And then there is the news that the Federal Office of Comptroller in
Germany pointed out that the German gold reserves in France, England
and the US had not been inspected and verified since, hmmm, forever.
This despite the fact that the government is in fact obliged to
receive reports of such inspections in regular intervals, and does in
fact receive them from the Bundesbank in regards to gold and specie
stored in Germany itself.
Interestingly the Bundesbank immediately declared that no such
inspection was required as the gold was being certified regularly in
the countries it is stored in, while the Comptroller pointed out that
the request has in fact the force of law and wasn’t open for
discussion. The government itself seems to have excelled at silence on
the subject and in typical German fashion, the electorate dozed on…

Imagine a bunch of German bureaucrats in cheap suits showing up at a
depositary with a drill and a list of bar numbers. Such fun… And the
wonders it might do for the gold price when it so happened that the
world’s second-largest national hoard turned out to, well, you know,
not be there.