Swiss, French call to bring home gold reserves as Dutch move 122 tons out of US
The financial crisis in Europe is prompting some nations to
repatriate their gold reserves to national vaults. The Netherlands has
moved $5 billion worth of gold from New York, and some are calling for
similar action from France, Switzerland, and Germany.
An unmatched pace of
money printing by major central banks has boosted concerns in
European countries over the safety of their gold reserves
abroad.
The Dutch central bank – De Nederlandsche Bank – was one of the
latest to make the move. The bank announced last Friday that it
moved a fifth of its total 612.5-metric-ton gold reserve from New
York to Amsterdam earlier in November.
It was done in an effort to redistribute the gold stock in “a
more balanced way,” and to boost public confidence, the bank
explained.
“With this adjustment the Dutch Central Bank joins other
banks that are keeping a larger share of their gold supply in
their own country,” the bank said in a statement. “In
addition to a more balanced division of the gold reserves...this
may also contribute to a positive confidence effect with the
public.”
Dutch gold reserves are now divided as follows: 31 percent in
Amsterdam, 31 percent in New York, 20 percent in Ottawa, Canada
and 18 percent in London.
Meanwhile, Switzerland has organized the ‘Save Our Swiss Gold’
referendum, which is taking place on November 30. If passed, it
would force the Swiss National Bank to convert a fifth of its
assets into gold and repatriate all of its reserves from vaults
in the UK and Canada.
“The Swiss initiative is merely part of an increasing global
scramble towards gold and away from the endless printing of
money. Huge movements of gold are going on right now,” Koos
Jansen, an Amsterdam-based gold analyst for the Singaporean
precious metal dealer BullionStar, told the Guardian.
France has also recently joined in on the trend, with the leader
of the far-right National Front party Marine Le Pen calling on
the central bank to repatriate the country’s gold reserves.
In an open letter to the governor of the Banque de France,
Christian Noyer, Le Pen also demanded an audit of 2,435 tons of
physical gold inventory.
Germany tried and failed to adopt a similar path in early 2013 by
announcing a plan to repatriate some of its gold reserves back
from the US and France.
The efforts fizzled out this summer, when it was announced that
Germany decided to leave $635 billion worth of gold in US vaults.
Germany only keeps about a third of its gold at home. Forty-five
percent is held in New York, 13 percent in London, 11 percent in
Paris, and only 31 percent in the Bundesbank in Frankfurt.
Read more at
