Why Germany Is Going to War with Gold
The comments below are an edited and abridged synopsis of an article by Tyler Durden
Governments don’t want you to own gold, especially in Germany. There, owning gold is a means of preserving wealth, especially in times of war or economic crisis. Many Germans fear that their government could again lose control of fiat money, as the Weimar Republic did in the 1920s, leading to devastating hyperinflation.
An astounding 26+ million Germans have gold investments. More Germans have savings in physical gold than in the stock market. They currently own 8,918 tonnes of gold worth €330 billion, just over half in bars and coins.
Germany’s central bank has more gold than any other, except for the US. Yet these facts and figures indicating strong gold buy-ins are incongruous with a new German law that severely limits the anonymity of citizens’ gold purchases.
Until January 1, 2020, the maximum amount of gold you could purchase in Germany, without disclosing personal information, was €10,000 ($9,076). However, in response to an EU directive targeted at money laundering and terrorist financing, the German government set a new, much lower limit of €2,000 ($2,203).
The wholly predictable result? Panic gold buying, with long lines of customers queuing up outside the country’s precious metals shops and gold dealer showrooms during the last days of December.
The legion of gold buyers was there to purchase under €10,000 worth of gold in anonymous transactions that don’t require identity checks, before the new rule kicked in. Their fear was that passing on one’s information to the seller, then on to the government, would allow the government to confiscate their gold, if it wished, as has been done in the past.
The bottom line? Governments don’t want you to own gold. They prefer you to invest in the stock market, in real estate, to make all your purchases on debit or credit, because these transactions are trackable. You are trackable. The last thing the government wants is a bunch of gold bugs running around off-grid, especially during tough economic times, when they could be shopping instead of tying up their money in gold bars and coins.