IN FACT NOBODY TRUSTS A “EUROPEAN UNION” NEITHER IN A DEFINITIVE EURO

 

First it was Germany, then Holland, Belgium and France, and now Austria also. Countries of all Europe demanded the last year that their reservations of gold, often stored abroad, return home. At first sight it is strange. After all, the gold has stopped to have an important paper in the financial system and after two years of bear market, not even voucher that that before. It costs to justify the logistical difficulty or diplomat of bringing it to house. 

Then that it happens why the gold is repatriating? Is it clear, is a reflection of the growing uneasiness regarding the Euro. The crisis of the euro has left repairing during these last two years but the austerity and the recession they are passing invoice. To have the gold inside the frontiers is a policy of sure against a chaotic return to the national foreign currencies. The fact that so many countries want that guarantee he tells us something important of the euro... and not precisely soothing. In spite of all the guarantees of the BCE and of Germany it is thought that their sinking is possible. 

Austria has been the last country in speaking of recovering its gold. He has 280 tons of the valuable metal, 80% in London and other 3% in Switzerland. One week ago it was known that the Austrian Tribunal of Bills requested a revision of the possibility of transferring an important part to Vienna, where supposedly the central bank will be able to watch over him closely.  

It is a growing tendency. In Germany, an important public campaign and of press it takes years demanding that the gold is returned from the country to German floor. Of their enormous stock of 3.400 tons, great part is in United States, London and Paris, although now he/she has remembered that most will be returned to the control of the Bundesbank. 

In Holland, the pressure is similar. One month ago the central bank (Of Nederlandsche Bank) he had begun to bring part silently from their 600 tons of turn reservations to Amsterdam. 51% is at the moment in the Federal Reservation of New York but he will decrease to 31% and it leaves it will continue in Canada and the United Kingdom. Soon after, the governor of the Belgian central bank, Luc Coene, said in an interview in television that the repatriation of its reservations of gold (in its majority in London, Canada and Switzerland) he was studying. 

Other bigger countries could be added to the tendency. The reservations of France are among those bigger than the world, with 2.435 tons. Last month, the leader of the populist National Front, Pen Marinate Him, he requested in a letter open to the Bank of France that all the French gold returns to Paris. Also, it urged to the bank to take advantage of the fall of the price and to buy more metal. 

 Italy has not still united but with 2.451 tons, its reservations are the fourth of the world and a report of week principles suggested that the half could be in New York. Although none of the Italian politics’ agitators has still demanded their transfer to Rome, it is single question of time that this happens. By the way Spain occupies the twentieth world position with 281,6 tons  

The reservations of gold of Germany and Austria have been abroad almost all for their position in first line in the Cool War. If the tanks of the red army had advanced toward occident, he made sense that the gold was very far from the front.  

Apart from that, there is something very curious. It cannot be coincidence that so many countries of the euro area suddenly worry so much by where their gold is stored while in Great Britain, USA or Japan anybody cares it. The reason doesn't cost to discover it. People are more and more nervous for her money and in those circumstances she is renewed the interest for the beautiful metals. 

There are not many circumstances in those that to maintain a great load of gold in own territory is important, but one of them is a sudden and chaotic reorganization of the currency. If a country introduces a new currency suddenly and it can support it from the beginning with gold, he would have instantaneous credibility in the markets. To repatriate the gold only makes sense so that that happens. 

Of course, it is a lot for that. No central bank is scheming a secret plan of abandoning the unique but the more prepared currency you is, more probable it is that it happens. The main threat to half term for the euro is not economic but politics. If nobody trusts him, he/she won't survive and the repatriation of the gold is an indicator more than that the distrust is growing.