It Will Take The Fed Seven Years To Deliver 300 Tons Of German Gold

January 16, 2013

Print Version

Source: Zero Hedge

With the market yet another algo-controlled snoozer, programmed to close the S&P just green(as otherwise confidence in central planning may fail), the key things we learned today are as follows:

Obama proposed 23 "gun controling" executive actions, which do little to actually control guns - that part falls to Congress, where the proposal will be promptly killed - but which will add some $4.5 billion to US spending, and which will "push for further action on his health care law, including insisting on the kind of mental health coverage states must provide under their Medicaid programs."

The breakdown of the spending is as follows, per Weekly Standard:

$4 billion for the president’s proposal “to help keep 15,000 cops on the streets in cities and towns across the country.” (That is roughly $266,000 per police officer.)
$20 million to “give states stronger incentives to make [relevant] data available [for background checks] … “$50 million for this purpose in FY2014”
“$14 million to help train 14,000 more police officers and other public and private personnel to respond to active shooter situations.”
“$10 million for the Centers for Disease Control to conduct further research, including investigating the relationship between video games, media images, and violence.”
$20 million to expand the National Violent Death Reporting System.
$150 million to “put up to 1,000 new school resource officers and school counselors on the job.”

What can one say: politics, fully, theatrically and embarrassingly "endorsed" by the children sitting behind the president.

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But the biggest news of the day comes from the official Buba announcement that, in its official capacity as a prudent central bank, it - as first of many - is looking to repatriate some 300 tons of gold from the New York Fed. That, however, is not today's news - that was Monday's news.

What is news is that courtesy of the supplied calendar of events in the Buba statement, it will take the Fed some seven years to procure Germany's 300 tons of gold. This is the same Fed that, in its own words, holds some "216 million troy ounces of gold" or some 6720 tons, in its vault 80 feet below ground level.

Putting the above in perspective, the amount of gold that Germany will have to wait 7 years for is shown in red. The amount of gold the Fed supposedly holds, is shown in yellow with a shade of tungsten. Why it will take the Fed 7 years to part with an amount of gold that is less than 5% of its total holdings is anyone's guess...

unless of course, the bulk of the gold in the column on the right has been rehypothecated numerous times to serve as collateral for countless counterparties, and it is no longer clear just who own what to anyone.

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We can only wonder how many centuries it will take the New York Fed to deliver all the gold held by third parties in its vault, once the demand notices start rushing in...

For all those curious how the Fed itself describes the gold vault and its contents, can read more in the pamphet below: