BERLIN -- Germany's central bank announced Wednesday that it
would reverse a decades-old policy of storing gold abroad and
reclaim $36 billion of bullion from New York and Paris to ensure
that half of the country's reserves were on home soil by 2020.
About 674 metric tons of gold -- sent abroad to keep it out of
the reach of the Soviet Union during the Cold War -- is to be
"repatriated" and deposited in the Bundesbank's vaults in
Frankfurt. The move would eliminate Germany's gold reserves in
Paris and reduce those in New York, but would leave its bullion
in London untouched. "The two most important functions of gold
reserves are to build domestic confidence and to ensure the
option that the gold can be quickly exchanged into foreign
currency," Carl-Ludwig Thiele, a board member of the Bundesbank,
told reporters Wednesday. Thiele said the move had nothing to do
with the reliability of Germany's allies in storing the gold.
Rather, he said, it was no longer necessary to maintain reserves
in Paris now that France