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Debt crisis: Italian cash-for-gold shops quadruple as financial crisis deepens

published by Tom Sullivan on Sat, 2012-08-25 08:40

Crisis-hit Italy has seen the number of cash-for-gold shops quadruple in the last two years, according to an Italian think tank, with some cash-strapped citizens forced to sell their gold teeth to make ends meet.

City centres are being transformed as traditional shops go out of business, their signs replaced by ones that announce "Compro Oro", or "I Buy Gold".

The Eurispes thinktank estimates that the number of the shops has quadrupled in the last two years. The growth of the industry is "a very good indicator of the level of hardship in the country," said president Gian Maria Fara.

Valerio Novelli, a ticket inspector in Rome, is planning to sell his old gold teeth.

"I can't get to the end of the month without running up debts," 56-year-old Mr Novelli told Reuters. "I know I won't get much, but I need the money."
In a country mired in crisis, buying gold off desperate people has become one of the few boom industries.

Source and full story: The Daily Telegraph, 20 August 2012

Tags: 
ECONOMY
CRISIS
USURY
ITALY

Comments

Submitted by Tom Sullivan on Sat, 2012-08-25 09:03.

Every last one of these "cash for gold" outlets are outright scammers and a blight on the areas they move in to. Consider yourself lucky if you get one-tenth of what the gold is truly worth. Some try to get away with offer as little as one-thirteeth. Their TV adverts try to suggest that "old" or "broken" gold is somehow inferior, when its value is no less than that of "new" or "unbroken" gold.  There'll always be those who seek to profit from the misfortune of others. Usury is alive and well, it seems.

Submitted by Heydrich on Sat, 2012-08-25 15:03.

This phenomenon happens in every country that has a depression, but the wave hit powerfully in Italy (the euro zone's third largest economy) as the bankers starved the masses, causing cash-for-gold shops to quadruple over the past two years to about 28,000 (and growing). Eighty percent of the gold they extract from the Italian masses goes to Switzerland, making gold Italy's fastest growing export. Blanket television adverts urge Italians to sell off their medallions and jewels for quick cash (at a fraction of their value) so the victims can survive another week.

A lot of the cash-for-gold shops are run by gangsters or Mafiosi-type people, who are very tight with the bankers. The bankers had Italian law written so that cash-for-gold shops are legally considered part of the “scrapping” industry. Hence the shops do not have to pay any Value Added Tax.

Since the shops pay a fraction of the gold’s value, and since they rarely give out any receipts for their gold purchases, they are making a killing, tax free. It is quite literally a gold rush. Anyone involve in the scam is extremely excited, even manic, and not just in Italy. In the USA, people put signs on their cars saying, “I buy gold! Call xxx-xxxx.” Right-wing talk show hosts like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh constantly push the cash-for-gold mania.

And since there is a gold rush, there has been a corresponding increase in gold burglaries against businesses and private residences.

Italy is an especially juicy for the cash-for-gold scammers, since Italy historically has some of the highest rates of gold jewelry ownership in the world. It has strong cultural traditions like gifts of gold chains. Also, Italians could not legally to own gold bullion until ten years ago.

The entire scam is overseen by the top-level bankers who sustain the depression. When bankers engineered a depression in the 1930s, they directed President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 6102 (5 April 1933) making it illegal for Americans to own gold coins, gold bullion, and gold certificates. All Americans were required to surrender these to the Federal Reserve, in exchange for $20.67 per ounce  (one-fifth the gold’s market value), or face a $10,000 fine, plus ten years in prison.

In Europe the bankers do the same thing by withdrawing the euro currency, thereby forcing the masses to give up their gold.  

The masses defend this theft, since the masses have been brainwashed to support the euro currency that is killing them.

Submitted by andie531 on Sat, 2012-08-25 23:52.

I've seen a lot of these spring up where I am.  Jewelery stores will also buy gold now. 

When my mom died, I read the cremation contract.  Crematoriums have a right to any metals that fall out of the corpse (gold teeth, etc). 

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