Germany to repatriate gold

Discussion in 'Gold' started by Ausecon, Jan 15, 2013.

  1. leo25

    leo25 Well-Known Member Silver Stacker

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    That articular is just as bad as something written on KWN. He had no valid points just his own opinion, yet he criticises other sites for doing the same thing.

    and this line;

    is that meant to be a joke? so are we all meant to take whats written on NY times as 100% fact now? and believe people always tell truthful statements?


    For me the 7 year time line smells fishy and with good reason. But if you think otherwise I'm not going to attack you and call you names like this crying child.
     
  2. JulieW

    JulieW Well-Known Member Silver Stacker

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    I have great respect for Jim Sinclair's perspectives:

    www.jsmineset.com
    As he points out it is a central banking issue, not a piggy bank issue
     
  3. Aengrod

    Aengrod Member

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    And by some weird act of God, Germany isn't the only country that is repatriating its gold from the States. Now, there are none that are sending more to "store". You tell me if that is a pattern.
     
  4. Lovey80

    Lovey80 Well-Known Member

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    What a joke, 2020? S will HTF well before then. I bet if Germany wanted 100% of it's gold out of London right away then London would agree to wave the 550k Euro they charge to store it for them.

    Merklemark anyone?
     
  5. Big A.D.

    Big A.D. Well-Known Member Silver Stacker

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    Has anyone considered the logistics of actually counting out, transporting, counting in and then testing 674 tonnes of gold?

    Assuming deliveries are evenly spread out, they'll be shifting 1.85 tonnes each and every week for seven years. If the gold is in the form of 400oz LBMA spec bars, each shipment will contain 148 bars.

    At current prices, each weekly shipment will be worth about $100 million in assets which are completely untraceable after being melted down. That is an incredibly tempting target for anyone looking to acquire a large amount of gold without paying for it. It's the kind of target that attracts professionals with military training and experience in special operations.

    Whoever is doing the transporting might well be uncomfortable moving more than $100 million at a time, or rushing delivery to the point where there is a very noticeable stream of armoured cars driving out of the Fed's vaults every day for months at a time. Whoever is insuring the shipments might feel similarly uncomfortable at the prospect of paying out to replace a lost delivery and wants to spread their risk out. The bigger the shipments, the more concentrated the risk.

    Then there is the testing that has to occur at the German end (because checking the gold is all there is half the reason for the exercise to begin with). These are allocated bars (i.e. with serial numbers) and they're Germans so they'll measure it down to the gram.

    Assay and (re)manufacture takes time and effort and a lot of expertise which will probably be contracted out and whoever is doing it will basically be melting down ~150 x 400oz bars each and every week for 7 years, or roughly 30 per working day, or roughly one every 15 minutes. All of them has to be checked, perhaps individually, so that if any tungsten is found - or more likely just some regular, boring impurities - it can be traced bar to an individual bar and that bar's history can be investigated to find out when and where it entered the system and who owes who the difference in weight.

    At current values, the gold in question is worth about $37 billion dollars. We're used to seeing that sort of figure tossed around in discussions about global finance but it's worth remembering that this isn't just fake 1s and 0s money, this is actual, physical real money and there are practical issues in handling it which is why people tend to just leave it sitting in vaults to begin with.
     
  6. Dogmatix

    Dogmatix Active Member

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    ^ great post, echoes my thoughts
     
  7. tiburon18savard

    tiburon18savard New Member

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  8. Silverthorn

    Silverthorn Well-Known Member

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    I wonder how they did it in the first place.

    edit

    I seem to recall the French sent a navy destroyer for theirs?
     
  9. Dogmatix

    Dogmatix Active Member

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  10. Silverthorn

    Silverthorn Well-Known Member

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  11. Logik

    Logik New Member

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    Good post but a few points:

    1) Are they transporting it evenly? Nobody knows. It's not clear if it's a 6 year wait with 1 year of transporting or if they are transporting constantly from now until 2020.
    2) As someone else mentioned, the navy would likely transport the gold. I don't think they are going to get ship-jacked.
    3) For what it's worth, the Germans are moving 300T of their reserve, not 674T but your points still stand anyway.

    To continue your admirable tone of actual analysis and facts (which should be applauded since it is sometimes absent in these communities) we should ask whether there have been large transfers of gold reserves in the past, and how long they have taken. Then we have something to compare against. Someone already mentioned the French, are there any other cases?
     
  12. Yippe-Ki-Ya

    Yippe-Ki-Ya New Member

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    lol - funny how the descendants of the Germanic Barbarians now want their 'barbaric relic from the past" back ... :lol:
     
  13. Yippe-Ki-Ya

    Yippe-Ki-Ya New Member

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    yeh but France is also the most socialist state in Europe, and would have no scruples about selling the gold to pay for their parasites.
     
  14. Big A.D.

    Big A.D. Well-Known Member Silver Stacker

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    They're pulling 300 tonnes from the Fed and another 374 tonnes from France, which will reduce their French holdings to zero, for a total of 674 tonnes.

    Obviously the distance between France and Germany is shorter than from the U.S. to Germany, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's easier or safer. There are a lot of very experienced criminals in Europe and they can cross borders and hijack armoured cars very easily (and they do).

    I also don't think that the Germans trying to freak anyone out and start a run on gold or they'd be repatriating all of theirs, not just some of it. The time frame makes the whole thing very boring. A flotilla of German warships sailing into New York Harbour on the other hand isn't boring at all. That was one of the things that pissed off the Americans when the French did it. They made a big, bold statement about how it was so important and so valuable and how they were not keeping it in America any more. The "gold window" closed shortly after.

    Basically, I think the time frame has less to do with giving the Americans time to come up with the gold and more to do with the logistical issues of moving that much valuable stuff around the world securely.
     
  15. leo25

    leo25 Well-Known Member Silver Stacker

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    Good point's.

    Now why would Germany go to all this effort for some old fashion metal that has a small market value of only 37 billion dollars? That's the big question??

    - If there is no trust issues, then keep it where it is and save yourself the hassle.
    - If gold has no role today and is only worth 37 billion, then just keep it there.
    - if you need extra money, then just do what everyone else is doing and print more and again SAVE YOURSELF THE HASSLE!
     
  16. Silverthorn

    Silverthorn Well-Known Member

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    Well to be fair if there wasn't pressure from the people I doubt the bundesbank would bother. Having said that I'm not sure a whole lot of small moves is a safer way to do it. They just want it to be more of a non-event, I suspect, than it otherwise would be.
     
  17. leo25

    leo25 Well-Known Member Silver Stacker

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    Here is another view. Make what you want from it.
    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6obTic-XKU[/youtube]
     
  18. leo25

    leo25 Well-Known Member Silver Stacker

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    and whens the last time a Central bank did what the people asked?

    The US people have been just asking to LOOK at their gold, yet i dont see them budging.
     
  19. Yippe-Ki-Ya

    Yippe-Ki-Ya New Member

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    I respectfully disagree
     
  20. Shaddam IV

    Shaddam IV Well-Known Member Silver Stacker

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    "Zeese bars contain Wolfram! Zey are not pure!"

    "They were fine when we sent them, problem must be at your end buddy".
     

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