That Florida had gold mines.  Yes, somewhere in that flat (and swampy) state they must have gold mines ….somewhere.  Maybe the gold is lying under the Everglades or in the sand on the beautiful beaches?  I just can’t imagine where though because every mine that I’ve ever seen was located in hilly or mountainous regions where some past epithermal event must have occurred.  But Florida must somehow…somewhere have a (plural) gold mine(s).

So what the heck am I talking about?  Did you know that Florida’s #1 export last year was $8 billion worth of gold?  Their “goldmine” must really be ramping up production because they exported $50 million worth in 2010, $7 billion in 2011 and now $8 billion in 2012.

Apparently most of this gold was shipped to their new trading partner, Switzerland!  Yes, I know, this gold was either “vaulted gold” that was shipped overseas or of the “cash for gold” type.  My point is that $8 billion is a lot of gold.  This works out to something like 150 tons or more.  So why would this gold be shipped to Switzerland?  I can only speculate.

But maybe this gold needed to be refined?  Or because the Swiss have more demand than they can meet and they needed “product?”  In any case, gold as opposed to oranges or sugar cane as the largest export was certainly a surprise to me.

Another little “surprise” and again it relates to gold was the fact that JP Morgan took in for delivery to their “eligible” (customer) vault 2 large deposits.  They took in 192,900 ounces on Friday and exactly 96,450 ounces today.  Do you notice anything strange about these numbers?  Anything?  First off, Friday’s deposit was “exactly” double the size of the deposit on Monday.  So far, not so strange…but wait there’s more!  192,900 ounces is exactly 6 tons…which makes 96,450 ounces exactly 3 tons.  Quite the coincidence huh?  But the word “exactly” occurs too many times here, I’ll explain.

If you have ever held a physical COMEX bar in your hand then you know that they are almost NEVER “exactly” 100 ounces.  They are either short a fraction or heavier by a fraction of an ounce.  The odds of getting a bar that is “exactly” 100 ounces is 1 in 1,000 since these bars are weighed out to 3 decimal points.  The odds of it happening 2 days in a row are 1 in 1,000 times 1,000…or 1 in 1 million!  No way, didn’t happen and in my mind an absolute impossibility that “exactly” 6 tons was received one day followed by a second “round number day.”  I would ask you this (and please don’t e-mail me telling me that I’m a conspiratorial nut because the “odds” surely favor my conclusion), do you believe that JP Morgan received a whole lot of physical bars that just so happened to amount to “exactly” 6 tons followed by another round number of “exactly” 3 tons…or do you believe that they received pieces of paper that added together and equaled these amounts?  Heck, the odds of them receiving 2 pieces of paper, one stamped “6 tons of gold” and the other on “3” is even a better bet.

My point?  Do you really believe that these deposits actually “weighed” 9 tons or could they be mailed through the post office with a .46 cent stamp?  My point “exactly.”