Quite busy at the moment with a few projects
deadlining at the same time, hence the lack of posts. This is a quick post
which is deliberately trainspotting detail so no critiques I'm ignoring the
big issues. Koos notes
that:
"January
till November 2014 the FRBNY was drained for 166 tonnes, if we subtract 123
tonnes The Netherlands got out that leaves 43 tonnes for Germany. The fact
Germany claims to have repatriated 85 tonnes from New York in 2014 means they
must have pulled 42 tonnes from the Manhattan vaults in December. By the end
of this month (January 2015) the FRBNY will release the foreign deposit data
of December and we’ll see if the numbers match."
So
given the data from FRBNY, how can we construct 123t and 43t (or 85t for the
year). I found it interesting that in Koos table 5.16t is repeated three
times, that the Feb 2014 10.31t is basically double 5.16t and that the Aug
2014 15.47 is basically 3 times 5.16t. So working from this I get the
following breakdown of the FRBNY withdrawals.
I cannot find any other way to get 123t and 85t. I
find it very interesting that Nov 2014's 47.15t less 5.16t exactly equals the
Oct 2014 41.99t and the balancing shipment for Germany for Dec 2014 has to be
41.99t. This cannot be coincidental. Issues:
- Is it possible given the somewhat random nature
of 400oz bars (assuming that is what Germany and Netherlands are
getting) that every
shipment exactly equals 5.16t or multiples thereof? (I note that the
figures are rounded to 2 decimals, so there could be some small variance
if it was shown to 3 decimals).
- 5.16t means over 400 bars that every bar is overweight. I
haven't had time to check the US Mint bar list (see here and
here)
to see whether their distributions shows this tendency to overweight.
- Maybe the coin melt or whatever non standard
bars Germany and Netherlands are getting are exact weight bars, hence
the identical shipment weights?
- If Germany has been doing 5t every month or so,
why the rush to do 42t in December? Would it have not been easier to
just do a few 10t months and spread the work out.
- Note that in the Bundesbank release
they say that "As soon as the
gold was removed from the warehouse locations abroad, Bundesbank
employees cross-checked the lists of bars belonging to the Bundesbank
against the information on the bars removed" so
that is a lot of work for December - 3360 bars to check - rather than
just 400 or 800 bars per month.
- Why would the need the expertise of the BIS?
- Why do you need to do a "spot check"
if Bundesbank employees are cross-checking every bar anyway.
- What was the "spot check" - given
point above it isn't a check of the weight and bar number on the bars to
the bar list as that is already being done.
- It can't be an assay check as they would have
said that explicitly and in any case if anyone should help with that it
should be someone from the refinery doing the reprocessing, not the BIS.
- All I can think is it was weighing the bars
(that weren't being reprocessed) on a scale to check the weight was
correct to the bar or bar list. Do you really need the BIS to help with
that?
I'll just reiterate what I said on 20
January 2014 and 21
January 2014, it is all one big central banking club and as Jim Rickards
said, it is all just a "political
sop to agitation in Germany's parliament" and there
isn't any concern on Germany's part as to whether the US has their gold, and
if there is, they can't be seen to be concerned, lest the Narrative
of Central Bank Omnipotence be questioned (even more so after SNB dropped
its peg).
