Bundesbank to Repatriate 374 Tons of Gold From Bank of France, Substantial Portion of Gold Held at t

Because you have to ask yourself, why would Germany decide to do this? What do they see that the rest of us don’t see that requires them to physically move this gold out of lower Manhattan and obviously in Paris, as well, back to their borders?

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white&yellow999 said:

The Swiss seem to be following suit. ...

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mmerlinn said:

I can think of several reasons why.

First, France is rapidly becoming another Greece and Germany does not want her gold at risk. Second, if France becomes another Greece and still has German gold, France has a carrot to extract help from Germany that the Germans may not want to give. With no German gold in France, Germany can treat the French just as they did Greece and are commencing to do with Cyprus, basically economically colonizing (enslaving) them. In a nutshell getting the gold out of France finalizes the divorce of France and Germany.

Much the same can be said for the U.S., but we are bigger, further away, and not yet to the stage France is. Once it becomes clear that the U.S. is on the rocks, Germany will divorce us, too.

From a military point of view, having the gold home makes a lot of sense. If Germany is beholden to no one, Germany can pursue whatever avenue she wants to pursue without fear of the consequences of an economic meltdown. A country with unbacked money can be blackmailed with threats of destroying the economic system of that country through massive counterfeiting of that country's money. Gold prevents that Damocles sword syndrome.

These are just some of the reasons to repatriate the gold. From my perspective, and I am sure from Germany's perspective, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

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rblong2us said:

this is an 'us and them' isolationist approach.
Previous attempts to do this created wars.
The whole idea was to share everything and be equal trading partners thus removing any temptation to fall out.

I see no good coming from bringing home the gold, even though I totally understand the sentiment ............

A bit of 'fourth turning' in play )-:

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PMBug said:

I believe this is the same petition that swissaustrian told us about a while back:

http://www.pmbug.com/forum/f2/switz...s-snb-storage-only-ch-min-20pct-reserves-434/

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ancona said:

Here's an idea, howzabout we petition to see our own gold?

Oh that's right, we already did and they said NO!

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swissaustrian said:

There is a petition for that right now:
http://www.dailypaul.com/270939/white-house-petition-for-a-gold-audit

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There have been widespread stories that the Fed does not have the gold to return as gold held for governments is usually, ‘unallocated’. This suggests that the German gold reserves were not ‘allocated’. Ordinarily, central bank monetary reserves should be held in an ‘allocated’ format to evidence to whom they belong. As it is, held in an ‘unallocated’ form, in simplistic terms, this means that should the Fed fail, foreign central banks holding their gold there would be that unsecured creditors. This concern has been voiced inside Germany. It has been noted that the gold of Germany has not been audited in the past and it should be, on a regular basis. The German Court of Auditors told legislators that the gold had "never been verified physically" and ordered the Bundesbank to secure access to the storage sites. It called for repatriation of 150 tons over the next three years to test the quality and weight of the gold bars. But Germany has decided to move more than in this recommendation. It is said that Frankfurt has no register of the numbered gold bars.
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As we said above, the move of this gold to Frankfurt will allow time to ensure the central banks where the gold is held, to get hold of the gold if they do not have it at the moment. The prospect of developed world central banks now competing with those of the emerging world in the gold market may well start the next leg of the gold bull market because this new, persistent, price-insensitive buying has the power to take gold to a whole new level! We watch to see. If this does happen, then the whole nature of gold in the money system will change even before the changes are ‘officially’ accepted. Gold will be in a ‘de facto’ pivotal position in the monetary system again. It will be a short time from that point before it is ‘officially’ accepted then. The way will have been paved for China to arrive on the scene and gold to have a vital function in the monetary system between two very different and unconnected, politically and economically, power blocs, the developed world and the emerging world with China as its hub.

The last time the world was divided on this basis was at the start of both world wars. The consequences to the monetary world then were so devastating and saw the destruction of national currencies on both sides, in Europe.
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The last time the world was divided on this basis was at the start of both world wars. The consequences to the monetary world then were so devastating and saw the destruction of national currencies on both sides, in Europe.

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Wanna know what I think, folks? I think the central banks have been leasing their gold out for decades to the bullion banks and now find themselves in the rather precarious position of needing to reclaim that which they are supposed to own before the shortfall is exposed. I think that creates a big problem for both sides of that little scheme.

I think the smash in paper was specifically designed to shake out loose holders — and it has worked to a degree, but only amongst the weaker holders of the ETFs, who tend to "rent" gold rather than own it. I think the stronger hands have been getting their gold out of the official warehouses as fast as they can; and central banks in places like China, Russia, and all over the rest of Asia and South America have been trying to buy and, crucially, to take delivery of physical gold while they still can.

I also think that retail investors — particularly here in Asia — are, unfortunately, compounding the banks' problems by using the weakness in the paper markets to acquire as much physical metal (or, as it's known in this part of the world, "wealth") as they can.
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PMBug said:

Large image:

Spoiler

Long: http://www.mauldineconomics.com/ttmygh/what-if

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swissaustrian said:

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1. The repatriation is said to be spread over 7 years, so why the rush?
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J S Kim said:

Below is a recent correspondence from our friend Lars Schall, an independent financial journalist, and the German Central Bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank, regarding the exact whereabouts and specifications of Germany’s national gold reserve. From the correspondence below, it appears that the US Central Bank had already leased out Germany’s gold reserves in prior years and no longer has it, as the gold bars the US Central Bankers returned to Germany last year were clearly not the same ones that Germany originally deposited with them. The questions Mr. Schall’s revelations now beg is (1) if the Banque de France and the Bank of England have Germany’s original gold as well; and (2) if the various Central Bankers are deliberately returning Germany’s gold on a painfully slow timeline because they have already leased out Germany’s gold into the open market in prior years, no longer hold it, and must therefore scrape together Germany’s gold from the open market now.
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ancona said:

Just wait for the landslide of repatriation requests that is sure to come. The Fed has traded, hypothecated, derivitized, sold or otherwise used all their gold and has no realistic way to return it inside of any meaningful time-frame. They must therefore, default.

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What I just found out, and what presumably few people in the English speaking world knew, was that the Bundesbank had made an earlier repatriation request in the fall of 2012, to ship home 150 tons from the US in three years (ending in 2015). So after January 2013 two repatriation schedules co-existed. They were not mutually exclusive – so most Germany expected to see back was 150 tons from the US by 2015 – and ultimately 674 tons by end-2020 from both the US and France.

This was the plan.. But in 2013 only 37 (remelted) tons of gold reached German grounds of which 5 tons from the US. Needless to say, this lifted a few eyebrows. The Bundesbank has now withdrawn the original schedule to repatriate 150 tons from the US before 2015, but continues plan B, to repatriate 674 tons from NY and Paris by end-2020.
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PMBug said:

http://www.ingoldwetrust.ch/bundesbank-changes-gold-repatriation-schedule

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... In 2014, 120 tonnes of gold were transferred to Frankfurt am Main from storage locations abroad: 35 tonnes from Paris and 85 tonnes from New York. ...

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... the Fed’s custodial gold holdings have reduced by 125 tonnes from January to November 2015. I am fairly confident that all of these are German repatriations as there hasn’t been any announcements of other central banks withdrawing metal from the Federal Reserve’s vaults in New York. ...

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The Bundesbank today announced its gold repatriation tonnages for 2015: 210 tons, with 99.5 having been returned from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and 110 from the Banque de France in Paris. This is 6 percent of all German gold reserves and 10 percent of the German gold reserves held abroad:

http://www.bundesbank.de/Redaktion/EN/Pressemitteilungen/BBK/2016/2016_01_27_relocation_of_gold.html
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At least one more central bank besides the Bundesbank must have repatriated some gold from the New York Fed in 2015, as the New York Fed reports a decline in its custodial gold holdings of another 25.5 tonnes.
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Germany's central bank is bringing home gold reserves stored in places like New York and Paris faster than planned, it said on Thursday, as confidence in the euro ebbs even in the heart of the currency bloc after a decade of a sluggish economy.

Stashed away at the height of the Cold War in safe havens well out of Moscow's reach, the 3,378-tonne, 120 billion-euro (102 billion-pound) gold stockpile has become a symbol of Germany's economic ascent and a guardian of its stability.

But with Europe stumbling from crisis to crisis, the German public has grown uneasy about keeping the gold abroad. Some even argue the world's second biggest bullion reserve may be needed to back a new deutschmark, should the euro zone break up.

Having already moved 583 tonnes of gold out of New York and Paris, the Bundesbank plans to have half its gold in Frankfurt by the end of 2017, years ahead of its 2020 schedule, with the rest split between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of England.
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The Bundesbank will repatriate 674 metric tons of gold from vaults in Paris and New York by 2020 to restore public confidence in the safety of Germany’s reserves.

The phased relocation of the gold, currently worth about 27 billion euros ($36 billion), will begin this year and result in half of Germany’s reserves being stored in Frankfurt by the end of the decade, the Bundesbank said in a statement today. It will bring home all 374 tons of its gold held at the Banque de France and a further 300 tons from the New York Federal Reserve, it said. Holdings at the Bank of England will remain unchanged.

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Sputnik News said:

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Katasonov, a professor at the International Finance Department at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, suggested that the United States disposed of Germany's gold bars at its own discretion.

"There are a lot of signs that the gold was not physically present in the New York vaults when Germany called it back. Of course, the U.S. began to return it to Germany but there is one interesting detail. When you leave your suitcase in the luggage storage, you expect to get back the same suitcase. But Germany took the wrong 'suitcase,'" Katasonov told Radio Sputnik.

According to the economist, the gold bars that Bundesbank repatriated have different labels. He suggested that the U.S. might have replaced the German bullion with different gold bars bought from the market.

Katasonov explained that the U.S. managed to return the yellow metal thanks to favorable conditions in the precious metal market.

"I think there was a favorable environment in the market and the Americans managed to quickly buy the gold and give it back to Germany. They were not ready for this, but finally managed this replacement," he concluded.

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....reported almost exclusively by GATA that Germany's gold reserves vaulted with the United States were never more than gold credits until the Bundesbank sought to repatriate the gold in recent years.

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PMBug said:

http://gata.org/node/17172

No idea what Katasonov's source is for his claim about the labels on the bars.

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