Note to anyone getting gold from Fort Knox.... Bite it ........
Hi, my jokes aside. Our Aussie Gold has been held in UK vaults for decades upon decades. Every attempt for an explanation over that time has been met with ........................................................
The UK has "Our Gold" and keeps refusing to give us an explanation.
Der.....they no longer have our Gold!
They've screwed Australia....... again.....
Great Southern Land my ..##&.......... more like great southern UK bank!$
The Bank of England holds around one-fifth of the world’s gold in its secure vaults, the second largest holder after the New York Federal Reserve. But it’s not all ours. The gold is a mixture of our own national reserves, the national reserves from around 30 other countries (including 99.9% of Australia’s gold), and various investors.
The reasons are simple. London is the world’s largest trading centre for gold (around 70% of global trading), allowing ready access to the market; the BoE vaults provide a secure and cost-effective storage facility (including for small countries and those which are politically unstable); its audit procedures are trusted; and most gold market participants prefer to take delivery in London.
The BoE holds gold in two ways: individually serial-numbered bars that are specifically attributable to the actual owners (allocated gold); and other bars which meet the London Bullion Market Association’s (LBMA’s) ‘Good Delivery’ standards as a general ‘pool’ to which customers have an entitlement in line with their deposits but not the specific bars they originally deposited (unallocated gold).
The gold holdings do not accrue interest, but are revalued twice per day in line with the LBMA gold price and the owners of the gold directly experience the consequent changes in value of what they own (both up and down).
Some countries lend their gold on the market for profit, generally without the bars themselves being physically moved. In the case of Australia, which has participated in the lending market for more than 30 years, there have been times when they have lent out almost all of their gold (notably around 2003). The returns from which they have benefited would not have been achievable had the gold been stored in Australia.
In the last few weeks, about 2% of the gold held by BoE but in ownership of international banks (notably JPMorgan and HSBC) has been shipped to New York City, arising from the looming threat of tariffs for imports to the US and investor fears that Trump is about to start a global trade war. Gold inventories in New York have doubled since Trump was elected. Both JPMorgan and HSBC (among others) often lend out their gold on the London market to borrowers who need to use it as collateral and charge interest on the loan, while hedging against price decreases by selling gold futures in New York.
Traders are nervous that the 25% tariffs Trump has imposed on steel and aluminium imports will be further extended to precious metals, so some are moving their gold to the US before that happens. Consequently, the futures market price in New York has, at least temporarily, surged above the London cash price. Banks are, in essence ‘shorting’ the price of gold. Moving gold out of London to New York is not a straightforward process. It’s usually transported on commercial flights as the cheapest option, but via refiners in Switzerland where the gold is melted and recast because Comex contracts in the US require bars of different size than LBMA standards.
