Free Republic

The German central bank, or Bundesbank, said Monday that it stepped up the repatriation of its gold reserves from overseas storage last year. “The Bundesbank successfully continued and further stepped up its transfers of gold,” the central bank said in a statement. “In 2014, 120 tonnes of gold were transferred to Frankfurt from storage locations abroad: 35 tonnes from Paris and 85 tonnes from New York.” Germany’s gold reserves are the second-biggest in the world after those of the United States and totaled 3,384.2 tonnes this month, according to the latest data compiled by the World Gold Council. …

Do you remember seeing old pictures of the Great Depression which depicted "lines"? There were two types, bread lines and also lines to the front doors of banks. While we don't see any bread lines today, trust me, there are bread lines in every single state, and long ones at that. Nearly 50 million people in the U.S. survive on SNAP, EBT cards or whatever they are called in your state. Can you imagine the "confidence" it would instill if each day on your way to work you saw massive lines of people waiting for breakfast? Or, when you came...

As the Dutch central bank looks to repatriate some of its gold reserves back from the New York Federal Reserve, Dennis Gartman, the editor and publisher of The Gartman Letter, has questioned what reputational damage this could cause for the U.S. The Dutch central bank last week confirmed that it was shipping gold from the U.S. to the Netherlands to "spread its gold stock in a more balanced way", adding that it would have a "positive effect on public confidence". It comes after the Germans made a similar move in 2013, indicating that it would transfer 300 tons from New...

Germany’s central bank will repatriate gold reserves held at the New York Fed and the Banque de France. Bundesbank officials acknowledged the move is “preemptive” in case a “currency crisis” hits the European Monetary Union. While the Bundesbank tried to minimize the importance of the move, repatriating gold is a clear indication of public loss of confidence on foreign central banks and the integrity of the monetary union. Over the past few years, Venezuela, Libya, and Iran have also repatriated their gold holdings. “No, we have no intention to sell gold,” a Bundesbank spokesman said on the phone Wednesday, “[the...

While moustachioed managers, contrary to the far better insight of their superiors, and mainstream spivs are trying to talk down Germany's somewhat stunning shift in thinking - i.e. to repatriate its gold - as nothing but political pandering (or cost-saving); it seems, just as we predicted, the rest of the world are seeing this crack-in-the-confidence-armor the same way we have suggested. As we noted here, the first party to defect from the prisoner's dilemma of all the bulk of global gold being held by the Fed, defects best (then the second, or even the third perhaps) and sure enough, via...

Germany’s Bundesbank is to repatriate gold reserves held abroad to tighten control and combat currency crises in the future, pulling a chunk of its holdings from New York and all its bullion from Paris. The move marks an extraodinary breakdown in trust between leading central banks and has set off ferment among gold enthusiasts, with some comparing it with France’s withdrawal of gold from the US under President Charles de Gaulle as the Bretton Woods currency system crumbled in the early 1970s. Handelsblatt said the Bundesbank will announce on Wednesday that it intends to relocate the gold to vaults in...