This article appeared on Zerohedge today and it struck me as being entirely irrelevant: Central Bank Secrecy – Silence On Gold Storage. Why does it matter if a Central Bank discloses where its gold is held? They don’t allow any independent party inspections and audits so it is entirely irrelevant if we know the address of where any specific Central Bank’s gold vaults are located.
We know – or so we’re told – that the Federal Reserve stores some of its custodial in vaults in NYC (it also supposedly has a large portion of its gold in “deep storage” at West Point, but I don’t know anyone who believes that gold is really there in legal title to the U.S. Treasury or other rightful owners). But just ask Germany what good that knowledge was for them.
Allegedly the Fed keeps German custodial gold in nine different vaults (for security purposes, wink wink). But when German officials requested a visual inspection of the gold – roughly 1500 tonnes at the time – the Fed would allow the German party that had flown to NYC into only one of the alleged nine vaults. The Fed permitted only a partial inspection.
We know how the rest of that story has played out. An original 674 ton immediate repatriation request in 2013 was transformed into 300 tons over seven years. To this date, we still don’t know how much or little gold in the last two years has made its way back to Germany. Although some analysts go by the Fed’s reported vault numbers to infer that some amount less than 100 tons has been sent back to Germany, only a naive fool would trust those numbers.
Make no mistake about it: the Fed has spent a considerable amount of money over the last 5 years – and hired Enron’s ex-lead lobbyist, Linda Robertson – see this link – in order to sabotage any audit legislation drafted by Congress. This was specifically directed at quoshing legislation enabling Congress to audit the gold and the gold swap activities of the Fed.
Compiling a list of Central Banks who are willing or unwilling to disclose the location of their gold vaults is a pointless endeavor unless each CB is willing to undergo a completely independent audit of every bar of gold and the associated record-keeping activities connected with each bar. We have a better chance of finding life on Pluto than getting any Central Bank willing to submit to a legitimate audit open to pubic inspection.
In fact, highlighting the fact that the Bank of England will disclose its vault location in contrast to the CB’s that refuse to disclose only serves the purpose of deceitfully “legitimizing” the BoE’s reported gold holdings. It’s the exercise of setting up a strawman for the purpose of promoting fraudulent propaganda.
The Bank of England is no more willing to submit to the rigors of a legitimate independent audit than any other Central Bank. Thus, unfortunately, any reported numbers representing any amount of gold held in these vaults is nothing more than vacuous “hearsay” evidence. It’s analogous to believing that OJ Simpson was innocent.
