http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Chavez-Venezuela-recalling-11B-in-gold-reserves-2082688.php President Hugo Chavez announced Wednesday he is nationalizing Venezuela's gold mining industry and intends to bring home $11 billion in gold reserves currently held in U.S. and European banks.
He said the recall of the gold reserves is intended to help protect this oil-producing country from the economic woes in the United States and Europe.
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The Central Bank said recently that the country has about $17.9 billion in gold out of a total of more than $28.6 billion in international reserves. Chavez said $11 billion worth of the gold is held in other countries.
Central Bank president Nelson Merentes said on television that the decision to move the gold reserves was being taken out of "prudence."
"At the time of these disturbances, it's preferable to recover our assets, in this case the gold, and have it here in the vaults," Merentes said.
Okay, so now the big rush to gold is making sense. Supposedly J.P. Morgan holds some Venezuelan gold. Could be a problem. This could end badly..................
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/chavez-pulls-venezuelas-gold-jp-morgan-great-scramble-physical-startingAs most know, JPM is one of the 5 vault banks. The fun begins if Chavez demands physical delivery of more than 10.6 tons of physical because as today's CME update of metal depository statistics, JPM only has 338,303 ounces of registered gold in storage. Or roughly 10.6 tons. A modest deposit of this size would cause some serious white hair at JPM as the bank scrambles to find the replacement gold, which has already been pledged about 100 times across the various paper markets. Keep an eye on gold in the illiquid after hour market. The overdue scramble for delivery may be about to begin.