The bottom line is that apparently some warehouses and bullion dealers are not a safe place to store your gold and silver, even if you hold a specific warehouse receipt. In an oligarchy, private ownership is merely a concept, subject to interpretation and confiscation.
There's the punchline -- let nobody claim that Jesse buries the lede!
If this went over your head, let me explain (and go read Jesse's article on it) -- the bankruptcy trustee is now apparently either attempting to or actually has seized customer property held in gold and silver vaults if those bars were transacted through MF Global!
A warehouse receipt is not an unallocated, nebulous claim. It contains a serial number of one or more specific bars sitting in a warehouse. You are in fact charged a storage fee for the service of maintaining security over your property and you have had to tender payment in full as well. This is a bailment in any sense of the word and under any theory of law I've seen -- and yet now, suddenly, it is proposed that your property held under bailment by this institution can be seized and stolen to pay unallocated bankruptcy claims against the bankrupt company's estate!
This sort of action turns the entire premises of private property and bailment on its ear! NO -- and I repeat NO -- property held allegedly for your benefit by any third party anywhere is safe under this "theory" of the bankruptcy trustee. Yes, this includes something so simple as the money on deposit in your bank account.
