Réserves d'or de la Bundesbank / banque centrale allemande

Réserves d'or de la Bundesbank / banque centrale allemande / grosse embrouille

au moment où la banque centrale d'allemagne ( bundesbank ) évoque à nouveau de potentielles ventes d'or,
retour en arriere avec ce document explosif d'avril 2001 de James Turk , concernant les réserves d'or officielles de la banque centrale allemande

nota ESF désigne European social fund, le FMI à l'échelle européenne ..

http://www.esf.gov.uk/index.asp

à lire absolument .. vous serez .. éberlués du tour de passe passe !!

________
What is the real story re Germany’s gold? Since we are blast from the pasting, you might like to review what GATA’s insightful James Turk wrote some time ago on the subject. The timing to do so is perfect:

April 23, 2001 (with the gold price at $265)


Behind Closed Doors

by James Turk

© by The Freemarket Gold & Money Report.

…Let’s put one and one together here to see if we can come up with an answer. According to Virgil Mattingly, the ESF has authorized gold swaps, presumably in the recent past (circa 1995). According to Ted Truman, the only outstanding swap facility of the ESF (circa 1995) other than the one established for Mexico is their facility with the Bundesbank. Ergo, the ESF has a gold swap facility with the Bundesbank.

It’s an interesting proposition, and one that fits well with another newly discovered fact. Some very interesting sleuthing by Mike Bolser, who has been assisting Reg Howe in his lawsuit against the BIS, has revealed that the Treasury has made a small but very significant accounting change. Mike noticed that the Treasury Department has changed the designation of nearly 1700 tonnes of inventoried gold at the US Mint’s facility in West Point, New York (approximately 21% of the total US Gold Reserve) from "Gold Bullion Reserve" to "Custodial Gold".

The August 2000 Status Report on US Treasury Owned Gold stored at West Point has a designation of "Gold Bullion Reserve". See: http://207.87.26.43/gold/00-08.html. But the September 2000 and subsequent status reports inexplicably designate this same gold that is stored at the US Mint in West Point as "Custodial Gold". See: http://207.87.26.43/gold/00-09.html

This change was made without explanation, so rather than let the matter remain unexplained, Mike diligently contacted the Treasury asking what seemingly are two uncomplicated questions. Would the Treasury please explain why they made this change, and what does this change in designation mean with respect to the ownership status of the gold at West Point?

They are simple questions, but perhaps they touch too close to a nerve. Not surprisingly, the Treasury so far has not responded to Mike. I have some views on what Mike discovered, and why the Treasury is so quiet about it. I think this change in asset classification is related to the ESF gold swaps. Here’s my thinking.

The change Mike spotted possibly occurred as a result of accountants looking at the financial statements of the US Mint being prepared for its annual report ending fiscal year 2000. Note that the previous director of the Mint (Phillip Diehl) resigned in early 2000, so this was the first annual report signed by the new director (Jay Johnson). If there is one thing that government bureaucrats do well, they take great pains to call things by their right name. To do otherwise would put their job in jeopardy if something under their responsibility came under Congressional scrutiny, and it was subsequently determined that the name assigned to something was incorrect or misleading.

Therefore, this change in the descriptive label for nearly 1,700 tonnes of gold at West Point from "Gold Bullion Reserve" to "Custodial Gold" was purposeful. It happened for a reason. This conclusion is all the more plausible because the Treasury did not change the classification from "Gold Bullion Reserve" to "Custodial Gold" to describe the gold stored in Fort Knox or at the US Mint in Denver. Maybe new US Mint director Johnson saw something he didn't like. What could that have been?

I’ve already put one-and-one together to establish that the ESF has "gold swaps" with the Bundesbank. It therefore does not require much conjecture to add one supposition to the equation by concluding that the gold in West Point has been swapped with gold owned by the Bundesbank, thereby necessitating its reclassification from "Gold Bullion Reserve" to "Custodial Gold". Here’s what I think has happened.

The Treasury Department wanted to make gold available to some bullion banks. This statement is based on my basic premise that several of the big banks have gold books that are hopelessly imbalanced. By having borrowed short and loaned long, these banks have in their quest for profits imprudently fallen into the alluring but usually fatal banker’s deathtrap – a mismatched loan book. But what’s worse for these banks, it is even more difficult and treacherous to try extricating themselves from this particular deathtrap because they haven’t mismatched their loan book of dollars, which we all know can be created by the Federal Reserve ‘out of thin air’ if dollars are needed to bailout banks from a deathtrap predicament. Instead, these banks have mismatched their gold book. And no one – not even the Federal Reserve – can create gold out of thin air.

So given this reality about the nature of gold, the Treasury had to turn elsewhere to find the gold necessary (1) to keep these banks from defaulting on their bullion obligations arising from their mismatched gold books in an environment where metal had become increasingly difficult to come by and/or (2) to keep the gold price low so that the likelihood of default by the banks would be lessened, even though metal would remain tight because fabrication year after year was exceeding newly mined supply. Rather than accept the bitter pill that certain banks were about to default on their bullion obligations, the Treasury looked for alternatives and found one – they put their hand into the till, until recently known as the Gold Bullion Reserve at West Point. They swapped this gold with the Bundesbank. I’ll explain how they did it, but let’s first consider the practical aspects of this transaction.

In all likelihood, these particular bullion banks needed gold in Europe where their obligations were originally established. There is very little gold lending in New York. It is a practical problem to ship the gold out of West Point without raising the alarm of government auditors. It is costly too. Also, it is likely that some of the gold in West Point is coin-melt from the 1933 gold confiscation. Even if it could be smuggled out of the West Point vault into the market without raising suspicions, the alarm bells would go off at the refiner and soon thereafter in the market because everyone knows that only the US government has coin-melt bars. The appearance of coin-melt bars in the market would immediately raise suspicions that the US Gold Reserve was being dishoarded, an outcome that the Treasury would obviously take steps to avoid in concocting its scheme because the US Gold Reserve cannot be depleted without Congressional approval. Therefore, one is faced with the practical considerations of overcoming these hurdles, but the answer is relatively simple.

The Treasury has gold in West Point. The Bundesbank has gold in Europe. The Treasury cannot directly do a deal with the Bundesbank because unlike the ESF, the Treasury is subject to Congressional oversight. So instead the Secretary of the Treasury and the President decide to use the ESF to set up a swap line for gold with the Bundesbank.

By so doing, the gold in the Bundesbank’s vault in Europe becomes ESF gold, to do with as they please – i.e., the ESF lends this metal to bailout certain bullion banks. And the Bundesbank now owns the gold in West Point, which as a result was purposefully re-classified from Gold Bullion Reserve to Custodial Gold because the Treasury no longer owns this gold, having swapped it out through the ESF in exchange for gold in Europe owned by the Bundesbank. Case closed. The mystery of the abnormally low gold price is solved. The ESF did it.

The abnormally low gold price is the result of the mounting irrefutable evidence that the ESF is deeply involved in the gold market, and I do mean deep. They are involved in some 1,700 tonnes worth because that is the weight of gold stored in West Point, which was probably being swapped at the rate of a few hundred tonnes per year from circa 1995 through 2000. There are two other tidbits that I would like to share with you that add even more validity to this supposition.

First, a couple of months ago I was analyzing the 1998 and 1999 balance sheets of the ESF. Being an ex-banker, I know a little bit about accounting, including where to find the big holes through which the proverbial truck can be driven. And suffice it to say, I found one of those, which could suggest that in these two years 975 tonnes of gold came into the market from the ESF. Interestingly, after reaching this conclusion, I wanted to test it. So I called a top gold market expert whose supply/demand analyses are second to none, and who believes that gold from the US reserves has been coming into the market for several years.

Without telling him about my analysis of the ESF balance sheet, I asked him how much gold he thought came out of the Treasury/ESF in 1998 and 1999 in total. His response was 1,000 tonnes, a mere 25 tonnes difference from what I deduced from the ESF financial statements. When I told him this, that we had both reached the same conclusion from different sources, he chuckled but was not in the least bit surprised, being so convinced that the Treasury/ESF has been a major source of metal for years. I have thoroughly reviewed his supply/demand numbers since 1994 and have determined that as much as 2,000 tonnes of gold from the US reserve may have entered the market in order to make the gold price as low as it is, which leads me to the second tidbit that I would like to share with you. It is just as intriguing.

This same individual told me several months ago about some astonishing intelligence he had learned from a source in Europe. He told me that the Bundesbank’s gold vault was empty, which seemed so preposterous that I found it hard to believe. He also admitted that this news startled him when he learned about it, and that he did not have an adequate explanation for it. He knew that the Bundesbank was an active lender of gold, but he had a difficult time accepting the possibility that all 3,400 tonnes that it owned had been loaned. Yet he was confident that his source had provided him with accurate information.

We now know what has happened. The Bundesbank has loaned 1,700 tonnes, one-half of its 3,400 tonnes reserve; the other 1,700 tonnes were swapped for gold in the US reserves, requiring the change in the West Point vault from Gold Bullion Reserve to Custodial Gold. In other words, the Bundesbank’s vault is empty because one-half of their gold is stored in West Point not Europe, and the other half has been loaned out.

Despite the irrefutable proof that the ESF is involved in the gold market, two questions remain unanswered. First, what’s the ESF’s motive? Unfortunately, we just don’t know for certain.

Many, including me, claim that it is to use gold to provide the liquidity needed to bailout some big banks that have imprudently grown their gold books by recklessly expanding credit and mismatching their asset/liability maturities. These banks are the ones with the unusual – some say abnormal – derivative activities that are named as co-defendants in Reg Howe’s suit against the BIS. That this list includes Germany’s largest bank may explain why the Bundesbank would agree to participate in this gold swap scheme. It was bailing out one of its own.

Others claim the ESF aims to manipulate the gold price to make inflation numbers look better than they really are by keeping the gold price artificially low. And there are some who argue that the US government, acting at the behest and under the instructions of the big banks, aim to destroy their combined arch enemy – gold, regardless of the fact that the gold mining industry would be destroyed along with it.

This last theory is not outlandish. It has currency because gold is the world’s only free-market money. In contrast to national currencies, all of which circulate only because of government fiat, Gold’s value derives from everyone who understands that it has usefulness as money. And governments and banks don’t like the fact that while they can manipulate gold for a time – and as have we have seen in recent years, even a long time – they cannot in the end control the price of gold anymore than they can control the price of a Picasso painting. The value of a Picasso is determined by the free-market, and so too is gold. In short, you and I give gold its value – not the central banks, not the US government or any other government, either acting alone or together. But the US government either has not yet learned – or refuses to admit – this reality that its power to control gold is limited, which is an inexplicable conclusion unless you accept the notion that governments have short memories and need to relearn what logic says they should have learned from experience.

If logic prevailed, the US government would have learned from its ill-fated attempt in the 1960’s to keep the price of gold abnormally cheap at $35 per ounce that the market determines gold’s value. But instead, the US government is about to learn that it cannot keep a manipulated ‘floating-rate’ gold price from rising any more than it was able to keep the manipulated ‘fixed-rate’ gold price from rising thirty years ago. The free-market rate of exchange between dollars and gold will prevail, eventually repeating today what happened in the 1970’s after the artificially low $35 rate was no longer tenable – the gold price will skyrocket higher. It is well worthwhile keeping in mind that the gold price rose nearly three-fold in the eighteen months after the fixed-rate price was abandoned in August 1971.

Then there is the second unanswered question. To what extent is today’s exceptionally low gold price the responsibility of certain bullion banks, which have cheapened gold by extending gold credit to such an extreme, and the ESF, by perpetuating this scheme? This question too does not have an answer, at least not yet. But as the truth about the ESF’s involvement in the gold market continues to emerge and become more widely known, the price of gold is destined to rise to a more normal level, just like it did after August 1971. The high price that gold eventually achieves will indicate how badly certain bullion banks and the ESF have damaged gold mining companies and the gold industry.

In conclusion, while we don’t know whether any of these motives for manipulating the gold price that I ascribed to the US government are accurate, one point is clear and cannot be denied. The US government cannot claim that the ESF is not involved with gold. We now have the irrefutable proof that establishes beyond any reasonable doubt that the ESF is indeed involved in the gold market. We know this for a fact because of our peek behind closed doors. ¤

jamesturk@goldmoney.com

PS: The Treasury responded months later by remaming all US Gold Reserves as "Deep Storage Gold." When caught, just change the game again. Another farce, and shading of the truth, when it comes to the gold market.

Trop gros

La banque centrale d'allemagne- Bundesbank- Buba a mis ses réserves d'or à disposition de la BCE, comme toutes les autres banques centrales, pour les réserves relatives l'euro : il fallait bien qu'elle les eusse.

la BCE autorise la non comptabilisation des swaps et autres prêts d'or ..
Officiellement donc et d'apres ces critéres , les coffres de la banque centrale allemande- Buba - sont pleins ..

un autre indice lié a cette affaire mais qui est plus vaste ..

pendant que le hedging n'a cessé de diminuer ..les dérivés sur l'or sont eux en tres forte augmentation .. signalant des ventes d'or par les banques centrales à un niveau énorme ..
si ces ventes d'or ne sont pas comptabilisées officiellement ( et à ce niveau la , elles ne le sont pas ) .. il s'agit bien de loans ou de swaps ..

et surtout tu dis que ayant mis a dispo( de la bce) cet or, la bundesbank- Buba - ne peut pas ne pas l'avoir ..
c'est là effectivement tout le principe des conséquences de comportements frauduleux .. qui sont par essence inavouables .. choquants

de fait la vérité c'est que la bundesbank posséde virtuellement cet or qu'elle a prété ..et qui retournera danss ses coffres quand et seulement si , ses débiteurs le lui rendent .., cet or prété
ce qu'ils ne pourront faire en aucun cas si l'affaire s'ébruite..
puisque cette mise à jour des faits feraient exploser les cours de l'once d'or à la hausse ...

tiens un autre exemple tout récent celui la .. la fed ne publiera plus chiffres de M3 ... on te l'aurait dit par avance .. tu aurais trouvé ça aussi trop gros non? et pourtant ...

Problèmes avec les dérivés sur l'OR
http://www.sdk.org/aktuell.php?id=386

une recherche sur google avec un n° de dossier, p.ex.DB6181 http://www.google.com/search?q=DB6181&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Si j'ai bien compris (ça fait quelques années que je n'ai plus pratiqué le teuton réunifié) il y a un problème de prix sur des options (CALL) vendues par la DB. Les cotations sont suspendues. Auraient-ils été exercés ?

Mais ce n'est peut-être qu'une erreur véritable

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sdk.org%2Faktuell.php%3Fid%3D386&langpair=de%7Cfr&hl=fr&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

version traduite ..


je parle pas allemand si bien que je ne comprends pas d'avantage que ce que tu dis .. pb de cours aggravé par effet de levier ..

voila une excellente traduc anglaise via midas

en fait : la deutsche bank ( DB) avait emis des warrants pour une valeur faciale de 1 once d'or ..et elle a réduit sans préavis et sur tout les contrats ( y compris ceux en circulation ) , la valeur faciale des contrats à un dixieme d'once d'or !!

_______________________

Making the rounds this morning:

MarkeTalk (11/17/05; 00:37:40MT - usagold.com msg#: 138037)
Knallgold message #137957; Babelfish translation of Deutsche Bank's gold derivatives problem
MK has asked me to translate from German into English the post made by Knallgold on 11/15/05. The mechanical translation attempted by Babelfish was dreadful and confusing. Because I majored in German (after having spent my junior year in college there) and because of my thorough acquaintance with the gold business in general, I will attempt a more sensible and understandable translation of this most important but least understood subject.

"Today it came to the attention of the SdK Investor Protection Association that apparently Deutsche Bank has considerable problems with its gold derivatives trade. What is of concern are the paper instruments known by identification numbers DB6181, DB6183, DB6184, DB6185, and DB6187. These paper instruments are the so-called Long as well as Short-WAVE Knock-Out Option Contracts, which have been trading on the Stuttgart and Frankfurt exchanges since 4 October 2005. According to the prospectus dated 3 October 2005, these refer to the sale of an ounce of gold at various strike prices. Due to the tremendous leverage provided by these products, which Deutsche Bank advertized on its website and in its printed publications, these option contracts were especially popular among investors. Just last week SdK referred to the attractiveness of these option contracts in a 'Gold Special' article in its publication entitled 'SdK Exclusive'. In a covert style action shrouded in mystery, Deutsche Bank attempted today by unilateral action to severely diminish the terms contained in the prospectus much to the detriment of investors.

"Accordingly, the reference relationship is supposed to be reduced from one ounce of gold per contract to one-tenth ounce of gold per contract. For those investors who already own them, the terms have been reduced by a factor of ten. The SdK has never known this type of action to have taken place before. Should such changes in the prospectus with negative consequences to investors be possible, then the credibility and trust in the entire German options and derivatives market would be irreparably damaged.

"For this reason the SdK has requested the Stuttgart exchange and Deutsche Bank to suspend the trading in these products until this matter is clarified."

GC

PS from MIDAS:

There is talk in bullion dealer circles of some problems with certain option books!!! Perhaps that is it?

Merci Marie,

C'est effectivement clair désormais.

La DB a agi comme Nixon en 1971, enfin eux laissent 1/10è, lui ne laissait rien d'autre que son bout de papier

C'est l'illustration parfaite du fait qu'il faut détenir lor en physique et pas sous forme de bout de papier, sauf bien sûr comme dopant.

Modification unilatérale et substantielle du contrat...

Pfff...implaidable pour la banque àmha (très humble mon avis, car ce n'est pas mon domaine juridique de prédilection) ...enfin...(en droit français) le droit des contrats est déclinable à la majorité des matières, avec des variantes, soit, mais pas au point de remettre en cause le fait qu'un manquement à l'obligation contractuelle, a fortiori la plus essentielle, puisse être imposée au co-contractant. n81

Qu'un seul porteur exerce un contentieux et il leur taille les oreilles en dentelle...



et si un tel plan louche se produit aux States, avec les dommages intérêts, c'est carrément

Wellcome to Bahamas...

le droit des contrats figure presque dans tous les pays du monde ; sans cela il n'y aurait guère de développement possible.

La base est soit le droit latin soit le droit anglo-saxon, mais dans tous les cas celui qui rompt le contrat doit indemniser l'autre partie.

Un cas intéressant : j'achète un call sur l'Au car je ne veux plus de monnaie papier ; j'exerce mon option mais mon co-contractant défaille : il n'a pas le physique. Je gagne au tribunal, mais le papier ayant cours légal, le tribunal condamne naturellement la partie défaillante à m'indemniser ... en papier. Et si, en plus, cette partie imprime elle-même ce papier (ou est proche de l'imprimeur) : où est la pénalité qui punit la faute et que vaut l'indemnité ? bref, qu'est-ce que "la justice" ?

Excellente remarque, en effet, tu gagnes mais du papelard

et ce, dans 14 mois à 18 mois (parfois plus), sans compter les délais d'appel et la propention quasi systématique des "gros comptes" à user de manoeuvres dilatoires, à demander des reports d'audiencement, à faire appel, puis à ne pas exécuter les jugements qui les condamnent...leurs baveux sont au forfait annuel, ils doivent bien justifier de leurs (gros) salaires...

Le plaignant, lui, paye son bâveux pendant ce temps là...

Avec un peu de "chance" quand ils te versent le million auquel ils ont été condamnés, au rythme prévisible de l'érosion monétaire tu achètes deux baguettes, un litre de lait, un paquet de beurre et tu te fais un gros goûter ...

eh oui .. frappé au coin du bon sens , Armand ..

et du bon sens , dans ce monde troublé .. il nous en faudra de +en + ..

de la à appeler ça nouvelles valeurs .. ou plutot reconquete de valeurs oubliées ... ;)voir méprisées par ceux qui s'autodéterminent l'élite ..

très interessant papier de Lars Schall , journaliste freelance, allemand : l'allemagne devrait arréter son cinéma et rappatrier fissa ses réserves d'or sur le sol national



**************



http://www.gata.org/node/10550



Lars Schall: Germany should end the secrecy and bring its gold home


Submitted by cpowell on Mon, 2011-10-10 13:13. Section: Daily Dispatches
By Lars Schall
Monday, October 10, 2011

The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth.

-- Alan Blinder, vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, on the PBS "Nightly Business Report," 1994.

In recent months I have written to the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington to ask questions about the gold reserves of Germany.

A critical problem with Germany's gold reserves, the second largest gold holdings in the world, is noted by Peter Boehringer of the German Precious Metals Society: "The bulk of Germany´s national gold is not in Germany and has not been since the 1960s, when Germany earned most of the gold through its trade surpluses, but is kept in New York and London and a little bit in Paris too. Even the Bundesbank itself has confirmed this part of the story several times -- and defended that storage policy with 'reasons of trading convenience and historical storage custom.'"

In fact, when asked about it, the Bundesbank has stated that it "needs to hold gold at the various trading centers in order to conduct its gold activities." (See http://www.gata.org/node/7713.)

After the Bundesbank brushed off some specific questions of mine (see
http://www.gata.org/node/9363) and refused to communicate with me any further when I replied that its way of answering was largely a recycling of old phrases that had very little to do with my questions, I also endured silence from the Fed (see
http://www.larsschall.com/2011/05/02/the-sound-of-silence-from-the-fed/). Thus I did the last two things that were left for me to do in this matter: I wrote to the Bank of England and to the U.S. Treasury.

Let's see if my questions were legitimate.

But first let me tell you why Germany should have its gold at its own disposal on German soil. The reason is two-fold and involves a time frame of the present to 2025:

-- The future of Germany lies in eastern Eurasia. (Whether we like it or not is irrelevant.) Take a look at the energy situation from a German perspective and you'll see. Among the G20 nations, export powerhouse Germany should be one of the biggest energy-deficit nations, enormously dependent on ever-increasing imports of Russian energy. But Russia as an energy exporter will focus more on the Pacific region in the years to come (especially via the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline and the ultramodern Kozmino oil terminal). By doing so, Russia can demonstrate both its growing independence from Europe and its growing ability to use its oil and natural gas muscle in a way that soon won't be a bluff anymore. My friend Max Keiser described the context well: "To fight the currency war the Germans will have to buy physical gold in the open market or strike deals with countries like China, Russia, and Iran."

Keep in mind here not only that the region of the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) "account for a significant share of global gold production," as Vienna-based commodities analyst Ronald Stoeferle points out, (see Footnote 1) but also that the central banks of Russia and China are big buyers of gold, while Western central banks are not, even though the latter are selling less gold these days. And the members of SCO and ASEAN won't pay forever for what Peter Dale Scott calls the "American war machine." (See Footnote 2.)

-- I believe that the time will come when oil-producing countries and other natural resource exporters will no longer sell their commodities for paper money but only for precious metals. The age of cheap and abundant oil and natural ressources is over and with it the age of "expensive real values for cheap paper promises." As geopolitical analyst James G. Rickards says:



"This is all part of an evolution away from the U.S. dollar. It has a number of ways to go. I do think that what may happen is that gold will be used as a pricing mechanism. In other words, Middle Eastern and Russian natural resource exporters may begin to price their goods in units of gold while still accepting dollars, but the problem, of course, is that the amount of dollars won't be fixed. A simple example: Right now oil is around $100 a barrel and gold is around $1,500 an ounce, so it takes 15 barrels of oil to purchase one ounce of gold.

"If you look at the oil-to-gold ratio it has been very constant for a very long time. Of course the price of oil has moved between $30 per barrel and $150 per barrel, and the price of gold has moved between $200 an ounce and $1,500 an ounce, but if you look at the ratio, it always hovers around that 15-1 or 16-1 ratio, and that tells you something about the real intrinsic value of commodities.

"But you could have a situation where somebody in Saudi Arabia says: 'From now on a barrel of oil will be 1/15 of an ounce of gold. Now if you want to pay me in dollars, that's fine, but you have to do the dollar-gold conversion (to figure out how many dollars you owe me in a world of an increasing gold price), so you have to pay more dollars for a barrel of oil.' So even if the Saudis accept dollars, you can still have a world where oil is priced in gold but gold is convertible to dollars and you can pay with dollars but you have to pay a lot more.

"I think that is one of a number of solutions on the table. Another one is of course the Special Drawing Right of the International Monetary Fund. The IMF is trying to promote the use of SDR as a basket of currencies. But none of this is feasible yet. It will require some years to study. It will require a conversion process and some pre-announcement for the market. But the bottom line on the whole thing is: The exporters of natural resources and manufactured goods in the Middle East, Russia, China, and Brazil all have indicated deep dissatisfaction with the current international monetary system and the role of the U.S. dollar in particular, so I think you will see some shifting away from that in the years ahead."

Or from GoldMoney founder James Turk about the use of dollar and gold in internationa commerce:

"That is a really good question, and it doesn't involve economics; it involves politics. Given the American influence in that part of the world from a military support point of view, something dramatic has to happen with the dollar before these countries abandon the dollar and go to gold. They should go to gold, because the link between gold and oil is quite clear: An ounce of gold buys the same amount of oil it did 50 years ago. But the political issues are clouding the economic and monetary issues. If the dollar collapses, you are going to see not just the countries in the Middle East but people around the world moving to gold and out of the dollar."

Of course, this switch won't come easily. Why? Because the elites all over the U.S.A. (and the 'fat cats' from Wall Street) have to be in the know -– when the petrodollar system (or, as David Spiro called it, the hidden hand of American hegomony" (see Footnote 3) will come to an end, they (and, unfortunately, the country that makes them rich and powerful) would finally burn at the stake of history. (Large quantaties of surplus dollars that have been circulating for decades outside the United States would find their way back inside the U.S., resulting in disastrous inflation. Do you think this is really an option for the elites?)

I would assume that the following is a much more appealing option, laid out by Rickards in an interview with King World News. (See
http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/10/16_....)

Rickards said: "I think the paper dollar is on its way to collapse but that doesn't mean the end of the United States or U.S. power. What's really interesting to me is that the United States is an awesome gold power. We never talk about it because nobody ever wants to talk about gold -- no one in an official capacity. But if you think of the world in terms of oil reserves, and people have done that a lot over the last 30 years, you know about the role of OPEC and so forth. You divide the world into those that produce oil and those who consume oil. An awful lot of concern has gone into the oil industry and the movement of oil around the world. Well, think of gold the same way. Few people have ever done this.

"But when you start to think of the world in gold space instead of oil space, you quickly realize that the United States is the Saudi Arabia of gold. We have more than 8,000 tons -- more than any other country. The euro system has 10,000 tons. But that's a consortium of 16 members, 16 central banks, so it's Spain and Italy and Germany and the Netherlands and a number of other countries. It's not all on the books of the European Central Bank. In fact, relatively little is on the books of the ECB. Most of it is in the national treasuries of those countries. But, collectively, if they wanted to act as a unit, under the one currency banner, the euro, they;ve got 10,000 tons, so they're a gold power too.

"Russia is desperately short of gold. China is short of gold. India and Brazil are kind of pathetic. Japan and the UK are kind of pathetic. None of these countries has anywhere near the gold they need to support their money supply. So for the United States, just as we're a military superpower, we're also a gold superpower. We're also one of the 10 largest gold-producing countries in the world, producing approximately 200 tons a year out of a total global output of a little over 2,000 tons. So we're producing almost 10 percent of the world's gold output. We're a major producer and we're a major hoarder of gold.

"In addition there are more than 6,000 tons of foreign official gold stored in the United States that we could always convert if we wanted to. If that gold is at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the United States could just secure it. We could send in a military convoy and move it to West Point or some secure U.S .location and then just give the Europeans a receipt. So we could actually increase our gold supply to more than 14,000 tonnes very quickly.

"In a way, then, the Fed could afford to trash the paper dollar, or at least experiment and risk trashing the paper dollar, because if the paper dollar collapses, we could just go back to gold pretty easily. But the rest of the world can't, especially if we take their gold."

I don't want to see the approximately 66 percent of Germany's gold reserves held at the New York Fed to be dumped into the mouth of the "beast of corporatism" that the United States has become.

Thus, it is doubly important -- having at heart the best interests of the German people and fellow Europeans -- to have Germany's gold in physical form in Germany itself, and not just a receipt.

Take this exchange between Rickards and me:

"Mr. Rickards, a huge chunk of the foreign gold reserves located at the New York Fed belongs to Germany. What are your thoughts related to the German gold reserve in custody at the New York Fed? Let's assume you were the head of the Deutsche Bundesbank with the best interests of the German people in mind, and assuming that we're heading to a system of currencies backed by gold. What would you do in that respect?"

Rickards: "It depends on the German gold policy. If Germany wants to leave monetary policy to the United States and is willing to accept whatever policy plans the U.S. comes up with, Germany should probably leave the gold where it is. That is a question of confidence. But if Germany wants to pursue its own policies or perhaps have a more gold-backed euro or maybe even go back to a deutschmark, then they should bring the gold to Germany and store it in secure vaults under control of the Bundesbank. For as long as it stays in the United States, the gold is vulnerable to confiscation. So you really don’t have the control over your own monetary policy as long as your gold is in other hands. During the Cold War, given the Russian threat, I am sure it made sense to have the German gold in New York. But today I would be concerned more with the Federal Reserve's printing presses than with Russian tanks, and thus I would like to have the gold in Frankfurt."

And take this exchange between the financial journalist Nomi Prins and me:

"Officially, Germany has the second largest gold reserve of the world. Roughly 66 per cent of the total gold is located in the vaults of the New York Fed. Do you think that Germany should relocate its gold reserve from New York to Frankfurt just to be on the safe side?

Nomi Prins: "I wouldn't keep 66 per cent of my gold at the Fed." (Laughs.) "Yes. If I was Germany, and taking note of what is going on in the global economy, in the U.S. economy, and how the Fed is artificially propping things up, I would want to pull out my gold assets. I would want tangible physical assets in my possession. I don't see why the German central bank wouldn't want to do that. It just doesn't make sense to me."

With the euro being treated by a clueless intensive-care unit on a permanent life-support machine and the European Central Bank itself being a bad bank, I would sum up this way. During one of his more intelligent moments in public, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan remarked a few years ago: "Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world. It is interesting that Germany in 1944 could buy materials during the war only with gold, not with fia, money paper. And gold is always accepted and is the ultimate means of payment and is perceived to be an element of stability in the currency and in the ultimate value of the currency and that historically has always been the reason why governments hold gold." (See Footnote 4.)

And now my questions.

Here is my e-mail to the Bank of England:

"Request re sovereign German gold at Bank of England.

"To: press@bankofengland.co.uk
"CC: enquiries@bankofengland.co.uk

"Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

"My name is Lars Schall and I am a freelance journalist for finance from Germany. I have some simple questions for you, especially related to the sovereign gold reserves of the Deutsche Bundesbank that are placed in London. I forward them to you because the Deutsche Bundesbank itself wasn't very communicative in that regard to me. Chris Powell, the secretary of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), wrote about this behavior as follows (http://www.gata.org/node/9363):

'The Bundesbank's refusal to answer Schall's questions can only heighten suspicion that use of German gold is central to the gold price suppression policy undertaken largely surreptitiously by the Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury Department, and Bank of England.'

"So I thought you may want to take the chance to debilitate this suspicion as far as the Bank of England is concerned. I can imagine that the Bank of England could have an interest in reconnoitering some 'misunderstandings.'

"With regard to the gold deposits in New York City and London, the Deutsche Bundesbank told me among other things:

"'Particularly with respect to the confidential nature of information about where gold holdings are kept, we are unable to go into any greater detail concerning exact locations and the quantities stored at each of these. Likewise, owing to the strategic nature of the activity, we are not at liberty to provide you with more detailed information about gold transactions.'

"The Bundesbank also stated in the past (see http://www.gata.org/node/7713) that 'the Bundesbank needs to hold gold at the various trading centers in order to conduct its gold activities.'

"Therefore, my questions for you are:

"-- Can you confirm that you are engaged with the Deutsche Bundesbank in strategic activities in the gold market, in particular when it comes to the sovereign gold of Germany that is located in London?

"-- Given that London is a large gold trading center, do you help the Deutsche Bundesbank with conducting its confirmed gold activities? If not, why is the gold then located at the gold trading center, London? In other words, if these are strictly reserves, no trading, correct?

"-- Furthermore, do you have any swap arrangements with the Deutsche Bundesbank related to the German gold reserves that are located in the United Kingdom?

"-- If the answer to the latter is yes, for what reason do you need a swap arrangement with the Deutsche Bundesbank related to its gold in the United Kingdom -- or any other foreign central bank or foreign gold reserves -- at all, if you actually have one or would seek one?

"-- Do you keep any gold-related records away from the public? In other words, if yes: What sort of gold-related records are barred from disclosure? Is nearly everything gold-related secret as far as the Bank of England is concerned?

"-- In the past the Bundesbank stated with regard to the German gold reserves abroad 'that transportation to Germany and safekeeping in the Bundesbank's own vaults would entail high costs.' Can you explain why it costs less to keep the gold safe in London at the Bank of England than in Frankfurt or Mainz?

"-- Moreover, according Dimitri Speck's book, "Geheime Goldpolitik" ("Secret Gold Policy"), published by Finanzbuch Verlag in Munich 2010, the German gold in custody in London is approximately 21 percent (+/- 5 percent) of the official German gold holdings of 3.401 tonnes. (See Page 86 of the book.) Can you confirm that? You see, the difficulty I have is this: According to Folker Hellmeyer, chief analyst with Bremer Landesbank, large parts of the German gold reserves were shifted from London to Frankfurt. Hellmeyer says this on the grounds of his experience at the Helaba (Landesbank of Hesse-Thuringia). Can you confirm his statement that a good portion was relocated? If so, how much was relocated? In other words, what is your official statement of how much sovereign German
gold is actually in British custody?

"-- My last question: If the Deutsche Bundesbank decided to shift large parts or the full amount of the German gold reserves away from London, would you perceive this as an expression of loss of confidence by the German side in the Bank of England?

"Thank you very much for your attention!"

"Best regards, Lars Schall."

As a second e-mail I wrote the following to the Bank of England after my friend Rob Kirby made me aware of something:

"Request re sovereign German gold at Bank of England No. 2."

"Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

"For your 'swap answer' in order to reconnoiter some 'misunderstandings,' please take a look at this essay written by the Canadian financial analyst Rob Kirby in 2006:

"http://www.safehaven.com/article/6115/a-swap-story-borrowed-from-the-bank-of-england"

"This got Kirby 'thinking about things like former British Chancellor Gordon Brown and his well-publicized sale of 60 percent of the British gold reserves at less than $300 per ounce and the make-up of Britain's remaining gold reserves."

"Do you have an answer, ladies and gentlemen?

"Moreover, 'in doing a bit of research about the makeup of Britain's sovereign gold reserve, I ran across this tidbit [footnote on the bottom of Pages 5 of 8 of the pdf file] regarding different types of gold swaps that the Bank of England presumably utilizes: 'Under a gold location swap, gold stored in a particular physical location is swapped with a market counterparty for specified period with gold stored in another physical location. Under a gold quality swap, gold of a particular quality [fineness] is swapped with a market counterparty for a specified period with gold of different fineness. In each case a fee is built into the transaction.'

"Question: what is a 'gold quality swap'?

"Kirby said: 'Given the amount of research I've done in this area, I would only offer that this would make a gold quality swap a 'rare bird' indeed. But this got me to thinking WHO could possibly be involved in such a transaction if one were to occur.'

"'And with inclusion in these footnotes, they do occur. ...

"'Fundamentally, a gold quality swap would allow the holder of 'less than fine' bullion to effectively sell or transact it publicly and remain anonymous. All gold coin melt just happens to be 22-carat. Who would possibly care about such a thing? After all, central banks have declared gold to be a barbarous relic and sell it all the time -- and usually have news conferences to pre-announce upcoming sales to boast about them, don't they? So why would a sale of 'less than pure' gold need to be kept a secret? The 'best fit' counterparty is: the U.S. Treasury or Federal Reserve was the other side of these trades. In fact, they are the most plausible counterparty for such a transaction -- arising from the great confiscation of gold coin in the United States in 1933.“

"Mr. Kirby added:

"'Regarding gold quality swaps conducted by the Bank of England, my thought then and now is that gold reserves yet to be mined are likely involved here. After all, a deposit of 3.401-compliant reserves is gold 'of a different fineness than .999 pure LBMA good-delivery gold, isn't it?'

"What is your take?"

"Best regards, Lars Schall."

The press office of the Bank of England sent me an answer that said at the beginning: "Not for quotation or attribution." Thus I am obliged not to quote the answer. But I certainly can say that the Bank of England refused to answer my questions.

And here is my e-mail to the U.S. Treasury:

"Request re Exchange Stabilization Fund."

"To: Press@treasury.gov
"CC: Kara.Alaimo@treasury.gov

"Dear Ladies and Gentlemen and dear Ms. Alaimo,

"My name is Lars Schall and I am a freelance journalist for finance from Germany. I have three simple questions for you related to a rather mysterious topic:

"Swap arrangements between the Exchange Stabilization Fund and the Deutsche Bundesbank, respectively the national German gold reserves that are placed in the United States of America.

"Due to the fact that in the past:

"a) the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors in Washington treated my public requests in that regard not very well; and:

"b) since the Exchange Stabilization Fund is the entity that is involved with gold market operations on behalf of the U.S. Treasury (and to a lesser extent on behalf of the Federal Reserve), I would like to ask you now for some clarifications, please:

"1) Regarding the swap arrangement that was acknowledged / mentioned during the Federal Open Market Committee meeting in January 1995 (see FOMC19950201meeting.pdf / Page 125) between the ESF and the Deutsche Bundesbank, is this strictly a swap arrangement related to foreign currency / exchange?

"2) Do you have any swap arrangements with the Deutsche Bundesbank related to the German gold reserves that are located in the United States?

"3) For what reason do you need a swap arrangement with the Deutsche Bundesbank related to its gold in the U.S. -- or with any other foreign central bank / foreign gold reserves -- if you actually have one or would seek to get one? (See the minutes of the FOMC meeting in January 1995
FOMC19950201meeting.pdf / Page 69, the remarks by Mr. Mattingly.)

"Thank you for your attention!

"Best regards, Lars Schall."

I'm still waiting for a reply to this one.

By the way, after I heard nothing from the New York Fed and Federal Reserve in Washington, I asked GATA Chairman Bill Murphy about it.

Murphy replied: "I think their lack of response and lack of denial -- I mean, that's pretty simple to deny, really simple -- that they haven't come back to you at all is indicative of the answer."

I should point out that central banks the world over have always been afraid or reluctant to provide transparency about issues concerning gold. Consider GATA board member Ed Steer's brilliant essay, “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,“ in which he outlines how Canada's gold was "mobilized" to "assist" in taking down the Soviet Union:

http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/Pfv1.cfm?pfvID=2612&SearchParam=Shamrock+...

And Dana Allen's related essay, "How the Soviet Empire's Fall was Engineered":

http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/Authorlinkdocs/1672.htm,

If you have never heard that the foreign exchange income of the Soviet Union was reduced by driving down the price of both oil and gold during the Reagan administration, and how those prices had been "managed," read those essays by Steer and Allen. They tell the truth.

* * *

FOOTNOTES:

1. The Shanghai Cooperation Council consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadzhikistan, and Uzbekistan, and states holding observer status: Mongolia, India, Pakistan, and Iran. Partners in dialogue are also Belarus, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN.

2. Compare for the status quo Michael Hudson's "America's Military Expansion Funded by Foreign Central Banks." published at Global Research on April 12, 2011:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24267

For the term "American War Machine" compare Peter Dale Scott: "American War Machine. Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan," Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.

3. Compare David E. Spiro: "The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets," Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1999.

4. Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in an exchange with U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, in "The Architecture of International Finance," testimony by Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, May 20, 1999.

For the historical fact that the Allied Powers were not reluctant to make "business as usual" before and during World War II with Nazi Germany, compare the history of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, in Charles Higham's "Trading with the Enemy. The Nazi-American Money Plot 1933 – 1949," iUniverse Inc., Lincoln, 1983, 2007, pp. 1–19, Chapter 1: "A Bank for All Reasons."

5. Related to the complex "oil price / collapse of the USSR," compare, for example, James R. Norman: "The Oil Card. Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century," Trine Day, Walterville, 2008, and Peter Schweizer: “Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy that Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union," The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1994.

-----

Lars Schall is a freelance journalist in Germany. He can be reached at larsspeschall@yahoo.de.

encore une belle désinformation des médias qui rapportaient ces jours ci, que l'allemagne allait abonder le fameux FESF, fond de solidarité européen ( encore un nom à la con, pour planche à billet ! )
avec ses réserves d'or
démenti de l'allemagne
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/05/us-eurozone-bundesbank-idUSTRE7A428Y20111105

Bundesbank: central bank reserves will not help fund EFSF

FRANKFURT/BERLIN | Sat Nov 5, 2011 3:55pm EDT


(Reuters) - Germany on Saturday rejected media reports that Bundesbank reserves would be used to fund the euro zone's rescue facility after German newspapers said Group of 20 leaders had discussed the idea of tapping central banks.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) reported that Bundesbank reserves -- including foreign currency and gold -- would be used to increase Germany's contribution to the crisis fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) by more than 15 billion euros ($20 billion).

The European Central Bank (ECB) would own the reserves, according to the paper, citing sources at the G20 meeting held in Cannes this week.

The Welt am Sonntag newspaper, citing similar plans, said 15 billion euros would come from special drawing rights (SDR) that the Bundesbank holds.

"Germany's gold and foreign exchange reserves, which the Bundesbank administers, were not at any point up for discussion at the G20 summit in Cannes," government spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

G20 leaders in Cannes discussed the idea that the European System of Central Banks could pawn their total foreign exchange reserves of 50-60 billion euros to a trust of the European crisis fund in the form of special drawing rights from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the newspapers said.

"We know this plan and we reject it," a Bundesbank spokesman said.

Seibert said several partners had raised the question in Cannes whether SDRs could be used to strengthen the EFSF but Germany had rejected this plan and discussions at Monday's Eurogroup on Monday would not discuss this topic.

The newspapers had said the issue was taken off the agenda at the G20 following Bundesbank opposition but that it would be debated on Monday at a Eurogroup meeting of euro zone finance ministers.

(Reporting by Harro ten Wolde, Annika Breidthardt and Marc Jones; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

************

2eme communiqué du ministre des finances,Minister Philipp Roesler ,

"pas touche à nos réserves d'or "

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/07/germany-reserves-idUSL6E7M708O20111107

German econ min: gold reserves cannot be touched

BERLIN | Mon Nov 7, 2011 2:34am EST


Nov 7 (Reuters) - Germany Economy Minister Philipp Roesler said on Monday the country's gold reserves with the central bank cannot be touched, adding his voice to opposition to an idea reportedly discussed at the G20 summit of using reserves to boost euro zone bailout funds.

"German gold reserves must remain untouchable," Roesler, who is head of the Free Democrats (FDP), a junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition, told ARD television.

The Bundesbank (German central bank) and a spokesman for Merkel already said over the weekend that they too ruled out the idea reported discussed at the summit of Group of 20 leading economies last week.

German media said that the Cannes summit discussed using central bank reserves, including foreign currency and gold, to increase contributions to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) by more than 15 billion euros ($20 billion).

The reports said the European Central Bank (ECB) would own the reserves which would be used to back a form of special drawing rights from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

étrange que seule la Teutonie Réunifiée soit mise à partie.


Le lamentable de l'Elysée devrait se souvenir de n'avoir vendu (bradé) "que" 400 tonnes de l'or de la France lorsqu'il était sinistre de l'économie.

et l'Italien que sa banque centrale possède un joli stock d'or aussi (à moins que le super-mario qui en était le chef avant de devenir calife de la BCE ...)

tiens je leur refile gratos une idée : qu'ils fassent exploser les cours de l'or puis vendent tout ou partie de leur stock ; ça devrait boucher les trous.

Citation :

et l'Italien que sa banque centrale possède un joli stock d'or aussi
(à moins que le super-mario qui en était le chef avant de devenir
calife de la BCE ...)

Certes...

Nigel Farage met les pieds dans le plat au sujet de l'or des banques centrales européennes, que ce soit l'or allemand, anglais ( évidemment, là les choses sont désormais claires,) ou plus largement les réserves d'or européennes ..qui pourraient avoir été prétées depuis longtemps !



c'est bien la 1ere fois, me semble t'il que j'entends pareil langage dans la bouche d'un politique ( à part évidemment Ron Paul) !

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/11/8_Nigel_Farage_-_Where_is_Europes_Gold.html

Citation :

When asked about leaders in countries inside of Europe beginning to question their various central banks because they are worried about the whereabouts of their gold, Farage responded, “Huge ruse as you say. Big suspicion in Germany as to where the gold is. The Greeks, of course, have demanded that the Germans give back their gold that they believe was taken from them in World War II.





And of course the British government, where Gordon Brown famously sold most of our gold reserves at $284 an ounce. So gold is not just a big play in the financial markets, it’s a big play in the whole debate in the architecture of the current Eurozone woes.”





When asked if he believed European central banks had leased out most of their gold, Farage responded, “I just don’t know the answer to that question. But if I look at just how poorly the central banks had performed over the last decade or so, frankly nothing would surprise me. There seems to be almost no limit to the stupidity of these people.”

interview fort édifiante de Jim Rickards :

on sait peu de choses sur l'or entreposé aux us ... mais on sait au moins ceci :

il y a 6000 tonnes d'or à NY qui n'appartiennent pas aux usa, mais soit au FMI, soit à d'autres nations étrangéres, et la plus grosse partie du stock d'or allemand ( 3000 tonnes ) y est certainement entreposé

et carrément :

Citation :

But I do know looking at it from a US perspective, as I’ve described in the book Currency Wars, if the US gets into extreme distress, and there’s a collapse in the dollar, I have no doubt that in an emergency basis the US will basically confiscate all the gold in their possession. Then they will convert it to back up a new gold based US dollar as plan B or some way to stop the crisis.





So it’s a political question for Germany as to whether they want their gold back, but sometimes you don’t ask questions if you don’t think you are going to like the answer. It would be interesting if Germany demanded that gold be shipped to Frankfurt or Berlin what the US would say.”

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/11/11_Jim_Rickards_-_The_US_Wont_Give_Germany_its_Gold.html

il paraitrait même que le principal coffre, sous-terrain, est situé à Manhattan à Maiden Lane à coté des deux tours jumelles du WTC ... mais l'or a été récupéré, bien sûr.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Maiden+Ln,+New+York,+NY+10038+@40.709500,-74.009678

selon le journal allemand Bild, le bureau de vérification fédéral allemand critique l'audit laxiste ( ah bon, il y a eu un audit? lol ) des réserves d'or de la Bundesbank . le comité du budget de parlement va donc étudier ce dossier, et plus particulièrement...les lieux de stockage à l'extérieur du pays

les politiques commencent à s'affoler...il faut remettre la main sur cet or ! ( s'il existe encore, note de Marie )





By Mark O'Byrne

Citation :

German lawmakers are to review Bundesbank controls of and management of Germany’s gold reserves.





Parliament’s Budget Committee will assess how the central bank manages its inventory of Germany’s gold bullion bars that are believed to be stored in Frankfurt, Paris, London and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, according to German newspaper Bild.



The German Federal Audit Office has criticised the Bundesbank’s lax auditing and inventory controls regarding Germany’s sizeable gold reserves – 3,396.3 tonnes of gold or some 73.7% of Germany’s national foreign exchange reserves.

There is increasing nervousness amongst the German public, German politicians and indeed the Bundesbank itself regarding the gigantic risk on the balance sheet of Germany's central bank and this is leading some in Germany to voice concerns about the location and exact amount of Germany’s gold reserves.

The eurozone's central bank system is massively imbalanced after the ECB’s balance sheet surged to a record 3.02 trillion euros ($3.96 trillion) last week, 31% bigger than the German economy, after a second tranche of three-year loans.

The concern is that were the eurozone to collapse, Bundesbank's losses could be half a trillion euros - more than one-and-a-half times the size of the Germany's annual budget.

In that scenario, Germany’s national patrimony of gold bullion reserves would be needed to support the currency – whether that be a new euro or a return to the Deutsche mark.

The German lawmakers are following in the footsteps of US Presidential candidate Ron Paul who has long called for an audit of the US’ gold reserves.

It is believed that some 60% of Germany’s gold is stored outside of Germany and much of it in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Germany and other central banks may follow in Hugo Chavez’s footsteps and repatriate their gold to Germany so as to have direct possession of and ownership of their gold reserves in order to be better prepared for a systemic or monetary crisis.

Jim Rickards has outlined possible plans by the Federal Reserve to commandeer Germany’s and all foreign depositors of sovereign gold at the New York Federal Reserve in the event of a dollar and monetary crisis leading to intensified “currency wars” and the ‘nuclear option’ of a drastic upward revision of the price of gold and a return to a quasi gold standard is contemplated by embattled central banks to prevent debt deflation.

http://www.resourceinvestor.com/2012/03/07/germany-to-review-bundesbank-gold-reserve-controls?ref=hp&page=2

transcription originelle de l'article du Bild,

c'est beaucoup plus complet !



German newspaper faults secrecy around Germany's gold in New York



Submitted by cpowell on Thu, 2012-03-08 18:42. Section: Daily Dispatches

3,401 Tonnes of Gold:
Picture the Gold Treasure of the Germans in New York

By Ralf Schuler
BILD, Berlin
Tuesday, March 6, 2012

http://www.bild.de/geld/wirtschaft/edelmetalle-gold/bild-beim-gold-schat...

NEW YORK -- It's the most valuable treasure we Germans have: 3,401 tonnes of pure gold -- about 1,800 euros for each of us. Absolutely disaster-proof, divided between high-security vaults in Frankfurt, Paris, London, and New York. And the German Federal Bank (Bundesbank) isn't looking after it!

The incredible gold scandal! On the 19th of November 2011, BILD magazine reported that the German Federal Bank last looked at our gold reserves in New York in 2007, and has thereby even alarmed the Federal Audit Office. (Inquiries are ongoing.)

A clear breach of the law, leading accountancy lawyer Prof. Jorg Baetge told BILD. "A tally of the ingots has to be made at least every three years." The Federal Bank hasn't done that.



Sloppiness with tangible consequences: The gold reserves (currently worth about 147 billion euros) make up the "considerable" portion (says Baetge) of more than 17 percent of the Federal Bank’s annual accounts. Are the Federal Bank's annual accounts for recent years therefore wrong?



Alarmed by the BILD report, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) member of parliament and expert on international politics Philipp Missfelder wanted to know more.

Involved in talks at the United Nations in New York, Missfelder wants to check the part of the German gold reserves stored there at the Federal Reserve Bank.

According to the BILD report, he is demanding the list of gold ingots from the president of the German Federal Bank, Jens Weidmann.

Missfelder told BILD: "I was shocked. First they said there is no list. Then there were lists, but they were secret. Then they told me that inquiries endanger the trust between the German Federal Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve."

When the German Federal Bank found out about the BILD investigation into German state gold, its head of communications, Michael Best even tried to block the journalist's visit and the coverage in BILD: "Against this background I ask you to understand that the German Federal Bank cannot further support your request for a visit."

What does the Federal Bank want to hide?

... BILD on site

Number 33 Liberty St., Downtown Manhattan. It goes down five floors below ground. "E-level." Plain floors, humming ventilation, gigantic steel doors. And 7,000 tonnes of gold! More than in the legendary Fort Knox. It is the largest gold storage vault in the world.

But where is the German gold?

Jack Gutt of the staff of the vice president of the U.S. Federal Reserve, said: "It is in some of these 122 steel-lattice compartments. I cannot say more than that."

How many ingots? Everything is secret. No photos!

Only this much: the German gold is somewhere in the latticed chambers here in the New York vault. BILD wants to see it: no way! It will only be shown to the German Federal Bank.

These site inspections are your job, Mr. German Federal Bank Chief! How does one recognise the German gold?

Jack Gutt to BILD: "There are lists of all the ingots. Each ingot has a number, a stamp indicating the purity of the gold and a seal. The German gold reserves can therefore be counted according to law."

In the German parliament the pressure is growing. Missfelder told BILD: "It cannot be the case that for German gold assets the accounting laws are obvioulsy being violated. I demand a transparent stock check."

http://www.gata.org/node/11090

Max Keiser et Stacy Herbert discutent des inquiétudes grandissantes - en allemagne et en Suisse- sur la vulnérabilité de LEURS réserves


pour mémo, on compte organiser sur la question des réserves d'or, un référendum en Suisse


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKyFhx9vakY&feature=player_embedded

d'après Sinclair, l'inquiétude monte d'un cran avec les récents raids... et il n'y a pas que les goldeux qui se demandent d'où vient cet or, largué sur le marché.

certains pays européens ( et on pense évidemment à la Suisse, et l'allemagne ) se demandent si leur stock entreposé aux USA, ne servirait pas à ces raids

Bonne question, ma foi !

j'adore la dernière phrase : quel besoin ont les allemands de faire gardienner leur or aux USA : ils ont peur que la France les envahisse?









http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/3/15_Sinclair_-_Is_the_Fed_Selling_Europes_Gold_During_Interventions.html

la Bundesbank refuse pour la nème fois de répondre aux questions du journaliste Lars Schall



questions qui concernaient un éventuel swap d'or entre la bundesbank , le trésor us, la banque d'angleterre ou l'ESF, exchange stabilisation Fund ( US)


qu'est ce qu'ils sont "discrets", tous ces" braves gens" ...

http://www.gata.org/node/11212



c'est pas étonnant, évidemment ... mais ça vaut le coup de le faire remarquer ...

faute d'audit, le doute sur la réalité et la localisation des réserves d'or de l'allemagne s'intensifient



http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/debate-breaks-out-in-germany-over-foreign-gold-reserves-a-833289.html

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en attendant, la Bundesbank confirme que ses stocks d'or sont gardiennés par la fed, la banque d'angleterre et la banque de france

Bundesbank Confirms German Gold Held By FED, BOE and Banque De France

Citation :

Germany's Bundesbank confirmed yesterday that the German gold reserves are held overseas by the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Banque de France. The German parliament, the Bundestag, has been examining the accounting of German gold reserves at the Bundesbank. The parliament's Budget Committee, one of the most powerful committees in the German parliament, had requested a critical report by the Federal Audit Office. "The decision has been unanimous," the paper quoted the Christian Social Union budget expert Herbert Frankenhauser. The newspaper report alleged "account cheating" regarding the German gold reserves. According to a Bild report, the federal auditing office complained of "inadequate diligence of the accounting of the gold reserves, which are stored in some foreign countries. Repatriation of the gold reserves is encouraged.” The Bundesbank confirmed that it, like many central banks, keeps part of its reserves in vaults at foreign central banks and said some of its gold is held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Banque de France and the Bank of England. It declined to say how much gold in total is held overseas or how much gold is stored with the Federal Reserve, Bank of England and Banque de France. The Bundesbank statement said it had complete confidence in the integrity of the central banks where the gold is held. "From these central banks, the German Bundesbank annually gets confirmation of the gold holdings in troy ounces as a basis for its accounting," the Bundesbank’s statement said.

http://www.goldcore.com/goldcore_blog/bundesbank-confirms-german-gold-held-fed-boe-and-banque-de-france



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le parlement allemand VEUT un audit des réserves d'or alemandes ... et on se demande bien pourquoi, la Bundesbank s'y oppose !

Citation :

The German parliament, the Bundestag, is looking at the accounting of German gold reserves at the Bundesbank. Parliament's Budget Committee has requested, in opposition to the Bundesbank, a critical report by the Federal Audit Office, the newspaper Bild reports.



"The decision has been unanimous," the paper quoted the Christian Social Union budget expert Herbert Frankenhauser. The newspaper report alleged "account cheating" regarding the German gold reserves.

According to the Bild report, the federal auditing office complained of "inadequate dilegence of the accounting of the gold reserves, which are stored in some foreign countries. Repatriation of the gold reserves is encouraged. The German gold reserves are in part held at foreign central banks.

The federal audit office wants to weaken the report in regard to the security of other countries and provide to the parliament a shorter summary that could be read only in the secret shelter of the Bundestag.



Bundesbank President Jens Weidman was trying to convince the leadership of the Union parliamentary group to prevent the demand for the report.

Germany has with 3,400 tons of gold, the world's second largest gold reserves. They are managed by the Bundesbank and are part of the country's currency reserves.

http://www.gata.org/node/11362

Citation :

le parlement allemand VEUT un audit des réserves d'or alemandes ... et on se demande bien pourquoi, la Bundesbank s'y oppose !

Ach "paradoxe allemand"