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With the Associated
Press report appended here, the German gold audit
story has just exploded into the English-language press with some
important revelations:
-- The gold vaulted by the German central bank, the Bundesbank, with the
Bank of England "has fallen
'below 500 tons' due to recent
sales and repatriations. ..." So despite the lack of official announcement, Germany lately
has been selling gold from
London -- perhaps as part of the secret "strategic activities" grudgingly acknowledged two years ago
by the Bundesbank to GATA's friend,
the German financial journalist Lars Schall:
http://www.gata.org/node/9363
The lack of announcement of the
sale of the German gold in London suggests that the sale was actually part of a gold
swap with another central
bank -- like the New York
Fed. That is, the powerful
implication here is that German gold in London was sold at
the behest of the United States and in exchange
Germany took title to
United States gold vaulted in the United States --
or title to gold supposedly
vaulted in the United States. This way the Bundesbank could
continue to claim ownership of the same amount of gold without lying, at least not technically.
As for the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury
Department, when you rig every
market you can't worry so
much about lying.
Of course such gold swaps were the target of GATA's federal freedom-of-information lawsuit against the Federal Reserve in U.S. District Court for the District
of Columbia, a lawsuit concluded
somewhat successfully
last year, having pried from the Fed an admission
that it has secret gold
swap arrangements with foreign
banks:
http://www.gata.org/node/9917
-- The Bundesbank is resisting accountability and has censored
part of the auditors' report in the name of protecting secrets of
the central banks storing
the German gold. But why should there be any secrets about it? Nobody's asking for the combination numbers to the vaults, and the combination wouldn't do anyone any good anyway, as the vaults are guarded. Do these secrets involve gold loans and leases and other legerdemain? That seems to be the case.
-- The campaign to repatriate the German gold has gotten noticed in a big way.
-- The Bundesbank
has been officially reprimanded
by another German government agency for negligence in its custodianship of the national gold.
-- The Bundesbank won't let German parliament members inspect the German gold vaulted abroad because the central bank vaulting facilities supposedly lack "visiting rooms." And yet one of those vaults, the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York, offers the public tours that include "an exclusive
visit to the gold vault"
-- provided, apparently, that you're not an elected representative of the German people:
http://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/visiting.html#tabs-1
GATA has made further informational requests of the Federal
Reserve, Treasury Department,
and State Department involving
their gold records:
http://www.gata.org/node/11606
Since those
agencies have failed to respond, GATA now is entitled to bring more freedom-of-information
lawsuits against them. But we can't do that without sufficient financing.
The auditors' report about the German
gold demonstrates that
the Western central bank gold price
suppression scheme -- part of a vast
scheme of rigging all
major markets -- can be exposed and defeated by persistent clamor
and demands for information. If you
haven't already considered helping us financially, please do so now:
http://www.gata.org/node/16
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
* * *
Unease about Germany's
unchecked gold reserves
By The Associated Press
via Boston Globe
Monday, October 22, 2012
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/2012/...ditors-urge-...
BERLIN -- Germany's central bank has failed to properly oversee the country's massive
gold reserves, which have
been stored abroad since the Cold War in case of a
Soviet invasion, independent auditors
say.
The central bank must renegotiate its contracts to gain the right
to inspect its gold bars,
which are worth tens of billions of dollars and are stored
in the United States, Britain, and France, the Federal Auditors Office said in a report to lawmakers obtained by The Associated Press on Monday.
The report says the gold bars "have never
been physically checked
by the Bundesbank itself or other
independent auditors regarding their authenticity or weight." Instead, the Bundesbank relies on a "written confirmations by the storage
sites."
Most
of Germany's gold reserves
-- some 3,400 tons worth
an estimated $190 billion at
current rates -- have been kept
in the vaults of the U.S. Federal
Reserve, the Bank of France, and the Bank of England
since the postwar days, when Berlin worried about a possible land war
with the Soviet bloc.
The auditors maintain that the central bank must be able to at least inspect samples of its gold bars at regular intervals to verify their book value.
The report acknowledges that such inspections might be logistically complicated, but it stresses that "this cannot discharge [the bank] from the necessity to carry out an inventory."
The central bank said in a
reaction to the report that
was also sent to lawmakers Monday that it sees
no reason for a physical
inspection of the bars. "There is no doubt about the integrity of
the foreign storage sites
in this regard," it stated.
The debate on most of the gold reserves being held by foreign authorities has caused some inevitable conspiracy theories questioning their very existence, but several German politicians have also voiced unease.
Philipp Missfelder,
a leading lawmaker from Chancellor Angela Merkel's
center-right party, has asked the Bundesbank for
the right to view the gold bars in Paris and
London, but the central bank has denied the request, citing the lack of visitor rooms in those facilities, German daily Bild reported.
Given the growing
political unease about
the issue and the pressure from auditors,
the central bank decided
last month to repatriate some 50 tons of gold in each of
the three coming years from New York to its headquarters in Frankfurt
for "thorough examinations"
regarding weight and quality, the report revealed.
An initiative backed by some German economists, industry leaders, and a few lawmakers
dubbed "bring home our gold" launched in May
has attracted some 10,000
supporters online so far.
But Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and
others maintain that there is
no reason to worry.
"I currently have no doubt about
the stock and the storage of the gold reserves," said Priska Hinz, the opposition
Greens top lawmaker on the budget committee. "I do not doubt
the reliability of the foreign
central banks," she told the AP.
Several passages of the auditors' report were blacked out in the copy shared with lawmakers, citing the Bundesbank's concerns that they could compromise secrets involving the central banks storing the gold.
The report said that the gold pile in
London has fallen "below
500 tons" due to recent sales and repatriations, but it did not specify how much gold was held in the U.S. and in France. German
media have widely reported
that some 1,500 tons -- almost half of the total reserves -- are stored in New
York.
* * *
Join GATA here:
New Orleans Investment
Conference
Wednesday-Saturday, October
24-27, 2012
Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel
New Orleans, Louisiana
target="_blank" http://www.neworleansconference.com/
* * *
Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our
Dawson City conference in August 2006:
http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html
Or by purchasing a colorful
GATA T-shirt:
http://gata.org/tshirts
Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009:
http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal
Help keep GATA going
GATA is a civil rights
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