scrutinize and examine what they invested in, will have their wealth flow into the pockets of those savvy investors who thoroughly performed their proper due diligence.

With this exciting new Canadian gold vault partnership, our customers can truly minimize their risks and secure their most safe haven of assets by choosing perhaps the most cost effective gold vault in the world.

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