venerdì 30 settembre 2016

Bayer-Monsanto: an infamous wedding facilitated by the ECB

Bayer-Monsanto: an infamous wedding facilitated by the ECB

By purchasing bonds from Bayer, the ECB has indirectly facilitated the takeover of Monsanto which was finally approved two weeks ago.
By Stan Jourdan and Graham Caswell.
bayer-monsanto_v2.jpg
When Reuters wrote back in May that in theory the ECB could buy debt issued by Bayer, which said on Monday it would finance its cash bid for Monsanto with a combination of debt and equity, we thought it would only be a theoretical case. We hoped the ECB would not dare actually do that. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a very real situation.

According to the list of bonds purchased by the ECB (operationally by the German Bundesbank) under its quantitative easing programme, the ECB reveals clearly that it purchased a number of bonds issued by Bayer AG and its affiliate, Bayer Capital Corporation B.V. The ECB does not disclose the amount of bonds it holds. Those bonds' rates are extremely low, a little more than 1 percent. Those low rates are clearly a consequence of the ECB's intervention in the corporate bonds markets. To sum up, there are two ways the ECB is helping Bayer to achieve the Monsanto takeover:
(1) It bought bonds directly from Bayer.
(2) By purchasing corporate bonds massively on the markets, it is pushing down rates for large corporations, hence lowering borrowing costs on other bonds that are not necessarily owned by the ECB.

To be fair, Bayer will still need much more than the ECB's contribution under QE to complete its €59 billion takeover (Bayer also plans to issue more equity in the coming years). However it's clear that the ECB did lend to Bayer, although it will not say how much.

As we predicted in July, the ECB is making access to finance even cheaper for big corporations, and is encouraging corporate concentration over the development of SMEs. But for what purpose? There is little evidence that the Monsanto-Bayer deal will create more wealth, or more jobs, or will generally contribute to the well being of European citizens.

In fact, as the European Parliament controversially debated recently, Monsanto is precisely feared and denounced by a large number of NGOs for selling harmful products for humans and the environment. Following the merger Bayer-Monsanto will supply roughly a quarter of the world's seed and pesticide market, thus reinforcing further the market concentration.

The Bayer-Monsanto deal is just one example of cheap ECB money encouraging corporate concentration over the development of SMEs, and a further example of the the absurdity of the logic behind the ECB's quantitative easing programme. The ECB is basically helping big companies by lowering their borrowing costs, hoping to make those investments unprofitable for investors so that they will then turn their money onto SMEs. This is nothing less than an old-school top-down approach. It is 'trickle-down' economics at its worse.

On Monday, pressed to justify the ECB's corporate bond buying programme by MEP Ernest Urtasun, Mario Draghi declared: “the argument that this would support large corporates. And therefore, and therefore what? Does this deprive the small corporates? That's the key question. (...) Large corporates receive support from our corporate programme and free space in the banks' balance sheet for supporting SMEs.”'

 The assumption underlying Draghi's defense of corporate QE is that the corporates would have borrowed anyways. What this assumption ignores is that the availability of QE money is changing corporate behavior in the direction of mergers and acquisitions. The ECB's corporate QE is already accounting for over half of net issuance from ECB-eligible companies (and rising rapidly) and mergers and acquisitions are currently the biggest contributing factor to the growth of credit lending in the euro area. In other words, corporate QE is clearly distorting the market in favour of non-productive financial operations.

By reversing its logic and directing its QE directly to people and/or sustainable investment, the ECB has an opportunity to improve the efficiency of its policy, while contributing more tangibly to the development of the Eurozone economy and the wellbeing of European citizens. It should start looking into alternative options now.

martedì 27 settembre 2016

How Bankers Live With Themselves

How Bankers Live With Themselves
One man conducted hundreds of interviews to understand the motivation and morality of those in the finance industry.

Eddie Keough / Reuters

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/among-the-bankers/501458/

How can bankers live with themselves after the destruction wrought by their industry? That’s in part what the Dutch journalist Joris Luyendijk sets out to uncover in his new book, Among the Bankers: A Journey Into the Heart of Finance, which was published overseas last year under the title Swimming with Sharks. The book attempts to lay bare not the technical workings of a very opaque industry, but the emotional and moral considerations of those who operate within it.


Luyendijk, a reporter at The Guardian who has a background in anthropology, poses that question of conscience over and over again. To answer it, he conducted hundreds of interviews with people who work in the City, London’s version of Wall Street.

Early on, Luyendijk finds out that despite an unwritten code of silence, bankers are eager to talk about their jobs once promised anonymity. They tell him candid tales of the long hours, the competitive culture, the money, the stress. One woman said of her colleague, “I sit next to this girl who has a son whom she never sees. She gets in early, goes out very late, and the nanny sits at home.” Some are desperate to brag to Luyendijk about their clients or their best deal; others want to share how bad they feel, how uncomfortable they are with the depiction of their work. “Banking today is like playing Russian roulette with someone else’s head,” one banker said.

Unlike many finance-centric books, Luyendijk goes beyond the front-office—an industry term that refers to those in the professions most often seen in the movies: traders, investment bankers, deal makers, financial advisors. These workers, particularly the male ones, were full of bravado when responding to Luyendijk, and some had quick dismissals for every critique of the industry: The City pays a ton in taxes, creates jobs, and supports much of London, they argued.
But these workers make up only a fraction of the thousands of bank employees who work in compliance, human resources, IT, and a variety of other critical roles. This group gets little of the limelight and often little respect from those who earn higher salaries and bonuses. And yet, Luyendijk finds, they still have strong feelings about working for a bank. Even if they aren’t the ones pricing deals or making trades, they feel pride or shame at being associated with the industry. “You become part of the fabric of the place. Then they dispose of you,” one woman, who had worked in support roles for over a decade, told Luyendijk after being fired. Still, upon receiving the news, she went back to her desk and started sending emails about an ongoing project to ensure that her colleagues, and the bank, wouldn’t suffer from her absence. Perhaps one of the most important contributions of Luyendijk’s book is in giving voice to these people, who support—and, in some cases, enable—the financial industry.
 
Among the Bankers shows just how intricate and fractured the global banking system is, with departments within the same bank unaware of what their own companies are doing. That makes the banks not only too big to fail, but possibly too big to manage. Their sheer size creates two problems: the inability to identify and remedy problems—such as rogue traders—but also a culture that allows for the plausible deniability of its leadership. Luyendijk concludes that bank employees—often singled out as the driving force behind the economic collapse—aren’t solely to blame. There is a system that pushes them to take risks and a culture that shames anyone who admits errors or weakness; these factors, Luyendijk argues, are more culpable than any single person or even any group of people.

The book illustrates what many who have ever ventured into banking, or know someone who did, probably knows: that it is more often than not an all-consuming job that pushes workers to conform or burn out. In one conversation, a young banker describes making $60,000 per year before his bonus, and how it quickly warped his sense of money. “I would spend $300 on a night out and think nothing of it,” said the interviewee. In another conversation, the author asks a banker if he has any friends outside of finance. He responds by saying, “When you make $100,000 a month you basically don’t have common interests with your friends anymore.” That can change the way people dress and behave and can create complex feelings of loyalty to an industry that has proven itself to be mostly indifferent to outside conceptions of morality. “I have found that many outsiders are deeply reluctant to accept that to an important degree the financial world isn’t populated by people willfully doing evil, but by conformists who have simply stopped asking questions about right and wrong,” Luyendijk writes.

Changing a system in which one is in some way complicit is difficult. More than that, the hierarchy of banking means that those in fields like compliance can feel belittled or powerless to confront or rein in the ambitions of front-office workers and executives, whose risky but profitable strategies keep the entire operation afloat. “Nobody ever challenges the front office,” one compliance officer told Luyendijk. After all, if a bank goes down, its compliance officers do too. And, as Luyendijk finds out, the employees in the financial industry vastly outnumber those at regulatory agencies, plus they’re paid better and better equipped to pivot quickly, leaving regulators to play catch up. It’s no wonder banking culture has been so difficult to reform.

What Luyendijk finds is that piecemeal changes to the financial industry won’t create the change that many are hungry for; that would require a massive overhaul of the entire system. Luyendijk describes his prescription as “not repairs or a major clean-up but a completely new DNA,” the sort brought about by huge shifts in law and policy. So far, that type of change is nowhere to be found. There is no happy ending or clear solution at the end of Among the Bankers, and though frustrating, that’s at least an honest conclusion about an often exasperating industry.

About the Author

lunedì 26 settembre 2016

Scrapping cash: don’t let the banks coin it

Scrapping cash: don’t let the banks coin it


pound-414418_960_720

The proposal to abolish cash has a certain superficial appeal, but—even before we get to the myriad practical problems—it could turn out to smuggle in a dangerous agenda of stealth privatisation. Kenneth Rogoff’s argument that we can simply abolish physical cash and switch to using electronic money, completely misses one crucial difference between the two—the institutions that create them.

“Electronic money”—that is, the numbers in your bank account, which change every time you spend on a debit card—are not fully equivalent to physical cash. They’re actually IOUs, or deposits created by banks when they issue loans. As the Bank of England recently confirmed: “Commercial banks create money, in the form of bank deposits, by making new loans. When a bank makes a loan, for example to someone taking out a mortgage, it does not typically do so by giving them thousands of pounds worth of banknotes. Instead, it credits their bank account with a bank deposit of the size of the mortgage. At that moment, new money is created.”

If physical cash, in the form of notes and coins can be considered “public” money in the particular sense that it is created by a public institution, bank deposits can be thought of as “private” money, again in the specific sense of who creates them—namely, the banks. The Bank and the Royal Mint, which respectively create notes and coins, have clear rules of transparency and lines of accountability concerning the volume and distribution of the money created. In contrast, the deposits created by commercial banks do not have the same clear lines of accountability. The private sector can effectively, at least in the upswing of the business cycle, create as much as they want.

Worse, the money held in your account is, legally speaking, the property of the banks. The physical cash you hold is, as you’d expect, legally yours. If we moved to an “electronic money only” situation, as Rogoff is proposing, without creating a new “digital cash,” our nation’s whole process of currency creation would have been completely privatised.

Having a privatised currency may appeal to some, but the 2008 crisis is pretty clear evidence that the banks aren’t doing a very good job of creating money. Indeed, they have been seriously abusing their privilege. After 30 years of financial deregulation, banks create new money predominantly for the financial and property markets, bloating the financial sector, and puffing up housing bubbles. With the private sector still heaving under the mountain of debt, little has changed since the crash.

Rogoff also pleads that it is necessary to give cash the axe, because it will allow central bankers to shift to negative interest rates. But that implies that the barrier to monetary policy working is simply that central banks can’t cut interest rates enough. This misses important reasons about why low interest rates aren’t working. Negative rates are simply a continuation of the ultra-low rates of the last seven years. And they’ve failed to stimulate the economy—witness the slowest recovery in history—chiefly because people and businesses don’t want to take out more debt.

Low rates only work by encouraging more private sector borrowing. But with private debt still sky high, there wouldn’t be much room to pile on much more—even if it were wise. Suggesting that 0.25 per cent rates are not low enough is like assuming that if a mallet didn’t fix the software problem on your computer, then it is time to reach for a sledgehammer.

Rather than chase after negative rates and the abolition of cash, we should consider other options, such as “digital cash” and monetary financing. Unlike deposits made up by the banks, proper digital cash really could work as a replacement for physical money and a means of discharging the government’s duty to provide the public with a safe form of currency. The first feature of real digital cash is, of course, that it is created by the central bank. It could then be an electronic version of notes and coins. It would also generate income for the government, just as the issuing of physical money has always boosted the state’s coffers, through the process known as seigniorage. By allowing the banks to create all the electronic money we use today, the state is shooting itself in the foot; let us not make that problem worse.

The other big idea gaining traction is monetary financing. It is far more preferable to ever-lower interest rates, which no longer work. Central banks would create new money, and use this to fund government spending, which could in turn support employment, investment and incomes. This might sound dangerously radical, but it’s currently considered fine for banks to create money, irrespective of whether they use it to lend to businesses for productive investment or instead to support speculation in land or financial assets. In this context, the taboo on creating money to finance state spending on worthwhile things is hard to sustain.

Digital cash could work hand-in-hand with monetary financing in various ways. One idea would be for every citizen to have a digital cash account at the central bank, perhaps administered by a private bank. If monetary financing became part of the toolkit, the award of a cash transfer into digital cash accounts would be a remarkably straightforward way to inject money into the economy.

This human invention, this tool, we call “money” is changing fast. But we need to direct these changes towards a money system that works in the public interest and helps to build a more stable and fair economy. That will involve some much bigger thinking than simply getting rid of cash.

Spanish activists landed ex-IMF head Rodrigo Rato in court

How Spanish activists landed ex-IMF head Rodrigo Rato in court

  • 25 September 2016
  • From the section Europe
Image copyright AFP
Image caption "End of an era": Rodrigo Rato, once hailed as an economic genius, is taken from his office by police for interrogation in April 2015
An initiative launched by a handful of political activists in 2012 is on the verge of striking the biggest blow yet in a fight over allegations of political corruption in Spain.
On Monday, dozens of former members of the board at Spanish bank Bankia go on trial in Madrid on charges of misappropriation and fraud.
Among them, the activists' prize catch: former minister and IMF chief Rodrigo Rato, who denies any wrongdoing.

How did we get here?

It all began at a meeting in Barcelona over four years ago, held to mark the first anniversary of the 15 May 2011 "indignado" ("indignant") protests against corruption and cronyism.
"Why don't we have Rato sent to prison in five years' time?" asked one attendee.
"So we drew up a rational plan with a reasonable production timeframe towards that goal," says Sergio Salgado drily. He is a leading member of the campaign group 15MpaRato, which is directly responsible for Mr Rato going on trial.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption Protesters demand justice for "all the guilty thieves" in 2014
"We have nothing personal against him," explains Mr Salgado.
"He is the symbol of the revolving doors culture. He has been a minister, then managing director at the IMF and a banker. And he was a very well-known figure," says Simona Levi, another leading figure in 15MpaRato.

Who is Rodrigo Rato?

Now 67, Mr Rato was economy minister in the conservative Popular Party (PP) governments of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar from 1996 to 2004. Mr Rato was often credited with being the "mastermind" of Spain's economic boom, before it turned to bust when a real-estate bubble burst in 2008.
When the PP lost power in 2004, Mr Rato became IMF chief, a post he suddenly left in 2007 for "personal reasons". In 2010 he was named chairman of Bankia, a bank formed by the fusion of Caja Madrid with other public savings banks, all struggling to deal with the blowback from years of easy lending to construction projects.
On his watch, Bankia became the bank that symbolised Spain's financial crisis.
  • As Spain's fourth biggest bank, it listed on the stock market in July 2011
  • Bankia said initially it had made an operating profit in 2011 of €305m (£265m; $340m)
  • But then a May 2012 audit demonstrated that it had actually lost €3bn
  • Mr Rato was forced to resign as Bankia chairman and the bank was nationalised at a cost of €22bn in public money
  • The shares bought by over 200,000 small investors became worthless overnight

What did the activists do?

The small team at 15MpaRato started compiling evidence of what they saw as fraudulent information given to people with accounts at Bankia who had been given the chance to buy "preferential" shares before the flotation.
They encouraged small investor "victims" to come forward, sue Bankia, and help them build a credible narrative with which to persuade public prosecutors to take action.
Bankia eventually agreed to give back €1.5bn to the approximately 200,000 who had bought preferential shares when Spain's courts accepted a Bank of Spain report that established there had been deception.
Mr Rato's role in this alleged fraud is still being investigated with no date set for that trial yet.

Rodrigo Rato and the case of the 'black credit cards'

What no-one expected was the case of the "black credit cards" - and that is why the former Spanish economy minister goes on trial on Monday.
The evidence arrived in 2013, when Simona Levi opened a whistle-blowing email.
In the email was a complete list of people accused of using secret credit cards issued to board members and advisers at Caja Madrid and later Bankia, as well as claims about what they had spent their money on.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption The 'black credit card' scandal "offended people's innate sense of justice", says Mr Salgado
"At first you read these huge amounts of information that come through that account and you don't take it too seriously. But then we began to think 'wow, this is a real treasure'," Ms Levi recalls.
The list was a who's who of Spanish political life, including representatives of political parties from the left and right, unions, a secretary to Spain's royal family and the bank's top management, including Mr Rato. And the 15MpaRato activists shared it with Spanish media.
The total sum spent between 1999 and 2012 amounted to €15.5m - money supposedly meant to cover the costs of attending board meetings, but often allegedly used for personal items or simply taken out of cash machines.
"The amount was not the thing. It offended people's innate sense of justice. We all go to cash machines; you might have some money in there, sometimes not enough. But these people always had what they wanted," says Mr Salgado.

What are Mr Rato's prospects?

Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption The 'black credit card' case has enraged former shareholders in Bankia
Mr Rato faces a possible jail sentence of up to 10 years if found guilty of running and expanding the secret credit card system, and may be put on trial in at least three other cases.
Prison would complete the downfall of a man once considered a probable prime minister of Spain but who in 2014 felt forced to give up his PP membership card.
In 2015 it emerged that he was being investigated for tax fraud after taking advantage of a fiscal amnesty three years earlier, repatriating money he had been keeping abroad. This investigation caused him to be briefly arrested in April 2015.
He denies any wrongdoing.

Rodrigo Rato's fall from grace

Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption When he was arrested in 2015, El Mundo newspaper wrote of "a point of no return, in which we leave behind an era"
2004: Mr Rato leaves Spain's economy ministry to head IMF
2007: He returns to Spain after three years in Washington, citing unexplained personal reasons. An internal IMF report in 2011 criticised the organisation under Rato's leadership, saying it "failed to anticipate the crisis, its speed and magnitude"
2010-12: During his 18-month stint at Bankia, Spain sees the unravelling of the biggest banking disaster in its history, prompting an EU bailout of Spain's financial sector
July 2012: Mr Rato is called to court to explain Bankia management, following complaints from 15MpaRato and political party UPyD
2013: His name crops up in the "black credit card" affair
2014: Mr Rato resigns from Popular Party
2015: Arrested for seven hours during police search of home and office .
2016: Panama Papers leak reveals Mr Rato as a client of Mossack Fonseca, which helped him to wind up two offshore companies worth €3.6m

domenica 25 settembre 2016

Fraud Crisis; U.S firms fudging their numbers like no tomorrow



Fraud Crisis; U.S firms fudging their numbers like no tomorrow

http://tacticalinvestor.com/fraud-crisis-u-s-firms-fudging-their-numbers-like-no-tomorrow


  Fraud Crisis; U.S firms fudging their numbers like no tomorrow
U.S firms are resorting to sophisticated forms of manipulation otherwise known as fraud to prop their earnings. The goal is to create an illusion that all is well when in fact it is not; it’s like the band playing happily away on the Titanic just before it sank.  The data manipulation is quite sophisticated, so it is almost impossible to get a true glimpse into the financial performance of a given company. Soon, you will have to resort to the time-tested metric of allowing a monkey to shoot darts at a random list of stocks, to find you next winner.
In a nutshell, there’s a standard known as generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, which encourages some uniformity in how companies will report financial results. Unfortunately, the strict standards of GAAP often force companies to report big one-time, non-recurring items that will distort quarterly earnings, in turn making them a poor reflection of underlying operations. And so, many companies will make adjustments for these items and separately report adjusted or non-GAAP financial results.
Must Read: Margin trading comeback could propel Chinese Markets Upwards

All of that’s well and good. But there’s an unsettling trend we’ve been witnessing: the gap between GAAP and non-GAAP numbers is widening. Specifically, this “GAAP gap” is widening in such a way that more and more costs and expenses are being removed to make underlying profits look higher. “The gap between GAAP (reported) and pro forma (adjusted) EPS continued to widen in 4Q, with the GAAP/Pro forma ratio of 0.74 still at its most extreme levels since 2009,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Savita Subramanian said on Monday. “Trailing four-quarter (2015) GAAP EPS came in at $87 vs. $118 for pro forma EPS.” Full Story

Another topic we spoke of that is coming to fruition; the rise in fraud; we are in the “what’s love got to do with it” era.  Whatever crap corporations can get away with they will put to use, in their quest to ensure that they lock in massive bonuses.  This is why we stated that corporate debt and fraud would reach insane levels before this bubble blows up.  When people were talking about margin debt soaring last year to match 2007 levels, we said so what, when they spoke of hot money supporting the market, our response was the same. You need to understand that there is a new trend in motion, a trend that the world has not seen before. There is nothing more than 90% of the populace is not willing to do for money; if the price is right, they will sell their soul. So get used to this new trend and be careful who you call your friend, be especially careful of family members for they are the ones that quite happily and willing stab you in the back, and they usually stab very deep.  If you understand the problem the solution is easy; in this instance, it means that the markets will soar to levels that will appear sane only after you smoke a combo of crack and cocaine.  So don’t bother trying to figure out the markets, go with the trend, it’s your friend, everything else is your foe.

sabato 24 settembre 2016

Health Warning! "Realism" virus afflicting mainstream economists

Italy: the Court of Bolzano on the issuance of currency by commercial banks

Press release
Italy: the Court of Bolzano on the issuance of currency by commercial banks
by lawyer Marco Della Luna, September 26, 2016


The issuance of currency by commercial banks was admitted recently by the People's Bank of South Tyrol (Banca Popolare dell’Alto Adige) in real estate enforcement proceedings 216/2014.

The judge in that case held that this practice is effective and legitimate, by writing, in the order 7/6/16:

"As, however, a breach of Article 127 (ex Article 105) of the European Union's founding treaty, we do not understand why the creation of money through the banking system may violate that provision, which has nothing to that effect, as it is absolutely irrelevant the reference to article 10 banking Act, which does not prohibit such a system, since in any case the Euro is a coin that is not representative, it is not required a value for each printed ticket as the era of the gold standard ... ".

The bank had declared: "The Maastricht Treaty does not reserve the ECB money creation, but literally the issue of (euro denominated) banknotes and minting of coins. The Italian Civil Code does not recognize banknotes and coins at the only legal tender (if it was that, according to anti-money laundering legislation, it would have prohibited any deal providing for the payment of a price equal to or more than € 3,000; similar limits are also in place in most countries of European Union). 


Banca Popolare dell’Alto Adige does just what the art. 10 TUB provides, namely the collection of savings (anyone can open at any time a savings account or open a bank account) and the provision of credit (like the claimant know, Banca Popolare actually grants loans and credit facilities).

The "money creation" by the commercial banks, the existence of "book money", the phenomenon of "fractional reserve" are completely legitimate features of our economic and monetary system and an expression of freedom of contract. If a bank makes a loan to a customer, we have a simple phenomenon of expansion of the balance sheet ( "Bilanzverlängerung"). "


The problem, however, rest in the accounting of the very same process of money creation by the banks: Cash Flow Statements don't account for money creation today.

Top Bank Fraud Expert: ALL of the Big Banks’ Profits Come from FRAUD

Top Bank Fraud Expert: ALL of the Big Banks’ Profits Come from FRAUD

The country’s top white collar crime expert, William Black – who put over 1,000 top S&L executives in jail for fraud, and is a  professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri – confirmed recently what the alternative media has been saying for years:  the business plan of Wall Street is fraud. That’s their key profit center.

Black also says that a British parliamentary investigation Tories found that all of the retail profits of the largest banks in the UK came from fraud.



Indeed, the big banks manipulate every single market … and routinely engage in criminal acts.

Who cares?

Well, experts say that we have to prosecute fraud or else the economy won’t EVER really recover and stabilize.

But the government is doing the exact opposite. Indeed, the Justice Department has announced it will go easy on big banks, and always settles prosecutions for pennies on the dollar (a form of stealth bailout. It is also arguably one of the main causes of the double dip in housing.)

Indeed, the government doesn’t even force the banks to admit any criminal guilt as part of their settlements. In fact:
The banks have been allowed to investigate themselves,” one source familiar with the investigation told Reuters. “The investigated decide what they want to investigate, what they admit to, and how much they will pay."

venerdì 23 settembre 2016

From Gold Trains to Gold Loans – Banca d’Italia’s Mammoth Gold Reserves

23 Sep 2016 by

From Gold Trains to Gold Loans – Banca d’Italia’s Mammoth Gold Reserves

Full with videos here: https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/ronan-manly/banca-ditalia-gold-reserves-trains-loans/

Italy’s gold has had an eventful history. Robbed by the Nazis and taken to Berlin. Loaded on to gold trains and sent to Switzerland. Flown from London to Milan and Rome. Used as super-sized collateral for gold backed loans from West Germany while sitting quietly in a vault in New York. Leveraged as a springboard to prepare for Euro membership entry.  Inspired Italian senators to visit the Palazzo Koch in Rome. Half of it is now in permanent residency in downtown Manhattan, or is it? Even Mario Draghi, European Central Bank (ECB) president, has a view on Italy’s gold. The below commentary tries to make sense of it all by bringing together pieces of the Italian gold jigsaw that I have collected.

2,451.8 tonnes

According to officially reported gold holdings, and excluding the gold holdings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Italy’s central bank, the Banca d’Italia, which holds Italy’s gold reserves, is ranked as the world’s third largest official holder of gold after the US and Germany, with total gold holdings of 2,451.8 tonnes, worth more than US$ 105 billion at current market prices. Notable, Italy’s gold is owned by the Banca d’Italia, and not owned by the Italian State. This contrasts to most European nations where the gold reserves are owned by the state and are merely held and managed by that country’s respective central bank under an official mandate.
Italy’s gold reserves have remained constant at 2451.8 tonnes since 1999. Although the Banca d’Italia has been a signatory to all 4 Central Bank Gold Agreements and could have conducted gold sales within the limits of the agreements between 1999 and the present, it did not engage in any gold sales under either CBGA1 (1999-2004), CBGA2 (2004-2009), or CBGA3 (2009-2014), and as of now, has not conducted any sales under CBGA4 (2014-2019). With 2,451.8 tonnes of gold, the Banca d’Italia holds marginally more than the Banque de France, which claims official gold holdings of 2,435.8 tonnes.
Gold as a percentage of total reserves for both banks is very similar, with Italy’s gold comprising 69.7% of total reserve assets against 67.2% for France. Similarly, German’s gold reserves, at 3,378.2 tonnes, are 70.1% of its total reserves. See the World Gold Council’s Latest World Official Gold Reserves data for details.
So it appears that the big three European gold holders consider their gold to be a critical part of their foreign reserves and are keeping the ratio of their gold to total reserves within around the 70% mark.

Towards Transparency?

In April 2014, Banca d’Italia published a 3 page report about Italy’s gold reserves titled “Le Riserve Auree della Banca D’Italia” (published only in Italian). The report highlights that Italy’s gold is held in four storage locations, one of which is in Italy.
Specifically, in the report, Banca d’Italia confirmed that 1,199.4 tonnes of its gold, approximately half the total, is held in the Bank’s vaults which are located in the basement levels of its Palazzo Koch headquarters in Rome. The majority of remainder is stored in the Federal Reserve Bank’s gold vault in New York. The report also states that small amounts of Banca d’Italia gold are stored at the vaults of the Swiss National Bank in Berne, Switzerland, and at the vaults of the Bank of England in London.
As to why Italian gold is stored abroad in New York, London and Berne and not in other countries, is explained by historical data, and explained below.
++ Bankitalia: Visco, statuto riafferma indipendenza ++

Palazzo Koch

In its Palazza Koch vaults in Rome, the Banca d’Italia claims to store 1199.4 tonnes of gold. Of this total, 1195.3 tonnes are in the form of gold bars (represented by 95,493 bars), and 4.1 tonnes are in the form of gold coins (represented by 871,713 coins). While most of the bars in Rome are prism-shaped (trapezoidal), there are also brick-shaped bars with rounded corners (made by the US Mint’s New York Assay Office) and also ‘panetto’ (loaf-shaped) ‘English’ bars. The average weight of the bars in Palazzo Koch is 12.5 kg (400 oz), with bar weights ranging from relatively small 4.2 kgs up to some very large 19.7 kgs bars. The average fineness / gold purity of the Rome stored bars is 996.2 fine, with some of the holdings being 999.99 fine bars.
The Banca d’Italia also states that 141 tonnes of gold that it transferred to the ECB in 1999 as a requirement for membership of the Euro is also stored in Palazzo Koch. This would put the total gold holdings in the Palazzo Koch vaults at 1340 tonnes. Gold transferred to the ECB by its Euro member central banks is managed by the ECB on a decentralised basis, and is held by the ECB in whatever location it was stored in when the initial transfers occurred, subject to various location swaps which may have taken place since 1999.

The Vault is revealed

While the Banca d’Italia’s 3 page report appears to be the first official written and self-published confirmation from the Bank which lists the exact storage sites of its gold reserves, these four storage locations were also confirmed to Italian TV station RAI in 2010 when an RAI presenter and crew were allowed to film a report from inside the Bank’s gold vaults in Rome.
This RAI broadcast was for an episode of ‘Passaggio a Nord Ovest’, presented by Alberto Angela.

Translation of Video

For those who don’t speak Italian, such as myself, I asked an Italian friend to translate Alberto Angela’s video report and the other voice-overs in the report. The translation of the above video is as follows:
Banca D’Italia features a secret and extremely important place which represents Italy’s wealth: it’s our gold reserve.
We’ve had a special permission to visit this place, called “the sacristy of gold.” Here there’s a big protected door, and three high personnel from Banca d’Italia who are opening the door for me. Three keys are needed to open the door of the vault, one after the other and operated by three different people. Obviously we can’t show the security systems nor the faces of these men, but the door is huge, at least half a metre, and leads to another gate where again three keys must be used. Past this, that’s where our country’s gold is kept. 
Here we are. It’s exciting to get in here, the environment is simple, sober. [general commentary, then camera shows a large amount of gold]
This is not all the gold we own, as part of it is also stored in The Federal Reserve in the US, in the Bank of England in the UK and in Banca dei Regolamenti Nazionali in Switzerland. I’m speechless when exploring the sacristy, … you don’t see this every day. 
The value of all this gold is established by the  European Central Bank, that also establishes its price. The overall value appears in the end of year balance. In 2005 the gold was valued at 20 miliardi of Euros (billions)
There are three types of lingotti (square-shaped gold). {he says how much the bars weigh}
They feature some signs on them, to say that they have been checked. Some are almost 100% gold, pure gold. There’s also a serial number on the gold, and a swastika on some of them as the Nazi took away all our gold, transferring it first to the north of Italy and then to Germany and Switzerland. At the end of the war part of it came back featuring the Nazi sign.
This gold represents the symbol of our wealth, without this we wouldn’t be able to deal with the rest of the world, it’s a symbol for Italy, a guarantee, like a family’s jewelry. They can be used to get loans as happened when Italy asked for a loan from Germany and they demanded, as a guarantee, the value in gold. So the name Germany was put on this gold at the time.
{the reporter then talks about going from gold to notes and ‘convertibility’ – trust in the States is now the guarantee for exchanges, and not gold, says the voice. It’s a relation of trust … Banca d’Italia keeps an eye on this. After Maastricht, a lot of our gold has left Italy to join the other countries’ gold to create the communitarian reserve of the Euro}”
Note that the reporter, Angela, states that in addition to Rome, the Italian gold is stored at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, the Bank of England in London, and at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland. The reporter uses the exact words “Banca dei Regolamenti Nazionali”.

The BIS and SNB

This BIS as Italy’s gold custodian was also confirmed in 2009 by Italian newspaper “La Repubblica”, which published an article about Italy’s gold, stating that it was held in Rome, at the Federal Reserve in New York, in the ‘vaults’ of the BIS in Basel, and in the vaults of the Bank of England.
This apparent inconsistency between a) the Banca d’Italia’s report, which claims that its gold in Switzerland is at the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in Berne, and b) the RAI broadcast, which states that some Italian gold is stored with the BIS in Switzerland, is technically not a contradiction since the BIS does not maintain its own gold storage facilities in Switzerland. The BIS just makes use of the SNB’s gold vaults in Berne.
If you look on its website, under foreign exchange and gold services, the BIS specifically states that it uses ‘Berne’ as one of its safekeeping facilities for gold, i.e. it offers its clients “safekeeping and settlements facilities available loco London, Berne or New York”. Loco refers to settlement location of a precious metals transaction. By confirming that its Swiss storage is with the BIS, and that it also stores gold at the Swiss National Bank in Berne, the Banca d’Italia has, maybe inadvertently, confirmed that the BIS makes use of the Swiss National Bank’s gold vaults, and that the SNB vaults are in fact in Berne. while its knwn that the SNB gold vaults are in Berne, the SNB rarely, if ever, talks about this.
However, in 2008, Berne-based Swiss newspaper “Der Bund” published an article revealing that the SNB’s gold vaults are in Berne underneath the Bundesplatz Square. Bundesplatz Square is adjacent to the SNB’s headquarters at No. 1 Bundsplatz. BIS literature, such as the official BIS history publication “Central bank Cooperation at the Bank for International Settlements, 1930 – 1973” also confirms that the SNB gold vaults are in Berne and that the BIS and the Banca d’Italia have held gold accounts with the SNB in Berne since at least the 1930s. Note that the SNB actually has two headquarters, one in Berne, the other in Zurich at Börsenstrasse.Its quite possible that some of the SNB custodied gold is also stored in the vaults of its Zurich headquarters under Paradeplatz or Bürkliplatz.

Simple Questions met with Ultra-Secrecy

In April 2014, in two emails, I asked the Banca d’Italia’s press office specifically about this SNB / BIS situation, and also about the Banca d’Italia gold stored in New York, (and also about gold leasing – see separate section below). My questions were as follows:
“The Banca dItalia states in its April (2014) gold document that the Italian gold held in Switzerland is stored at the Swiss National Bank in Berne. Previous profiles of the Banca dItalia gold storage arrangements in an RAI TV broadcast in 2010 and in a La Republica newspaper article in 2009 state that the Italian gold in Switzerland is deposited with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS).
Given that the BIS use the SNB vaults in Berne to store gold deposited with them (since they don’t have their own gold storage facilities in Switzerland), then the reference to the SNB is not surprising.
However, my question is, does the Banca dItalia store its gold in Berne as gold sight deposits with the BIS or as earmarked custody gold with the SNB, or a combination of the two?”
“Is the gold of the Banca d’Italia that is held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York held under earmark (custody), or held in a sight account?”
The Banca d’Italia responded (simultaneously on all questions):
“This is to inform you that unfortunately Banca d’Italia will not be giving information in addition to the website note.
Regards
Press and External Relations Division, Secretariat To The Governing Board And Communications Directorate, Bank of Italy”
By ‘website note’, the press and external relations division was referring to the 3 page report on gold reserves (see above) that the Bank published in April 2014.

Nazi Bars in Rome

The RAI television broadcast from 2010 was also notable in that it revealed that the Banca d’Italia holds bars of varied origins in its Rome vaults, including bars stamped with the official Bank of England stamp, and bars from the US Assay Office in New York including a featured bar from 1947. There are also Russian bars shown in the RAI video, one of which is shown in the video with the CCCP lettering, the hammer and sickle stamp, and the letters HKUM.
More surprisingly perhaps, is the fact that the Banca d’Italia also holds Nazi gold bars from the Prussian Mint in Berlin. The RAI broadcast video shows a 1940 Nazi bar from Berlin, stamped with the eagle and swastika insignia and with Prussian mint markings. The Nazi bar holdings can be explained by the fact that the Italian gold was confiscated by the Nazis during World War 2 and ended up being moved out of Rome up to the north of Italy and then most of it was transported onwards to Berlin in Germany or else to Switzerland. Following the war, some of the gold given back to the Italians as part of the Tripartite Commission payouts happened to be Prussian Mint bars stamped with the Nazi symbol (see below for historical account of Italian gold movements during World War 2).
riserve auree1
A view of the gold on shelves in the Palazzo Koch vaults, Rome

The Foreign held Italian gold

The Banca d’Italia gold document does not specify how much of the Italian gold is held in New York, London and Berne, apart from stating that most of the gold that is not stored in Rome is stored in New York. Note that this is even less transparent than the brief information that the Deutsche Bundesbank publishes about its gold reserves storage locations. However, the Banca d’Italia document does state that “the bulk” of foreign stored gold is in New York (“la parte più consistente è custodita a New York“), and that  “contingents of smaller size” are located in London and Berne (“Altri contingenti di dimensioni più contenute si trovano a Berna, presso la Banca Nazionale Svizzera, e a Londra presso la Banca d’Inghilterra“).
While one could argue about the meaning of ‘the bulk’ in terms of quantity, essentially the Banca d’Italia gold document implies that the London and Berne holdings are not very large. More specifically, it is possible using historical data and records of Italian gold movements to infer that there is little Italian gold in London and Berne.

Not a lot in London

It does not look like Banca d’Italia holds anything other than a very small amount of gold in London. During the late 1960s, mainly between 1966 and 1968, the Banca d’Italia transported most of the gold that it had stored at the Bank of England vaults back to Italy. Regular shipments were exported and delivered by MAT (the secure transport company) to the Banca d’Italia’s vaults in both Rome and Milan, sometimes about 4 tonnes at a time, sometimes 10 tonnes at a time. Historic Bank of England gold account “set-aside” ledger entries (C142/5 Bullion Office Set Aside Ledger, A-K, 1943-1971) show that by the end of 1969, the Banca d’Italia only held 988 gold bars in London, weighing 396,000 ozs,  or approximately 12.34 tonnes. In support of the veracity of this statement, see the specific ledger entry below.
banca-d-italia-boe-dec-1969-12-3-tonnes
During the Banca d’Italia’s gold transport period out of the Bank of England, various other transfers were also made from the Banca d’Italia gold account to the BIS gold account at the Bank of England. Since Italian gold reserves have not in total changed very much since December 1969, it is realistic to assume that the Banca d’Italia’s London gold holdings have not changed dramatically since December 1969, unless there have been location swaps executed since that time between London and New York or between London and Berne. This would generally only have been done for a specific reason such as to allow Italian gold lending through the London market. Significant gold lending only began in London in the mid-1980s, and the Banca d’Italia has never been on public record as having engaged in gold lending on the London Gold Lending Market.
Another possibility is that the Italians now use the BIS gold account(s) to hold gold in London in the same way that they do in Berne. This would allow the statement that some of the Italian gold is held in London to be true, even though the gold would, in this case, be held via the BIS gold account at the Bank of England, and not directly by a Banca d’Italia gold custody account in London.

Little in Berne

There does not appear to have been any Italian gold left in Berne after WWII (see historical details below), so whatever Italian balance is currently in Berne has been built up since 1946. Of relevance to the gold vaults in Berne, both the central banks of Finland (Bank of Finland) and Sweden (Riksbank) recently published the international locations of their gold reserves, and revealed that only very small percentages of their gold is kept in the Swiss National Bank vaults in Switzerland. Of the Riksbank’s 125.7 tonnes of gold reserves, only 2.8 tonnes (2.2%) is stored in the SNB vaults. For the Bank of Finland, only 7%, or 3.4 tonnes of its 49.1 tonnes of gold reserves are stored with the SNB in Switzerland.

Mostly in Manhattan

If this Swedish-Finnish 2-7% range of allocations held at the SNB was applied to the Italian gold that held outside Italy, it would result in between 25 tonnes and 87.6 tonnes of Italian gold being held at the SNB vaults in Berne. Factoring in 12 tonnes held at the Bank of England and a small amount held in Berne, this would imply nearly 1,200 tonnes of Italian gold at the Federal Reserve in New York.
There were at least 543 tonnes of Italian gold at the Federal Reserve in New York in the mid-1970s, since this was the quantity of Italian gold collateral that the Bundesbank held at the New York Fed during its first gold loan to Italy between 1974 and 1976 (see discussion below of the 1970s West Germany – Italy gold loan). If the quantities in London and Berne are as low as they appear to be, this 543 tonnes used as collateral might not have even been half the gold that Italy has custodied with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

A gold vault in Milan

It’s notable that the Banca d’Italia has used a vault in the city of Milan to store gold as recently as the late 1960s, although there is no mention of a Milan vault in the Banca d’Italia’s 2014 gold document. This would either imply that the gold stored in Milan in the 1960s was transported to Rome at a later date, or else that the Rome statistics may represent combined holdings stored in Rome and Milan, and are just rolled up to Rome for reporting purposes, since Rome is the head office of the Banca d’Italia. The Banca d’Italia’s Milan vault did feature as a key part of Italian gold movements during World War 2 (see below).

Historical Italian Gold

Like other central banks, the Banca d’Italia states that it uses 4 storage locations partly due to historical reasons and partly based on a deliberate strategy gold storage diversification strategy.
Although the Banca d’Italia held 498 tonnes of gold in 1925, Italian gold reserves fell to 420 tonnes in 1930, and continued to decline throughout the 1930s, falling to 240 tonnes in 1935, before another sharp fall to 122 tonnes in 1940 at the beginning of World War 2. With both Rome and Northern Italy under German occupation in 1943, the German occupiers pressurised the Banca d’Italia’s governor Azzolini to move the Italian gold north. Ultimately this led to 119 tonnes of Italian gold being transported by train from Rome to the Banca d’Italia’s vaults in Milan. But the transfer to Milan turned out to be just an interim stopover since the Germans continued to pile on pressure to move the Italian gold to Berlin.
The fascist government that controlled Northern Italy at that time initially resisted the German plan, but negotiated a compromise and agreed to move 92.3 tonnes of gold to a castle in Fortezza, in the far north of Italy near the Austrian border, close to the Brenner Pass and likewise very close (via Austria) to the German border.
Eventually the fascist government capitulated fully to the German demands and 49.6 tonnes of Italian was moved from Fortezza to the Reichsbank vaults in Berlin, followed by an additional transfer of 21.7 tonnes, so in total 71.3 tonnes of Italian gold ended up in the Reichsbank in Berlin. See here for graphic showing these wartime movements of Italian gold, and a comprehensive discussion (in Italian).
In the 1930s, the Bank for International Settlements Bank had invested substantially in Italian short-term treasury bills, which had a built-in gold conversion guarantee. Likewise, the Swiss National Bank held or was the representative for claims on some of the Italian gold. With the German pressure on the Italian gold in 1943, the BIS and SNB both became anxious about their investments and requested that their Italian gold-related be fully converted into gold with a view to moving the converted gold to the SNB vaults in Berne, Switzerland.

The Gold Trains to Berne

After intense negotiations, which the Banca d’Italia also supported (since it would allow some of the Italian gold to go to Switzerland and so avoid Berlin), the SNB and BIS succeeded in releasing the gold transfers, and over 72 years ago on 20th April 1944, 23.4 tonnes of Italian gold was sent by train from Como in Italy to Chiasso in Switzerland and then onwards by another train to Berne.
This required four railcars, two with 89 crates of gold weighing 12,605 kgs for the BIS (1,068 bars in total), and two other railcars of gold bars for the SNB which probably contained 9-10 tonnes – since this was the balance of Italian gold which did not go to Berlin or to the BIS but which had been moved to Fortezza from Milan.
A few days later on 25th April 1944, the Banca’Italia also executed an additional intra-account transfer in the Berne vault to the benefit of the BIS. This was part of a location swap with the BIS. To quote the official BIS historical narrative:
On 25th April 1944, the Bank of Italy transferred an additional 3,190 kgs of fine gold from its own gold account with the Swiss National Bank in Berne to the BIS gold account there.” (Central Bank Cooperation at the Bank for International Settlements, 1930-1973, Gianni Toniolo, BIS).
The actual transfer comprised 244 gold bars containing 2,966 kgs. An additional 233 kgs was debited from the Banca d’Italia sight account with the BIS, which suggests that the Italians only had 2,966 kgs in physical gold stored in Berne with the balance having to come from their sight deposit with the BIS (i.e. unallocated storage). (See “Note on gold shipments and gold exchanges organised by the Bank for International Settlements, 1st June 1938 – 31st May 1945.
The above suggests that the Banca d’Italia had no gold in Berne at the end of WWII. In fact, after WWII ended in 1945, the Italians essentially had very little gold anywhere except for small amounts that were left in Fortezza and found by the Allies, which was then returned to the Italians. Italy started buying gold again in 1946 with a 1.8 tonne purchase from the Banque de France. The Italians also began receiving gold back as reparations from the Tripartite Commission for the Restoration of Monetary Gold (TGC), getting 31.7 tonnes a few years after WWII ended, and another 12.7 tonnes in 1958. Since 71.4 tonnes had been taken by the Germans to Berlin, the Italians ended up with a net loss of about 27 tonnes due to theft and/or other war losses.
Some of these post-WWII gold reparations contained the Nazi Prussian Mint bars which are now stored in the Banca d’Italia’s Rome vaults. The initial gold bar reparations for Italy in the late 1940s came from the TGC account set up at the Bank of England. Records from the Clinton Library show that Italy received 575 Prussian bars set-aside from the TCG account in its early allocations. Prussian bars also made it to the Federal Reserve in New York. The same records show that were over 2,500 Prussian Mint bars held under earmark at the FRBNY for various customers as of January 1956 including the BIS, IMF, SNB, Bank of England, Netherlands and Canada among others. Some of these bars were later remelted into US Assay Office bars. (The Gold Report, Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States, July 2000, Clinton Library).
In a similar way to other major European central banks, the Banca d’Italia’s gold reserves were mainly built up during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Although the Banca d’Italia was a relatively important official gold holder during the first half of the 20th century, it ‘only’ held 402 tonnes of gold as of 1957. But starting in 1958 and running through to the late 1960s, Italy’s gold reserves rose by nearly 600% to exceed 2,560 tonnes in 1970. See page 19 of “Central Bank Gold Reserves, An Historical perspective since 1845, by Timothy Green, Research Study No. 23, published by World Gold Council, for data on Italian gold reserve totals during the 1950s and 1960s.
Since 1970, Italy’s gold holdings have remained fairly constant, although at times some of the Italian gold has been used in various financial transactions such as:
  • gold collateral against a loan from Germany during the 1970s
  • contributions to the European Monetary Cooperation Fund (EMCF)
  • contributions to the European Central Bank (ECB)
The gold collateral transactions with Germany and the EMCF and ECB contributions explain why, in the absence of purchases or sales, Italy’s historic gold holdings statistics appear to fluctuate widely at various times since the mid-1970s.

l’Ufficio Italiano dei Cambi (UIC)

Until the 1960s, most, if not all of Italy’s official gold reserves were held not by the Banca d’Italia, but by an associated entity called l’Ufficio Italiano dei Cambi (UIC). In English, UIC translates as the “Italian Foreign Exchange Office”. The UIC was created in 1945. One of its tasks was the management of Italy’s foreign exchange reserves (also including gold).
Therefore the Italian gold purchases in the 1950s and 1960s were conducted for the account of the UIC, not the Banca d’Italia. However, during the 1960s there were two huge transfers of gold from the UIC to the Banca d’Italia, one transfer in 1960 and the second in 1965. In total, these two transactions represented a transfer of 1,889 tonnes from the UIC to the Banca d’Italia. The UIC’s main function then became the management of the national currency and not the nation’s gold. The UIC ceased to exist in January 2008 when all of its tasks and powers were transferred to the Banca d’Italia.
DB

Gold Collateral for the Bundesbank – 1970s

In 1974, Italy required international financial aid to overcome an economic and currency crisis and ended up negotiating financial help from the Deutsche Bundesbank. This took the form of a dollar-gold collateral transaction, with the Bundesbank providing a US$ 2 billion loan secured on Italian gold collateral of equivalent value. On 5th September 1974, Karl Klasen, President of the Bundesbank, sent the specifics of the collateral agreement to Guido Carli, Governor of the Banca ‘dItalia. The details of the transaction were as follows:
US$ 2 billion was transferred from the Bundesbank to the Banca d’Italia for value date 5th September. Simultaneously, for value date 5th September, the Banca d’Italia earmarked 16,778,523.49 ounces of gold (about 522 tonnes) from its gold holdings stored at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York into the name of the Bundesbank, and received a gold claim against the Bundesbank for the same amount.  (2A96 Deutsche Bundesbank Files, 1974, Bank of England Archives).
The gold collateral was valued at $149 per ounce based on a formula of 80% of the average London gold fixing price during July and August 1974. The loan was for a six month maturity but could be rolled over up to three times, i.e. up to two years in total. It turns out that the loan was rolled over up to the maximum two years allowed. Not only that, but the entire gold-backed dollar loan was renewed in September 1976 with larger gold collateral of 17.5 million ounces or about 543 tonnes. This gold loan renewal in 1976 was underwritten by the UIC, and the 543 tonnes of gold was transferred from the Banca’Italia to the UIC prior to the loan renewal. Note that Paolo Baffi had become Governor of the Banca d’Italia in 1975, taking over from Guido Carli.
In September 1978, at the 2 year maturity date of the renewal, the 543 tonnes of gold was returned to the ownership of the Italians but instead of being transferred to the Banca d’Italia, the 543 tonnes was transferred to the balance sheet of the UIC, since the UIC had been involved in underwriting the entire loan agreement. This 543 tonnes of gold stayed on the UIC books and was revalued over the years, thereby creating a large capital gain for the UIC.

Gold capital gain Controversy – 1997/98

When the gold held by the UIC was sold to the Banca d’Italia in 1997, the UIC realised a capital gain of 7.6 billion Lira which then became taxable. The UIC then owed the Italian Exchequer 4 billion Lira, 3.4 billion Lira of which was transferred to the Italian State in November 1997. At the time in 1997, Italy was preparing for entry to the Euro, and needed to keep its deficit under the 3% ceiling required by the Maastricht Treaty criteria. Eurostat ruled that this windfall transfer to the Italian Exchequer was not allowed to be offset against the government deficit. See here for January 1998 statement from Eurostat.
However, a European Parliament parliamentary set of question in March 1998 to the European Council seems to suggests that the UIC tax payment to the Italian Exchequer was offset against Italy’s public sector deficit, and that it helped to keep the Italian deficit under the critical 3% Masstrict ceiling, thereby helping Italy to qualify for Euro membership. The parliamentary questions were from Italian politician Umberto Bossi:
“Does the Council intend to finally ascertain the nature of this transaction?
Does the Council intend to establish whether it is permissible to encourage tax revenues of this kind to be offset against the public sector deficit?
If not, does the Council not consider that this incident shows yet again that Italy has not changed its ways and is prepared to stoop to dubious accounting practices in order to enter Europe?”
The answer to this parliamentary question in June 1998 seems vague, but did not deny that the tax windfall generated by the capital gain on the 543 tonnes of gold may have helped improve the Italian fiscal condition in the run-up to Euro qualification and entry.

EMCF and EURO

As referenced above, Italian gold has been contributed to various European monetary experiments since the 1970s. This explains why the yearly official total figures of Italian gold fluctuate widely over the 1970s-1990s period, and indeed have also fluctuated since 1999.
In 1979, Italy’s gold reserves dropped by 20% and stayed that way until 1998 when they increased again to the previous 1979 level. This was due to Italy contributing to the European Monetary Cooperation Fund (EMCF) which was a fund within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System (EMS). In exchange for providing 20% of their gold and dollar reserves to the EMCF, member countries received claims denominated in European Currency Units (ECUs). [The ECU was an abstract precursor to the Euro]. The gold that was transferred to the EMCF was accounted for as gold swaps, but there was no physical movement of gold, it was just a book entry to represent a change in ownership to the EMCF.
In 1999, with the advent of the Euro (initially as a virtual currency), central bank members of the Eurozone had to again transfer gold, this time to the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB stipulated that each member had to transfer foreign reserves assets, and 15% of these transfers had to be in the form of gold. In Italy’s case it transferred 141 tonnes of gold to the ECB, so Italy’s gold reserves fell by this amount.
The gold owned by the ECB is not centrally stored and managed by the ECB. It stays wherever it was when transferred by each member country, and the ECB delegates the management of its gold reserves to each member central bank, so essentially, it’s just another accounting transaction. It’s unclear whether the ECB gold managed by the Banca d’Italia on behalf of the ECB is “managed” any differently to the non-ECB gold (i.e. its unclear whether the same investment policy always applies to both gold holdings). One person who would certainly know the answer to that questions is Mario Draghi, current president of the ECB, former governor of the Banca d’Italia, and also born in Rome, home of the Palazzo Koch gold vault.

Is any Italian Gold pledged or leased out?

Banca d’Italia annual reports follow International Monetary Fund reporting conventions and classify the gold in its balance sheet as ‘gold and gold receivables‘. In September 2011, when I asked the Banca d’Italia to clarify what percentage of the asset category ‘gold and gold receivables’ in its 2010 balance sheet referred to gold held, and what percentage represented gold receivables, the Bank’s press office replied succinctly that “it’s only gold, no receivables.”
Following the publication of the Bank’s three page gold document in April 2014, I asked the Banca d’Italia press office a number of questions (see above), one of which was about gold leasing:
Are any of the Bank’s gold reserves subject to lease agreements, and if so, what percentage of the gold is leased out? Is any of the Bank’s gold swapped or pledged in any other way?
As mentioned above, the Banca d’Italia’s response was:
This is to inform you that unfortunately Banca d’Italia will not be giving information in addition to the website note.
Regards
Press and External Relations Division, Secretariat To The Governing Board And Communications Directorate, Bank of Italy”

Gold Audits

The Banca d’Italia states in its 3 page gold document that external auditors verify the gold held in Rome each year in conjunction with the Bank’s own internal auditors. For the gold held abroad, the external auditors are said to audit this using annual certificates issued by the central banks that act as the depositories (the  depositories being the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Bank of England, and either the BIS or perhaps the SNB depending on the type of certificate that is issued for BIS deposits).
This approach is analogous to the methodology used to audit the German gold reserves stored abroad, i.e. there is no independent physical audit of the gold stored abroad by the Bundesbank. The paper-pushing auditors merely audit pieces of paper.
As regards the Banca d’Italia’s gold holdings at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), these holdings could either be in the form of a “Gold Sight Account” or a “Gold Ear-Marked Account”, as explained here by the Bank of Japan in 2000 when it switched its gold holdings at the BIS from a gold sight account to a gold earmarked account:
“The Bank of Japan has recently transferred its claims against the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) embodied in a “Gold Sight Account” to a “Gold Ear-marked Account” with the BIS.” (July 2000)
If the Banca d’Italia’s gold holdings at the BIS are just in a sight account, then this is just a claim on a balance of gold, not a holding of specific gold bars.
It’s also surprising to me that the mainstream media have taken a significant, albeit superficial, interest in the Bundesbank’s ongoing exercise to repatriate 300 tonnes of its gold reserves from New York to Frankfurt, but zero interest in the fact that the Banca d’Italia supposedly has a huge amount of gold stored in New York that has never physically audited it and does not even see a need to repatriate it.

Banca d’Italia office in Manhattan

Like the Bundesbank,  the Banca d’Italia also maintains a representative office in New York, at 800 Third Avenue – 26th Floor, New York – NY 10022 (see representative office contact details here). The head of this representative office is Giovanni D’Intignano (see LinkedIn). Therefore, it should be very easy for the Banca d’Italia to ask the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to conduct an on-site physical gold audit of the Italian gold at the vaults of the New York Fed, all 1000 plus tonnes of it.
In fact, the Banca d’Italia also maintains another of its only 3 representative offices abroad in London at 2 Royal Exchange, London EC3V 3DG, which is right across the road from the Bank of England’s headquarters and gold vaults. It should therefore also be a simple matter for the Banca d’Italia to also organise a physical on-site audit of its gold reserves stored at the Bank of England in London, something the Bank of England has been allowing its gold storage customers to do since 2013.

Political Awakening

There has been a developing political trend recently in Italy for more transparency on the Italian gold and also calls for its ownership and title to be protected against control by outside entities.
In January 2012, Italian politican Rampelli Fabio (co-signed by Marco Marsilio) submitted some written questions to the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, a department headed at the time by Mario Monti (Monti was also simultaneously Italian Prime Minister at that time), asking the following questions about the Italian gold (questions 4-14567 : Italian version and English version):
“When and under what agreement or statutory provision were the storage location decisions (regarding New York, London and BIS Switzerland) taken and whether that strategic decision is still considered to serve the interests of Italy?
Who owns the gold reserves held at Palazzo Koch (in Rome) and the gold reserves held at the foreign locations?
Does Italy have full availability to the gold reserves held at the Bank of Italy and at the foreign locations?”
Even though these questions were submitted nearly 5 years ago, the official status of the questions on the parliamentary website still says “In Progress”,  suggesting that they have not been answered by the Ministry of Finance. I can find no other evidence elsewhere either that these questions were ever answered.

Senators visit Palazzo Koch vault

Three Italian senators of the political party Movimento Cinque Stelle visited the Banca d’Italia gold vaults in Rome on 31 March 2014 and are calling for the ownership of the gold to be transferred from the Banca d’Italia to the Italian public so that its control cannot be compromised. See video below of their before and after visit which was broadcast from outside the Palazzo Koch vault in Rome.
These 3 representative (in the above video) are Senator Giuseppe Vacciano, Senator Andrea Cioffi and Senator Francesco Molinari.  I do not have a direct English translation of this video, however, anyone interested can translate this page from Italian,  which was published on 3 April 2014, and features Senator Vacciano explaining the senators’ vault visit.
In his report, Vacciano confirm some interesting facts, such as that the Italian gold belongs to the Banca d’Italia and not the Italian State.  The ownership issue is also confirmed by the Banca d’Italia’s 3 page gold report (see above) which states:
“La proprietà delle riserve ufficiali è assegnata per legge alla Banca d’Italia” – (Ownership of official reserves is assigned by law to the Bank of Italy)
Unusually for a central bank, Banca d’Italia’s share capital is held by a diverse range of Italian banks and other financial institutions as well as by the Italian state
Vaccciano also confirmed that in the vault they saw some South African gold bars, many American gold bars, and “several bearing the Nazi eagle”. And in a similar way to the RAI reporter Alberto Angela, who said in 2010 that he was speechless when viewing the gold in the sacristy, Vacciano says:
from a purely human perspective, we could see with our own eyes a quantity of precious metal that goes beyond an ordinary perception … I must say that arouses feelings that are difficult to explain“.

Italian Citizens

The Italian business community and public appear to be quite aware of the importance of the country’s gold reserves. In May 2013, the World Gold Council conducted a survey of Italian business leaders and citizens which included various questions about the Italian gold reserves. The findings showed that 92% of business leaders and 85% of citizens thought that the Italian gold reserves should play an important role in Italy’s economic recovery. There was very little appetite to sell any of the gold reserves, with only 4% of both citizens and business leaders being in favour of any gold sales. Finally, 61% of the business leaders and 52% of the citizens questioned were in favour of utilising the gold reserves in some way without selling any of them. The World Gold Council interpreted this sentiment as allowing the possibility for a future Italian gold-backed bond to be issued with Italian gold as collateral. The Italian gold could thus play a role similar to that used to collateralise the international loans from West Germany to Italy in the 1970s.

Mario Draghi – Last Word

For now, the last word on the Italian goes to Draghi. Even Mario Draghi, former governor of the Banca d’Italia, and current president of the European Central Bank, has a similar view to the Italian public about not selling the Italian gold. In the video below of a 2013 answer to a question from Sprott’s Tekoa Da Silva, Draghi says that he never thought it wise to sell Italy’s gold since it acts as a ‘reserve of safety’. However, as would be expected from a smoke-and-mirrors central banker, Draghi doesn’t reveal very much beyond generalities, and certainly no details of storage locations or whether the Italian gold comprises gold receivables as well as unencumbered gold.

Post in evidenza

The Great Taking - The Movie

David Webb exposes the system Central Bankers have in place to take everything from everyone Webb takes us on a 50-year journey of how the C...