Bank of England – praag.org

Germany’s Bundesbank resumes gold repatriation

The Bundesbank successfully continued and further stepped up its transfers of gold last year. In 2014, 120 tonnes of gold were transferred to Frankfurt am Main from storage locations abroad: 35 tonnes from Paris and 85 tonnes from New York. “Implementation of our new gold storage plan is proceeding smoothly. Operations are running very much according to schedule,” said Carl-Ludwig Thiele, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank.

The Bundesbank took advantage of the transfer from New York to have roughly 50 tonnes of gold melted down and recast according to the London Good Delivery standard, today’s internationally recognised standard. “We also called on the expertise of the Bank for International Settlements for the spot checks that had to be carried out. As expected, there were no irregularities,” said Mr Thiele.

According to its new gold storage plan, unveiled in January 2013, the Bundesbank will be storing half of Germany’s gold reserves in its own vaults from 2020 onwards. This necessitates a phased transfer to Frankfurt am Main of 300 tonnes of gold from New York and all 374 tonnes of gold from Paris.

Since the transfers began in 2013, the Bank has relocated a total of 157 tonnes of gold to Frankfurt am Main – 67 tonnes from Paris and 90 tonnes from New York. This is equivalent to roughly 23% of the total quantity to be transferred.

The Bundesbank assures the identity and authenticity of German gold reserves throughout the transfer process – from when they are removed from warehouses abroad until they are stored in Frankfurt am Main. As soon as the gold was removed from the warehouse locations abroad, Bundesbank employees cross-checked the lists of bars belonging to the Bundesbank against the information on the bars removed. Finally, once they arrived in Frankfurt am Main, all the transferred gold bars were thoroughly and exhaustively inspected and verified by the Bundesbank. When all the inspections had been concluded, no irregularities came to light with regard to the authenticity, fineness and weight of the bars.

The gold community paid great attention to the decision of the German Bundesbank to “bring German gold home”. At the beginning of 2013, the Bundesbank announced it would repatriate 300 tonnes of gold stored in the US by 2020. It is well behind schedule, citing logistical difficulties. Yet diplomatic difficulties are more likely to be the chief cause of the delay, especially seeing as the Bundesbank has proven its capacity to organise large-scale gold transports. In the early 2000s, the Bundesbank incrementally repatriated 930 tonnes of German gold held by the Bank of England.

Source: BUBA

Austria mulling gold repatriation

The Austrian state audit court says the central bank should address the concentration risk of storing 80% of its gold reserves with the Bank of England, Standard reports, citing draft audit report.

The court has advised the central bank to diversify storage locations, and contract partners, Bloomberg reported.

The Austrian central bank is currently reviewing gold storage concept, and doesn’t rule out relocating some of its gold from London to Austria.

Standard cited unidentified central bank officials.

The gold reserves of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) and their deposits in the UK and in Switzerland are a recurring theme in political discussions.

Especially after the example of the Deutsche Bundesbank the Austrians are serious about bringing gold home.

Given the “high concentration of risk in the Bank of England” the bank is also reviewing the “actual spread of the storage locations”.

Austria has 280 tons gold reserves, according to 2013 annual report, but only a small part (17 percent) is kept in Vienna, while 80 percent of the reserves are located in London, and three percent in Switzerland.

In comparison, the German Bundesbank has 3400 tons of gold, about half of it in the United States.

The decision was taken to resettle half of the gold to Germany.

Bank Of England leads drive for deposit confiscation

Talks under the auspices of the global Financial Stability Board (FSB) over the summer are approaching a key stage as officials aim to clinch an agreement on bail-ins and the bailing in of creditors including depositors of banks.

Finance officials are hoping to pave the way for proposals to be tabled at the G20 leaders meeting at the Brisbane summit in November.

The issue is of major consequence to globally systemic lenders such as Citigroup, Barclays and BNP Paribas, as some will have to issue billions of dollars of fresh bonds earmarked to carry losses.

The issue is of major consequence also to depositors who could see their savings confiscated as happened in Cyprus.

The complexity of the topic and differences between countries’ legal regimes and corporate structures are raising questions over how detailed any framework will be.

Bank of England officials led by Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, are attempting to bridge sharp differences among leading G20 countries as they prepare a landmark set of proposals aimed at tackling the problem of “too big to fail” banks according to the Financial Times today.

Japan is one of the countries with problems with bail-in plans amid concerns that they are not easily compatible with the structure of its banking system. Its banks are heavily deposit-funded, and officials are uncomfortable about the idea of bail-ins.

Japanese banks are already vulnerable and bail-ins could hurt consumer sentiment in the already struggling Japanese economy. Concerns in Tokyo are said to be sufficiently profound for it to push its case right up to the summit itself.

China is also sceptical about the notion of private sector bail-ins given its banks are state-owned. “There are some very entrenched positions,” one official told the FT.

Russia is likely to oppose the coming bail-in regime as well as many other large creditor nations.

Mr Carney, who also chairs the FSB, said in March he wanted to “break the back” of the too big to fail issue this year. He said regulators sought by Brisbane to have cracked two major issues – on the loss absorbing capacity that big banks have to hold and on contractual provisions in derivatives contracts.

Bail-ins are coming to banks in the western world with consequences for depositors.

Source: CoreGold

Greece hires Goldman Sachs, Rothschild to ‘help economy’

Who better to help Greece escape financial turmoil than Wall Street mafia head Goldman Sachs and the international banking elite family known as the Rothschilds?

According to an official statement as reported by Reuters, Greece’s bank rescue fund has turned to the banking mafia duo in order to sell off two Greek banks (Proton and Hellenic Postbank) that were all but decimated by the economic turmoil in the nation. And who better to help sell these banks and help Greece to get back to a stable economic than Goldman Sachs, who actually was very helpful in helping to wage financial warfare on the Greek people through hiding Greece’s debt.

But that, of course, is just seasoning on top of the ironic yet horrific dish cooked up by this rescue fund in choosing the very origin of the modern banking mafia through turning to the notorious Rothschild family. From funding mega wars to originally making their massive wealth through outright deception following the Battle of Waterloo, electing any Rothschild to act as a Greek adviser is a choice that goes against the interests of the Greek people.

But then again, that is the way of the international banking cartel.

As we saw with the Cyprus incident, the wealthy bankers and connected corporate moguls pulled their voluminous amounts of cash from their accounts within the nation before the government went in and took finances from the savings of the people in order to pay for the country’s mega bailout. Even Cyprus President Nikos Anastasiadis was found to be on the list of individuals who withdrew their finances before the government-backed theft began.

According to Reuters on the partnership between the Greek bank rescue fund and the corrupt banking tag team Goldman and Rothschild in an article that has received virtually zero attention:

“Greece’s bank rescue fund has hired Rothschild and Goldman Sachs as advisers on the sale of lenders Proton and Hellenic Postbank (TT), which are most likely to be bought by bigger Greek banks, officials told Reuters on Friday.”

Back in April 2012 Zero Hedge – to loud jeers by the “pundits” who were convinced there is no chance in hell of it happening – that Goldman’s take over of the world’s central bank triumvirate: the NY Fed (Bill Dudley), the ECB (Mario Draghi) and the Bank of England, would soon be completed with Mark Carney taking over the world’s oldest central bank located on Threadneedle street.

This process has now been concluded and we have photographic evidence. – Anthony Gucciardi/Zero Hedge