Jim Rickards lays out a plan to commandeer Germany’s and all foreign depositors of sovereign gold at the New York Fed as currency wars heat up and the ‘nuclear option’ of hoarding and raising the price of Gold is contemplated by an embattled Fed as a way to force down the exchange value of the US dollar.

Pie chart provided by Dimitri Speck

Listen to Jim Rickards interview

Peter Boehringer, head of Germany’s precious metal society responds to Rickards:

As max and Dimi have already confirmed: It is no secret that the bulk ok Germany´s national gold is not in Germany (and has not been since the 1960s when Germany has earned most of the gold through its trade surplusses) but in NYC and London and a little bit in Paris, too. Even the Bundesbank itself has confirmed this part of the story several times – and “defended” that storage policy with “reasons of trading convenience and historical storage custom”…

As far as [just] GERMANY´s gold is concerned, we are however talking about close to 3,400 tons, not 6,000.

Re Jim Rickard´s “creative” idea that the US are about to implement an official gold standard and a new gold dollar: well – I am not so certain about that – because just recently, we have heard an Obama claqueur arguing for an official sale of the US gold [261m oz / 8100 tons], which sort of contradicts that speculation. Actually I believe that the likes of JPM are in desperate need to cover their short positions and therefore would welcome a sale of these tonnages to them – which in turn would prevent the US from going on a gold standard again by “lack of material”.

But for the sake of argument just imagine for a second Jim Rickards had a valid point: In this case, the US would have to move very quickly, because if China continues to secretely amass gold, in a future gold dollar based world, it could at a certain point establish its own gold yuan, too. So could very soon do Russia and some other current gold buying nations. And do not forget that – in this case, Switzerland, Italy and France were overnight superpowers, too, because of their high gold per capita ratios. Germany would NOT be – due to the reasons mentioned above…

My thoughts so far. Jim is speculating here – actually I would call it wishful thinking of a goldbug . One cannot rule it out. But the US would have to move quickly in order to emerge as a winner of this game. The big winners would be the gold superpowers behind JPM & GS, all goldbugs, all GoldMoney customers , and of course all future SAVERS in the world who would -after 30+ years- finally have a save currency to save again. Obama however would have to figure out a way for its nation to live within its means and to get rid of the “Keynesian paper money standard” currently providing 50% of US´s federal budget expenses [1.5 trillion $ p.a.]…

Similar story for almost all western nations, too.

Brgds

MK: Please note that Rickards is saying that the U.S. may commandeer all of the foreign Gold they hold on deposit – 6,000 tons (in addition to the 8,000 tons at Fort Knox) – including Germany’s Gold, but exact tonage per sovereign was not spelled out by Rickards. Based on the above analysis, the German component would be approximately 66% of the approximately 6,000 tons “held” by Germany.