The People’s (central) Bank of China receives its recent purchase of 10,000 tons of gold (lawful Money) from the London Bullion Market Association and discovers about 70% of it to be counterfeit.  The fake bars are 1% gold plated with a 99% tungsten-core.  Tungsten has a specify gravity (mass per volume) nearly identical to gold, but sells at around 0.25% the price of gold.  The serial numbers on the counterfeit bars indicate that they came from United states. 

       NOTE: Counterfeiting lawful Money is nothing new to the U.s.  In 1965 the Bureau of the Mint began replacing the composition of its silver dimes, quarter- and half-dollars with various alloys of copper, nickel and zinc.

       Postscript: Five months later this incident was used as the basis for an episode of the Columbia Broadcasting System crime drama CSI: New York, which aired March 10, 2010.

       [added 1/8/2022] Thanks to Freedom’s Phoenix for this entry.

       While the United states Armed Forces (private mercenaries) are stationed at 737 bases, in 130 nations around the world, defending “all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world,” Edward J. Pinto, a real estate financial services consultant and former Chief Credit Officer of the Federal National Mortgage Association (a.k.a. Fannie Mae) reports to the house subcommittee on housing and community opportunity that five percent of Federal Housing Administration insured mortgages are in foreclosure  —  double that of five years ago.  Despite the fact that FHA has a 30,000,000,000 “dollar” reserve fund to cover its 725,000,000,000 “dollars” in mortgages, the agency will probably require a 54,000,000,000 “dollar” Federal “bailout in the next 24 to 36 months.”

       Just two days before, David H. Stevens, Commissioner of the FHA Commissioner, wrote in a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal claiming that “[T]he impression that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is on the brink of disaster. … is just plain wrong.”  Yet by his agency’s own data, the amount of FHA mortgages in default was up 76/ percent over the previous year, from 232,864 to 410,916.

       [added 1/8/2022] Thanks to Freedom’s Phoenix for this entry.