A couple of months ago the Bundesbank made a surprise announcement. Over the past four years, the German central bank said, it had discreetly transferred 300 tonnes of gold bars from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York to its own vaults in Frankfurt. The transfers had been due to finish in 2020 but so keen were the Germans to get the precious metal on to their own territory that they managed the feat three years early.
Why would a central bank want to repatriate gold in this day and age, when it no longer underpins the international monetary system? The official explanation was that, in a post-Cold War era, the Germans had little need to spread their economic reserves around the world, though there