this is from today's commentary from bill murphy of gata, and cites the work of adrian douglas as well:

It was some week as far as GATA coverage was concerned, thanks to the internet. However, for the most part what GATA has produced remains in the weeds, even when it comes to the internet. If it were not for the Maguire revelations, I doubt what GATA had to say would have garnered any attention at all. Heck, as has been mentioned by others, the beat reporters who were there (3 from Reuters) didn’t even bother to mention GATA’s name following the hearing. The Bloomberg reporter had our presentation in advance and then did nothing with it, as usual … and what are the odds that the TV feed line goes down just when I am to make the GATA presentation and then goes right back up when I am done? Ya think some people don’t want our story out there?

NOTHING has been said by anyone about the essence of GATA’s presentation to the CFTC which covers 11 years of evidence of Gold Cartel activity. It is the financial story of a lifetime and still NO ONE wants to go there. One thing for sure, the Maguire emails about JP Morgan’s manipulation of the price of silver surely make it much easier for some major financial publication to come our way and do some serious investigative work about what GATA has to say. That means bringing our assertions to the likes of Robert Rubin, the Fed, The Treasury, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, JPM, HSBC, etc., and let letting them respond. All a big league reporter has to do is dissect GATA’s presentation made to the CFTC and then do the proper legwork around what we said. Someday, somebody will.

Adrian’s bombshell with Jeff Christian surely was a biggie and a huge story unto itself. The bottom line is the head of HSBC’s precious metals trading said their positions on the Comex were hedged by positions in London. Of course, the CFTC does not take measures to confirm any of the details to HSBC’s claims, which has been my bitch to the CFTC in prelude commentary prior to March 25.

Well, lo and behold, Jeff Christian confirmed what Adrian has been saying that these paper positions on the Comex, in many cases, are backed with nothing more than more paper positions in London. In essence, Adrian has been claiming for some time that the London gold game is a monster ponzi scheme. It can be a lot to grasp, so Adrian has laid out the deal for us as simply as possible…

The LBMA website says most customers have unallocated accounts as they are "the most convenient and low cost". Customers can only trade in gold if they have unallocated accounts. They describe the unallocated account holder as an "unsecured creditor". This is the key. How can you be an unsecured creditor? If you bought 100 tonnes of gold even if they don’t give you serial numbers you own 100 tonnes of gold. If you are "unsecured" it means you don’t own anything you just have a general claim against the inventory of the bullion bank of the amount you bought. So this is the first evidence that it is a fractional reserve accounting scam. Then you look at the trade volumes. They trade on a NET basis (from their website) 20 Million ozs per day of gold. That is 22 B$ per day. That is 5.5 TRILLION DOLLARS per year. On a gross basis this is probably 15 TRILLION USD per year (1.5 times the US economy or 25% of the GLOBAL economy!). The magnitude of the numbers implies that this amount of trade is not backed by gold. They are buying and selling gold that only exists as a ledger entry.

The bombshell was Jeff Christian confirmed my analysis that the LBMA sells 100 times what it actually has in metal.

If you divide by 100 then the NET trade in REAL PHYSICAL METAL is 200,000 ozs per day which is 1625 tonnes annually. This is a VERY sensible number when compared with gold mine supply and helps to confirm the 100:1 ratio given by J. Christian.