Gold Bars
The excellent financial website “Zerohedge” has a strangely disturbing story up – The Germans want their gold back:
–It Begins: Bundesbank To Commence Repatriating Gold From New York Fed
“In what could be a watershed moment for the price, provenance, and future of physical gold, not to mention the “stability” of the entire monetary regime based on rock solid, undisputed “faith and credit” in paper money, German Handelsblatt reports in an exclusive that the long suffering German gold, all official 3,396 tons of it, is about to be moved. Specifically, it is about to be partially moved out of the New York Fed, where the majority, or 45% of it is currently stored, as well as the entirety of the 11% of German gold held with the Banque de France, and repatriated back home to Buba in Frankfurt, where just 31% of it is held as of this moment.”
(snip)
“- in this particular case, the last central bank to pull its gold from the NY Fed and the other 2 primary depositories of developed world gold, London and Paris, just happens to discover their gold was never there to begin with, and instead served as collateral to paper gold subsequently rehypothecated several hundred times, and whose ultimate ownership deed is long gone.”
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Again, Zerohedge discovered this memo from BOE (Bank of England) archives that may hint at the biggest gold robbery in history:
“This memo, more than any of the other spurious and speculative accusation about Buba’s golden hoard, should disturb German citizens, and of course the Bundesbank (assuming it was not already aware of its contents), as the memo lays out, without any shadow of doubt, that the BOE and the Fed, effectively conspired to feed the Bundesbank due gold bars that were of substantially subpar quality on at least one occasion in the period during the Bretton-Woods semi-gold standard (which ended with Nixon in August 1971).
The facts:
At least two central banks have conspired on at least one occasion to provide the Bundesbank with what both banks knew was “bad delivery” gold – the convertible reserve currency under the Bretton Woods system, or in other words, to defraud – amounting to 172 bars. The “bad delivery” occured even as official gold refiners had warned that the quality of gold emanating from the US Assay Office was consistently below standard, and which both the BOE and the Fed were aware of. Instead of addressing the issue of declining gold quality and purity, the banks merely covered up the refiners’ complaints.”
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(DR) So what does this mean?
If the gold has been degraded or gone missing, I imagine the New York Fed will have to come up with the real stuff from somewhere. Additionally, this could rock the world of gold bugs, those who invest in gold as a hedge against financial collapse. In theory, the price of existing gold, already unbelievably high, would go through the roof. Then the dark fear that the gold has been degraded or replaced with platinum will panic those who only possess gold in paper.
History buffs will recall that during the first great depression, FDR ordered all people holding physical gold to turn it over to the government in trade for paper money. Speculators have been worried for years that there may not actually be physical gold in the Federal Reserve, or Fort Knox, for that matter.
Overlay this scenario with Germany’s obvious power grab going on in Europe. They are, for instance, turning Greece into their own personal “Mexico” right now. Spain is next, then Italy, with all these countries (as well as the United States) experiencing a shocking re-emergence of Fascism.
Germany has successfully played the long game in beating southern Europe down into low-wage enclaves that will beg for a strong Germany to take the lead in security and manufacturing.
So let’s see how this emerging gold scandal plays out…
