Ben Bernanke and the rest of the US Federal Reserve bet the farm that they could engage in countless monetary interventions, keep interest rates at zero, and print over $2 trillion in new money without damaging the US’s credibility.
They were wrong. Indeed, Germany just fired a major warning shot to the US Federal Reserve.
On Monday, Germany announced that it will be moving a significant portion of its Gold reserves out of storage with the New York Fed and moving them back to Germany.
A few background details.
- Germany has the second largest Gold reserves in the world behind the US.
- Since the early ‘80s, Germany has stored the largest portion of its Gold reserves with the New York Fed (45% vs. 13% in London, 11% in Paris and the remaining 31% in Frankfurt).
- In the fall of last year, German officials began raising the issue of auditing its reserves at the NY Fed.
Why would Germany suddenly decide that it wants to change a policy it has had in place for over 30 years?
More importantly, how did it go from wanting to audit its reserves to actually removing them from the NY Fed’s care?
In simple terms, Germany has just announced that it doesn’t trust the US Fed.
The world’s Central Banks have been staging a global currency way for several years now. Germany, China, Japan, and the US all want to keep their currencies weak to improve exports and minimize their debt loads.
In the case of Germany, it’s the second largest exporter of goods in the world behind China. More than anyone in the EU, Germany wants a weak Euro. However, every time the Fed announces a new policy, the US Dollar falls, the Euro rallies and German exports fall off a cliff.
Germany is now openly telling the Fed that it is done playing around. This will have severe consequences in the financial system.
Remember, the only thing holding the financial system together is belief in the Central Banks. If the Central Banks (it was Germany’s Bundesbank that is behind the Gold move) stop trusting one another or grow openly antagonistic, then things will get very bad very quickly.
For months now we’ve been asserting that the “improvements” in the global economy and financial system were a mirage. Germany’s move has confirmed this. If the financial system was in fact safe and the global economy was improving, Germany would not feel the need to repatriate its Gold.
Which begs the question, what exactly do German Central Bankers know that we don’t?