Trustee Wants to Seize and Liquidate Even the Gold and Silver Bullion Stored Under Bailment for Customers From MF Global

Jesse's Cafe Americain

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.

Here's Karl Denninger's take on the above story:

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! [blogger emphasis] 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.