It was time again for the Deutsche Bundesbank to slam the door in my face. Germany’s central bank can’t give a candid account on its gold policy at home and abroad.
By Lars Schall
On December 12, I’ve published a response that I’ve received from the press department of the Deutsche Bundesbank with regards to reasonable questions concerning Germany’s gold reserves and the handling thereof – see here. The answers that I’ve received from the Bundesbank’s press department reminded me instantaneously on some classic words spoken by the murdered Black Panther Fred Hampton: “You come up with answers that don’t answer, explanations that don’t explain, conclusions that don’t conclude.” Therefore, I wrote on the very same day again an e-mail to the Bundesbank’s spoke person Susanne Kreutzer. That e-mail said:
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Dear Ms. Kreutzer, thank you for your response! However, I have some further questions: You state that the Deutsche Bundesbank doesn’t trade gold. Can you explain to me this statement by Mr. Andreas Dombret during his speech at the Reception of the Bundesbank Representative Office in New York City on November 1, 2012 regarding the German gold reserves: “(W)e are now looking back at sixty years not only of fruitful cooperation in many fields and international fora, but also of storing gold and trading via the New York Fed. As a matter of fact, it is sensible for us to do so in New York, as Frankfurt is not a gold trading venue.“ Is this a contradiction to your statement? Furthermore, I was particularly interested in your answer to question 2. You say that the gold you’re getting back from New York isn’t already in good delivery form…and you have to convert it to that first and then check the purity. This means that the gold the US is holding for Germany is coin melt from the 1930s, isn’t it? The reason that you say that the bar lists aren’t necessary is because the serial numbers on the bars will reveal that they are probably not in good delivery form, either. Any comment? Kind regards, Lars Schall. |
A few days later I found an interesting document that originated at the International Monetary Fund in June 1999. That document was very recently disclosed by GATA here:
http://www.gata.org/node/12009
In this report I stumbled across a confirmation of gold lending activities undertaken by the Bundesbank. That information prompted another e-mail on December 16:
Dear Ms. Kreutzer,
I would like to add something related to the critical question if the Bundesbank is involved in trading with its gold or not.
In a study authored in 1999 by the International Monetary Fund on the topic of gold lending by central banks, the Bundesbank is mentioned as a party that was at that time engaged in gold lending:
http://www.gata.org/files/IMFGoldLendingFullStudy1999.pdf
Take a look for example at the references to the Bundesbank’s gold lending in Paragraph 32, Box 3 on Page 22, Paragraph 49, and Footnote 10.
The questions that I have are:
First of all, is gold lending – at least indirectly – a kind of trading activity according to the understanding of the Bundesbank? Gold that gets leased out is, as the IMF study says, “usually associated with sales of gold in the spot market.“ The IMF study also states that gold lending central banks became active in the gold derivatives market with bullion banks and gold producers, „selling through forwards and options.“
How much gold did the Bundesbank lent out?
Is this an ongoing process, or did it stop? If the latter is the case, when did it stop?
Was the claim returned to you? And if it is the case that the claim is uncollectible, what will happen on your balance sheet and when will that be communicated to whom?
Thank you very much for your attention!
Best regards,
Lars Schall.
I also thought it might be good to ask Dr. Andreas Dombret directly himself about his remarks in New York City. So I wrote first to the communications bureau of the Atlantik-Brücke (Atlantic Bridge), the most influential German-American invitation-only association (you may want to take a look at the membership roster past and present), of which Dr. Dombret is the current treasurer. A bit later I received on request from a good informed individual the e-mail address of the Dr. Dombret’s Bundesbank office. So I wrote to that address, too.
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
could you forward the message below to Dr. Dombret, please? Before I’ve received this email-address, I contacted first the Atlantik Bruecke — so you may get this message in duplicate.
Thank you!
Best regards,
Lars Schall.
— lars schall <larsspeschall@yahoo.de> schrieb am Mo, 17.12.2012:
Von: lars schall <larsspeschall@yahoo.de>
Betreff: Media Request for Dr. Andreas Dombret
An: info@atlantik-bruecke
CC: ambrose.evans-pritchard@info
Datum: Montag, 17. Dezember, 2012 14:34 Uhr
Dear Ms. Koch,
we’ve just had a short conversation on the phone related to Dr. Andreas Dombret. Below follows my request for him. I copy this email to Mr. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, international business editor of the British newspaper The Telegraph, because my request for Dr. Dombret has something to do with questions raised by Mr. Evans-Pritchard in a recent interview with me:
http://goldswitzerland.com/europe-usa-will-not-allow-deflation-to-take-root/
Thank you very much for your kind assistance!
Best regards,
Lars Schall.
Dear Dr. Dombret,
my name is Lars Schall, I am a freelance journalist for finance from the Ruhr area.
Under this link you can find a recent story of mine related to a press inquiry at the Deutsche Bundesbank:
http://www.larsschall.com/2012/12/12/the-deutsche-bundesbank-and-its-gold-to-trade-or-not-to-trade/
As you can see I was told that the Bundesbank is not engaged in trading activities when it comes to the gold reserve of the Bundesbank. Can you explain then to Mr. Evans-Pritchard and me this statement of yours vis-à-vis William Dudley / NY Fed during your speech at the Reception of the Bundesbank Representative Office in New York City on November 1, 2012 regarding the German gold reserves:
“(W)e are now looking back at sixty years not only of fruitful cooperation in many fields and international fora, but also of storing gold and trading via the New York Fed. As a matter of fact, it is sensible for us to do so in New York, as Frankfurt is not a gold trading venue.“
Is this a contradiction to the statement that I have received from the press department of the Bundesbank?
Moreover, in a study authored in 1999 by the International Monetary Fund on the topic of gold lending by central banks, the Bundesbank is mentioned as a party that was at that time engaged in gold lending:
http://www.gata.org/files/IMFGoldLendingFullStudy1999.pdf
Take a look for example at the references to the Bundesbank’s gold lending in Paragraph 32, Box 3 on Page 22, Paragraph 49, and Footnote 10.
The questions that I have are:
First of all, is gold lending – at least indirectly – a kind of trading activity according to the understanding of the Bundesbank? Gold that gets leased out is, as the IMF study says, “usually associated with sales of gold in the spot market.“ The IMF study also states that gold lending central banks became active in the gold derivatives market with bullion banks and gold producers, „selling through forwards and options.“
How much gold did the Bundesbank lent out?
Is this an ongoing process, or did it stop? If the latter is the case, when did it stop?
Was the claim returned to you? And if it is the case that the claim is uncollectible, what will happen on your balance sheet and when will that be communicated to whom?
Thank you very much for your attention, sir!
Best regards,
Lars Schall.
Today I have received the following reply from Ms. Kreutzer. It reads:
Dear Mr Schall,
Dr Dombret forwarded your email to me.
Please note that the Bundesbank does not trade with its gold reserves.
The following op-ed article by Mr Thiele published in the German newspaper „Die Welt“ in November might be quite helpful in answering your questions. Unfortunately, the article is in German only.
Kind regards,
Susanne Kreutzer
Here’s the article by Carl-Ludwig Thiele, member of the Bundesbanks’s executive board:
Das goldene Erbe im Schutz vor politischer Willkür
And so here you got it once again. Just as Chris Powell, the secretary of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee said yesterday on Russia Today’s “Capitol Account”:
“You can go to the central banks and ask them why can’t we see your swap and your leases, what are you doing in the gold market? A freelance writer in Germany, Lars Schall, has been putting these questions to central banks in the last few months, and of course he pretty much gets the door slammed in his face. This is the whole ball game: They can’t talk about it. All you have to do is to ask them specific questions, and the scheme falls apart.”
GATA’s Bill Murphy & Chris Powell call out Gold and Silver Market Manipulation Conspiracy Critics
Lars, you do wonderful work, the work of a true, conscientious journalist. It’s terrible that it seems so unusual to me as I read of you following each line of inquiry.
Best wishes to you and your family in the Christmas season.
It is time to draw the most glaringly obvious inferences from this staunch refusal to share the truth. For one thing is certain, such stubborn refusal must and will continue unabated. The Bundesbank could not care less about the morality of their position, both in deceiving the public and in declining to offer any accountability.
The Bundesbank is impotent, it can’t give the game away. That is not its job; its job is to do what all privately-owned Central Banks were created to do- steal from the nation’s citizens. The Bundesbank has no say in where the Gold Bullion goes. It only has a say in paper gold and its balance sheet positioning.
This is the reality. Many continue to disclose these truths, most recently preciousmetalspete at his blogspot site. There is no longer any reason to not arm oneself with these truths, and then to take the necessary steps to defend one’s future finances.
For ultimately, the fact remains that the Bundesbank will NEVER talk, but so what? Each and every insightful individual should be capable of deducing that the once in many lifetimes opportunity to protect and profit from the inevitable new financial system can be achieved only by buying PHYSICAL GOLD!
Hi Lars,
keep up the good fight mate, persistance does pay off.
Case in point, I have been campigning since Apr 2012 to get the Reserve Bank of Australia (Australia’s Central Bank) to disclose the location of their 80 tonne gold holding and have been getting repeated responses of „The Bank does not publish the location of its gold reserves“ (last reponse here: http://ausbullion.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/rba-has-foi-pf-key.html).
I have lobbied politicians and people of influence in the Australian financial industry without seemingly any result until this week when I scored a breakthrough with this response from the same PR Manager:
„Thank you for your email.
As at end-June 2011 the Reserve Bank of Australia held 80 tonnes of gold in London Good Delivery bars. The Reserve Bank holds 99.9 per cent of its gold reserves in the United Kingdom at the Bank of England. The remaining 0.1 per cent is held at the Reserve Bank’s Head Office in Sydney.
London is a major global gold trading market and the Bank of England provides a secure and cost-effective storage location for central banks and market participants. The Reserve Bank has processes in place to ensure that the gold reserves are maintained appropriately. It is not considered necessary from management, security or operational perspectives to relocate the gold bars to a facility in Australia.
The Reserve Bank has reviewed its approach to releasing details about its management of the physical reserves of gold and decided to release the above information.“
The full story can be read here:
http://ausbullion.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/reserve-bank-of-australia-admits-999-of.html