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Is Germany's Gold Housed in New York, Paris and London All Gone?
foreward by JS Kim, Managing Director of SmartKnowledgeU
Here 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.
Below is Mr. Schall’s inquiry to the Deutsche Bundesbank:
December 26, 2013
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am an independent financial journalist. In connection with the transfer of 37 tons of Bundesbank gold from New York to Germany, I came across the news that the bars were a melted before the transfer. May I kindly ask you for the following information:
Why were the bars melted at all? And why couldn’t that wait until the bars arrived in Frankfurt?
Kind regards,
Lars Schall
Below is the Bundesbank’s curious reply that is riddled with a lack of transparency:
January 3, 2014
Dear Mr. Schall:
Thank you for your enquiry.
At a press conference on the topic of Germany’s gold reserves on 16 January 2013, Executive Board member Carl-Ludwig Thiele presented the Deutsche Bundesbank’s new storage concept. In addition to the relocation of gold bars, this concept includes, amongst other things, measures to ensure that the specifications of the London Good Delivery (LGD) standard are met. You can find these specifications on Page 17 of the
following presentation:
http://www.bundesbank.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/Presse/Publikationen/201…
Storage plan (new)
2012 2020
Frankfurt 31% ………… 50%
New York 45% ………… 37%
London 13% ………… 13%
Paris 11% ………… 0%
Planned relocations:
– Phased relocation of 300 tonnes of gold from New York to Frankfurt.
– Phased relocation of 374 tonnes of gold from Paris to Frankfurt.
– Achieve LGD standard, where this is not already the case.
You can find the specifications for the London Good Delivery (LGD) standard at the following address:
http://www.lbma.org.uk/pages/index.cfm?page_id=27
In cases where these specifications were not already met, the Bundesbank had these original gold bars melted down and recast in order to meet this standard. This was achieved without any difficulties. Please understand that in order to ensure the security of the gold transports and our employees, the Bundesbank is unable to provide you with any further information.
Yours sincerely,
DEUTSCHE BUNDESBANK
Communication
Wilhelm-Epstein-Strasse 14
60431 Frankfurt am Main
Tel.: +49 69 9566×3511 or 3512
And below are questions raised by Peter Boehringer, president of German Precious Metal Society and co-initiator of the Repatriate our Gold campaign, to the opacity and oddities of the Bundesbank’s response:
Why does the Bundesbank continue to avoid transparency regarding Germany’s gold holdings?
Why not just come up with easy-to-deliver facts instead of repeated rhetoric about an alleged remelting of gold bars in the United States that even people with some knowledge of the gold industry and some common sense fail to understand?
There is no reason why the original gold bars acquired in the 1950s and 1960s (if they ever existed at all, which has never been proven, as by publication of bar lists or photos) had to be melted down and recast into LGD-compliant bars in New York as opposed to Frankfurt. Nor is there reason why all this had to be done in obscurity without any published report of the recasting.
The public is still waiting for answers to crucial questions like these:
– What kind of gold bars were melted? Original material from the 1950s and ’60s?
– How can the Bundesbank hint in its press release that some of the old bars already met the LGD specifications when those specifications were not defined and made a standard for central bank bars until 1979?
–
Why has the Bundesbank not published a bar number list of the old bars?
How can there be security concerns about bars that no longer exist?
Why has the Bundesbank not published a bar number list of the newly cast
bars?
– Who exactly melted the bars? Where exactly was this melting performed? Is there a smelter at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York?
– Who witnessed the melting and recasting of the bars?
– Are there any reports on this in writing with a valid signature? By whom?
– And especially: Why was it deemed necessary to perform this action in the United States as opposed to Frankfurt or nearby Hanau, where there are some of the best facilities in the world for metal probing, melting, and recasting? Had these actions been performed in Germany in a fully transparent manner, it would have been so easy for the Bundesbank to dismiss all questions from “paranoid gold conspiracy theorists.”
The Bundesbank is just the custodian of Germany’s national gold, which is worth more than $125 billion. The Bundesbank owes the public full transparency in all these gold matters. That is, physical audits,
independently verified storage reports, and a publication of the full bar lists of all its gold in all national or international vaults. Despite having now had the excellent opportunity of this partial repatriation, the Bundesbank has again failed to produce any proof or indication that at least 37 tonnes (out of 1,500 tonnes of German gold at the New York Fed) still existed through 2013 in their original 1950s-’60s bar form. Instead, Germany is now owner of almost 3,000 LGD-compliant standard bars, which proves nothing and dismisses no allegations of decade-long manipulation of the gold price.
It is still possible and even probable that the old German bars were lent into the market long ago or that they have multiple owners or are backing multiple gold exchange-traded fund derivatives. Of course the same holds for our remaining 120,000 bars at the New York Fed. The “repatriation” of a mere 1.5 percent of Germany’s foreign gold holdings and the supposed melting and recasting of the original gold bars do not prove the continued existence of Germany’s remaining gold holdings supposedly vaulted at the New York Fed. The Bundesbank has missed a great opportunity to bring transparency to Germany’s gold reserves. What a pity. And at its current speed the Bundesbank will require 60 years to accomplish the repatriation mission forced upon it by an impatient public. What a shame.
The initiators of the Repatriate Our Gold campaign are considering legal action based on freedom-of-information law against the Bundesbank and possibly also against its auditors, who have certified the Bundesbank’s balance sheet without having adequately considered the risks associated with a non-transparent gold hoard, which is the only asset of substance on the Bundesbank’s books. (Ninety percent of those assets are mere paper claims, many of dubious quality, like “Target 2? claims.)
Our objective remains to achieve the publication of all gold bar lists and full transparency involving Germany’s gold. The German people are entitled to have all information about their golden property. And the American people have a right to know as well. After all, it is the U.S. Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury Department that have been obscuring their gold holdings and foreign gold holdings since the last proper audit in 1953.
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... and all the people in India.
Maybe they had to melt it down before repatriating it because they didn't want the press getting pictures of a bunch of gold teeth and fillings piled high on pallets.
it is taking years due to the commitments of this loaned gold, used as collateral multiple times, leveraged multiple times, what a mess, they need years to unravel it all, in 7 years they will still not be able to deliver free and clear.
over that time the plan is the german public will forget gold, and will be focused on other NEWs.
Maybe those bars need melted because bars stamped with swastikas would be illegal now in Germany.
All this Gold has been earned by Germany after WW2, all German gold was confiscated at the end of WW2
They are melting down coins, junk and scrap to make the bars. Thats why its taking 7 years.
Maybe it's because the war starts between now and then.
Better check that shit and make sure it ain't lead bars that are painted gold!
^.^
I do believe the majority of gold has been leased, thus gone forever.
They said they would do it here:
http://gata.org/node/8208
I'm of the opinion that above grand theft there should be another catigory, if you steal or defraud someone above the dollar values of one billion dollars, captial punishment should be on the table. This would include the likes of corzine and members of the treasury dept and fed for the loss of Americas gold holdings. Audit the gold, if it is not at Fort Knox or the NY Fed, heads should roll, literally. And if you think that is to harsh, I can show you a death that is directly related to any theft or fraud of over a billion dollars.
The Rosevelt confiscation was primairly gold coinage and hence 90% or so gold content. Rumor has it this is still unpurified and this may be what is going on, the purification of bullion melted and bared but never made 99.999% before.
Agree totally.
But we're no longer a nation of laws....just a nation of men....some more equal than others.
Oink!
How hard could it be to get a judge to indict some people at the Bundesbank and get them to tell what the hell is going on? I suppose about as hard as it would be to get the same done in NYC or London. Way too hard, obviously.
Comrade, you are far too suspiciousing citizenisting state of your overlords.
Everything is clearly on up and up.
Indictment: Similar to perjury, this is a concept that has no place in "high finance."
different legal system. the chief constitutional way to do this in Germany would be a parliamentary motion or enquiry. on the european continent judges are less powerful, while parliaments are way more. which is one of the reasons why "unelected" reverberates so often and strongly in the "Common Law" world, and not here
the whole situation about German gold "abroad" is presented here in this article as if it's the same between the American People and the US Treasury. it isn't
it starts with the fact that it's between the US and Germany, a inter-governmental affair
when national banks/treasuries owe gold to each others, there is no strict allocation of bars with numbers, etc. the US owes a certain amount of tons of gold to Germany. that's it
the real scandal is still that delivery is being delayed over seven years. that should be an eye-opener for everybody
I am sure the judges in these cases (and the Bart Chilton CFTC shit show) have been made aware that these are cases of "national security". Ie, you expose this and pretty quickly the entire western world is revealed as nothing more than a layered ponzi upon ponzi.
clearly Germany should be asking for the outstanding balance in bitcoins so they can directly redeem bitcoins for bars and in the mean time boost the GDP of Germany using BTC on their balance sheet.
LOL.
Oh ya, I went there.
... shave & a (Chilton) hair cut... 2 satoshis...
Nothing to worry about. The delay was merely because they are building a boat to ship the gold back from New York to Germany. It's all here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/titanic-anniversary/9235980/Titanic-replica-to-be-built-in-China.html
They'd better send it by air. Many of of us have experienced how gold and boats don't mix. ;)
lol - serious gold always travels by air (nowadays, before it was on warships). insurance is otherwise prohibitive. perhaps because of this inexplicable "sink the boat" effect
The gold has been gone for a while.
The Americans are scrambling around to find something to send to the Germans. They have sent about half so far, so we might be talking about 14 years, not 7.
And why all this idiotic nonsense of re-casting into other shapes. I am convinced the gold originally deposited was catalogued, weighed, measuresd and stamped, down to the last little bar, it came from Germany, nicht wahr??, that's the way they do it! And it should only be in storage, not usage, so clearly all the original bars must be there, as gold does not wear, tarnish or evaporate by lying on a shelf.
The Americans haven't got it anymore. It was sold at 300 or 400$ per ounce, and now it has gone. They are scrambling around trying to get fresh gold at each slam dunk event, but there is more paper than physical available. And fcuk, if they have to increase the price to entice physical out in the open, they would be shooting themselves in the foot each dollar from here to whereever!
Low interest rates, money printing and normal fraud has driven physical gold underground. Backwardation is a sure sign that paper prices and real prices are diverging.
Why do you think India is fighting gold, and Germany not complaining??. They have been told to shut up and do as they have been told, because much is at play here, and the "terrorists" are buying gold to destabilize the system.
Guess what, yes we are!
I beg to differ. most of this gold between the US and Europe is a balance. as in balance of trade
Americans imported goods (in excess) from Europe, europeans received as-good-as-gold dollars, exchanged them into their local currency (we had many of them), the USDs eventually landed through banks to the national banks and they, whenever a certain limit was reached, called NY and agreed a swap, de facto buying gold with USDs - the simplicity of the "gold window" which Nixon closed in 1971
yet most of the gold was continuing being kept in NY (with many excuses and many reasons, until French warships showed up to load). it was mostly American gold to start with, spent/promised for trade payment, in the same way as China is now sitting on a lot of USDs because of the trade imbalances. as in: full ships arrive, empty ships depart
meanwhile I'm not so sure that backwardation of gold has any meaning. it's not being consumed, as such. there are always stocks available, the question is only price
imho the real question if you are happy with a raincoat-check instead of your raincoat. what's the current check-to-raincoat ratio of the comex? 80?
simplified, what Germany is doing is the same as exchanging gold promises into real, physical gold. the difference so far? a promise of delivery in seven years
It used to be gold aligned to settle balance of trade, until the French got serious about it, and actually wanted the gold. Then the game was no longer fun, and the gold window shut close.
The Germans, as you ought to know, have had a trade surplus, and still do, for yonks! The only reason their gold is not in Germany is that there was fear, that the Ruskies might come and take it, so daddy would look after it, and the amis next door!
Backwardation has been tauted as the start of gold going underground and not being available any longer for paper money. When paper starts to loose the confidence of the people, things can move rather quickly rater suddenly. If you suspect that you might actually be the last in the queue, and there is no longer a greater fool behind you, you will no longer part with gold for ANY amount of paper money. You might barter, but exchange of gold for paper becomes impossible.
A backwardation occurs when the difference between the futures and spot is less than the cost of carry, or when there can be no delivery arbitrage because the asset is not currently available for purchase.
At the moment you can surely buy your Krugerrands and gold in small amounts with no problems. But could you step up and suddenly get about 50 tons per month? physical, without getting the price to increase.
I don't think you can. I think there is intense pressure on all physical clients to delay, defer or desist. Have you noticed, the gold price got slammed as the Germans started to ask for it? I don't think it is a coincidence. I think the Americans are trying to throttle all other supplies to satisfy China, so they don't dump the Dollar and things really, really start to get weird. We at the epitome of a 100 year experiment with fraud and crime and the Federal reserve system, and things are starting to seriously fall apart. That is where India gets told off, and Germany. Because the Americans and their allies are trying to get through this with pretend and extend. They can't tell the Chinese to go and do whatever Chinese do, but they surely can tell the Germans to, and the Europeans generally. This is a house of cards, and it will come down.
I'm betting on it!
zee Germans are coming, zee Germans are coming!
Tell zem bitzcoins are as good as golds & make them accept their new 'currency' units!
it's all heading to the IMF. At some point we're gonna need someone from Japan to lead that Agency...or someone from the USA to take into account the catastophe that is Japan.
Simple answer?: Yes.
I wonder if the bars were all remelted to elininate any gold plated tungsten fakes?
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding!
We have a "wiener."
You remelt (and recast) in NY so nobody can say that they left the US in good delivery condition, and so sorry you Germans switched them out for tungsten...
Ya, I'd remelt all of that once I received it. (Just to make sure it's gold)
Goldfinger Bitchez! soon we will learn that all of Japan's gold has been stored under Reactor 3 and 4 in Fukushima
No, we will find out that is where the US leased Germany's gold to
Germany figures in this spoof on a TED talk about capitalism and profit (though the UK bit before it is the best)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QPxDugs0Nw