Wow.
An old adage comes to mind: "If you're going to panic, panic First."
Sounds like Germany is panicking correctly... But there hasn't been a lot of information/speculation on WHY they are panicking yet.
Could Germany just be hitting some hard times and happen to NEED their gold back? Or perhaps there is some famous German nation ego growing out of control in the Reichstag again, like has happened twice before, and it needs funding...
Oddly it might not be a trust issue with US banks, like I would first guess... There could be all kinds of reasons, and some of them not very hard to believe. Meanwhile, if it was just a lack of trust in the Fed, then wouldn't other countries in worse positions pull out of the fed first? (Such as all of the PIGS.)
It probably doesn't matter though. This could very well start the final downward fall of the USD no matter why it happened. Time for me to exchange the last of my USD now... Good luck bros.
There's a few prevailing theories.
#1 (The "Accepted" version) - Germany is getting greedy and doesn't want to pay NY or any other bank to hold their gold, so they're moving it all back home so they don't have to pay anyone.
#2 (My theory) - Germany inspected the BNY vaults back in November. They didn't like what they saw. BNY refused for more than a solid month to let them review the assets that are rightfully theirs. This was more than enough time to truck in gold from other places or to play games with it. Afterwards BNY let them review something like only 5% of the gold that is held there, far less than they are owed. During this time, they felt very uncomfortable with BNY and decided to withdraw it. Personally, I have a major concern that BNY is working with COMEX to use the foreign gold reserves to float physical delivery.
When UTexas closed their gold contract for $1 billion of gold (Only 664,300 ounces), comex took something like 3 days to provide it to them for inspection, beyond the required margin for delivery. This was early last year when gold was around $1400-$1500 per ounce.
This SHOULD be of major concern to
any bank who holds gold in US reserves. If Comex can't pony up with a measly 6,643 gold bars, what happens when Germany asks for their 44,572,500 gold bars?
#3 (A popular one) - Germany plans in the near future to see the EU collapse and re-introduce a gold mark. It wasn't that long ago that West Germany backed the mark with gold, and they could do it again with the over 3,000 tons of gold they have.
