What happened to the German gold?

For all goldbook owners: This is a full update on the story about ‘What happened to the German Gold?’ in ‘Deflation of Precious Metals (6)’ on page 37.

Now, I like to encourage you to read the updated full story anyway even if you’re not German. Because no matter from where you come and live the knowledge transported teaches us a fantastic lesson as this happened to many countries. We wrote about the Irish gold on September 3 2011 here: https://www.celticgold.eu/media/pdf/CGNews3rdSep2011.pdf

And the story about the Swiss Gold and how the IMF milked the Swiss people from 50% of the Swiss gold reserves:
https://www.celticgold.eu/media/pdf/CGNews15thOct2011.pdf

Here is what happened to the German gold - Updated:

According to official statistics Germany has 3,428 tons of gold, after the US the second largest gold treasure of the world. With the foundation of the ECB the German Bundesbank transferred 232 tons to the European Monetary Institute. 1,700 tons of the German gold is presumably stocked in West Point, New York. During the Cold War they preferred to shift their gold reserves abroad. The 1,700 tons were booked in the US as „Custodial Gold“ or „Deep Storage Gold“.

Update: From where did the 3,428 tons of gold come from after the Second World War? Germany had a massive boom and indeed the trading surplus Germany had been kept in gold adding up to the above amount.

The Bundesbank retains just a small part of their gold in their own vaults, a bit more than 2%, about 80 tons. The rest and bigger part of it is located in the US, England and France.

Of the approximately 3,400 tons were 1,700 tons lent out and extra +1,700 tons lent to the U.S. Exchange Stabilisation Fund. The U.S. Exchange Stabilisation Fund lent the gold to the Bullion Bank. Because information transfer about German gold is restrictively handled, nobody knows exactly how much gold exists physically at the moment. In the worst case they lent out twice 1,700 tons, so the asset would be 0 tons. One shouldn’t forget that the loaned gold only exists in the books. It won’t come back in the probable case of a crash.

Update: Now there started a public discussion where the German gold is and how the Germans do get it back.

Here’s the news:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/debate-breaks-out-ingermany-over-foreign-gold-reserves-a-833289.html

German Bundestag Examines Assessment of Gold Reserves
From Reuters, via Die Welt, Berlin
Monday, May 14, 2012, Translation by Lars Schall
http://www.welt.de/finanzen/article106305876/Bundestag-prueftBewertung-...

The German parliament, the Bundestag, is looking at the accounting of German gold reserves at the Bundesbank. Parliament's Budget Committee has requested, in opposition to the Bundesbank, a critical report by the Federal Audit Office, the newspaper Bild reports.

"The decision has been unanimous," the paper quoted the Christian Social Union budget expert Herbert Frankenhauser. 

The newspaper report alleged "account cheating" regarding the German gold reserves.

According to the Bild report, the federal auditing office complained of "inadequate dilegence of the accounting of the gold reserves, which are stored in some foreign countries. Repatriation of the gold reserves is encouraged. The German gold reserves are in part held at foreign central banks.

The federal audit office wants to weaken the report in regard to the security of other countries and provide to the parliament a shorter summary that could be read only in the secret shelter of the Bundestag. Bundesbank President Jens Weidman was trying to convince the leadership of the Union parliamentary group to prevent the demand for the report.

Germany has with 3,400 tons of gold, the world's second largest gold reserves. They are managed by the Bundesbank and are part of the country's currency reserves.

Conclusion: Let’s find out where the gold is and repatriate the gold. Venezuela was first – Germany could be next?