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Indian Temples Fight Back Against Government Gold Grabbing Plot
Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
The following article from Reuters is a follow up to a topic I have explored on various occasions in the past. Namely, how an inept Indian government is attempting to use the age old tactic of scapegoating in order to deflect attention away from its widespread policy failures. In the case of India, the target is gold. It’s a logical target for any crony Indian bureaucrat or Central Banker to go after. Wealth confiscation is a tried and true method historically used by corrupt elites to stay in power, and there is plenty of gold floating around the subcontinent. Easy pickings... or so they thought.
It appears some of the temples are now drawing a line in the sand, and are in fact refusing to provide details about their holdings. Other temples are a bit more compliant. From Reuters:
The central bank, which has already taken steps that have slowed to a trickle the incoming supplies that have exacerbated India’s current account deficit, has sent letters to some of the country’s richest temples asking for details of their gold.
It says the inquiries are simply data collection, but Hindu groups are up in arms.
“The gold stored in temples was contributed by devotees over thousands of years and we will not allow anyone to usurp it,” said V Mohanan, secretary of the Hindu nationalist Vishwa Hindu Parishad organisation in Kerala state, in a statement.
Guruvayur temple, in Kerala, one of the most sacred in India and boasting a 33.5-metre (110-ft) gold-plated flagstaff, has already told the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) it won’t divulge any details.
“The gold we have is mostly offered by the devotees. They would not like the details to be shared with anybody,” said V M Gopala Menon, commissioner of the temple’s administrative board.
The head of the Hindu nationalist main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kerala state, V Muralidharan, said the RBI wanted to “take possession” of the gold and maybe sell it for dollars.
Sounds like a brilliant plan. Take wealth that was accumulated over thousands of years and sell it for an electronic unit of exchange that Ben Bernanke can create in infinite quantities with a single keyboard stroke. Can people possibly be this stupid?
Subha Unnikrishnan, a clothes shop owner worshipping at one of the temples in Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram, said whatever had been given to the temple should stay there.
“We have given it to the god with a purpose,” he said. “Nobody can take them away.”
Of the three major temple boards in Kerala, which administer more than 2,800 temples, Cochin board has also decided against providing details of its gold, while another has yet to decide and a third says it has not yet received a letter from the RBI.
On the other hand, some of the temples are either extremely naive or captured. For example:
Mumbai’s Shree Siddhivinayak Ganpati temple, often visited by Bollywood celebrities, had already put 10 kg (22 lbs) of its gold into a bank deposit scheme. It still has 140 kg in its vault.
“The gold we have is the nation’s property, we will be proud if the nation can benefit from it,” said Subhash Vitthal Mayekar, chairman of the temple’s administrative trust. He has not yet received an inquiry from the RBI.
It is not alone. The Tirupati temple in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, considered one of India’s richest, has lodged 2,250 kg of gold with the State Bank of India, which pays it interest.
You can rest assured that gold is already long gone…
If the Indian government is trying to create massive surge in nationalism and unrest, snatching gold from religious temples is a sure way to get there.
Full article here.
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And que the Holy Warriors, the Gurkas.
Better have guns and ammo...
Better. Gurkas are also world class lawyers. Battle fields and court rooms for thousands of years. Talk the legs off a goat. And the bullet would be too merciful. lol!
What? They're midgets, too?
The History of The Chinese Gold Market
http://koosjansen.blogspot.nl/2013/10/the-history-of-chinese-gold-market...
History yet to pass.
Gold will rebalance the sum of all Fiat expansion
http://twoshortplanksunplugged.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/gold-will-rebalance-sum-of-all-fiat.html
The History of The Chinese Gold Market
http://koosjansen.blogspot.nl/2013/10/the-history-of-chinese-gold-market...
Opzouten Koos.
Note to the faithful members of the Tirupati temple, you'd better get your gold back NOW, if you can.
This will happen to churches around the world soon enough. In America the tax exempt status will be done away with, and offerings will be taxed, soon and very soon.
Amazing how much attention gubamints pay to that useless, traditional, barbarous relic of m=no monetary significance.
"Gold is a great thing to sew into your garments if you’re a Hindu family in India in 2013."
—Charles Munger, asshat
+1 snort snarf
Since Gold does not procreate, it can not bear interest.
Only from my cold dead roof.
Those guys are actually from Nepal....
Yup, and that temple is part of their traditions and history.
DONT DROP THAT "DURKA DURK"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5znn5bMDVkg
If India is paying 5.77% pa on a 5 year USD fixed deposit in Sept 2013 or GIC as called in Canada or certificate of deposit in US, which was close to 3.87% in Sep 2012 and similar level until June 2013, it is a hike of 1.9% and approx 50% more than last year when the whole world is paying less than 1.5% for 5 years.
http://www.4-traders.com/CENTRAL-BANK-OF-INDIA-9059895/news/Central-Bank...
Rates today are at 5.77% pa for 5 year USD deposit/GIC/CD. http://www.indiannewsandtimes.com/2013/08/30/central-bank-of-india-revis...
All Indian banks usually give same rate because of competition and almost full or majority Govt ownership in all of them.
Mini capital controls have come into India starting Aug 2013:
First, resident Indians were banned to send any money abroad effective Aug 15 2013 towards property purchase and limits were reduced for everything else from USD 200k per person per year to USD 75k per person per year: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/RBI-puts-curb...
Secondly, duty on gold has been hiked 1,500% from Jan 2012. It was 1% for the last 30 years and now is at 15% in Sept 2013.
http://www.livemint.com/Politics/JlZGoBKCQkBA25TMnKUipL/Customs-duty-on-...
This was supposed to help conserve precious USD but it is backfiring so far with a surge expected in the Oct-Dec quarter.
Previously the Govt has changed rules to make repatriable Rupees (tax free) sent by NRI's into India to receive same rate of interest for NRI's in Dec 2011 when the Rupee last had plunged.
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/rbi-cautions-banks-on-nre-depo...
Thirdly, the banks had hiked deposit rates on non repatriable funds (tax payable) in Rupees, which worked until Dec 2011. Post Dec 2011, repatriable funds in Rupees were also hiked and made same until Sep 1, 2013. Now no one wants to send money in Indian Rupees - due to its 50% plunge in the past 3-5 years, because both other options are only available in Indian Rupees, so RBI had to come up with an option to attract USD and now interest rates have been hiked in foreign currencies because of the heavy maturities coming in the next 6 to 12 months. This also shall stop working within 1 year post which they will have NO OTHER options available to attract money.
Fourthly, India has been so desperate for not letting USD leave India or holding back some of the foreign corporations that they have started asking for retroactive taxes since 2012. Last year, Vodafone's USD 2bn tax bill was a major international news but last night's freezing of Nokia's assets has still not made global headlines. 12 major corporations are involved in serious tax disputes for retroactive taxes going back a decade or more and is not being highlighted by any 3 major advisory firms, which I wont name here. Also no analysts in India are covering as well as none of the major global banks who cover India with research. BMW had to call Merkel for help http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/BMW-seeks-Ger...
http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-341497/
Finally, today's hot news is about POSCO, the 3rd largest steelmaker in the world who is being urged by UN not to build in India despite POSCO having ruled out a few months ago, in July 2013, that they themselves are frustrated and do not wish to start a project in India. They applied for an Indian steel plant licence in 2005 after paying the usual bribes but have not been allowed to build until 2013 and we all know what all has changed since 2005 in this world, aside from a global financial crisis, major bank failures, Iceland default, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt revolutions, Cyprus bailout, PIIGS bailout, US downgrade, London/Kenya/Mumbai/Boston terror attacks, and the price of steel has probably plunged over 70% to 80%, rest all is fine. :)
Good news is: India has moved to make a decision in 2013 on an application submitted in 2005 because they need to show how good they are in attracting foreign investors! :)
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/posco-arcelor-mittal-fdi-foreign-inve...
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/indl-goods/svs...
The Current account deficit (which basically is how much money leaves India for oil purchase or coal purchase, or purchase of pulses or gold purchase or imported car purchase or Apple iPhone purchase etc) is growing at the speed of light. Until 2005/2006, the deficit was barely at USD 1bn which is healthy for a growing economy but has ballooned to USD 21bn PER QUARTER, which means this amount leaves India every quarter!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230391880457910694247589394...
If these curbs are not capital controls, I dont know what is. To curb this rising deficit they need to control all money leaving India in any form. To satiate the demand, all gold inside India is open game. Wait for the riots when all this gets confiscated.
India has always had religion based riots whether in 1984 on turbaned Sikhs due to Indira Gandhi's assassination or in 1992 due to a mosque being broken or in 2002 in Gujarat where Hindus fought Muslims or in 1947 when British divided India into religion based territories. If gold is taken, religion based riots will begin afresh, if history is any guide.
In another moronic example of the judicial activism, and to show how bad the revenue declines are, the Supreme Court has confirmed that a property developer has to pay VAT of 5% on all properties sold after 2006. :) Retroactive taxation is coming to a city near you now.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/mumbai-realty-inventory-peaks-...
If deficit remains high or rises, despite gold duties and other random tax hikes, the only suitable next measure left is complete capital control, whether pre or post a downgrade of the country, whether post or pre bank runs in the country. As we all have seen in Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Iceland, just in the last 2 years, bank runs are a must before capital controls. Did I forget, real estate collpase is mandatory as well, which is yet to happen in India at the same time in 2014.
Indian bankers and businessmen thought they were smart to borrow in a carry trade with US borrowing costs at historic lows of 5% to 8% levels but if income is in Rupee which for most is, then they are doomed because the 50% decline in the Rupee has killed even the hedged investors. This is the way US benefits from other countries by the QE policy well executed in the last few years and by keeping ultra low rates. It may have hurt the US economy and US citizens for a few years, but the next few years will be better and perhaps best when Helicopter Ben ultimately starts 'tapering' QE' and hiking interest rates. Every single country who has borrowed in USD will be doomed and that money will flow back to the US as a gain in addition to the higher interest rates. One country's loss is another country's gain. So, if India loses, it has to be someone's gain: which will be US in this case. At least this is one measure that I see as beenfiting US versus all the other bad news with respect to QE and low interest rates.
I dont know whether I should let the bank runs begin or let the capital control begin in India. You can think for yourself, what happens next in the ongoing India movie before it meets a perfect storm. Karma is a bitch! They should have thought before they spent all this money buying overseas assets whose time has come to pay the debt back or before allowing foreign investors along with their money who now want out at any cost. If both come around together in 2014 with demand as well as supply collapsing simultaneously, can I say, let the riots begin or shall I let bank runs and capital controls.
Damn it, it is so confusing, let all 3 begin! :) IT INDEED WILL BE A RIOT! A 3D RIOT! Or make it 4D with the looming debt defaults that I happened to predict on Aug 30 and Bloomberg caught up on Sept 30, 2013 and Fitch just a couple of days ago. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-29/record-defaults-seen-on-40-bill...
Sikh and destroy.
kudos
Indeed.Sikhs in India are not a group to fuck over.
A warrior religion with many of the Indian officer corps being
that religion.
The Golden Temple in Amritsar is little hard to hide though.
"It appears some of the temples are now drawing a line in the sand, and are in fact refusing to provide details about their holdings."
Yeah, particularly the gold plating on the Temple walls.
Plated ?
Not unless JPM is the property manager.
When I visited that Temple,it was solid gold plate,not plated base..
.There were armed guards back then,30+ years ago.You would
need a full division to take it by force.
In person its much more impressive.The photo is blah in comparison.
Tell me all the guards all have awesome gold chain mail armor with elephant tusks and scimitars. Tell me Gold Shirt Man is the Supreme Golden Samurai of the Gold Defenders Superhero Brigade. I need this.
or, it could be gold-shirt man running for the hills :)
I didn't specify thickness though I presumed it is substantial.
Not just a warrior religion, but one that is based on a doctrine of fairness and protecting the weak that is deeply ingrained. It would be deeply unwise for the government to fuck with any temple deemed protected by the Sikhs.
Amazing dudes.
yeah. but it's even harder to loot.
Same goup of folks who blew up the Air India flight (Kanishka) and killed 329 people?
and shanked Indira Ghandi, too.
Sikh and ye shall find!
Why would they telegraph their punch?
“The gold we have is the nation’s property, we will be proud if the nation can benefit from it,” said Subhash Vitthal Mayekar, chairman of the temple’s administrative trust.
As he is stuffing a suitcase full of bribe money in his trunk...
Hindi is a state religion?
..if not, he might soon be headed or a face-face visit with Vishnu
I'm pretty sure the Communists and the Nazi's did this in Europe too; which means the Catholic churches and Mormon temples here in the U.S. should be nervous.
hell yeah they did. Loot On. by the freakin trainload. That's what allowed them to out score the Huns and Mongols, motorized transportation.
I'm not denigrating mike milkin, but he didn't have to carry it all home, either.
They'll FF it, and blame it on some Sikhs and some right-wing faction that uses ancient Indian swastika symbols. Sikh-Heil!
http://www.religionfacts.com/hinduism/symbols/swastika.htm
FYI: 'swastika' = Sanskrit svastika, "All is well"
The gold we have is the nation’s property, we will be proud if the nation can benefit from it,” said Subhash Vitthal Mayekar, chairman of the temple’s administrative trust. He has not yet received an inquiry from the RBI.
I'm curious if they hang people in India? It would seem to me we have a volunteer.
This gold is belonging to me ... err ... our gods!
Sweet Jesus, if they start going after temples, what's next, scraping the gilt and leafing off the domes and the Ganesh's?
That's a path to civil unrest in a country as religious as India.
Paging chidwin13 ... Paging OhRegionalIndian ... pick up please.
ORI must be busy at some pre-arranged marriage celebration for one of his 1400 cousins, haven't seen him post in a while myself. He was always my favorite right after AnAholeNonymous.
Are gold teeth still popular. Nazi's did that too
What about the Dome of The Rock? Isn't that gold-plated?
Bullish for an AOG (Act of God), or those "doing God's work".
I'm sorry but any religion that stores gold in a vault should be robbed.
That was Napoleon's biggest achievement! And all the rest like democracy for the people followed!
I personally feel that Napoleon's greatest achievement was demilitarizing France by leading all those French soldiers off to Russia to freeze to death. Kind of like the Pied Piper.
Tyler,here's the real reason behind this story and others in India.The majority of politicians in power in India are being investigated on criminal charges.It is a corrupted society and ordinary folks know the extent of the stinking smell of criminal behavior by politicians.
I think that the Indian government is overplaying it's hand. But that is just IMHO
You can smell the banker fear as the Western banks and all those who followed them into the gold price suppression ponzi stand in front of empty vaults. Turns out paper price suppression is a lot easier than demand suppression. It is just self delusion.
Indian government has been blaming gold for its Current Account Deficit woes.. Gold import bill of $50 bn against total CAD of $90 bn.. So the government's logic is to recycle the temple gold into the retail market thus reducing dollar outflow and utilizing idle gold in temple vaults to satisfy the huge local demand. This will be advantageous to the populace in more ways than one... Lower gold prices as the 10% import duty will be cut alongwith lower premiums, lower fuel prices as that CAD situation will improve, and the most significant of all... More power(GOLD!) to the people!! rather than it just sitting with obscurantist and equally corrupt temple boards...... OR as it is India, some politician/bureaucrat might just swoop in and siphon off the phyzz to some swiss bank vault for it to be multihypothecated and so on....
They're doing it all wrong!
They need to start importing leprechauns.
Once they set up enough gold pots it will divert the flow of gold to the masses.
We need to stop attributng to stupidity what is a recurring pattern of government-sponsored attempts to steal physical gold in exchange for fiat (intrinsically worthless irredeemable) currency units. This is deliberate and it is nefarious and a direct attack on the people and their remaining freedoms. Bernanke says gold is not money and blithely insinuates that it is a mere token, a relic of the past, a trifle. He is a fucking liar. All of them in banking, in finance, these educated oh-so-smooth silver-tongued liars want the gold, period. Because they know and guard a little secret: gold is money and has always been money and always will be. They know that their house-of-cards three-card-monte scam called fiat fractional reserve banking buttressed and pumped up with fraudulent schemes called derivatives is not real and will one day blow away like a fart in the wind.
I hadn't bought any physical in two years. Today's prices are too good to be resisted. I bought 1000 oz of silver. It's selling for the below the cost of production and there is no substitute. In my book that's a fricking clearance sale price.
It is certainly nefarious but silver does have a replacement in electronics: graphene / nanotubes. Carbon. Very plentiful. On the other hand silver also can replace antiobiotics which are now failing.
"Grandmother, what big eyes you have!"
"All the better to see with, my child."
"Grandmother, what big teeth you have got!"
"All the better to eat you up with."
Substitute "Bigbrother" for "Grandmother".
I'm surprised that the British didn't take all this gold in the 19'th century.
hearing phys gold selling at 1800 @ownce on the streets of calcutta.
bull mkt in travel agency to india ?
It is indeed lucrative to smuggle gold into India. I dont belive price can be so high. International price at USD 1,325 levels and adding 15% is USD 1,523. This price is possible for regular Indian wholesale buyers and Govt will allow it. I know there is some premium of USD 30 to USD 50 on top, for physical taking it to USD 1,600.
However, I totally doubt if any jeweller will buy for USD 1,800 because how will he make money since after paying his workers for 'making' jewellery, can he really sell it for USD 1,850 or USD 1,900 when average global price is USD 1,325 levels or even lower today? Customers are gullible but not that gullible!
This is a nice smuggling story involving the hero of today: China and a sidekick called: Nepal. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2013/09/08/2003571594
Indiands are as stupid as anyone else, the only reason we should take notice is because they are killing their stupid fiat currency.
Mumbai’s Shree Siddhivinayak Ganpati temple, often visited by Bollywood celebrities, had already put
10 kg (22 lbs) of its gold into a bank deposit scheme. It still has 140 kg in its vault.
“The gold we have is the nation’s property, we will be proud if the nation can benefit from it,” said Subhash Vitthal Mayekar, chairman of the temple’s administrative trust. He has not yet received an inquiry from the RBI.
Coming soon to a cabinet post nearby, I'm sure
This Indian government of Manmohan Singh, spin off of Indira Gandhi Congress Oligarchy legacy; corrupt like all Romanoff type aristocratic strains of current globalist sham scam; is the most shameless stooge of Pax Americana Oligarchy; like Brasil of Lady Rousseff; both of them OSTENSIBLY socialist and ostensibly BRICs, but in reality total surrogates of local incredibly corrupt Oligarchies, sucking on their elitist teats to exist as political mouth pieces. This is the biggest betrayal of them all. You know what to expect from the Sauds and consorts are they are openly royalists, but the machiavellian scheming of statists gone oligarchy clones is a descent into Hades which no Orpheus can condone. How can you resuscitate Eurydice if you are the devil's clown???
They are now caught in the maelstorm of Oligarchy incoherent dyslexia WORLDWIDE; a language of capitalism that they don't understand nor control anymore; a vision of tomorrow thats going NOWHERE.
Its alarm bells now on the TITANIC of PAx Americana and surrogates; tomorrow the bell will toll; and all those who drill holes in the hull of the juggernaut, in the hope of making a quick buck will get caught; with THEIR PANTS DOWN.
Sure, just don't inquire into how these temples acquired "their" gold in the first place, and assume, magically, it was always theirs.
No I'm not saying the breathtakingly corrupt and inept Fabian socialist Indian government should get to take "their" gold and pass it out amongst itself and Goldman Sachs.
I'm saying, the amount of gold in these temples that could be melted down and sold, the proceeds of which could then be used to fund things like, I don't know, education, sanitation, sustainable communities, local agriculture/light industry ... is simply astounding.
Instead it sits there doing nothing while Indian society crumbles.
And give me a fucking break, which do you think would benefit posterity more? Sustainable independent local communities, or pretty temples to be beholden by masses of poor/starving/dying Indians as their society collapses, at which time the temples will be plundered by local strongmen anyway?
As for consistency: I feel exactly the same way about Vatican City and other outrageous treasure hoards sitting around collecting dust. First you have to have a future, then you can think about preserving things for the inhabitants of that future.
<We are not in Kansas anymore, the consequences and aftermath for the two-century-long hydrocarbon-fueled bacchanale of energy-wasting insanity are coming to a nationstate near you, time to reevaluate values and priorities which are not appropriate to the coming world.>
You don't need money to build things. People do that.
not for free.
No, they do it in exchange for someone else's work.
Gold is a regulator, like credit but of a different nature. The comment I was replying to implied that it is harmful for gold to "just sit there" doing nothing. Well, it isn't. Gold sitting there just means untaped purchasing power which will temporarily shift to someplace else. It is up to the people if this means less or more work to do. Gold certainly won't do any work for them.
untapped purchasing power IS doing work for people once it's in use again.
That's what purchasing power is. It's not credit. It saves someone else the work to get the gold by hand.
Gold has a function both when it is moving and when it isn't.
When it isn't moving, it causes deflation. Deflation doesn't prevent people from doing work, it merely forces them to reallocate.
actually, deflation increases purchasing power & is a force of efficiency. I welcome it. Deflation has always brought benefit to anyone it's touched. Deflation is a drop in prices, deflation is a decrease in money supply. It is not destructive but it does stop vampires in economies that can only feed on inflation. I welcome it.
It's always good to ask but the Vatican definitely sent Catholic hunter-killers aka mercenaries aka explorers aka missionaries to steal all the gold & silver possible around the world, whereas I'm pretty sure no one's documented Indians doing that. Doesn't mean it all came honestly but it sure didn't come that way.
Put a frame around this one for posterity!
If ever there was one of the best advertising campaigns for owning PMs this one would be it. This and of course all the European CBs that are demanding repatriation from the U.S. Government since the beginning of this year only to be told that it's in a 'safe place' and "to be patient" over the course of several years.
.
Listen Raghuram, you can join our elite Western Central Bankers' club, but there are a few conditions
- You have to clean all the toilets, park our cars, and bus the tables in the restaurant
- You have to get us all your country's gold, and have it transferred to Switzerland so the BIS has something to back it's transactions with
If you're cool with that and can deliver the goods, you're totally in, promise - don't let the lack of brown people here fool you, we are TOTALLY NOT racist, there are no racial or religious requirements you are genetically incapable of meeting that will prevent you from full membership - trust me, I'm a banker.
+10
Well said.
No pun intended, is nothing sacred?
You can always expect the celibrity affiliated institutions to go along with the state program.
Celebrities are the biggest spineless weenies on the planet.
They can't even take a stand against late term abortion (defenseless unborn infant murder).
Think they'll take a postion on monetary policy while they make a million or more per movie? LOL
Not even in india
As with any abortion the only true question is the health of the woman whose choice it is. To compromise her survival or health for any reason against her will is itself an act of murder or attempted murder.
Also, abortions save lives:
http://youtu.be/t0A2ZIiZ-m0?t=11m30s
Kewl! Now the money printers will ANGER THE GODS!