Golden geopolitics. Why does Germany evacuate its gold from France and the USA
Dear Readers,Last week in "However" already was rising the topic of how the Bundesbank takes part of its gold reserves from the vaults of Paris and New York.
Let's dwell on this in more detail, since this news There are still many interesting nuances.
Partner of my partner
To date, Germany has announced only the intention to store only 2020% of its own gold reserves by the year 50, by the way, the second most massive in the world - 3.396 tons. That is, in this case, move 300 tons from New York and 374 from Paris to the basements of Frankfurt. Reserves in New York (37%) will continue to exist, and only Paris will lose German gold completely. Particular attention is the formulation with which the Germans move gold:
"... in order to create trust and confidence in the homeland, as well as to be able to exchange gold for foreign currencies in gold trading centers abroad within a short time."
It comes to mind that a change in the structure that existed since the day the euro was introduced is taking place before our eyes. Berlin completely withdraws its gold from Paris, with which it has a common currency and thus shows that in the future Paris does not interest him as a financial center, in which it will be possible to change gold as the need arises. Obviously, in the opinion of Berlin, New York will retain this function in the future, but in addition to it German gold is still in one place, and Germany has not made any demands on this depository. This place is London, where 13% of Germany’s gold reserves lies. The British repository generally fell out of the news bulletins, and yet a very important event connected with it ten years ago is connected with it.
In the 2000, the Bundesbank had 1.440 tons of gold at the Bank of London. Then, according to The Telegraph, in 2001, the balance went down to 500 tons (now, by the way, it is 450). During the year, 940 tons of gold were withdrawn from the London vaults and quietly moved to Frankfurt. According to the official version, "due to the fact that the cost of storing gold was prohibitively high." In America, German gold is generally free, because, according to Americans, this gives weight to the dollar as a world reserve currency, but now it is also withdrawn. The version of a decade ago looks completely far-fetched - so why did the Germans do it?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the same Telegraph voiced a hypothesis - this is due to the fact that London at that time began to sell gold at the lower price bar, and therefore the Germans were afraid that their own gold could go under the hammer.
In fact, besides the obvious risk, something else is hidden here. According to Carl-Ludwig Thiele, "after our gold was returned from London, it was subjected to the most thorough verification. As a result, part of the bullion was melted to meet the standard of the London Quality Supply, which is the basis of international gold trade."
Mr. Thiele completely forgot the fact that the London storehouse deals only with LPC ingots, others are simply not accepted there. If his bank was forced to melt part of the gold, it means that a certain amount of fakes were returned from England.
Shadow of Bretton Woods
And here we are forced to return to the events of the second half of the twentieth century, namely 1968 of the year. If you dig through the open archives of the Bank of England, you can find a memo C43 / 323 dated 31 May 1968 of the year and entitled "The gold and currency exchange department data is different." In it, someone Robson refers to Roy Pearce, at that time the chief cashier of the Bank of England, and the final recipient of the note was Charles Coombs, responsible for operations with gold and foreign currencies of the US Federal Reserve.
The note explicitly describes how, during the Bretton Woods Agreement, two central banks, England and the United States, in the course of the conspiracy, sent gold bars of obviously poor quality to Germany.
For those who do not read in English, only the facts: at least two central banks conspired at least once to transfer to Bundesbank what was 172 gold bars of “poor supply”, and both central banks were aware of this. “Bad delivery” occurred despite warnings from official smelters that the quality of gold from the US Assay Office was noticeably below standard, which the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve knew about. Instead of correcting the situation, banks simply agreed to close this information from the Bundesbank. Gold was transferred to London in order to settle with Berlin as part of regular payments.
The Bank of England detects a discrepancy in US gold bars, notifies the Federal Reserve that many "bad supplies" have been found among its bars, but - and in this salt - in this case, the parties intend to keep it secret, since the Bundesbank received the Bundesbank. This is just one documented incident. It is easy to imagine that hundreds of thousands of bars, which were listed as LCP in securities, have lost some weight over the years of Bretton Woods. It is not known how many peripheral central banks received them as LPC, and you can imagine what happened to the bars stored in New York. Just imagine, since there is no real way to check their quality. Without additional evidence, all this is just a mind game.
Thus, it becomes clear that Germany’s desire to keep secret the gold operations with London, in particular, why the return of 2000 of the year was carried out so covertly, although the Germans had every right to reclaim their property. If someone took a good career to dig even in open sources, this would cast doubt on the whole of Germany’s gold reserves, since God alone knows how many times a bad supply took place and what is the true gold content in the metal that is stored in Germany and for Germany . The fact that part of it had to be melted, says that the scam of the United States and Britain was disclosed, but so far, in fact, occupied Germany was not in a position to make claims.
They used to say "go away", and now "come tomorrow."
Note the return date. 300 tons Germans will return seven years. From the same Federal Reserve, which allegedly stores 6720 tons of gold in its vault. This is despite the fact that three times the larger volume was returned from London during the year. Naturally, the whole world thought of one thing - in the basements of America and France this gold is simply not there. I will not focus on the widely publicized problem of tungsten ingots. Anyone interested will find enough information about counterfeits, filled inside with tungsten and coated with gold, allegedly found by the Chinese in a number of other banks around the world. It is not known how common these forgeries are, although along with the data on the “bad delivery” all this paints an interesting picture.
Even if gold is still in place, the problem may be different. It is not known whose gold is in our time. Yes, initially, American bankers acted only as custodians of these values. However, gold from the Federal Reserve vaults has been repeatedly used by banks to secure mutual loans and re-supply, when the lender uses the collateral of its clients for its own loan. As a result, there is a chance that seven years are necessary for the Federal Reserve to determine to whom some gold physically belongs. It is likely that in the process of re-provision gold could be presented as collateral, which under no circumstances had the right to change the owner.
Tungsten or empty storages - these probabilities cannot be ruled out. But it is also quite possible that even the 5% of gold allegedly stored in it cannot be returned by the US Federal Reserve simply because it cannot match the owner and his metal. This already surfaced in the 2011 year, when the re-supply chain broke just in London. The result was a completely wild storyassociated with HSBC itself, one of the two most important gold keepers in the world, including not someone else, but the SPDR Gold Shares, a trust owning more than 42 millions of ounces (more than China’s gold reserves). HSBC was forced to sue MF Global "to determine whether he or any other person is the authorized owner of the gold on $ 850.000."
This is the very edge, because in a legal way no physical gold bar can move from owner to owner while in storage. He has a unique number and cannot be changed. But that is what led to the suit! Instead of the normal procedure, it turned out that it was extremely difficult to find the owner of gold, because the bars were repeatedly repotted during credit operations. As a result, HSBC at some point began to receive conflicting instructions from several owners of the same gold. The amount of the claim is not important here, because the trust in the very mechanism of storing gold in the funds under foreign control turned out to be under attack. How many more bars rotates in credit operations without the knowledge of their owners? Everyone thought about it.
So the current state of affairs is not a point at all, it is such a fat comma. Extra publicity is completely useless to Germany, which allows itself through the mouth of Andreas Dobre, a member of the Executive Council of the Bundesbank, to state in November the following:
- discussions on the preservation of gold outside of Germany are caused by irrational fears;
- debates about it are sucked from the finger and do not show weighty arguments;
- The relationship between the Bundesbank and the US Federal Reserve has been excellent for many years;
- Frankfurt is not a trading platform in the gold market, so it’s convenient to store gold in New York from all points of view;
- over the course of 60 years, Germany has never had problems with storing gold in the United States or doubting the integrity of the Federal Reserve;
- Germany will continue to use the advantageous position of the New York Stock Exchange to use gold if necessary;
- although gold is important, the main task of Germany is to deal with the crisis of confidence in the eurozone, which should be the focus.
Not a few months pass, as the official Bundesbank makes a full reversal and demands its gold back. This only means that all preparations have been completed and the need for a smoke screen has disappeared. The risk of being the last to the gold depository at the moment when all the lending chains are sprinkled and five owners appear for each ingot has become too large. The world is now turning $ 1 derivatives into a quadrillion, which is about 20 times the planetary GDP, and someday it will all be submitted to maturity.
In fact, Berlin has long understood what it is dealing with. What exactly he prepared in return, we will have the opportunity to learn in the coming years. Experts have already called what is happening a declaration of financial war, and this time Germany looks like a defending party. And the desire to return the gold home immediately through the word is associated with the improvement of relations with Russia.
It is not known what part the Bank of France took in this, but two weeks after the announcement of the Bundesbank, France launched an operation in Mali. This African country is the third largest exporter of gold in Africa. Seven years is enough time to satisfy the request of a European partner. As the popular joke goes, Germany demanded that gold be returned to her from the underground vaults of France. France went to mine it out of the ground.
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