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Africa's Largest Refinery Finds 2.7 Tons Of Gold "Missing" After Computer System Upgrade
It's one thing to implicitly admit that there is a physical gold shortage and as a result nations - such as Germany - are unable to repatriate their physical gold held in the safe and trusted confines 90 feet below the NY Fed, gold which may or may not be there and has likely been leased out exponentially to cover paper shorts by virtually every BIS-overseen central bank (and the BIS paper gold selling team itself of course). It is something totally different to corzine, as in vaporize, 87,000 ounces of physical gold, some 2.7 tons, and blame it on a computer upgrade glitch. Which is precisely what Rand, Afrrica's largest refinery and processor of about a third of the world's gold since 1920, has done after it "discovered" that $113 million in precious metal was missing after "adopting a new computer system."
Bloomberg reports that the refinery in Germiston, a town 20 kilometers east of Johannesburg, has 87,000 ounces of physical gold less than the amount present in its accounting records after “implementation difficulties” with the new system, the company said in a statement today. That’s worth about $113 million at today’s price of $1,296 an ounce.
Taking a page out of China's infinite rehypothecation scheme, the South African refiner essentially told its investors, most of whom are gold miners, to step up and replenish the missing metal or else investors may come asking questions about their own reported gold holdings. And, it succeeded.
Rand Refinery’s shareholders, including AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (ANG), Sibanye Gold Ltd. (SGL) and Harmony Gold Mining Co. (HAR), agreed to lend the company 1.2 billion rand to help make up the difference.
Laughable excuses aside, those curious where the gold may have gone should probably ask the former CEO: "Howard Craig resigned as chief executive officer in May and has been replaced by Mark Lynam, who is being assisted by management consultant Accenture Plc in sorting out the issue."
However, just like in China, it appears nobody has any interest in actually digging deeper:
The miners, customers of the refinery, have received the prices they were expecting, leading them to conclude it’s most likely an accounting problem rather than theft, James Wellsted, a spokesman for Sibanye Gold, said by phone.
Perhaps it is normal when nearly 3 tons of physical gold goes missing for nobody to care. Alternatively, perhaps it means that just like the entire financial Ponzi system, which can sustain the lies only as long as everyone agress not to "defect" and admit Janet Yellen is a "naked (and very much clueless) emperor", the rot within the gold space has now shifted away purely from the commercial and central banks and is now impacting the miners and refiners. If so, anyone who owns gold is encouraged to take physical possession of it asap because if, as this incident suggests, the Chinese rehypothecation experiment has gone global, when everyone does demand their deliverable be, well, delivered, it will be too late.
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I gotta get me a computer system like that
Not surprised. This is the curse of the ERP.
Funny story... I was consulting for a MAJOR big name firearm manufacturer. Their operations were a mess:
-all kinds of scrapped inventory
-WIP lying around all over the place (boxes, parts, and yes, even stacks of finished or near-finished automatic firearms.
-rework
-all kinds of inaccuracies / missing inventory / lost parts / etc.
They also had problems with their ERP. Pay millions of dollars a year to saddle yourself with unmanageable headaches. Great business, isn't it?
Old computer = Traditional honest accounting.
New computer = FASB-Geithner-Bernanke-Dimon-Blankfein-Feinstein-COMEX-LBMA accounting. "Look what I found under the sofa cushions....."
Who da foch cares.....its a barbarous relic........load me up with bitcoin now there's a store of wealth
Just from personal experience, they should search all the nearby lakes.
Is it in the basement of the NY FED?
Aaaaaaaaaaand it's gone?
Somebody's having tons of fun!
Lois Lerner. And she ain't talkin'
BreX'ed actually.
You just won yourself one helicopter ride.
Rock it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TlPo0yCSa4
Either it exists, physically, or it doesn't.
Everything else is accounting.
And it's gone!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nVk25ZvTkU
Maybe it's in Scrooge McRothschild's money bin.
http://www.livescience.com/19919-gold-recreate-scrooge-mcduck-gold-coin-...
No, there's only Yellen, the naked emperor.
You can't get screwed by a computer system, until you have one.
Wouldn't the bigger farce have been if their computer system had been upgraded and they had suddenly found an extra 3 tons?....you know, to then lend out 1000x to drive the paper price down and keep the ponzi going full tilt.
Audits.
Anybody ever heard of a fucking audit FFS?
Paraphrasing....
It matters not what is being audited.
What matters is who is doing the auditing.
- J. Stalin & Co., Auditors, Judges, Juries and Executioners
Talk to the israelites, they been coming up short since the beginning of the 1600's.
That 'Sons of Guns' reality show got busted by the BATF early on (the dad) for a bunch of missing automatic weapons and parts, that's why they needed that guy to marry the daughter, he was the only 1 with a legit Class3 license.
This has absolutely nothing to do with their ERP systems. I have been instrumental with managing, purchasing and implementing ERP systems for manufacutring companies over the years. This is just a convenient excuse to blame what has probably been sloppy controls of their warehousing for years.
I would bet mangement knew about this but just kept sweeping the losses under the rug until they no longer could.
My experience of going from AS400 to JD Edwards / Peoplesoft was slightly different.
For example, with AS400, I would spend about an hour entering paperwork, and our inventory would be dead on.
With Peoplesoft, I would spend about an hour cycle counting (doing inventory) for the system never quite pulled the correct amounts off the inventory from the bill of materials.
I took a bill of materials sheet, weighed up the component parts and found there was a large discrepancy between what the bill of materials was calling for and what the scale was telling me. Which made perfect sense as to why our counts were consistently off on certain components.
I brought it up to the chain of command, but it only went so far, until Mr. I. Am. Somebody did exactly what I did and had a Eureka moment.
As a programmer/analyst who just broke a critical web-page today after three days of testing/debugging/comparing old to new files line by line, all I can say is this, complexity is a bitch. Too many moving parts will get ya. Especially when they're distributed across various servers/business units/software components. At least I was smart enough to back up the old files.
Now, I guess my ZH break is over, and I should go find the bug that produces no error.
Nobody ever wants to fix a $500 problem. They must wait until it is at least a 5MM problem.
I've not seen this in a refining business but this happens often in ERP projects when organizations take the opportunity to actually verify (cleanse) data before "loading" into their "new" system.
Because once the ERP is in place, you at least have the tool to track the lifecycle of an asset from requisition to disposal. In fractured application environments, it's easy for assets to get "lost" in the cracks of disjointed business processes.
<deleted>
.... Sorry, i got the ZH double-tap.
just an accounting problem. damn, same glitch hit MF Global's cash vaults. must be spreading.
..... and every day, he would push by with an empty wheelbarrow. The guards would check it, and nothing. They figured he was just an old fool, pushing an empty wheelbarrow........they knew he was stealing something, but they just couldn't figure it out.
Put back the old system, and the gold magically reappears!
This is why you only want to hold gold in paper form. /sarc
Doesn't matter paper or physical..it's just a bad store of wealth. Money needs to be invested and circulate to do good in the economy.
This story just proves what a bad investment gold is, I imagine that over the next few days a 3-5% correction will take place only to preceed a return that is more in line with the commercial applications of the substance, which there are a few..
Yep, much better to invest your Toilet Paper USDollars into the financialization schemes of the Wall Street Casino.
Especially now, time to buy the Mother Fucking All Time High in the S&P.
So is this what caused the lift in paper PM's today? Paper silver up like 30 cents and paper gold up like 14 bucks or so.
What a waste. Just think, they could've moved all that money into High Yield junk bonds.
YeeeeeeeeeeeeeeHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
must be Gartman:
http://www.kitco.com/news/2014-07-25/KitcoNewsMarketNuggets-July-25.html
More like Cartman.
Ignore reality all you want, but don't bring your nonsense on this site.
So, your logic is that because some entity is unable to manage its books correctly that the thing that they "produce" isn't worth having, and that "the ecomomy," which is all about books and is rife with accounting errors, is the thing that is better trusted?
FAIL!
Ever consider that these folks really can't lose here, that suggesting that the amount of gold available is overstated wouldn't cause the price of the gold that IS available to go up?
Those late to the game always complain...
Sure looks like they can't lose by losing $113 million worth of gold.....they immediately got handed $1.3 billion to 'aid in replacing it'! Dang I wish I could get a 1,000% return on my accounting book errors!
Tomorrow they'll find the missing gold and keep the bail out money for a whoel year before they seel shares to the government. Are you guys going to learn form this or keep up the money ain't money, your a poopie talk. Take out a loan and start up a internet company before it's too late. Maybe a blog for funny money talkin degenerates who think shiney rocks are worth something.
"Money needs to be invested and circulate to do good in the economy"
You, obviously, don't have a clue about what money is.
You are a casualty of your education system. For example, in the US public schools the meaning of money is purposely not taught.
Take a look at any US Dollar denomination, it clearly states: "Federal Reserve NOTE". It doesn't say "Federal Reserve MONEY".
They are fu..ing notes! Fu..ing pieces of paper signed by a couple of bureaucrats. They can be produced for practically nothing. They can be created by a fu..ing Federal Reserve bureacrat with a few computer keyboards strokes.
Money has to have intrinsic value. Many things have been used as money throughout the ages. For example, salt, pearls, dimonds, cows, copper, silver, gold ...
I give up, you are poop head!
+1 for the Poop Head.
Aye Captain, we have a taste for booty.
You should give up, as he's obviously trolling the ever-loving shit out of you. I'm impressed at how many bites he get.
...women
I dont really give a shit about the economy, I care about myself. And not in the narcisstic sort of way, but in the self-sustainable kind of way. Why should I spend my money owning shares of bullshit.com (or their product, but as we all know, few companies in the DJIA make anything anymore) if its just to give a bullshit.com employee a job? Fuck them, they should have found a job that actually benefits society. Then I would be glad to buy from them
Not bad for a "barbarous relic".
" I gotta get me a computer system like that "
Easy, use Windows.
Yet another example of digital gold gone wild...
About that new Con-puh-duh system...
It's got the Ebola Goldman virus: Once infected, it messes up things and starts leaking out The Precious. 95% fatal.
Imagine that...who would bother to steal the barbaric relic?
I don't think it was stolen, it was human error in the original account...misplaced decimal point? Just more proof that electronic records and currencies are better for everyone and the markets.
It wasn't stolen, it was just counted wrong. The pooter said so....... sheesh.
If i were going to submit a guess as to what will happen next week, they'll find the gold and blame the computer. Computers don't make errors, people do. Same logic applies to guns, I'm sure you'll agree.
Why do "accounting problems" always mean something is less than is should be rather than more?
depends from which side you look at it ^^
Not really. Double-entry accounting is sooo outdated. "Trust us. It's different this time."
/sarc
It's only a "problem" for the guys who can't account for it. Hence... Account-ing problem.
How many thousand tons are missing from the Fed's vaults in New York? But then it would be unpatriotic to ask such a question in the land of the free.
well, now you know the explanation that will be used... accounting glitch.
I'm sure you can get quite a good echo effect in the Feds gold vault.
My guess is it would be similar to Geraldo opening Al Capone's vault. Not a damn thing in it.
Geraldo is a dick
Unpatriotic terrorist!
/sarc
fat finger
That's what she said....
Ebola done did it!
Not 'missing' .......... 'misplaced!'
deep storage, under the bedrock that the vault is bolted to.
misallocated
If you like your gold
You can't keep your gold
Signed,
Yellen is one hell of a dirty, filthy, flea infested, cockroach fucking, CUNT
I respectfully disagree. I have observed no signs of filth (I grew up in Arkansas, where taking a bath once a week was optional--I know filth), and fleas ("he who lays down with dogs gets up with fleas" is true for a reason; again, if yer in Arkansas and have hounds...). Cockroaches are nutritious... once you boil them to kill the bad stuff (personally, I prefer grasshoppers and crickets).
In my not so humble opinion, Yellen is the almost perfect woman: She is a respectful lady in public, yet has been conditioned / trained / brainwashed to act like a man. Hence, her acquiescence to her role is acknowledgment that the male is superior, especially with regard to monetary policy.
(I'm not quite sure where to put the /sarc tag... the first paragraph is absolutely true, and the second is too good to spoil...)
"However, just like in China, it appears nobody has any interest in actually digging deeper:"
Digging even deeper?...Like in gold digging.
Off topic:
Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval39% of the American people are braindead:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx
Well, ya know, everyone deserves their own Cult of Mediocrity, especially Obama.
39% approve of Obama. More than that are brain-dead.
The gaza massacre is spreading into jordania now.
Looks like the middle east is catching fire so who needs gold anyway right?
That's 87,000 less ounces .....Gold must have went up at least $87 today.... correct ??
If you say so, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
REUTERS-
Gold futures tumbled late Friday on the news that 2.7 tons of gold is missing.
A real 'lol wut?' headline.
Obviously, the value of "paper" gold SHOULD be smacked down.
And when they figure out there's no gold in Fort Knox,
THEY'LL GIVE YOU 5000 DOLLAR FOR EVERY GOLD OUNCE YOU WANT AT THIS RATE!
Don't they have boats and deep lakes in Africa?
lame
Computer upgrades can sometimes be very expensive.
That's what happens when you upgrade from XP to Vista.
"get the fuck outta here...!"
Axel Foley
No green eyeshaded grizzly old scrivner would have lost that. Luddites, rejoice!
Now that is poetic justice, Bob!
Kudos
BartleBob !!! Its you !!!
If it is only a refinery and not a lending institution, there may be hope.
However, if it is anything like the Chinese copper storage fiasco and loans were made against inventory, what a mess.
Stupid Windows 3.1
I always knew it had a bug.
Are you sure they weren't just running DOS on a Trash80?
So that's wrhere Germany's gold went.
And, don't forget, it's where you socks went too!
There are forces operating in the universe that we just cannot comprehend...
And of course, if they were US-manufactured computers, there certainly couldn't have been some security breach...
The upgrade? Windows 8.
that's a hell of a lot of "nugget" style bling, right there. Shit, I bet everyone in the country has grilles that would make FlavaFlav jealous.
Cheshire Nugget Catz, bitchez
Hey if they had a 98% accuracy of the computer count vs physical inventory count that means they have a lot of fucking gold on hand.
The refinery promises to put into place a tough new measure to prevent further losses:
No more cuffed pants while visiting the gold dust.
the standard of living just shot up in zimby :)
"Perhaps it is normal when nearly 3 tons of physical gold goes missing for nobody to care."
"Where's the gold?"
"Eessh! I don't know."
Don't be so suprised; I've lived here for 30 years, it's our new normal.
hypothecation
GIGO stuff them tubes
Garbage in - gold out?
Appears you may have to get off your lazy ass and do a physical inventory. Computers are relatively new, ledgers were used for many centuries.
Gold is part of the Grand Chessboard.
The part the MSM only rarely talks about to ridicule.
Gold Will Have The Last Laugh.
And goldholders like you.
PS, Some BTFDers dipped into the stash there
"The miners, customers of the refinery, have received the prices...
Customers? Can s/o explain how miners are customers? If miners are buying only refinery services, e.g. to refine the ore, then "customer" fits.
If miners are selling ore or refined gold to the refiners, then tyey are being fooled to consider themselves "customers" of the refinery.
Maybe they came across a few of those London Good Delivery Bars that were filled with tungsten that everybody seems to be talking about.
You'd think miners would have no problem digging deeper ....
Reminds me of my own boating accident. This stuff is just hard to hold onto I guess.
And, it's gone...
Not to steal from Bill Holter's Blog last month but the video is more appropriate every day...
Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DT7bX-B1Mg
2.7 tonnes gold vaporized by an IAD? Improvised Accounting Device
The dog ate it.
Now you see it NOW you DON'T! Puff and it's GONE.
Let's have a world AUDIT.
YOU SHOW ME YOURS & I'LL SHOW YOU MINE SAID THE VICAR TO THE NUN.
You know what this means: Flight to the safety of stocks from the perils of gold.
New high for S&P in 5...4...3.....
Nothing to see here just move along, move along.
Bits of gold = good
Bitgold = bad
So, they "lost" 2.7 tons of gold - but their customers don't care because they got the "right" price. Huh.
In a past life, that sounds like theft. Usually, that's not rectified by the thief paying up when caught.
Oh come on!
A computer glitch vaporized your gold?????
How about you actually drilled it out, inserted tungsten, and then melted down the drill tailings to do some tungsten plating.
They used to just use Executive Orders...these kids with computers these days...
"who is being assisted by management consultant Accenture Plc"
Bwahahahah, they are so fucked.
They will install a new productivity tracking system that will completely stall production - but they will be able to confidently say that no gold was lost in the process.
All AR functions will be performed by workers in Bagalore while AP functions will be handled from Hyderabad. Neither group can speak to each other due to language and caste barriers. The resulting confusion will be epic.
Captain of Industry: "What is 2 + 2"?
His lawyer's answer: "I'll put my paralegal on the research and have your answer is 3 days."
His engineer's answer: "We'll have to do some field studies and appropriate calculations and get back to you with an answer in one week."
His accountant's answer: (Get's up from chair, looks around, closes door to office, lowers window shades, whispers in magnate's ear) "What do you want it to be?"
This is a trial run on behalf of the NY Fed testing the reaction of the market to finding their own stock control error (must have been when we transferred the system from punched cards) and paying everyone off in dollars.
Class!
Where's Dov Zakheim when you need him?
Transposition error. Typed in 9.6 tons instead of 6.9 tons, Sorry. No big deal, its like the difference between a $6 and 9 dollar corn dog at the state fair.
Missing gold. Imaginary gold. So what? We live in a world where everything is becoming ever more imaginary by some percent per year. Plus, minus. Happy, sad. Diversions continue to rise. An industry of pointing fingers and cameras at things, real or imagined, manufactured, to divert. Or look worse than your life is, or worse than you are. So far.
Amused to death.
Gold is just another fiat. As long as we are sufficiently diverted from reality.
No gold manipulation here. Ha ha ha ha ha! Buy yours with confidence!
The occasional physical inventory stil needs to be done in this age of computers. More than one company has been surprised when their inventories were audited.
I find this pretty funny given the rigmarole Rand puts other people through when you sign up to supply them with real ie physical gold.
Rand, that sounds like an african name, for sure.
When noticed, the situation turns out unsurprising.