U.S. asset managers worried Obama could confiscate gold

Speaking at the FT Silver conference in London yesterday, lead-off speaker John Levin, HSBC Bank's Managing Director, Global Metals and Trading (HSBC is one of the world's top precious metals traders and its vaults in the U.S. and Europe hold huge holdings of gold and silver bullion) recounted conversations with some of the U.S.'s top asset managers controlling massive amounts of capital asking if HSBC had the capacity in its vaults to store major gold purchases. On being told that the bank's U.S. vaults had sufficient space available he was told that they did not want their gold stored in the U.S.A. but preferably in Europe because they feared that at some stage the U.S. Administration might follow the path set by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and confiscate all U.S. gold holdings as part of the country's strategy in dealing with the nation's economic problems. (more)