While we sit and watch JPM roll their Dec13 position and smash price in the process, I thought we should have some fun by putting this year's GLD pillaging into context.
Yesterday saw another 1.50 metric ton pillage plunder redemption from the GLD. This leaves the GLD with a total "gold" in "inventory" of 863.01 metric tonnes, down 486.91 metric tonnes YTD or 36.07%.
Maybe 487 metric tonnes doesn't seem like a lot of gold to you? What if we put it this way?
Four hundred eighty six point nine one metric tonnes = 15,654,520 troy ounces
The London Good Delivery Bar we see below is approximately 400 troy ounces. (I say approximately because it is approximately. As everyone knows, the only exact and perfect measurements are found in 1 KG bars. They are always and forever 1.00000000000KG in weight. There is never, ever any variance. 
)
So, let's do some more math, shall we?
Fifteen million six hundred fifty four thousand five hundred twenty troy ounces = 39,136 London Good Delivery Bars
THIRTY NINE FREAKING THOUSAND!
And if we took those 39,136 London bars and stacked them 192 to a pallet, we'd fill 204 of these pallets!
TWO HUNDRED AND FOUR!!!
But let's not stop there. Let's have fun on this gloomy day...
The stated thickness of an Gold American Eagle coin is 2.87 millimeters. Let's say you're a wise and industrious Turdite and you have acquired a stack of 9 AGEs. If you retrieve from the bottom of the lake where they are stored and then stack them, one on top of the other, your stack would be 25.83 millimeters high or, for American Turdites, just slightly over an inch tall.
Now, just for fun, let's say that YOU are an Authorized Participant and YOU are the one responsible for the entire 15,654,520 troy ounce plundering pillaging redemption. And further, rather than London bars, the entire withdrawal was given to you in the form of AGEs. YOU, because you are filthy rich, have nothing better to do so you set out to stack your treasure, on on top of the other. How high will your stack reach now?
The answer?
A close approximation is that a stack of 319 AGEs would be one yard tall. Therefore, a stack of 15,654,520 AGEs would be over 49,000 yards tall. Put another way....that's about 28 miles!
A little over a year ago, a lunatic from Germany got in a balloon. He rode this balloon up to a height of 25 miles and then he jumped. It looked like this:
As frightening as that seems, YOU would have to ascend an additional three miles just to get to the top of your new AGE stack. YIKES!
So, anyway, I'm not sure what the point of all this is. If anything, I hope it gets you thinking about just how much gold has exited the GLD this year and wondering just where-oh-where that gold might have gone. Perhaps that crazy German dude was actually onto something. With so much of this seemingly related to Germany's repatriation "request" back in January, maybe old Felix was simply attempting to demonstrate just how far his country still has to go in retrieving its national treasure.
Hang in there and be ready for some fireworks this afternoon on The Globex when the FOMC minutes are released.
TF
