Bundesbank confirms Germany’s gold is in play

11:10a ET Monday, August 24, 2009

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, today confirmed that much of its gold is held outside the country at “trading centers” where the bank conducts “its gold activities.”

The Bundesbank’s statement, unsigned and issued by the bank’s press office, came as an e-mailed reply to GATA consultant Rob Kirby of Kirby Analytics in Toronto (http://www.kirbyanalytics.com/), who sought the Bundesbank’s comment on international journalist Max Keiser’s recent assertion that the Bundesbank had told him that most of Germany’s gold is in the custody of the United States in New York:

http://www.gata.org/node/7672

While contending that Keiser’s assertion was “not correct,” the Bundesbank’s reply to Kirby acknowledged that at least some German gold reserves indeed are held outside the country, maintained that this is common practice among central banks, and implied that the Bundesbank is trading gold despite its long-held position that it is not selling the gold it has been entitled to sell under the European Central bank gold agreement.

The Bundesbank’s reply to Kirby did not specify its “market-related reasons” for keeping gold at “major gold trading centers,” nor the bank’s “gold activities” there. But central banks often “lease” gold, lending it to bullion banks for sale into the market in exchange for a tiny interest payment, a currency-intervention mechanism used by central banks to suppress the gold price and support government currencies and bonds.

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