Germany bringing home their gold

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/01/15/germany-gold-bundesbank-us-france/

BERLIN -- Germany's central bank will repatriate some of its massive gold reserves stored in vaults in the United States and in France, a business daily reported Tuesday....

The central bank now plans to bring back to Germany some of the 1,500 tons of gold stored in the vaults of the Federal Reserve in New York, and all of the 450 tons currently stashed with the Bank of France in Paris, according to Handelsblatt.

The German government no longer trusts the Federal Reserve in light of the shipment of gold-plated tungsten to China a few years ago and many rumors about the Fed counterfeiting gold. Part of the problem also is that the central banks lease out a lot of the gold which they claim to have.

Earlier this year Nicaragua took back all of its gold from London. Now Germany wants France to send all of their gold being stored in Paris, along with 50 tons per year for the next three years from the Fed and another big chunk from London.

I suspect that the Germans are uneasy over the conflict over the Chinese dynastic families who are also demanding their gold put on deposit with the Fed from 1928-1938. Those amounts are so massive that there is no way the Fed could ever return that gold. But with China rising in economic and military power, and the Federal Reserve in decline, some Germans who know about this are nervous that they may lay claim to whatever is left in the hands of the Fed. So they want to get back their gold while it is still available, since there is not enough to pay back everyone.

Anyway, although Germany has been talking about this for months, this news article shows that the final gold repatriation request is now being issued. The timing is important, coming on 1/15, which is a type of Passover. In the past two years we have seen the major signs on 1/14, but both days can be considered to be Passover, as you know. I think this is the economic sign we have been watching for. (There may be more yet to come that has not yet hit the news.)

 Remember, too, that last year when Nicaragua demanded the return of 160-180 tons of gold from London, the price of gold spiked to over $1900/oz. Now Germany is repatriating about 370 tons of gold from Paris alone, in addition to 150 tons from New York and more from London. Back in 2001 they repatriated about 600 tons from London, which was more than half of what London was holding for them.

Gold and silver are both up on the news. I wonder if this will begin an upward trend in the prices as we saw a year ago.