“LBMA ensures the highest levels of leadership, integrity and transparency for the global precious metal industry by promoting standards and developing market solutions.”
– LBMA mission declaration
When Bullionstar repeatedly called on LBMA to maintain its own mission – reform for integrity and transparency in the precious metals market – how do you think LBMA answered?
Obligated LBMA for clearer reporting of effortless gold? Obliged LBMA to finish the price manipulation?
No, instead, LBMA sent an operative and his secretary to the Bullionstars Bullion Retail Center in Singapore to inform us that there are inaccuracies in our coverage. The assigned assignment of the secretary, we were told was to read our blog post as soon as they were published!
However, they kindly suggested a solution – if we sent our blog post to LBMA for review before they published, they could ‘correct’ any inaccuracies for us!
We rejected LBMA’s offer to censor ourselves.
Bullionstars Criticism of LBMA
At Bullionstar we are proud of our independence and have postponed LBMA’s practice for years. My colleague Ronan Manly has written extensively about their opaque operations, conflicts of interest and market manipulation. The more we examine the structure of the gold market, the more clear it becomes that LBMA is an obstacle to free and fair trade.
LBMA positions itself as the global authority for gold and silver trade, but favors overwhelming gold banks and paper-based trade over physical metals.
In the heart of the problem is price discovery. Instead of being driven by supply and demand for actual physical gold and silver, prices are affected by opaque OTC trade with paper metals. This distorts the realities of physical market and creates opportunities for financial institutions to manipulate prices, sidelines of physical investors and businesses.
LBMA is tied closely to Bullion Banks and Bank of England and maintains an opaque system that benefits great players, while physical investors are facing limited transparency and justice.
As physical metals inherit prices from the OTC market, real gold and silver holders lose by getting the price of their metals suppressed.
The paper gold shell -game
LBMA oversees the paper gold and silver market – a detailed system with non -allocated accounts and derivatives that give the illusion of liquidity while masking the fact that there is far less physical gold than their contracts represent.
This system allows banks to expand the supply of “gold” far beyond the available physical supply, suppress prices and protect their fiat interests.
The whole system is built on the assumption that most dealers will never take delivery, giving Bullion Banks the opportunity to engage in fractional reserve gold trade with impunity.
Convicted gold manipulators are running lbma
By 2020, JP Morgan admitted and agreed to pay over $ 920 million to run US probes in its manipulation of precious metals. The scheme involved thousands of misleading trades over an 8-year period. More dealers, including Gregg Smith and Michael Nowak (a previous LBMA -Board member)was later convicted of fraud, pricing and forgery and sent to jail. 
Despite this, JP Morgan remains a key player in LBMA and retains its status as a market process and participates in the daily auctions of gold and silver prices.
How can an organization claim to ensure the highest levels of integrity, transparency and governance, while having JP Morgan as one of his most influential members?
Market manipulation fines are treated as just another cost of doing business, and banks continue to work with the same privileges, ensuring that the manipulation cycle persists.
Durky LBMA -Vaults
While LBMA releases monthly data on total metal stored in London vaults, these numbers mask critical details. How much of this is really effortless, free -flowing metal available for market use? LBMA won’t say.
Much of the vaulted gold is tied together – deposited by the Bank of England for central banks or the backing of ETFs such as Spdr Gold Trust, leaving only a fraction as available for trade or purchase. Bullionstar has previously estimated that the free float from London Gold, excluding ETF Holdings, is a maximum of 800 tonnes – 1,200 tons. This estimate excludes private holdings, such as those contained by gold banks and other devices, which further reduces the available supply.
With 500 tonnes of gold moved from London to New York in the last few months – and more on the way – it is obvious that LBMA is running out of physical gold. But rather than admitting that, what is their apology? A lack of men and vans to transport it … because gold is heavy.
LBMA & Comex Collessal Break Ranks
For years, LBMA and Comex have worked together to strengthen the gold market under crises encrypted to ensure enough physical gold to maintain confidence in the paper trade. This was evident in 2020-2021, when panic almost broke the system, yet they managed to hold it together.
Now the tide is. The United States seems to be more uninterested in protecting LBMA, which shows little concern about the expanded gap between spot and futures prices or the spot price fades relevance such as benchmark for physical gold.
The focus has been changed to a desperate run to one’s own physical gold before the inevitable paper market collapse.
Central banks, institutions and wealthy investors gather real physical bullion that signalizes distrust in the LBMA paper markets. The once dominant LBMA loses influence as concrete gold overtakes paper promises as the true goal of wealth and influence.
Comes lbma to an end?
LBMA member Banks is not in the process of contributing to real price discovery for precious metals. On the contrary, the temptation to manipulate prices through forgery and other tactics – to run volume and activity to profit – is too great to resist. With a key pressure, they can extend non -assigned positions, which effectively injections “unlimited credit” into the system.
But this gigantic Ponzi scheme is ending as more wealthy nations and individuals wake up to the truth-self-appointed LBMA emperor has no clothes. There is not enough gold to back up a fraction of the paper’s promises and the race on physical gold has begun.