Finland's Gold
Curiously, both of these nations use Bank of England to hold majority of their gold! And in case of Sweden, add in significant amount held by Bank of Canada, which means both Scandanavian nations have possession of very small proportions of gold they claim to "own on their books".
| Location | Sweden | Finland | |||
| Bank of England | 61.4 | 25.0 | |||
| Swedish Riksbank | 15.1 | 9.8 | |||
| New York Fed | 13.2 | 8.8 | |||
| Swiss National Bank | 2.8 | 3.4 | |||
| Bank of Finland | - | 2.0 | |||
| Bank of Canada | 33.2 | - | |||
| Total | 125.7 | 49.0 |
But the story gets even weirder. Apparently, large chunks of these gold reserves supposedly held by Bank of England are not really "physically" held by Bank of England at all! Rather, they have been recycled back into global markets as "investment activity".
Maximum half of Finland's gold has been within investment activity over the years. Gold has been invested among other things in deposits similar to money market deposits and using gold interest rate swaps. Gold investment activity is common for central banks. The risks associated with gold investments are controlled using limits, investment diversification and limitations concerning duration.The most salient point about this is, how it relates to supposedly "rigged" low price of gold in international market as a profound anomaly. It otherwise cannot be explained in light of enormous amounts of gold being stocked by Reserve Bank of India, People's Bank of China and other Asian nations in recent years.
The evidence is mounting that Western central banks through the Bank of England have been feeding monetary gold into the market through leasing operations. Indeed, the Finnish blog says as much: "Gold investment activities are common for central banks".
This explains in part how the voracious appetite for gold by China, India and South-East Asia is being satisfied, without the gold price rising to reflect this demand.
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