When two weeks ago we exposed the heretofore secret location of JPM’s London gold vault (located under the firm’s massive L-shaped office complex at 60 Victoria Embankment) we thought: what about New York? After all, while London is the legacy financial capital of the “old world“, it is New York that the biggest private wealth of the past century is concentrated, and it is also New York where the bulk of the hard assets backing the public money of the world’s sovereigns are located, some 80 feet below ground level in the fifth sub-basement of the New York Fed, resting on the bedrock of Manhattan.
That the topic of the gold “held” by the New York Fed – historically considered the gold vault with the largest concentration of gold bars in the world – has become rather sensitive, in the aftermath of the Deutschebank’s request to repatriate it (surely, but very, very slowly), is an understatement. Yet in the aftermath of some of the revelations presented here, we believe quite a few other countries will follow in Germany’s footsteps for one very simple reason: suddenly the question of whether their gold is located at 33 Liberty, or just adjacent to it, in what we have learned is the de facto largest gold vault in the world, located across the street 90 feet below 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, doesn’t appear to have a clear answer.
