a humourous speculation from this thread:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=43820303
"It would be a nightmare to assay every brick that comes to a bank.
It now seems that the Chinese asked for an assay on some of their bricks and lo and behold, some were filled with Tungsten. You can imagine the nightmare that this presents itself.
Who has been buying gold lately?
India bought 200 tons of the 403 tons....
India said it was keen to diversify its reserves away from the US dollar, which has weakened in recent months.
USA: "You wanna diversify away from the Dollar? Sure, please hold one minute for our customer service rep. He will be with you shortly".
USA to Federal Reserve board: "Hey, we got India on hold wanting to diversify away from the dollar and buy some gold. WTF are we going to do now"?
Fed Board: "Hey, we still have some of those gold plated tungsten bricks! Lets unload 403 tons of that shot on them, they will never know. We will make it look like the Chinese did it"!!
The IMF only offered it to other Central Banks. I wonder why? If the Central Bank discovered the fake bars, would they even say anything? Or would they let people assume they have real gold?
My suspicion is that India is getting rid of a few US Dollars obtained in international trade and buying the gold, before the dollar slides further.
Take into account that the value of all the Gold mined in history only amounts to about $5 Trillion if sold at todays prices (give or take a few million).
The US has -$65 Trillion in debt and bullshott assets......
Something stinks."