This week's report by the London Bullion Market Association about the gold and silver held in London-area vaults brings little transparency to the issue and even contradicts itself, gold researcher Ronan Manly writes today.
Manly concludes: "The amount of gold in the London LBMA gold vaults (including the Bank of England's) that is not central bank gold, that is not exchange-traded fund gold, and that is not institutional allocated gold is quite a low number. The actual number is difficult to determine because a) the LBMA will not produce a proper vault report that shows ownership of gold by category of holder, and b) neither will the Bank of England in its gold vault reporting provide a breakdown between the gold owned by central banks and the gold owned by bullion banks.
"So there is still no real transparency in this area -- just a faint chink of light into a dark cavern.
"On the topic of London-vaulted silver, there appears to be a lot more silver in the LBMA vaults than even GFMS thought there was. It will be interesting to see how GFMS and the LBMA will resolve their apparent contradiction on the amount of silver stored in the London LBMA vaults."
Manly's analysis is headlined "LBMA Gold Vault Data -- How Low Is the London Gold Float?" and it's posted at Bullion Star here:
https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/ronan-manly...t-data-relea...
