*Veteran Café member Bryant Blake might really be on to something here. Bryant, a top mathematician/engineer, has put some considerable thought and effort into the central bank gold reserves issue. If any Café member can run with this and shed any further light on this Dracula issue, it would be most appreciated...

Bill, please feel free to bring in any of your associates to investigate the drop in reserves for the U.S, Germany, and France that is shown on the World Bank reserve table. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FI.RES.TOTL.CD. You might want to post the world bank link table on LeMet in case the world bank removes it from the public domain. Below is a table which converts the drops in reserves to drops in gold holdings. Based on the numbers, all of the U.S. and German gold, and most of the French gold is gone if it is assumed that SDR and currency reserves stayed the same from 2011 to 2012. Even if the SDR and currency reserves for these countries dropped to zero, the 2012 reserves indicate gold holdings dropped about 70%. -Bryant

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http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/?action=annual_report The 2012 us mint report on page 42 reports deep storage gold with a market value of $435 billion on 9/30/12. This compares with end of 2012 us reserve per world bank of $139.1 billion. I remember some talk of the world bank discounting leased gold a few years ago. If they have implemented this it appears the us has leased all of its gold and has none which is unencumbered.

Bill,
This morning I sent the following email to the World Bank:

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FI.RES.TOTL.CD

. the total reserves in 2012 for the United States, Germany, and France dropped greatly from 2011 levels. The 2012 reserve levels for these countries are so low in fact, that they are less than the respective countries claimed gold reserve value using the 2012 December 31 London closing gold price. Is there an explanation of why these reserves dropped so significantly? Is the value of each countries gold now reduce to account for leased and or swapped gold. Thank you, Bryant Blake