World Is Waking Up to LBMA Paper Gold Scheme. (Uncut) 03-04-2025

World Is Waking Up to LBMA Paper Gold Scheme. Recent Interview with Daniela Cambone of ITM Trading.

First, we got the news about all the gold leaving London for New York. And now Swiss exports to the US, Swiss gold exports are at its highest level in 13 years. What is going on? Is it, does it just have to do with tariffs? Or is there more at play? We’re going to try and get to the bottom of this today with my guest, Mario Ineco.

He has his own YouTube channel. He’s been doing this since 2015, focused on the financial markets. But in a previous life, he worked for over 20 years in the city of London and specialized in exchange traded derivatives market.

He also says he’s an ardent student of the Austrian School of Economics. Mario, nice to meet you. Welcome to the show.

Nice to meet you as well, Daniela. And thank you. I know you are based in London.

You’re really in the belly of the beast. Do you have any insights as to what is going on? Why is so much gold leaving Europe, leaving London and coming back into the US? Is it to avoid tariffs, future potential tariffs? That might beg the question, why would there be tariffs on gold? Or is there more at play? Any insights, Mario? I don’t think it’s the tariffs, even though it could have triggered some buying. I saw the report from the FT on January 29th.

And I’ll never forget that date, because I think it was the most important date for the gold market since Gordon Brown announced he was going to sell half the UK’s gold. And why do I say that? Well, I was coming out of a physio, sports physio, I had a bad elbow. And I got a notification from the FT saying that there was a stockpiling of gold going to the US.

And I read the article. And it said that the spot price was now T plus 4 to 8 weeks, which I thought was shocking because the Bank of England is supposed to have 400,000 of those 400 ounce bars. And from what I’ve read, only about 2% of those bars have gone over to the US.

So why do they have to delay delivery? And now you’re talking about Switzerland. Yes, there’s gold going from everywhere to the US. And a lot of people are saying that it’s to do with arbitrage that they buy in London and sell on COMEX because of the premium.

But they used to use EFPs for that, exchange for physical. And that term exchange for physical is really misleading. Because I remember when I worked as a futures broker, I traded government bonds, but some of my colleagues traded gold futures and silver futures.

And I used to hear about EFPs and I asked them, so are you taking delivery? And they said, oh, no, this is just a paper transaction. Futures brokers hate taking delivery. I asked my boss once because we had a client who traded a lot of gold and silver if we could take delivery and he said, forget it.

So some people speculate that there’s 2,000 tons now gone to the US over the last two and a half months. So I think personally, it’s to do with the US and the Treasury closing out its leases on the gold or maybe there isn’t much gold left in some of the depositories like Fort Knox. Who knows? Interesting.

You know, I had I know Clive Thompson is a mutual friend of yours, Mario. You know, he said one thing is for sure. Somebody wants their gold and they want it now.

And he was pointing to the COMEX and, you know, the levels we’re seeing in terms of physical deliveries. I mean, we’ve never seen this before. Something crazy is absolutely happening.

He brought up China. Could that be the mystery player that wants their gold? I don’t think it’s China because they’ve already been accumulating a lot of gold. And we also saw that earlier last year, before November, the Chinese were actually buying physical gold from London.

We saw, I think it was Yan Nguyen House for Monetary Metals. He did a lot of research about the customs data. So and I think the Chinese buy a lot of gold from directly from mines these days as well.

And all their gold that they produce in China. So I think, yeah, it’s very strange because the COMEX market and the LBMA there, I don’t know if you know the term bucket shop that I learned about that reading about Jesse Livermore when he started trading as a teenager. He didn’t have enough money to trade with a stockbroker in the real stock market.

So he just bet on prices in these bucket shops. And I think, yeah, it sounds weird, but I think the LBMA and the COMEX are 90 percent bucket shops and they’re just trading the price of gold, betting on it. But when someone comes and asks for delivery, it creates a huge problem.

And that’s what I think is happening. And I think they’re going to I think the cat is out of the bag, Daniella, because if the U.S. Treasury is really trying to bring back its physical gold, the paper scheme is over. I think for the paper scheme we’ve had for the last 50 years and recently I spoke, I think it was on my live stream on Sunday that the Wikileaks had a document from 1974, just before gold was made legal in the U.S. again.

And it was communication between U.S. officials like in the Treasury and London building dealers. And the dealer said, well, the futures market in gold, because the gold futures was actually created on December 31st, 1974, and the first settlement date was the 1st of January. They said, the dealers, that these futures would help keep the market like a speculative market and that it would make it volatile and stop the American public from wanting to buy real physical gold.

The LBMA, I’ve spoken to David Jensen. He’s in Canada. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him.

He does a lot of analysis on gold. And he said that the LBMA was created in 1986 when Margaret Thatcher had the big bank financial deregulation. And basically, the Bank of England was given the power to regulate the bullion market and they just told the bullion banks to do whatever they want.

So it’s like the Wild West. But now, you know, someone wants a lot of physical gold. And I think if it was just a normal investor, they wouldn’t be allowed to do that.

And that’s why my speculation is that it’s the U.S. government wanting gold. You say along those lines, you say, I think we’re approaching a monetary event. I’m not saying it’s going to happen tomorrow or next week or next month or next year.

I think it could take another two to three years. Are you talking about a monetary reset? Yeah, I think, you know, that that has been happening already as we see all the fiat currencies drop and gold go up quite a lot. I mean, since the beginning of this century, we’re up about 9, 10 percent in all the major currencies.

That is a gradual reset. But we could have something more serious where countries like the U.S., China and Russia get together and decide upon some kind of monetary agreement, because that’s the only way to keep, I think, trade and investment between nations on a stable basis. I think the last 50 years of the dollar standard or the fiat currency standard is on its last legs.

So, yeah, it could happen. I mean, it could happen this year, could happen next year. I’ve done some research about like cycles, monetary cycles.

And if you go back to 1933, that was the last time there was a major monetary event when Roosevelt made gold illegal. Then he revalued gold in 1934. And if you add, let’s say, 47 years to that, you get 1980.

That’s when the gold silver ratio went down to one and Volcker allowed rates to go up to 20 percent and gold topped and then interest rates started going down. And you add 47 to 1980, you get 2027. I think we’re due for some kind of event.

And even Secretary of the Treasury Scott Besant said in an interview before even the elections that he thinks we are nearing a Bretton Woods-like realignment. So that can only mean some kind of conference between these great powers. And hopefully, Europe will be involved because right now it seems like the U.S. is more friendly with Russia than Europe.

They voted together in the U.N. yesterday vis-a-vis the situation. Let me ask you, Mario, because it’s the first time, I mean, you’re bringing up that maybe the U.S. will align with China and Russia. Whenever I’ve heard the reset theory, it’s always U.S. versus, obviously, the BRICS, right? China, Russia and company.

So did I hear that correctly, that you actually think in your thinking that the U.S. would work together with China and Russia on something? Yeah, I mean, I used to, I’ve been covering BRICS for years as well. And even the fact that China was getting its, let’s say, gold exchanges ready and Yuan trading for foreigners six, seven years ago. And I think President Trump realizes that the BRICS are too far already, you know, too far down the road for America to be able to do anything.

I mean, look at the last three years, Danielle, they bought so much gold. It’s a record gold buying in 2022, 2023, 2024, net gold buying the biggest since the Bretton Woods agreement. So I think Trump has come into office and he sees, wow, even though he talks tough about 100 percent tariffs on the BRICS, I think that’s just part of his negotiating style.

I’m not saying he is going to be chummy with the Chinese or the Russians, but he realizes he needs to sit down with these other powers. And even Marco Rubio, the Secretary of the Treasury, recently spoke with Megyn Kelly and he admitted we’re not in the unipolar world anymore. We’re in a multipolar world and they have to work together.

I think, unfortunately, it’s only the Europeans and the UK who don’t see that. I want to bring up Fort Knox now, and I just want to read a quote from you here. You say, you know, this ties back into the physical market.

You say, I would venture to say that in London, where the LBMA is based and the bullion banks operate, there is no limit to how much paper gold or unallocated gold they can create from that 400 ounce bar. It’s infinite, you say. So when you have the President of the United States saying he wants an audit of Fort Knox and that the gold might still be there, but if that gold is, say, leased out, rehypothecated many times, that’s when you say there’s a major problem.

So it’s not whether the gold is there, it’s how many times has that gold been sold or leased? You say, how do you solve that? Well, you have to buy the lease back. You have to buy the gold back. And the thing is, if you lease it 100 times the gold that you have, it’s going to drive the price massively higher.

It’s like a run on the bank. Talk to me more a little bit about this, Mario. Yeah.

And yeah, run on the bank. You’re talking a gold run, a possible gold run. Yeah, because the LBMA and COMEX, they run the market like a fractional reserve bank.

And if you look at history, the goldsmiths, they started out just like storing gold for wealthy people. And then they realized that not everyone came every day for their gold. So they started lending it out and then they realized that they could just lend more than they have because people didn’t come.

And that was with gold. And we have the same kind of system, of course, in the banking system, in the fiat currency world. And the bankers, they don’t see a problem with that, with gold.

They lend it out many times over. And I think with Fort Knox, yes, they probably have lent out that gold many times over. But I think they’ve also sold it or it’s been shipped abroad.

Because why would they be bringing, you know, some people think, I think it was Bullion Vault and Stone X. They’re speculating that’s 2,000 tons already gone to the US. If they hadn’t let that gold go, why would they be bringing it back? And also the lease. If that gold went from the US to London, and why do they send it to London? Well, because in London, there’s no limit to how much you can hypothecate.

I think in New York, there is a limit, like three or five times. And that’s why a lot of the bullion banks, which happen to be American banks as well, are based in London. So yeah, the only way to close a lease, which is like a short, is to buy it back.

And yeah, that’s what will drive the price higher. Or they can default, which is what de facto the bullion banks in the LBMA are doing right now, because spot delivery now is like T plus, I don’t know, 60 days. So that said, what would you want gold investors and holders of paper gold and physical gold to know? Well, I guess the holders of physical gold, all they need to know is that hold on to your gold.

And if you can get more physical, because that’s the only way to defeat the bullion banks. And I say defeat the bullion banks and the central banks, because I started buying gold in 02 when I was still working in the city. And I noticed that the markets were kind of weird, for lack of saying, manipulated.

I could see it right away. And then I learned that, yeah, it’s just a fractional reserve game. And the only way to stop that game is for people to ask for delivery, to ask for physical.

And I always thought it was going to be like China or Russia who would destroy the LBMA. But ironically, it looks like it could be the United States. But people that have paper gold, I would get out of that position and get physical.

I mean, I have a friend who used to have paper gold with a big bank that I won’t mention. And now he’s completely realized that. And he’s been buying as much physical gold as he can.

So it’s not too late yet. But yeah, you still got time, because I think the premiums in the retail market, at least here in the UK, are still relatively low. But I think eventually, if this… And I don’t think this short squeeze, so to speak, is going to solve itself anytime soon.

So I think eventually, the premium is going to flow into the retail market. I look at some big precious metals dealer online in the UK. And for the last few weeks, they’ve got a banner, which they usually don’t have.

And they’re saying there’s a one to two day delay because we’re really busy. And so, yeah. So get your gold now, get your physical gold now.

Last point, you’re very bullish on the price. You say the second leg of commodity bull market on the cusp of breaking out was one of your recent videos. I had some experts on saying, don’t be surprised if we see a bit of a pullback here on gold.

Your just general thoughts on the direction of price here, Mario? Well, I think one of the most important things about buying physical gold and silver is that you need to be patient and you need to think like a central bank. You have to think of how many ounces you have. Of gold and silver.

And like today, the day we’re speaking, gold has gotten hammered. But I’ve looked at the year to date performances. Gold is up about 10 percent and the NASDAQ is down about one and silver is up about nine.

I mean, yeah, I’m bullish on gold, silver and hard assets, mainly because I think the 40 years of the everything bubble and financialization are over. And I think one of the big symptoms indicating that is what President Trump is doing in terms of tariffs and like trade and trying to bring back manufacturing to the U.S. I watched Luke Groman speak to Tucker Carlson and he said he talked about the Dutch diseases when a country finds a commodity and focuses only on that commodity and neglects the whole economy. He gave a really good analogy of that.

And he said that the U.S. has got the dollar disease. They’ve been borrowing and spending for 50 years and the whole economy is like rotting away, the real economy. The only people who are doing well are Wall Street, private equity, hedge funds, because they play the paper game and they use leverage.

So I think this is almost over. And commodities and gold and silver, hard assets, they’re going to see a lot of money flow into them. And there’s such small markets now that it’s going to be, in my opinion, explosive.

I’m not telling people to do it. This is my opinion. But and I think, you know, the currencies don’t last forever.

And a higher price of gold is a reflection of that as well. Well said. Mario Anecco, thank you so much for joining us.

Where can folks find more of your work? I’m on YouTube at Manecco 64. That’s M-A-N-E-C-O 64. Yeah, I’m also on X or Twitter, Manecco 64.

But the handle is at Manecco 1964. Perfect. Thank you so much.

It was so great speaking with you. Thank you. Appreciate your time.

And thank you all for watching. We’ll have more great content. Sign up at DanielaCamponi.com and subscribe to our channel.

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