{"id":43795,"date":"2019-02-14T10:31:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T15:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43795"},"modified":"2019-02-14T10:31:24","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T15:31:24","slug":"italys-gold-enters-the-political-fray-but-who-really-owns-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43795","title":{"rendered":"Italy\u2019s Gold enters the Political Fray. But who really owns it?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bullionstar.com\/blogs\/ronan-manly\/italys-gold-enters-the-political-fray-but-who-really-owns-it\/\">Italy\u2019s Gold enters the Political Fray. But who really owns it?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Italy\u2019s unpredictable political situation continues to throw up surprises with a controversial&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.lastampa.it\/2019\/02\/11\/economia\/usare-loro-della-banca-ditalia-la-tentazione-di-lega-e-ms-8BtalmMS7Yd716fJVj448J\/pagina.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">claim<\/a>&nbsp;in national newspaper La Stampa this week that the country\u2019s coalition government wants to sell part of Italy\u2019s gold reserves to cover spending plans and to prevent the need to increase VAT in a forthcoming Italian budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the claims by La Stampa are not really based on anything new, they still managed to cause an international media frenzy as they came a few days after Italy\u2019s governing coalition launched verbal attacks on Italy\u2019s central bankers and financial regulators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Note that Italy claims to be the world\u2019s third largest sovereign gold holder behind the US and Germany, with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bullionstar.com\/gold-university\/central-bank-gold-policies-banca-ditalia\">claimed monetary gold holdings of 2451.8 tonnes<\/a>. Interestingly, unlike most countries where sovereign gold is owned by the State but managed by the country\u2019s central bank, the Italian gold is officially owned by Italy\u2019s central bank, Banca d\u2019Italia (Bank of Italy), and not owned by the Italian State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Banca d\u2019Italia furthermore claims that 1199.4 tonnes of the gold (or roughly half), is stored in the Bank\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bullionstar.com\/gold-university\/banca-ditalia-gold-vault-rome\">gold vaults under it\u2019s Palazzo Koch headquarters<\/a>&nbsp;building in Rome, with most of the other half stored in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), and a small balance kept the Bank of England in London, and in an account of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in the vaults of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in Berne, Switzerland. But without any documentary evidence or independent auditing or verification of any of its gold, especially the foreign held gold, these claims are impossible to verify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.bullionstar.com\/blogs\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Di-Maio-and-Salvini.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-20339\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Italy\u2019s Gold enters the Political Fray. But who really owns it? Italy\u2019s unpredictable political situation continues to throw up surprises with a controversial&nbsp;claim&nbsp;in national newspaper La Stampa this week that the country\u2019s coalition government wants to sell part of Italy\u2019s gold reserves to cover spending plans and to prevent the need to increase VAT in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24402,23619,122,374,1464],"class_list":["post-43795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-banca-ditalia","tag-bullionstar","tag-central-bank","tag-gold","tag-italy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43796,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43795\/revisions\/43796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}