THE BUNDESBANK, DEUTSCHEBANK, AND THAT GOLD THING…AGAIN
No sooner does one post a blog or an analysis these days, then the story is either expanded and corroborated, or some detail is amended, or another dot appears to connect to the whole puzzle that is a world gone mad. Well, that's true today. Just last Thursday in my News and Views from the Nefarium I speculated that the Bundesbank, which has hitherto refused to publish anything like an inventory of its gold bars held in Germany, France, the OId Lady of Threadneedle, and the NY Fed, finally did do so, a tome of some 2,300 pages in fact. And I speculated that this might be a bit of a message, a shot across the bow, so to speak, that the Bundesbank know something is hugley awry with the western system, and that there's a slight malodorous air wafting to Europe from Wall Street. Indeed, as some commenters here have suggested, there does seem to be some sort of quiet back-channel economic warfare going on between the USA and Germany, evident in the vast fines imposed on Deutschebank, and more recently, the "emissions" scandal engulfing Volkswagen. I suspect readers here know what the real concern in the District of Corruption is, namely, to head off, by any means possible, any Russo-German rapprochement, and to keep the NATO choir singing Washington's chorales.
But now there's a possible different take on the Bundesbank's moves, in this article from Zero Hedge shared by Mr. D:
47 Years After 1968, Bundesbank STILL Fails To Deliver A Gold Bar Number List
You'll note that the article cites extensively the comments of Herr Peter Boehringer, leader of Germany's popular, and one is tempted to say, populist, gold repatriation movement. But that's not the least of it. The reall shenanigans are detail by Herr Boehringer in a three-fold analysis of what the Bundesbank claims to have done, and what is has actually done, not the least of which is that the list is an inventory list, and not a founderer's bar number stamp list, a crucial difference:
For the umpteenth time in 47 years, BuBa yesterday pretended to give transparency regarding Germany’s gold – but again failed miserably. I hereby challenge both BuBa’s Mr Weidmann and Mr Thiele and Bloomberg’s Mr Lorcan Roche Kelly to either withdraw their apodictic and loud but still completely unproven propaganda statement “Here is our gold – finally do believe it you stupid gold bug nutcases!!” – or to prove their so far unfounded and factually wrong statement!
1. No bar number list was made available by Bundesbank
Firstly, I am asking journalists and interested readers to open the 2,300 page long “custodian gold holdings – bar list” document : Everybody can see at first glance that the very first column of the “gold bar” list starting on page 7 is headlined “INVENTORY number” rather than “Producer’s Bar number”. An “INVENTORY number” however is something COMPLETELY different that the “Producer’s bar number”! It is a number artificially created on paper or a plastic sticker by the respective central bank which has nothing to do / no connection with the unique producers’ bar number pressed on the bars physically by the refineries when a bar is cast! The difference is absolutely CRUCIAL in that the very point of having a REAL gold bar number list is to enable a critical global public of gold experts and independent auditors as well as us-the-people and owners of the gold to check every individual bar not only regarding its physical existence but also to detect double countings on OTHER balance sheets (from central banks, Gold-ETFs, etc.)! The artificial and highly unusual “INVENTORY bar” method Bundesbank has chosen to now publish “a gold bar list” completely fails in that respect. This list is worthless as a basis for sound, physical and worldwide auditing and counterchecking of all available global bar lists in order to detect and avoid double countings. We hereby claim that this approach by BuBa and its “sub-custodians” (Banque de France, Bank of England and Federal Reserve) was a DELIBERATE smokescreen chosen to confuse the worldwide public without providing transparency! This approach cannot be excused in any way by Bundesbank’s very “honest” fine print for the list: “The Bundesbank, the Bank of England and the Banque de France use internally assigned inventory numbers, whereby the Bank of England and the Banque de France only allow part of this internal number to be published. The gold bar list therefore only shows the last three digits for its gold bars stored at the Bank of England and the Banque de France.” This is NO industry-standard bar number list – individual bars could only be unambiguously identified if Bundesbank had provided the producer’s bar numbers as well as the name of the producing refinery as well as the year the bars have been cast! “Repatriate our gold” hereby officially demands this additional information which should be very easy for Bundesbank to publish!
(Bold emphasis, and italics emphasis, in the original. Bold-italics emphasis added)
You'll note that with the statement that a real bar stamp list would allow a close check of "double countings on OTHER balance sheets" reveals what the movement's real concerns are: rehypothecation. So, as far as the repatriation movement in Germany is concerned, the Bundesbank's list was meant to silence the doubts voiced by the movement. It was not a message addressed to the NY Fed or the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.
And this brings me to my high octane speculation of the day (a two-parter, as we're going to see in tomorrow's blog), a high octane speculation highlighted by asking the simple question: Surely the Bundesbank should have, and would have, known that such an inventory list would not silence the movement's concerns, but only enhance them?
That indeed is the point: it probably would have known, and nonetheless published the list, with the predictable reaction. This suggests to me, once again, that the real recipients of the message lie not in Germany's gold repatriation message, but in London and New York, and the message is: "we know something is wrong, and we're letting you know we know, and we want our gold." The real question is, does Germany need its gold?
And the answer to that is probably yes. But for that, we have to wait for tomorrow.
See you on the flip side...
11 Comments
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maybe i missed something crucial here.
Dr Farrell,
what is that graphic at the top of the post about? and who is missing and how and why?
thank you,
zdb
it’s all good comments.
so we’re getting head fakes in head fakes in head fakes. and some of those head fakes are expected to be easily read. so as ever in the business of business, it all comes down to physical delivery and possession. while we all know the east (bricsa?) has been buying up gold, right? does anyone know of the quantities of physical delivered?
reminds one of max keiser’s plan to bankrupt jpmorgan by his campaign to buy physical silver. perhaps goshawks right: that it is the east’s main motive (or one of them) for buying up metal. it seems as pointless as gaddafi’s gold hoard. in the end, the west stomped in and took it. it’s as if the west got all those decades of high grade petrol for free. gaddafi must have been thinking the east provided him sufficient protection. who else is as wrong as he was?
who else is hurt (and how much and compared to who else) when their credits in dollars discount to nought?
I sometimes wonder if the big banks with the gold got into the gold jewelry making business. Perhaps turned the gold into jewelry that was worth three times or more the actual gold content worth. Maybe this repatriation is why we see so many sell your gold jewelry back to the bankers here signs all over town.
Lots of good comments here. WalkingDead and Basta in-particular posit interesting ‘variations’ on the motives.
I wanted to broaden the field, for a moment. Russia and China have been noted the past few years for buying-up all the gold they can, as fast as they can. Usually, the motivation is attributed to self-protection or to pre-financing the new, non-dollar currency system. However, what if a deeper, longer ‘game’ was in play?
The private banks are in an ever-tightening, defensive circle, as more and more countries demand repatriation of their gold. Whether through selling-off or “rehypothication many times over”, the gold is not in the private bank vaults. (It may not even be on-planet.) Under this pressure, the obvious way for the private banks to replenish gold stocks is to tap new production, private owners, etc.
Seen in this light, Russia’s and China’s ‘snatching’ of any available gold could be seen as a direct attempt to bring down the bankster system. With minimum ‘replacement’ gold available, sooner or later there will be a crack in the private bank ‘wall’. Upon that evidence of falsification, there will be a classic ‘panic’, and that system will quickly fall. Playing chess, rather than poker, as it were.
I do hope that new (hopefully honest) systems are pre-positioned to take up the slack, rather than having a descent into REAL chaos…
Seen in the above light, the Germans’ continual ‘pushing the issue’ of gold repatriation could be back-channel ‘support’ of the Russian and Chinese agenda…
Thanks for the thanks! I think that Russia and China (and the middle class in India and China) are hoarding gold for the quite simple reason that they see the fiat neo-Keynsian QE-forever-FTW, just-print-your-way-to-prosperity Ponzi for what it is. Couple that with the US having reached a new level of incoherent belligerence, as it lashes out about the world like a drunk sailor and specifically taunts both these powers, and so these countries are acting prudently and defensively, and preparing for the quite-probable collapse of the whole debt-soaked financial casino — err, I meant “system.”
The US’s push has now come to shove and its war propaganda has reached new levels of stupid, and so Russia and China are also preparing for military confrontation. Economic warfare is integral to this, and they will doubtless do their best to kick the props out from under the Wall Street-City casino/meth lab when things reach a crisis level.
These countries are not buying the globalist ZWO koolaid that somehow just because we say so, debt doesn’t matter anymore (except for the little people), and they know that insane levels money printing is allowing the West to keep lurching forward on its insane path, like the zombies that are everywhere in pop culture (a little Hollywood wink at what’s really going on, since they’re all in the club together).
They go back to gold, almost atavistic as a talisman of wealth, despite all the denigration and dismissals coming from the high rollers in the fiat casino that gold is just an ancient relic. That dichotomy of preception about the nature of money/wealth is fascinating.
This game is now about credibility, Germany’s gold bars have been long gone, and Hjalmar Schacht knew it way back then. The Fed is only part of the game, but now the whole “cover up” is being exposed and the players “excluding” the banks, may now be on the run. In other words, banks take orders from hidden elites, and those elites know “ALL”. If the NY Fed can’t cough up the bars, then the finger pointing will be at some very “high ranking” dudes in the shadows. Can anyone say “hidden system of finance”?
A central bank is being slyly duplicitous regarding gold accounting — and accountability.
“I’m shocked! Shocked I say!” /s
But I think the point here — despite the vociferous and doubtless quite legitimate protestations of Herr Boehringer — is that the BB specifically does NOT want to publish the actual bar numbers because, quite obviously, it does not expect to receive the exact same bars it parted with all those decades ago.
At this point, the BB will be happy to get the same amount of gold back it deposited, whatever the provenance, provided it is not gold-plated tungsten. The 2300+ pages of inventory was a pointed reminder to the FED, BoF and BdF that it knows exactly what is owed; not providing serial numbers allows these fine institutions to collect and resmelt inventory to meet the claim without undue embarassment.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth — even if it is supposed to be your own.
Edward and Alphonse as State Alchemists must be doing heavy duty at Central producing more gold. For the World Governments to meet the demands of the call for demands of gold bars with the proper identification numbers.
The list supplied has to be cross referenced in some way to the actual list which includes the above mentioned information. While it is suspected/highly likely that gold may not be there or has been rehypothicated many times over thru “fractional reserve banking” on steroids (since no one would EVER actually want to get their gold back, right?); it is still remotely possible that Germany is offering the Fed/US a method of replacing it as both should have a record of the above mentioned, actual identification numbers/information.
I’m wondering if the gold that they have repatriated actually matches that information. Would we hear about it if it doesn’t?
Why are US citizens not asking the same questions about Fort Knox?
Where could all this gold be disappearing to, anyway?
If one wanted to risk falling off that twig of speculation, one might suspect that it was going the same place it went in high antiquity. That would put us in the realm of legend, myth, and science fiction written by people long dead on clay tablets.
Of course, if you wanted to keep your vassal states in line, possessing their gold in your vaults would of some value.
And yet:
Both Mercedes and BMW have diesel engines that meet the standards, as do a variety of big engines for diesel trucks. Engines from the likes of Cummins and Caterpillar, etc are vastly cleaner than 20 years ago.
While VW was caught lying about its smaller diesel engines, but the bigger diesel from VW meets the standards, since it uses technology akin to big trucks and what Mercedes uses.
The point: Claims of economic warfare based on VW lying don’t make a lot of sense if none of the other more respectable (higher quality) German car manufacturers are telling the same lie.
And I for one can remember London, Paris and Rome from 25 years ago, the air pollution was disgusting compared to large US cities.
Gold sure has dropped in price, and one would think that many German manufactures would like the fact that the US dollar buys more euros today than 2 years ago.