Friday, August 19, 2011

Hugo Pulls a Goldfinger

...and Joel thinks it would make a great movie:
Massive security headache as Hugo Chavez orders 100 tonnes of gold bullion stored in Bank of England vault back to Venezuela

By TED THORNHILL


It’s the sort of news that would make greedy Bond villain Blofeld sit up – Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez wants the 211 tonnes of gold he’s storing overseas, much of it in Britain, shipped back to Caracas.

Security experts say the operation to transport it safely will be enormous as that amount of gold – 17,000 400-ounce bars – is rarely moved around.


What’s more, flying is out of the question because no insurance company would be able to cover a single aircraft carrying a consignment of gold this big, which is worth £7 billion. This means that ships will have to be used, which are far more vulnerable.
Newspapers seem to be all guesswork as to what he might be up to.  My guess: he's suddenly waked up to the fact that somebody might find it in a British bank and try to offset it against an uncollected debt.  Can't blame him.  Maybe the Iranians told him what happened to them after 1979.

Afterthought.  Hugo goes into a bar with the parrot on his shoulder.  Bartender says "hey, where'd you get that?"  Parrot says: "Oh, we got it from some guy who used to live in France."

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