A Dutch political party has put forward a series of 10 questions to its treasury secretary concerning its gold reserves:

http://www.gata.org/node/10454

Will anyone ask the Swiss National Bank the same questions too?

Thanks for the evening laugh!

I thought it was all buried under Paradeplatz an undisclosed location in an anonymous Swiss city.

Not under Paradeplatz as there are too many rats there but under the Bahnhofstrasse about 3 to 5 floors below. Plus below the Nationalbank Bldg at Bürkliplatz (towards the Fraumünster). And also in Bern.

Do they have any left after they sold shit loads recently?

About as much as China, three times more than the UK (ad the gold reserves of Russia to the one of the UK and you are about there).

US really has lot of gold according to Goggle!

That made my day

Do you have accurate blueprints so I could drill my way in with my wobbley battery powered Bosch drill?

They have not touched the stuff in spite of Switzerland have too much gold (and this is an UNDERstatement). The gold-reserves are up to three times as needed by international standards. And the gold price generally is rising.

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I have seen some of those cellars in about 1971 when they were only 2 floors below ground-floor, but my brother has seen the same cellars in the late 1980ies when they had been moved two floors lower. The position is exactly where people walk around right above, both in case of the Bahnhofstrasse and in case of the Nationalbank and the streets around it. But while all this is general knowledge, also general knowledge is that the cellars are secured against practically every eventuality

Well, it in reality is no joke, as the rats population in Zurich outnumbers the human one by about 1,5 to 1,0 . And the area between Paradeplatz and the Limmat is a centre-place. In some restaurants in the area (like one of Bindella) many female waiters do not go to the wine-cellar but leave this to the male Chef-de-Service

the pictures of 1750-1800 Zürich
http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/hbd/de/i...im_modell.html
-- taken from a model --- makes things more obvious

and if you realize that what now is the Bahnhofstrasse Zürich until 1864 (150 years ago) looked as below







you may realize where the problem comes from !

The two Bindschedler novels about the "Turnach-Kinder" give a good impression of how life in Zürich was before 1864
http://www.drs1.ch/www/de/drs1/sendu...h10096749.html

We've got two Iberian civil engineers looking for work, one specialized in tunnels!

Where does the general knowledge come from that those are vaults of the National Bank and not of the other Banks nearby? It is general knowledge that officially there is absolutely no official, let alone general knowledge as to the whereabouts of the SNB gold. Even the members of the Federal Parliament are meant not to know where it is.

General knowledge = hearsay?

thanks for info... I did think it was a joke... and that you were referring to those day-time inhabitants of the two main buildings sorrounding the square

Vultures not rats

It is actually vaults of the UBS, where much of the SNB 12,5kg goldbars are stored. I here refer not to what was the SBV (Schweiz.Bankverein) but to what was the SBG (Schweiz.Bankgesellschaft). I not only in my apprenticeship-time was involved in the airfreighting of gold to .... destinations, but in the 80ies was for three weeks together at work with a chap of the SNB in Bern (we were in a tent in the Magadino Plains, doing office work and evacuating federal property from the rising floods ! ). And we there and then were of the opinion that all was "general knowledge". Oh sure, right you are, we possibly got this point wrong a bit

Except Rats

Thank you. 12.441 kg, to be a bit more exact, namely 400 troy ounces.

Some of the Swiss gold is held overseas e.g. at Fort Knox in America. But as the SNB has engaged in gold lending activities, it is not clear as to how much gold on hand that the SNB has.

Anyway, the SVP has an upcoming initiative on SNB gold sales and location: http://af.reuters.com/article/metals...7KK34V20110920

Personally I don't think a total ban on gold sales is desirable; what would be better I think is to have a stipulated minimum amount of gold holdings (the initiative proposes gold covering 20% of SNB assets).