The In-Laws:
Shel: "You robbed the U.S. Mint on your own? The CIA thought it was too crazy?"
Vince: "Too risky."
FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
121–130 of 419 posts
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#122That's ~280kg of gold if anyone wonders
~ 617 lbs.
~681 American footballs. At 27 balls per team per NFL game, an average of 17.8 games per team per season, and an annual salary cap of $301 million, those many balls are equivalent to a salary of $481 million. So by weight, footballs are "worth" 12 times the price of gold.
Joe Burrow weighs 215 lbs and makes $55 million per year. That makes him worth his weight in gold x4.
I'm still researching the average weight of a football field. Depends if it has rained recently.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#123The CIA legitimately engages in bribery and hard asset payments. Note that the CIA approved his request and gave him these assets (or at least many of them - the paragraph below doesn't specify the amount). > From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.” Possibly…
"Legitimately" is a nonsense word in that sentence.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#124Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#125There's a surprising number of CIA and secret agent experts in this comments section.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I collect watches worth >$100k and I promise you that most collectors in this range are just watch nerds that have more money than they know what to do with. Singapore is a big watch market because it has a very tight knit and wealthy collector community. Margins on most watches in this range are around 10% on the low end. I wouldn't call that razor thin.
What's the appeal of collecting high priced watches? Is it kind of like art collections, where its a decent store of value while maintaining a collection of something you are personally interested in? Or is it more for "love of the game"? Not saying its not a cool thing to collect, well made watches are a very cool piece of engineering, I'm just curious if there's any "special" appeal outside of "i like this thing an…
> What's the appeal of collecting high priced watches?
You can carry them on your person through airports and other places reasonably unmolested in a way carrying a bunch of cash isn't so easy.
> Is it kind of like art collections, where its a decent store of value
Art doesn't store value: It trades whatever number the parties exchanging it want it to have, so those parties can manipulate their total annual revenues, which might be confused with value if you cannot think of why else someone would want to tell other people they made more or less money in a year, but is not valuable to anyone else.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#127Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#128From last November to March, the court papers say, Mr. Rush asked for, and received, “a significant quantity of foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in gold bars for work-related expenses.” Obvious plant nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“. —— Also the CIA was unable to confirm his discharge with the navy earlier? As if people aren…
> nobody would be that stupid to store the valuables at home within the first six months after the „acquisition“.
But where else would you keep it? A safe-deposit box at a bank?
I think, if I received illegitimate gold bars and figured the FBI might look into that, I would choose to keep them somewhere where a judge would think twice before issuing a search warrant for. Judges don't generally just issue search warrants for residences willy-nilly (because there can often be collateral damage); they're much more blasé about issuing search warrants for safe-deposit boxes.
Or are you imagining he'd go bury the gold in a hole in the woods somewhere?
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#129Mysteriously only 39.12 million dollars is accounted for, The FBI is carefully monitoring the remaining 38.25 million dollars of gold, for a hearing later this week where the fate of the 36.5 million dollars of gold will be decided.
Re: FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Watches are the commodity of choice for corruption in some circles. I know people in jewelry and a significant portion of their transactions are watches to Chinese businessmen, formerly through Hong Kong, now through Singapore. They're high value items with razor thin margins.
I collect watches worth >$100k and I promise you that most collectors in this range are just watch nerds that have more money than they know what to do with. Singapore is a big watch market because it has a very tight knit and wealthy collector community. Margins on most watches in this range are around 10% on the low end. I wouldn't call that razor thin.
Collectors are the end buyers, who ultimately create the value; but the existence of collectors as a predictable sink, permits the trading of the thing they collect as a medium of exchange and (short-term) store of value.
Similar to fine art. For every purchase of a painting by a collector who's actually going to display it, there are 10-100 being purchased by people who're going to keep them in freeport awaiting resale.
Basically like commodities futures. You don't buy onion futures because you have anything you would personally do with multiple tonnes of onions.