Dear Craig (the SnowDog), >Jim, you're just confused.
Just and confused, I agree! > There are NO bars in Ontario any more. One year ago, there > was 116 bars in Toronto at the Bank of Nova Scotia. Yes, I see that. But, for some odd reason, the folks at e-gold.com insisted on pointing me at this year-old information on their site which claims to be "live." So, while I admit to being confused by their site, I don't think my confusion is unjust. Moreover, isn't it rather odd that there has not been an audit in a year? I mean, that page linked from examiner.html is a year old. Now. Can we expect another review? Or can we expect e-gold, Ltd. to continue confusing people, such as myself, who are otherwise of good intent? At some point, merely confusing people who are using your service stops being mere confusion and becomes something much more aggravating. > That's a done deal, and the gold has been moved. I see that the examiner.html page suggests as much. I don't see any clear indication, to me, of where I might send an auditor to find all of my gold, if a customer were to demand it of me. > Morover, if you watch the examiner, Oh, I never do. I'm so busy, I only visit it on occasion. More often as Dagny Taggart makes searing criticisms about it. > the number of gold bars changes frequently. In the past week, > it has gone from 132 to 133, back to 132, then up again to 133. That's charming. And, tell me, does the value of gold ounces change by 400 every time? Looking at the table, I would guess that it does, since the bars are listed in that table as having 400.0000 ounces, average, even though they almost certainly do not. > The 'London' referred to now is London, England, UK. I don't know that, and neither do you. You think that is true because it may be implied in the contract with JP Morgan Chase, but you don't know anything of the sort. The examiner.html page does not say so. For that matter, it does not say that the gold bars are in Zurich, Switzerland and not in Lake Zurich, Illinois (in the lake itself and all wet like me! ;-). My point, and I think it is just, is that the examiner.html page should be as specific as possible about where my gold is being stored, and exactly how much gold is involved. >PS: Note also that we know there are 58 bars in Dubai because > we saw a picture of them in the Jan. issue of Wired. Now, c'mon. We saw a picture of bars of gold in _Wired_. We are told these are in Dubai. But what do we know? We know nothing. These could be a pile of bars, or a bunch of pixels faked together by some clever drone at _Wired_ or a pile of lead painted gold. They could be in Dubai, in Zurich, or, now, at the bottom of Lake Zurich, Illinois, for all that we know. And that's my entire point: we don't know where our gold is. I have gold stored by e-gold, Ltd., somewhere. I have no idea where. Really. I don't believe them when they tell me that there are 116 bars inspected in Ontario that pertain in any way to the 133 bars they claim to have now. >PSS: Note, also, that the gold amount is an approximation. Where does it say that???!!! That's not right! http://www.e-gold.com/examiner.html It purports to be live data. It purports to be accurate to four decimals. Four decimals, Craig! If the four decimals of accuracy aren't a realistic use of specific numbers, then why are they being used? I submit they may be used to convey an exactitude that is false to fact, and should not be stated by men of good will. I assume that the men of e-gold are of good will, but these examinations appear to have convinced Dagny Taggart otherwise. And I simply cannot account for the fact that 400 ounce bars which are only approximately 400 ounces each are described at examiner.html as being 400.0000 ounces (on average) exactly. Why use four decimal places, when the rest of the industry appears to use three? Why use four zeroes when the average cannot possibly be exactly that weight? > There is not exactly 53,200 ounces in aggregate; the bars > do not weigh equally 400oz each. Yes, that is very true. Two of them reviewed in Ontario when they were there a year ago this week were not even the weight that e-gold, Ltd., thought they were. They were not even close to being 400 oz. If we take the average weight of these two bars, that we do know about because someone went to where they are and weighed them, we get some real data to work with. Those two bars actually weigh an average of exactly 385.6365 oz. I don't know the actual weight of any other bars in e-gold's inventory. So, a conservative assumption on my part is that all the bars they have weigh about the same amount, which is not about 400 ounces, but is about 385.637 ounces. The e-gold examiner says that there is exactly 52,077.73 ounces of gold in circulation. I believe that Jay Wherley's fantastic software makes this number known, live, very well. But the corresponding value of gold in storage is not known, well, by any of us users. It is our gold, individually and severally, but we are denied the knowledge of where it is, how much of it there is, and that just isn't right. Taking the exact value of the average weight of the two bars about which we have some knowledge, and multiplying this average weight (calculated from two actual measurements) by the number of bars we are told are "in reserve" we get 51,289.6545 ounces. I think this number is better than the number on the examiner.html page, because it is calculated from two very precise measurements. While we don't have a list of 116 very precise measurements to work from, nor yet 133, we do have two. And two exact measurements is a better basis to form an estimate than zero measurements. 51,289.6545 ounces is a far cry from 52,077.73 ounces. It is off by 788.08 ounces of gold, or about $230,906.1215 at today's price. About two bars of gold are missing. (Exactly 2.043570824 of the bars whose average weight we know anything about.) (At the spike high which I anticipate of $7,500 per ounce, the deficit amounts to $5,910,566.25 which is a pretty big chunk of change.) The thing of it is, Craig, e-gold, Ltd., provided a listing of 116 bars to Central Escrow which listing contained all kinds of highly specific data about the exact gold bars in question, save two, which were not numbered or weighed correctly. See the Central Escrow page again: http://www.e-gold.com/ceal-inspection-2001-02-22.htm (I don't know how many times I've looked at that URL without twigging to the fact that it is a year old. Growing old sucks.) The page refers to "...comparison of the gold bullion listing provided by Repository with that supplied by E-Gold Ltd..." and notes discrepancies about two bars which include in both lists the refiner, the bar number, and the exact weight to three decimal places of accuracy, or one one thousandth of an ounce of gold (29.3 cents worth of gold). In other words, I think the Central Escrow page tells us that e-gold, Ltd., knows to within one thousandth of an ounce of gold exactly how much gold they have in gold bars. But they don't tell us. They tell us that there are exactly 133 bars, which, in the table, are presented as having the average weight of exactly 400.0000 ounces each! Four decimal places of utter nonsense! I cannot believe it! The list e-gold provided to Central Escrow was in ounces to three decimal places of accuracy. How did the accuracy grow to four decimal places when it reached examiner.html? I don't think it did. I think, in fact, and express the opinion, that the notion that there is any bar of gold in the world which is exactly 400.0000 ounces troy in weight is silly. Three decimal places seems to be the industry standard, and I doubt if any bar of gold measures 400.000 oz, either. I certainly don't think it credible that 133 bars, one of which weights 382.662 ounces troy and one of which weighs 388.611 ounces troy, could possibly be exactly 400.0000 ounces troy on average. That's silly! Averages don't work that way in real life. And that's a problem. See, if the examiner.html page were trying to convey an approximation, I would expect it to say: "approximately 400 oz. of gold." But it does not. It appears to be attempting to convey an exactitude of 400.0000 ounces of gold, which is a very exact number, accurate to one ten thousandth of an ounce, or just about three cents of gold. And it is up to date! http://www.e-gold.com/examiner.asp claims to have been created as of: 2/20/02 1:32:22 AM. So, it isn't like the page is an old, tired page, like the frame in which it rests, examiner.html which was last modified: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 4:21:32 PM Local time according to View..Page Info in my copy of Netscape. Seriously. The whole examiner.html page concept appears to be about two years old. But the data that appears there is very, terribly, tragically recent. It is now, now, now. But it is wrong, wrong, wrong. For two years, e-gold seems to have had an examiner.html page and examiner.asp with which to fill it. For two years, now, they have claimed that 400 ounce bars of gold are exactly 400.0000 ounces, on average, unless the .asp page has changed remarkably. And that just isn't right; I don't think it is even possible. I don't believe it. And, because I don't believe it, I find the use of four decimal places of accuracy to be a bit overzealous. And by "a bit overzealous" I'm attempting to use some of that disarming understatement that we get in places like London, England. The examiner.html page should be accurate to three decimal places. E-gold, Ltd., has never bought a single bar of gold that it did not know the weight of to within three decimal places, I would be willing to bet. It has a list, even if two of the bars on that list were not as listed, and were collectively off in weight by a tenth ounce. E-gold, Ltd., has a far more accurate idea of exactly how much gold there is in its possession, and it should share this data on examiner.html *or* it should put a big red label on the page "warning! approximation!" Otherwise, good people like Dagny Taggart are going to think bad thoughts about e-gold, and stop using the e-gold in their tipjar .sig file URLs, and e-gold is going to lose business to other, far more reputable, far more accurate sites, as the customers see it. And, frankly, that is sad. It is sad to see people who have such exact knowledge about how much gold they have try to pass off a gross approximation like "400 ounce bars weigh, on average 400.0000 ounces" on their web site as the truth about the gold they have "in reserve." E-gold is better than that. I'd like e-gold to simply stand up and say, "We have exactly 53,201.230 ounces of gold, and here's the list of which bars we own, and where they are stored." Why not? A list of the refiner, bar number, and weight exists. E-gold knows where these bars are to be found. Why not tell us? Then all these "what are they hiding" rumors can go away. E-gold would be better, stronger, and more popular with its customers if it told us these facts, exactly as they know them. Regards, Jim http://www.two-cents-worth.com/?101468&EG --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
