All Contend for Gold,

and all depend on gold (Nach Golde drängt, am Golde hängt doch alles. Goethe's Faust I, verses 2802-4).

A couple of weeks ago, the German Federal Court of Auditors (Bundesrechnungshof) complained about the sloppiness with which the German Federal Bank checks the gold reserves it has bunkered in London, Paris, and (not Rome) New York. 

And continuing with the Voice*: It would be much nicer if they came home to Frankfort, where the Bundesbank only keeps 82857 bullions or 31 percent of Germany's reserve. 

*Frank Sinatra, who liked to go traveling to London, Paris, and Rome but found it so much nicer to come home

The reason that most of Germany's gold is not in Frankfurt is due to the Cold War. At the end of the last war, Germany had no gold, but the Bundesbank started to change some of their US dollars, British pounds, and French francs into gold but kept it in those countries out of fear of a Russian invasion. 

Foreign storage was also one out of convenience for in times of exchange rate fluctuations of those currencies mentioned above, German gold in London, Paris, and New York could be used as a fast buffer for stabilizing the exchange rate of the Deutsche Mark. 

Since 2001 France and Germany have shared the euro, so the 29775 ingots kept in the Banque de France will be brought home wholly. With the British pound still being a global player, the amount of gold in the Bank of England remains. This is, in fact, nothing compared to the 122597 bullions Germany presently keeps in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York 24 m below street level in Lower Manhattan. That 21795 ingots of this gold will be repatriated has spread rumors that Germany does not trust the Fed anymore and, even worse, as a conspiracy theory stated: What Do German Central Bankers Know That We Don't?

Well, was it not Republican Ron Paul mistrusting the Fed in the first place asking that holes be drilled in the Fed's ingots to check if they are solid gold? In Germany, Rolf Baron von Hohenau articulated the German angst saying, "We need to know if it's real gold or is it something covered with gold." Let's face it, it is not easy to fake a bullion. The density of pure gold (19.32 g/cm³) is high, so diluting it with copper (density 8.96 g/cm³) will not do the trick. You could however use gold-coated tungsten (density 19.25 g/cm³) and possibly get away with it.

The problem is that tungsten is a precious metal for industry and is relatively expensive (45 U$/kg). So why not take depleted uranium (density 18,95 g/cm³) that is in abundance, slightly cheaper (42 U$/kg), and sell the gold-plated uranium ingots as gold. Thus we transform all the DU floating around that nobody wants, but everybody wants to get rid of. If you have ever tried to drill a hole in DU, you will know that Ron Paul's suggestion will work in this case. However, there are more advanced methods to check gold ingots.

A German official testing gold ingots with ultrasound

At the end of the transaction, just 50% of Germany's gold reserve will be stored in Frankfort, idolized by many, neither growing nor diminishing except for about 5 tons annually that our Finance Minister buys to mint coins for collectors. In transforming gold into coins, Mr. Schäuble is double-gaining for not only the seignorage* but the profit of the Bundesbank will also flow back into the federal budget.
*the difference between the price of the metal and the coin's nominal value. One can overdo it by minting a few grams of platinum into a coin giving it a nominal value of one trillion US dollars.

In the meantime, the public full of German angst, demanded, "Bring all our ingots home!"

*