USA may have the largest gold reserves, but a lot of it belongs to other countries. And those countries have been asking for their gold over the past few years, demanding repatriation of what belongs to them. Well the Fed will never run out of paper fiat money because they can just print more, but they may well run out of gold.   

Here is the list of the top ten countries possessing gold, along with the percentage of foreign reserves (other country’s gold) that they hold:  

USA 8133 tonnes - 75% of foreign reserves 

Germany 3371- 70% 

Italy 2451 - 67% 

France 2436 - 63% 

Russia 1909 - 17% - (largest buyer of gold over past 6 years) 

China 1842 - 2.4% 

Switzerland 1040 - 5.3% 

Japan 765 - 2.5% 

Netherlands 1040 - 5.3% 

India 612.5 - 68%  

The Federal Reserve Bank in New York holds about 6000 tons of gold in their vaults on Liberty Street in Lower Manhattan, but it’s not theirs. American gold is in Fort Knox. All that Fed held gold belongs to other countries (and the IMF). And those countries have been asking for their gold. Germany was the biggest example recently, and even they struggled to get what is actually theirs. Why should it take them seven years to get 300 tons of their own gold from the Fed vaults? One reason apparently is because the gold bars there are old and of poorer quality, so they need to be melted down and purified to meet modern standards.    

But another reason could be that the Fed simply didn’t have the gold. They had loaned it out to artificially manipulate the gold price or support some other weak bank somewhere else. This is what these insiders do in the financial industry. Even gold is not immune to being tarnished by unscrupulous and greedy traders. White collar crime could here be called gold cufflink crime.   

  Smaller countries will give their gold to the fed to store for them as a safety mechanism. This went on particularly during the Cold War, when the west thought that Russia might invade Europe, so they hid their gold in America. But then America struggled to give it back. I know it’s heavy but that’s not the real reason. And when still other countries also started demanding theirs too, it looked like a bank run on gold was happening. That could become very embarrassing to the Fed and America if they run out of the precious metal and can’t give it back to the rightful owners.   

Another huge holder of gold, namely Turkey has also been demanding their reserves back from storage. Their president, Mr Erdogan made a good point once when he questioned why the world has to take out international loans in dollars, which are vulnerable to exchange rate fluctuation. He suggested the brilliant idea of making loans backed by gold. That is a great step toward a gold standard, which is idyllic, though not as controllable by TPTB (the powers that be).    

As Russia and China continue to amass large amounts of gold, and India – as always – also accumulates as a hedge, the Fed’s gold stash may be running low. If there ever is a bank run on the gold there, and they have to shut their doors to the world asking for what is theirs, it could send the price climbing to its real true value, not the artificially suppressed value we see currently.  

Just remember, you can print more paper fiat money, and you can hard fork bitcoin (although the BTC maximalists won’t like that hard truth) but you can never make more gold, other than what the earth is willing to give up to miners. I live in South Africa, the home of deep gold mining, some of the deepest mines in the world. My country is built on gold, and the sweat of “slave labour” to mine the stuff by hand, miles underground, particularly during the Apartheid era. So gold is the colour of our nation, our sports team (with green) and our heritage.   

With the world economy on the brink of another recession, gold is the best hedge for investors at present, and I envision a potential price of $10 000 gold if things really go south. And south is looking mighty likely as world powers shift now in the 21st century – the century of Asia and the rise of China, along with the end of the American Empire. 2020 will be a deciding year, with American elections, and instability as the new norm in half the countries of the world, so buy yourself some gold and don’t leave it at the bank. Possession of physical gold is the only way to guarantee your security as a commodities investor. It’s as simple as that. If you don’t hold it, you don’t control it.   

Ref:  https://www.thestreet.com/video/14282652/why-germany-getting-its-gold-back-is-a-bigger-deal-than-you-think.html