Gold and silver broker GoldSilver.com  publishes a fascinating review of the prospectuses of some Asian banks that offer "paper" gold funds and are pretty candid in acknowledging that investors aren't really buying gold at all. "With paper gold, you don't own gold," GoldSilver.com says. "In most cases you don't even own a promise to receive physical gold."

Indeed, "paper gold" is the mechanism by which central banks long have suppressed the gold price, as "paper gold" allows them to increase the purported gold supply to keep up with the growth in the world money supply without having to go through the trouble of actually mining any metal. Like central bank money, "paper gold" is potentially infinite.

The GoldSilver.com commentary is headlined "Paper Gold and Gold Passbook Scams" and it's posted here:

http://goldsilver.com/article/paper-gold-and-gold-passbook-scams/