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Dear Friend of GATA and
Gold:
Germany's clamor and agitation
about the integrity of national gold reserves are spreading into Austria, where two national newspapers headquartered in
Vienna, Die Presse and Der Standard, this week raised questions about Austria's national gold and even
prompted a response from the country's central bank, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB).
Die
Presse's report, in German,
is here:
http://diepresse.com/home/wirtschaft/economis...ven_National...
Der
Standard's, also in German, is here:
http://derstandard.at/1353206965366/Staats...ast-worden-s...
Der
Standard also has published
what appears to be a report on the issue by the Austria
Press Agency, the country's
independent press
association, which GATA consultant Dimitri Speck has translated into English and is appended. The APA report is
notable for its inducing
the OeNB to disclose details about its gold leasing,
supposedly now down to 16
percent of the Austrian gold reserve,
and for recognizing that
a fractional-reserve gold banking
system may jeopardize the
return of leased gold.
Thus there seems to be increasing
understanding internationally
of GATA's complaint about the Western central bank gold price suppression scheme.
Yesterday's report from the
English-language Austrian
Times in Vienna, which appears
to have drawn its content
from the two newspaper reports cited above and which was dispatched to you --
http://www.gata.org/node/11954
-- quoted the Austrian National
Bank as claiming to have earned
E300 million from leasing its
gold over the last decade. This has seemed extraordinarily high to GATA's brain trust and may be an indication that the bank was leasing everything it had and maybe
even gold it didn't have.
In any case your secretary/treasurer today corresponded in some detail with
a reporter for the Austria Press
Agency who seems interested in pursuing a story
about the country's gold reserves.
Let's pray for his career and even for his safety.
Sorry for not being clearer and more detailed about
all this. While our German friends
lately have been performing
the most heroic service
on behalf of free and transparent markets and limited, accountable government, we are always terribly intimidated by the German language, as was Mark Twain, who wrote that "it ought to be
gently and reverently set
aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it."
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
* *
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16 Percent
of National Gold Leased Out
From Der Standard
Vienna, Austria
Thursday, November 22, 2012
http://derstandard.at/1353207010022/Sta...rozent-verleast
According to a newspaper report at the beginning of the last decade up to 80 percent [of Austria's
gold reserves] was leased to the bullion banks.
The
Oesterreichische Nationalbank
(OeNB) has broken a taboo and reported on Thursday that currently only 16 percent of its gold
holdings are leased. A spokesman
for the central bank confirmed
a report of the daily newspaper
Die Presse.
According to the newspaper
report at the beginning
of the last decade up to 80 percent was leased to the bullion banks.
When Ewald Nowotny replaced [central bank] Governor Klaus Liebscher in 2008, probably still about 50 percent of the national gold was leased out.
The
question is important insofar
as several experts consider
the gold market as a fractional-reserve
system, in which up to 100 kilograms
of gold claims are traded for 1 kilo of the physical precious metal. Should an event similar to a "bank run"
take place, the return of leased
gold would be at risk. -- APA, November 22, 2012.
* * *
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* * *
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