More on the mystery of Germany's missing gold.
The Germans appear to have given up on getting their gold back. Probably because it would cause the USA severe hardship to replace the missing gold and force up gold price.
The reason why? That “safe” German bullion may no longer physically exist. We’ll rely on an extended quote from ZeroHedge to explain the current mess as clearly as possible:
More than 18 months ago, on January 16, 2013 Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, announced that it will repatriate to Germany all 374 tonnes it had stored with the Banque de France in Paris, as well as 300 tonnes held in Manhattan by the New York Federal Reserve, by 2020.
Despite a lag of 18 months, the Bundesbank, as the Federal Bank of Germany is often called, has only managed to bring home a tiny 37 tonnes of gold.
A paltry 5 tonnes of that came from the U.S., the rest from Paris. The US Fed holds 45% or roughly $635 billion of the total 3,396 tonnes of gold Germany have in reserve, the world’s second largest gold reserves.
This has prompted, not surprisingly, renewed questions whether Germany’s gold still exists in those Manhattan vaults or if it has been melted down, leased or even sold.
With doubts about the whereabouts of Germany’s gold still prevalent, it appears that either Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition or the ECB, has decided to attempt to put the matter to rest.
Bloomberg reported yesterday that the German campaign to repatriate German gold from the U.S. has ended. The Bloomberg story was headlined ‘German Gold Stays in New York in Rebuff to Euro Doubters’ and the first sentence was ‘Germany has decided its gold is safe in American hands.’
However, the leader of the German gold repatriation movement, “Repatriate our Gold,” Peter Boehringer immediately refuted the Bloomberg article.
Germany’s official position at the moment appears to be to downplay this uncomfortable situation while still looking to get its gold back in Germany under its own government’s lock and key.
The greater question — too complicated to get into here — involves increasingly clear evidence that, via paper contracts and ETFs, the international banking system is lending and re-lending physical gold reserves to keep gold’s price under $1300 per ounce as regularly as possible.
http://www.commdiginews.com/business-2/germany-where-the-is-our-gold-serv-and-mi...