Yesterday, you'll recall, I blogged about the recent Deutsche Bank study that said two things were at the heart of the current financial system's instability: fiat money (monetized debt), and the absence of a gold standard. The solution being pushed in that study was, of course, a cashless "blockchain" system.

Now, the fact that a major bank like Deutsche Bank - a bank that allegedly carries massive amounts of bad paper and derivatives on its books - would be advocating the serious consideration of blockchain technologies as a serious alternative, should at least raise some concern and suspicions among those who are uncertain about such cryptocurrencies, and should serve to dent some of the enthusiasm certain circles have been showing for them.

Or to put all of that "country simple", something about them has never passed my "smell test." It has that mildewy mildly unpleasant stink of rotting money that one encounters in the physical presence of such banking establishments and the dynasties running them.

But anyway, back to the main point: gold. What I find somewhat interesting, and perhaps even something a little more than "coincidental," is that in more or less the same "time frame" of this ongoing financial mess, the following story also appeared(this was shared by many regular readers here: thanks to all of you):

"This Could Be Huge": Gold Bar Certified By Royal Canadian Mint Exposed As Fake

Well, I seldom take issue with the title of a story, but in this case, yes, it's huge: the Royal Canadian Mint apparently certified a gold bar's purity when the gold bar was not gold.

And it's difficult to imagine that simply being the result of a "mistake" or "bureaucratic oversight" on the part of the mint. Given all the other strange stories about gold in the past few years, including cases of fake tungsten-filled bars being sold to China, and the difficulty Germany had initially in repatriating its gold (and its subsequent reticence to allow real independent audit of the purity of that gold), it raises questions.

And the questions being pointed to all end in one word: fraud:

According to CBC, the Royal Canadian Mint is investigating how a sealed, "pure gold" wafer with proper mint stampings has emerged as a fake. According to the Canadian press, the one-ounce gold piece, which was supposed to be 99.99% pure, was purchased by an Ottawa jeweller on Oct. 18 at a Royal Bank of Canada branch. The problem emerged when tests of the bar showed it may contain no gold at all. And, when neither the mint nor RBC would take the bar back, jeweler Samuel Tang contacted CBC news.

Now the problem is of course that perhaps someone else simply stamped the bar with the Canadian Royal Mint's seal. The problem here is that the purchaser of the bar, as noted above, purchased it at a Royal Bank of Canada branch, which would seem to imply that that bank is part of a "distribution" network for something far-less-than-kosher, notwithstanding that

The Royal Canadian Mint said in a statement to CBC it is in process of testing the bar, "although the appearance of the wafer and its packaging already suggests that it is not a genuine Royal Canadian Mint product."

Well, if that's the case, then why did the Royal Bank of Canada not detect the problems with the packaging?

And as the article itself notes, a counterfeiter doesn't produce just one example (consider only the allegedly suspect packaging referred to above. Why go to all that trouble for just one bit of product?). So, in short, we're back to the implication that the bank which sold the bar may be part of a distribution network - perhaps unwittingly, since it appears it cannot tell the difference between genuine packaging and "fake packaging."

And all that is assuming, of course, that we're being told the complete story, and that the counterfeit didn't originate with the Royal Canadian Mint itself.

The bottom line? Well, in a world where blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies are being advocated in conjunction with gold for a restructuring of the financial system, it would appear that the gold component isn't perhaps such a stable component.

And while we're at it: since we're talking about a restructuring of the financial system, why is no one raising the question of the personnel running it? After all, that's where the real corruption starts. It' beginning to look like, if there is to be a genuine "reset", that everyone connected to that system should be vetted. And that of course, is itself a nightmarish proposition, and an indicator of just how bad things are: why put a new system into place, based on bullion and blockchain, if the same people are basically left in charge of it?

The basis of any functioning economic system is not technology. It is human trust. And where there is corruption to the extent we've seen in the last few years, trust evaporates. The economic system is a moral system. And the problem is, the financial community and major banks have been shown to be almost entirely bereft of it.

See you on the flip side...