Why The U.S. Won’t Give Germany Their Gold Back

During the cold war, West Germany followed a policy of storing its gold as far west as possible in case of a Soviet invasion.

Gold remains the one currency that is accepted everywhere. In the event of a currency crisis, the gold could be quickly deployed in financial markets to help restore confidence.

Over the past several years, the German people, for a variety of justified reasons, have expressed a pressing desire to have their central bank perform a test, validation or any other assay, of the German gold inventory, which at 3,395 tonnes is the second highest in the world, second only to the US. That is, if the US has any at all.

The problem is, the US won’t (or can’t) give Germany it’s gold back!

The Bundesbank announcement follows a public outcry last year after a clash in Parliament about whether all the bank’s gold was properly accounted for.

For the great many Germans who still curse the day they had to trade their marks for euros, there has been at least one consolation. If the common currency did not work out, Germany still had huge reserves of the hardest currency of all: gold.

In 2012, Germany had requested that 674 tonnes of its gold be repatriated and was told by the U.S. that it would take eight years to achieve.

The New York Fed and the French Central Bank managed to transfer a paltry 37 tons, with only 5 coming from the US.

This amount represents just 5% of the stated target, and was well below the 84 tons that the Bundesbank would need to receive each year to collect the 674 tons  over the 8 year interval between 2013 and 2020.

The release of these numbers promptly angered Germans, and led to the rise of numerous allegations that the reason why the transfer was taking so long is that the gold simply was not in the possession of the offshore custodians, having been leased, or worse, sold without any formal or informal announcement.           

When Germany heard it would take 8 years to get their very own gold back, they got extremely concerned and requested to look at their gold in the U.S. vault. Their request was refused. This occurred in 2013.

Germany was rightly displeased, to say the least. They probably thought they would never get all their gold back, and that may very well be the case. The difficulty in repatriating this gold was not in transporting that much gold, but points to the suspicion that the central banks could not deliver gold because it was leased out to the market.

It is very possible that all the signatories of the Central Bank Gold Agreements are in the same position as Germany with all their gold currently leased into the gold market.

If this was not so, why could the central banks holding Germany’s gold, not deliver the tonnage of gold asked for by Germany immediately? If only a portion of that gold had been leased the balance not leased could have been delivered.

Some might argue that the gold needed to be re-refined. If that were the case, then re-refining this gold would have produced far more than five tonnes in the last year.

On June 23, 2014, a Bloomberg article came out with an article indicating that Germany gave up on their request for their gold:

“Norbert Barthle, the budget spokesman for Merkel’s Christian Democratic bloc in parliament, said in an interview in June 2014,“Germany has decided its gold is safe in American hands. The Americans are taking good care of our gold.” ‘ WHAT?

It’s a diabolically unbelievable statement considering what transpired between Germany and the U.S. over the last 2 years.

But, wait!  Hours after the Bloomberg story broke, the gentleman at the center of the story, whom Bloomberg quoted as saying his ‘Repatriate Our Gold’ campaign was “on hold”-Peter Boehringer, came out swinging… “The Bloomberg story is a non-news article with a wrong headline.”

So, apparently Germany still wants it’s gold back. What is not being reported in the U.S. is the massive “End the Fed” rallies by the German people, as they believe it is the core cancer that is infecting the entire world. See the video of the protests here.

I know some Americans have protested in the streets to “Audit the Fed” to no avail. But the German movement has recently gone viral.

Something really smells here. There are a few possibilities, which include:

1. The Federal Reserve does not have the gold to repatriate  to Germany.
2. The US has threatened Germany into quiet submission.
3. The US told Germany that the gold is gone, and if they press the issue, the whole word economy collapses, including theirs.
4. The Federal Reserve is playing some dirty tricks trying to deceive the world in an attempt to maintain the US dollar as the reserve currency.
5. 1 and 4
6. All of the above

In July of 2014, financial expert Peter Schiff had an opportunity to interview Peter Boehringer of the German Precious Metals Society in an attempt to get at the truth about Germany’s gold repatriation.

Boehringer said, “The primary source for the confusion, especially in the non-German media, came from a factually wrong Bloomberg story. That story began with a completely unfounded headline “German gold stays in NY.”

Still, Barthle, or Merkel for that matter, are not in charge of the gold, the Bundesbank is, and they have said nothing.

It is noteworthy that in 2013, a mere 5 tonnes were actually delivered from NY to Frankfurt. And even for these miniscule volumes there is no evidence, either by an external auditor or by video documentation, that real gold bars (allegedly untouched in the Fed´s vaults since the 1960s) have been moved across the Atlantic.

Bundesbank has even melted down and allegedly re-cast these bars for no apparent reason! We have not received any audit report of this process, no report from the (unknown) performing smelter, and no bar lists from “old” or newly cast bars.

But to date, no mainstream politician has publicly questioned this strange behavior. It has been left to concerned private organizations like ours to press these concerns. Fortunately our national media has picked up on some of this which may have prompted Mr Barthle´s blind and unfounded “pledge of allegiance” to the U.S.”

Schiff – Is the issue something that is discussed or understood by the average German?

Boehringer – These details are of course not being discussed by the “average German” – soccer seems to be far more important these days. But both the gold community, the financial community, and the international media are taking ever more notice of our continued struggle. Rather than putting this issue to bed as these authorities may have hoped, we are seeing ever MORE questions being raised.”

Schiff – Officially, at least, what was responsible for convincing German officials that their gold is safely stored and accounted for by the Federal Reserve?

Boehringer – I can of course only speculate here. Given the decade-long mis-information by the Fed and the Bundesbank regarding our national gold, there is no apparent reason for these officials to now call this case “closed” – quite the opposite would be logical.

We must therefore assume that the Fed is unwilling or unable to quickly put Germany´s gold at the Fed (1,500 tonnes) on a few planes, thereby sending our property to where it belongs (Frankfurt). It’s become harder to not reach the conclusion that  our officials are not complicit in some kind of U.S. led cover-up.

One reason that the gold was unavailable for quick delivery could be multiple ownerships of our bars at the Fed. Given today´s global fractional gold banking scheme, an (allegedly physically existing) bar in a central bank vault could have 10+ owners – and could thereby show up in 10+ central bank balance sheets as either “physical gold” or “gold claim”.

These two (completely different) balance sheet items have not been properly differentiated for many decades now. We are potentially talking about non-existent physical bars at a magnitude of tens of thousands of tonnes!

Our campaign is therefore not only a “German” one – but could have international repercussions of unknown scale. It is not by accident that since the launch of the first two campaigns in 2011/12 (Germany and Switzerland) – more than ten similar national initiatives have been launched all over the world.

The responses of the arrogant central bankers are the same everywhere: Ignore them, call them “conspiracy theorists”, insist that “everything is in order with the gold”, but give not a shred of evidence (bar lists, audit reports, bar transport to owners). And act only if public pressure forces you to…”

Schiff– How did the Bloomberg article, which is really the only story published by a mainstream American outlet about the reversal, quote you incorrectly or out of context? Has the reporter explained his actions?

Boehringer -“I had a friendly 30+ minute conversation with the Bloomberg reporter, explaining all I could. But the only so-called “quotation” of mine which was ultimately used (published months later!) was “Right now, our campaign is on hold”. Of course, I never said this sentence.  The Bloomberg hack somehow twisted what I said to mean that we were satisfied and that we were no longer pressing the issue.

In hindsight, I however have to THANK  the reporter for involuntarily opening up this new and great opportunity for spreading our message. Since the Bloomberg piece, I am giving interviews on a daily basis – now even to international radio and TV broadcasters with millions of listeners. This gold issue will not go away.

Gold is money. And central bank gold is a potential cornerstone of future currencies which might well HAVE TO be (partially) gold-backed, especially if there is a crash of today´s un-backed paper currencies. The central banks all over the world therefore have to quickly become much more transparent and have to audit and repatriate their / OUR gold!”

No kidding. We’ve been asking to “Audit the Fed” for decades and it doesn’t happen. So the dog and pony show goes on.