Germans nervous about their gold

[shiny!]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

Vietnamese Banks Who Paid Dividend On Stored Gold, Were Quietly Selling It To Appear Solvent

[Shakespear]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

Incredibly, 11 years ago James Turk had diagnosed the problems of the missing German gold hoard.

I also am amazed how much has been foreseen many years ago and now can now be seen with naked eyes. Problem is that is all comes up the crowd Sllllooooowwwwly so that we don't notice

[don]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

All of the above puts into question the belief that a nation's gold reserves are reflected in its fiat currency.

[don]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

2012-10-27 — bloomberg.com

The Bundesbank said the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will help it meet auditing requirements related to its gold reserves that were demanded by Germany's Audit Court."We have been in discussions with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York about the Bundesbank's holdings of gold," the Bundesbank said yesterday in a letter to the German parliament's budget committee.

"The discussions have been fruitful and the Federal Reserve has expressed a commitment to work with the Bundesbank to explore ways to address the audit observations, consistent with its own security and control processes and logistical constraints."

The agreement is part of a compromise between the German central bank and the Audit Court, which has called on the Bundesbank to take stock of its gold holdings outside Germany, saying it has never verified their existence.
...
"We're in negotiations with our partner central banks to develop auditing rights, and that's been agreed in principle," said Thiele. "In parallel, we will, over the next three years, transfer 50 tons of gold each year from New York to Frankfurt, which is an additional way to create confidence."


A reliable choice, one without its own agenda. Was Corsine unavailable? Perhaps a TBTF multi-billion dollar money laundering division could manage the audit

[Shakespear]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

That gave me a good chucle this morning

Was Corsine unavailable? Perhaps a TBTF multi-billion dollar money laundering division could manage the audit

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

I haven't read anything about German plundring and confiscation, but I did have a chance to read the following book

http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Warriors-.../dp/1844675319

The books goes in directions where I can only guess if it is right or pure fiction. However the confication and hiding of the gold stripped from countries invaded by Japan doesn't seem to me to be too far fetched. What happened to the gold after the war is another thing. Did it get back to the rightful owners? I doubt it. Was it all accounted for? I suspect not. Who has it? ????

The book is a good read.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPE0llGCbTY

That's a very interesting book I came across a long time ago.....I've had a go at it a few times over the years......Still not sure how to put it in perspective......I wonder if the Black Eagle Trust still exists and/or what happened to all the gold?

Is the book genuine...or is it speculative fiction wrapped in some truth?

I think I recall a version of the book including a fair bit of documentation on a CDrom

[Fiat Currency]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

We'll soon reach the Schrödinger's Gold phase ... the only way to be sure is to open the vaults.

[don]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

the Deutsche Bundesbank speaks


Gold reserves stored securely

Questions posed by DPA to Carl-Ludwig Thiele, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank


How much German gold is stored in the United States, how much in Frankfurt and how much in Great Britain?
The Deutsche Bundesbank keeps part of its gold holdings in its own vaults in Ger-many, while other stocks of gold are stored at the central banks located in major gold trading centres. Specifically, these are

• Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt am Main: 1,036 tonnes (= 31%)
• Federal Reserve Bank of New York (Fed): 1,536 tonnes (= 45%)
• Bank of England, London: 450 tonnes (= 13%)
• Banque de France, Paris: 374 tonnes (= 11%)

Isn’t storing gold abroad an expensive anachronism?

The New York Fed and the Banque de France also offer to store gold holdings for other central banks free of charge. The Bank of England charges warehousing fees amount-ing to roughly €500,000 per year. Storage in the Bundesbank’s own vaults, too, involves costs. Matters of cost, however, are not the sole consideration in determining the choice of storage facility. The usability of gold as a reserve asset and storage security are much more important. During repeated visits to New York, London and Paris, our internal auditors have satisfied themselves that the security precautions in place there meet the same high stan-dards as those in Frankfurt.

What makes the Bundesbank so certain that German gold holdings are being stored securely abroad – even though, according to the German Federal Court of Auditors, these reserves have never been “physically inventoried and checked for authenticity and weight” by the Bundesbank itself or by independ-ent auditors?

At the beginning of the last decade, we brought 930 tonnes of gold to Frankfurt from London and subjected it to a painstaking inspection. Part of the gold was melted down in order to create new bars which conform with the “Good Delivery Standard” which is customary nowadays in gold trading. Of the 930 tonnes of gold, not one gram was missing. We do not have the slightest doubt that our holdings in New York and Paris are also made up of the purest fine gold. We have at our disposal fully documented lists of the bars, and our partner central banks send us every year confirmation not only of the bars’ existence but also of their quality. We receive confirmation of our gold reserves, measured in troy ounces. The Bundesbank has been drawing up its accounts on this basis since it came into existence. All external auditors have confirmed our accounting practices outright since then.

Why doesn’t the Bundesbank bring the gold back to Germany?

The reasons for storing gold reserves with foreign partner central banks are historical since, at the time, gold at these trading centres was transferred to the Bundesbank. To be more specific: in October 1951 the Bank deutscher Länder, the Bundesbank’s predecessor, purchased its first gold for DM 2.5 million; that was 529 kilograms at the time. By 1956, the gold reserves had risen to DM 6.2 billion, or 1,328 tonnes; upon its foundation in 1957, the Bundesbank took over these reserves. No further gold was added until the 1970s. During that entire period, we had nothing but the best of experiences with our partners in New York, London and Paris. There was never any doubt about the security of Germany’s gold. In fu-ture, we wish to continue to keep gold at international gold trading centres so that, when push comes to shove, we can have it available as a reserve asset as soon as possible. Gold stored in your home safe is not immediately available as collateral in case you need foreign currency. Take, for instance, the key role that the US dollar plays as a reserve currency in the global financial system. The gold held with the New York Fed can, in a crisis, be pledged with the Federal Reserve Bank as collateral against US dollar-denominated liquidity. Similar pound sterling liquidity could be obtained by pledging the gold that is held with the Bank of England.
In the statement it issued on Tuesday, the Bundesbank said that it would “take up suggestions by the FCA wherever possible.” What does that mean specifically? When, and at what intervals, will Bundesbank auditors physically view the gold being held abroad?

The Bundesbank has decided to strive for a more balanced distribution of gold re-serve holdings at home and broad, thereby taking increased account of gold’s function of preserving trust and confidence. After all, reserve assets have psychological significance, so to speak. In the next three years, we will repatriate 50 tonnes of gold annually from New York to Germany. That will give us the opportunity to inspect these bars, melt them down and convert them into “Good Delivery Standard” bars. That will therefore be a sort of spot check. Moreover, we are currently in the middle of discussions about a further expansion of our rights to conduct audits in New York, London and Paris. But, please: for years, our gold has been stored by the highly esteemed central banks of the United States, Great Britain and France without provoking any complaints whatsoever – not by just any fly-by-night operators. Part of the debate in Germany has veered somewhat towards the absurd.

[Shakespear]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

Karl Blessing was the head of the German Bundesbank from 1958 to 1969. He gave a written promise to the US Federal Reserve that he would no longer convert colossal German dollar reserves to gold because this would have caused the currency's value to plummet.

For decades, German central bankers have contented themselves with written affirmations from their American colleagues that the gold still remains where it is said to be stored. According to the report, the bar list from New York stems from "1979/1980." The report also noted that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York refuses to allow the gold's owners to view their own reserves.

Germany's gold reserves are currently worth some €144 billion and are not stored "with dubious business partners," as Thiele stresses, but rather with "highly respected central bankers."

In fact, auditors from the Bundesbank made a second visit in May 2011. This time one of the nine compartments was also opened, in which the German gold bars are densely stacked. A few were pulled out and weighed. But this part of the report has been blacked out -- out of consideration for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-864068.html

[Adeptus]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

I like how the obvious question was never asked:

What guarantees can the vault administrators offer that if every single country that stored gold in their vault asked for ALL their gold back at the same time, that each party would walk out with 100% of the gold they think they own? In other words, how do "we" know these guys aren't practicing 'fractional reserve gold' ? Until this question is answered with extreme high confidence, all these audits, inspections, partial repatriations etc offer ZERO guarantee that gold is being honestly stored and not leased out, or the same bars assigned to multiple parties, etc.

"Posession = 9/10th of the law". In a panic, make sure you are the first to panic. Venezuela did the right thing. Not storing your gold in your own country these days ammounts to mass incompetence. Storage fees, even if you have to build a secure storage facility from scratch pays back itself within the same year (probably in a few short months) due to the average gold price appreciation alone. The more gold a country "owns", the faster the ROI is achieved (i.e. the faster the national secure storage facility is paid for).

[don]

Re: Germans nervous about their gold

I like how the obvious question was never asked:

You went to the vaults, you saw gold. How do you know it was your gold? Do the gold vault administrators make transparent exactly which countries have how much gold in their vaults, or does everyone that walks in to do an inspection assume the gold they see is theirs and not also pledged to anybody else? In other words, how do you know the foreign vault administrators aren't practicing 'fractional reserve gold' ?

To summarize, could you take your gold home?