The Fed and Gold

On August 11, 2017, the Wall Street Journal carried a front-page article on the Fed, raising a question of its storage of gold. In my latest book I provide much more information on this subject. The following is excerpted from my book The Impending Monetary Revolution, the Dollar and Gold, Second Edition:

After WWII when there were fears of an invasion from the Soviet Union, Germany—which was facing hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops just across its border—stored much of its gold in the U.S., London, and France. In 2012 the German federal audit office told legislators that the nation's gold in foreign storage had never been audited and called for this be corrected. In previous years, dating at least as far back as 2007, the German government requested return of at least part of its gold stored at the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank in New York but without success. The Fed refused to allow German representatives even to see their gold, offering instead a variety of excuses, including “security” and “no room for visitors.”

 

Eventually, visiting German officials were shown five or six gold bars and told these were “representative for Germany's holding.” But the gold bars were not numbered and allocated, so they could be shown to any number of banks as “their” gold. For years the Fed website stated “All bars brought into the vault for deposit are carefully weighed, and the refiner and fineness (purity) markings on the bars are inspected to ensure they agree with the depositor instructions and recorded in the New York Fed’s records. This step is vital because the New York Fed returns the exact bars deposited by the account holder upon withdrawal—gold deposits are not considered fungible.” (emphasis added). That message was withdrawn in 2014 and replaced with “page unavailable.”

In October 2012, Germany said it would repatriate 300 tons of its gold from the Fed. Three months later, in January 2013, it was announced that the U.S. and Germany agreed the U.S. would return 300 tonnes of gold to Germany in a series of shipments that would take until 2020 to complete. The U.S. would continue to store the remaining 1,236 tonnes of Germany's gold.

All this certainly gives the appearance the New York Fed did not actually have the gold. If the bank had it, why not simply give it to Germany instead of stalling and offering excuses? It was, after all, their gold. And why would it take 7 years to return 300 tons? It could be done in a week if necessary; certainly several weeks or even months would be more than adequate—but 7 years? Germany had previously repatriated 940 tons of its gold from the Bank of England without undue delay.

If the New York Fed bank did not have gold for Germany, it would have to buy it to repay Germany, and a large purchase would push up the price, which the bank certainly did not want. Or the bank may have the gold, but it may have been leased, hypothecated or encumbered in some manner so that it could not be transferred to Germany. These possibilities, too, would require additional time to unwind.

It is significant that back in 1999 a study by the International Monetary Fund found that central banks of 80 nations were lending out their gold reserves. The loans amounted to 15 percent of their gold. The central banks were operating as fractional reserve banks, not custodians.

In 1998 Fed chairman Alan Greenspan testified at a House Banking Committee, “Central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities, should the price of gold rise.” In other words, if gold prices go up, the Fed would make sure they come back down. Why? Apparently because of fear a rising gold price would weaken the dollar's exchange rate and the Fed's control of interest rates, but it would also discourage people from buying gold as an investment, which would also be negative for the dollar. In 2013, gold prices were much higher than in 1998, giving the Fed a stronger reason for knocking down the gold price. And Germany's request to repatriate its gold would be an even stronger reason if the Fed did not actually have all the gold it was supposed to have.

Most Americans would be incredulous that the Fed could be involved in manipulations that left it unable to honor its custodial agreement with Germany. But the European Central Bank website states, regarding statistical treatment of Eurosystem's International Reserves: “reversible transactions in gold do not have any effect on the level of monetary gold regardless of the type of transaction (i.e. gold swaps, repos, deposits or loans), in line with the recommendations contained in the IMF guidelines.” (emphasis theirs). Thus central banks are permitted to carry physical gold on their balance sheet even if they've swapped it or lent it out entirely

Perhaps as a reaction to criticism of its own lack of transparency and cooperation on the German repatriation, the Fed itself in September 2012 asked the Office of the Inspector General of the Treasury to audit the gold. This was to be an audit of gold in the Federal Reserve System and did not include Fort Knox.

The audit took place on September 30, 2012, and the Treasury Report on it is dated January 4, 2013. The report states 99.98% of all Fed gold is held at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The remaining 0.02% is in coins at other Fed banks around the country. The audit found the New York Fed had 13,378,981.032   troy ounces of gold bars and 73,829.500  troy ounces of gold coins. Converting those troy ounces to metric tons results in a combined total of 419 metric tons. That's all. Yet Germany was supposed to have 1,500 tons of its gold here. And at least 60 other sovereign nations believe their gold is being stored by the Fed there, too.

Further doubt about whether the Fed actually has German gold is raised by the Fed's performance since it agreed in mid-January 2013 to repatriate 300 tons to Germany in seven years. In all of 2013 it sent Germany a paltry 5 tons. In 2011 when Venezuela decided to repatriate its gold from foreign banks, its 160 tons of gold were brought home in two months and five days, ending in January 2012.

Dr. Long Xinming writes that after WWII

“The FED came to all countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa and told them their gold holdings might not be safe because of the war, and they should permit the FED to take all of it to the US for safekeeping. Many countries obliged, receiving FED gold certificates in exchange, but when they later tried to cash in those certificates and reclaim their gold, they were told the certificates were fake, that they contained spelling and other mistakes which the FED would never have made, and that the serial numbers were wrong. And the FED still has all that gold.…

“Apparently a few people have been successful in presenting their certificates to the FED, with documentation that was irrefutable, but even in those cases the owners were forced to settle for only 1% or 2% of the actual value. And most other people or nations who attempt to redeem these certificates are arrested by the FBI for fraud – at the request of the FED.

“Late last year, a Canadian businessman had some of these certificates and tried to use them as collateral for a loan, and the FED had him arrested, extradited to the US, and charged him with fraud. Insiders claim this is common practice to frighten every one away...

“For many years after the war, the FED denied these transactions and even denied the existence of these certificates. But a crashed US military plane was found in the Philippine jungle with heavy wooden boxes full of metal containers, all with FED markings, and all containing hundreds of billions of dollars of these same certificates. That was when the entire story finally became public, but the Western media have never cared to report on it.

“I have many photos of the content of that aircraft, of the boxes and the cans and the certificates, if anybody cares to see.”

The Fed says it is storing gold for more than 60 central banks, governments, and a few institutions such as the International Monetary Fund in 122 separate accounts at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. How many of these would have to request repatriation or audits of their accounts before an avalanche of similar requests will follow? If there is not enough gold to cover all accounts, no central bank will want to be one of the last to claim its share. There will be a run on the bank such as the world has never seen.

Hyperlinks are not available for sources in the above, but sources are referenced in the print version. Be sure to get the second edition of The Impending Monetary Revolution, the Dollar and Gold because it contains six new chapters not found in the earlier edition. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other sellers offer only the first edition. The second edition is available only from American Liberty Publishers. (amlibpub.com)