Wells Fargo Thinks Costco Is Selling Up To $200 Million In Gold Bars Per Month
April 10th, 2024Via: ZeroHedge:
Last December, wholesale retailer Costco announced that they had sold over $100 million worth of gold in Q3 2023.
“You’ve probably read about the fact that we’re selling one-ounce gold bars. We sold over $100 million of gold during the quarter,” sad CFO Richard Galenti.
Now, Wells Fargo estimates that Costco “may now be running at” $100 million to $200 million per month in gold sales.
“Our work suggests there has been significant interest given COST’s aggressive pricing and high level of customer trust,” said analyst Edward Kelly in a Tuesday note to clients. “The accelerating frequency of Reddit posts, quick on-line sell-outs of product, and COST’s robust monthly eComm sales suggests a sharp uptick in momentum since the launch,” CNBC reports.
Costco is selling one-ounce bars made of nearly pure 24-karat gold. While the price is not disclosed online to nonmembers, it’s estimated that the product generally sells for about 2% above the spot price, which as of Tuesday morning was around $2,357 an ounce. That would put the price at Costco just over $2,400.
Could buying gold take a significant amount of USD paper notes out of circulation?
If the gold is paid for by a bank check, the ‘money’ exchange is done digitally. But it could have been done with cash. What if the bank or the Fed takes that amount in cash out of its paper note supply and burns it, then replaces it in digits in its accounting system? The value of the gold still exists in the gold, and the money paid for it still exists in digits in the seller’s account and in the money supply, but the paper notes that could have been used for payment no longer exist.
If so, then selling $200 million worth of gold per month for 4 years would eliminate 19% of the world’s notes that are currently in circulation (reported to be 50.3 billion).
Stealth CBDC.
“The US Treasury stopped issuing paper savings bonds in January 2012, switching to online platforms. There is a slight exception where a paper Series I may be purchased with proceeds from a federal income tax refund, but they are extremely rare. What they failed to explain is that US banks are NOT required to cash in these bonds.
“A friend’s daughter recently ran into an issue on her 30th birthday when she attempted to cash in a number of bonds that had finally matured. Her bank simply told her, “No. We will not cash them.” She called customer service, and the bank explained that they had no legal obligation to cash government bonds.”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/armstrongeconomics101/economics/paper-bonds-another-strike-against-govt-debt/
“As much as 60% of all U.S. currency (and 25% of U.S. government debt) is owned outside the U.S.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/imf-prepares-financial-revolution-say-goodbye-dollar
So will crashing the USD hurt foreign economies and persons as well as decimating us? Who doesn’t hold our currency so won’t be harmed but will be the only countries left standing?
Or will the IMF keep the peace by exchanging USD to CBDC in units of equal value?
Who inside the US owns 75% of the debt? Are they US citizens or US-citizen-directed companies, or foreign entities operating here? What if they demand repayment — our own people seize everything we own, including our bank accounts and Bitcoins and any CBDC balances to come? Our ownership of our assets is transferred via local businesses to foreign entities?
Let’s just tell our lenders they can have Ukraine and Israel, where we have sent so much of our cash, and keep our US citizen-owned US properties to ourselves.