“But what happens when that trust is abused? Surely there have been banking scandals in the past; however, what we now face is a crisis of confidence of unprecedented proportions. The store of capital that governments use to assure their people of the country’s strength, their gold reserves, has been sold off for what is in essence an IOU that can no longer be paid. We cannot honor our promise to the central banks. Even if we had the money to buy the gold to return to the central banks, there isn’t enough of it in the world to cover what we owe.”
“Production can be increased to buy us the time to fill a call order.” This from an Englishman in a Savile Row suit.
“It can’t.” The answer was short and blunt, like the person who gave it. He, too, had an accent, somewhat British in nature but with a Colonial twang.
“Mr. Bryce, would you care to explain.”
Bryce stood. Unlike the others, he had tanned, weathered skin, and his blue eyes were hidden behind a permanent squint. His hands were large, with swollen knuckles. He was someone who’d worked to obtain his wealth, toiled in ways the bankers could never understand.
“I’ve been chosen to represent South Africa’s mining concerns here,” Bryce said. “Mr. Volkmann told me what we were to discuss, so I talked with my people beforehand to give you accurate information. Last year South Africa produced about thirty-four hundred tons of gold at a cost of around two hundred and eighty dollars an ounce. This year we project the same tonnage but at a price of three hundred and eighteen dollars an ounce. Labor costs have risen since the end of apartheid because of the power of the trade unions, and we’re under heavy pressure to sign a new contract that’s even more generous.”
“Don’t give in to them,” the president of Holland’s biggest bank interjected.
Bryce shot him a look. “Hard rock mining isn’t assembly line work. It takes years of training to become proficient. A strike now would cripple us all, and the unions know it. They see gold trading near five hundred an ounce and know the mines aren’t losing money.”
“Can you increase production?” Another at the table asked.
“Our mines are two miles deep now. Every level we sink farther is a geometric increase in cost. It’s like building a skyscraper. To make it taller you can’t simply add a floor to the top. You must first reinforce the foundation and the structure. You must make sure the elevators can reach and that your water and sewer lines can take the additional capacity. Adding a floor to the top, architects say, costs as much and is as difficult as slipping a new floor under an existing building. Every new level we dig in our deepest mines costs two to three times as much to excavate as the one above it. We could get the gold, sure, but the expense far outweighs the profit.”
“Then we need to find alternative sources of bullion. Russia perhaps? Canada? The United States?”
“Not enough capacity to make a dent in the shortfall,” Volkmann answered. “Also, environmental protections in North America add a thirty to forty dollar premium per ounce.”
“What about exploration? We develop new mines, maybe bring order to the chaotic gold mines of Brazil so they can increase production.”
“Even with the latest equipment and management, the veins in Brazil aren’t big enough to fill an armored car in a year,” Bryce replied. “And as for exploration, there are gold reefs out there. We even know where some of them are. It would take years just to cut through the bureaucracy to stake claims, and then you’d need to invest billions of dollars to bring any of them up to the production levels you gentlemen require.”
“Then the solution is simple,” a Frenchman said into the short silence following Bryce’s gloomy assessment. “We must convince the central banks to never call in their reserves. Perhaps we could promise them a greater interest rate to ensure their cooperation.”
“That’s just a temporary fix,” said another New Yorker. “We can’t run from our obligation forever.”
“But if we have time to refill the central banks’ coffers, we can maintain price stability and avoid what happened when my country announced their sale.”
“And when the Wall Street Journal breaks this story,” the New Yorker countered, “what then? People are going to demand to see the gold their government promised them existed. Joe Six-Pack thinks there’s a vault at Fort Knox brimming with the stuff. He’s not going to be too happy when he learns it’s empty except for a bunch of worthless promissory notes. He’s going to panic because his government lied about the one thing it never had in the past, the surety of the greenback.”
“Which is precisely why I said earlier this is a crisis of unprecedented proportions,” Volkmann said. “We have removed the foundation of the capitalist system, and as soon as the public learns of this, it is going to crash down like a card house.”
The Swiss banker paused, scanning the room. He saw that he had their attention, and he could tell by the dour expressions that some of them already anticipated what he was about to say, even if they didn’t know the specifics. He sipped from a glass of water before continuing. “For the past six years Germany has embarked on a series of failed economic policies. The result has transformed the country from Europe’s industrial engine into something akin to a welfare state. Productivity is down, unemployment is at the ceiling allowed by the EU, and shortly the government will face the likelihood that it will default on their overly generous pensions. In a word, Germany is about to go bankrupt. I learned two weeks ago that they are going to sell all of their gold stock.”
The collective gasp was the sound of men realizing they were facing the abyss.
“That is six thousand tons, gentlemen — or roughly two years’ worth of South Africa’s production. As it stands there are only two thousand tons on reserve in Berlin and Bonn. We have to make up a four-thousand-ton shortfall.”
“How soon?” the Frenchman asked, having lost his earlier bluster.
“I’m not certain,” Volkmann replied. “In order to keep prices stable I suspect it will be over some time.”
“But not enough,” the New Yorker muttered.
“And keep in mind,” Volkmann went on doggedly, piling disaster on top of disaster, “if commodity traders realize the bind our banks are in, they will gouge us, and prices might double or even triple.”
“We are ruined,” the banker from Holland cried. “All of us. Even if the Germans accepted currency, we could not repay. The money we made selling the gold has already been lent to others. We would have to recall loans, all of our loans. It would ruin the Dutch economy.”
“Not just yours,” the banker named Hershel said. “We bought and sold twenty billion dollars’ worth of German bullion, and a good chunk of that evaporated during the dot-com implosion. We would have to deplete our savings-holders’ accounts to pay it back. There would be runs on banks all over the United States. It would be the Great Depression all over again.”
A despondent silence enveloped the room as they considered those words. These men were too young to recall the Depression that enveloped the world in the 1920s and ’30s, but they’d heard firsthand accounts from grandparents and other relatives. But this time would be much worse, because the global economy was so interconnected. A few even thought beyond their own losses and those of their home countries. With nations struggling to provide for their own people, international aid would end. How many people in developing nations would die because the men at this table had sold borrowed gold in order to fatten their profit ledgers?