http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-16/bundesbank-official-statement-gold-repatriation

This is the response today from Germany's Repatriate Our Gold campaign.


Statement by Peter Boehringer
on behalf of
Repatriate Our Gold
and the German Precious Metals Association

http://www.gold-action.de/campaign.html
http://www.gold-action.de/

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

We welcome the Bundesbank's announcement to repatriate significant portions of Germany's gold held abroad.

All reasons cited in the past for this storage had either been false or at least outdated since 1990 (with the end of the Cold War and the theoretical military threat to the Bundesbank's domestic gold vaults).

We are also satisfied that propaganda arguments (e.g. "chauvinistic/nationalistic demands for repatriation," "repatriation too expensive," "absurd debate questioning the integrity of US/UK central banks," etc.) have not been repeated at the Bundesbank's press conference today. Actually, by announcing some repatriation, the Bundesbank has implicitly acknowledged our point of view of gold as real money and integral part of a nation's monetary reserves.

But we do not approve of the speed and volume of the planned repatriation.

The Bundesbank has just announced that it will repatriate only 675 tonnes by 2020 by then bringing the total of German gold held in Germany to approximately 50 percent (1,700 tonnes) of total German gold reserves. The Banque de France will allegedly be given up as a Bundesbank storage facility (374 tonnes) and up to 300 of 1,535 tonnes will be repatriated from the New York Fed.

In our view, there is a lot of room for speeding up and increasing the volumes for this repatriation.

In addition, the Repatriate our Gold campaign insists on proper and independent physical and full audits of the Bundesbank's own vaults in Germany. This includes the publishing of bar number lists, which has been overdue for years. These gold bar number lists are important to prove or disprove multiple ownership of specific bars which could have come about through gold loans. This is one more reason to audit and repatriateall gold bars -- as an incomplete audit and incomplete lists would not fulfill this important purpose.

To quote from the statement of purpose of the Repatriate Our Gold campaign:

"Gold has been natural money for thousands of years. It has been used throughout history either as physical coinage or as the solid cornerstone for stable paper currencies. Up until 1913 most Western societies prospered and grew steadily and naturally under a monetary standard with at least partial gold backing. The gradual abandonment of the gold backing throughout the 20th century and the ultimate delinkage of all currencies from gold in 1971 is the fundamental cause of the ongoing inflation (the U.S. dollar has lost 98 percent of its purchasing power since 1913) as well as the main reason for the global financial crises since 2007. We believe it is essential to re-introduce a partial gold backing for the world's monetary system. And to back future national currencies, the gold needs to be physically present in the respective country. Gold needs to be re-monetized -- at least on a voluntary basis as a means of payment the people are free to choose at any time.

"We therefore campaign for:

"-- Independent, full, neutral, and physical audits of the gold hoards of the world's central banks.

"-- The repatriation of all central bank gold; that is, the physical transport into the respective ownership countries."