Va a ser que no.
Hacía tiempo que no hacíamos una entrada sobre esta serie. La subcrisis de Chipre ha sido más de lo mismo. Pero una noticia curiosa nos ha inspirado una nueva entrada.
En efecto ayer comentábamos sobre lo ridículo que parece que a estas alturas del partido (nuestros conocimientos en Economía serán pocos o serán muchos, esto varía según el opinador de turno, pero algunas cosas si se conocen con certeza en esta disciplina), haya personas que esperen un retorno al patrón oro, pero la tendencia al alza en el precio de esta commodity con muy pocos usos prácticos parece confirmar que haberlos, los hay y en abundancia (este cómo el tema del Peak Oil es un tema recurrente en tiempos de crisis).
Y la noticia es que hay un banco, ABN Amro, uno de los dos grandes bancos de los Países Bajos, que en teoría custodiaba oro y otros metales preciosos para sus clientes (es decir era sólo un depositario) que ha dejado de entregar la mercancía y en vez de ella cuando se la piden entrega dinero, valorándola a precio de mercado del día (si no he leído mal).
In a letter to clients, Dutch bank ABN Amro has told clients that they will no longer be providing physical delivery of precious metals including Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Palladium….Clients owning precious metals will see their account balances adjusted by the prevailing Bid prices of gold. (A copy of the letter has been posted on various sites with Silver Doctors providing what is one of the best translations)
Esto a disparado algunas especulaciones entre los catastrofistas de turno. Pero al final cómo siempre la realidad es muy diferente a los rumores y a la que los catastrofistas esperan.
El propio banco lo explica:
“Until 2009 ABN AMRO had a small bank that traded in physical gold called Hollandse Bank Unie (HBU) located in Rotterdam. Following our integration with Fortis Bank Netherlands, ABN AMRO was required by the European Commission to sell a part of its commercial banking portfolio in the Netherlands to Deutsche Bank. This was publicly announced at the time and included the sale of HBU, along with the transfer of HBU clients to Deutsche Bank. These HBU clients were able to use ABN AMRO facilities during the transition phase, and Deutsche Bank also offered its HBU services to ABN AMRO. Deutsche Bank subsequently announced last year that they would cease HBU activities in the Netherlands from 1 April 2013 – including this facility for ABN AMRO. We recently sent a letter to small number of affected clients, advising them that we can no longer make use of the HBU facilities provided by Deutsche Bank from this date. ABN AMRO has not provided these services directly since the sale of HBU, so there is no change to our offering – only to the facilities provided by Deutsche Bank. We have also found a new provider for these services, that is UBS.”
Es decir, ni ha habido pánico bancario, ni el banco está esperando un retorno al patrón oro, ni hay atraco, ni nada parecido. Un simple cambio organizativo
HPC MARKET 
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