In what is no doubt a propaganda piece designed to attempt to slow the gold repatriation and audit request freight train, the Bank of England has taken the unprecedented step to allow University of Nottingham chemistry Professor Martyn Poliakoff to take a video tour of the BOE’s gold vault.
Poliakoff excitedly proclaims that he has never seen this much tungsten gold (or this much of ANY element he clarifies), and states that his gut tells him that one’s first reaction is that it can’t possibly be real.
Poliakoff lets out a little too much truth in his interview (perhaps the BOE should have commissioned someone from the BBC to conduct the interview rather than a Chemistry professor?), stating that the reason the BOE and the central banks keep so much of their reserves in gold is because the value of gold is very stable compared to the value of currencies.
He also explains how the futures market really works:  Each bar has a serial number, and when people buy and trade the gold, they don’t actually take the bar home, the number is just transferred from the seller’s account to the buyer’s account. (What Poliakoff doesn’t mention is whether each bar has been rehypothecated to numerous owners as Ned Naylor-Leyland discovered was the case with Bob Pisani’s GLD bar last spring)

Poliakoff’s MUST SEE full video tour of the Bank of England’s gold vault is below:

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