Back in the days of the Soviets and worries about a Red Army invasion west of the Iron Curtain, Germany made a decision to hide the massive gold supplies outside German borders.

Germany has the second largest reserve of gold in the world — after the U.S. — but for years it has stored most of it in vaults in New York, France and London, rather than at home.

The German Precious Metals Association and Germany’s ‘Repatriate Our Gold’ campaign said that the move by the Bundesbank did not negate the need for a full audit of Germany’s gold.

The Telegraph headline states the Germans don’t trust President Obama (hence the reason for the decision) and then says ‘Do you blame them?’ – see article here

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100198640/the-germans-dont-trust-obama-with-their-gold-and-can-you-blame-them/

Federal Reserve responded to the Germans stating that the transfer will take seven years, noting that only 5% will be in the first shipment.

They want this to take place in order to protect against impairment of the gold reserves through leases and swaps. Indeed, they have called for independent, full, neutral and physical audits of the gold reserves of the world’s central banks and the repatriation of all central bank gold – the physical transport of gold reserves back into the respective sovereign ownership countries.

Germany has gold reserves worth 3,396 metric tons, worth about $200 billion. It is stored in the form of 27,000 gold bars — 45 percent of which are held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; 13 percent of which are in the Bank of England in London, and 11 percent of which are in the Banque de France, in Paris. The remaining 31 percent of the gold is kept in Frankfurt. Once the Bundesbank repatriates 300 tons of its gold from New York and all of the 374 tons of gold that it keeps in Paris, exactly 50 percent of Germany’s gold reserve will be stored in Frankfurt. Thirty-seven percent of the reserve will remain in New York.