[mattduke]

He means it literally, not figuratively. Search for "foreign country" in their discussion of gold. This pdf is available from federalreserve.gov.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')HAIRMAN GREENSPAN. Did I hear you correctly when you said that the gold exports in October appear to have come from the coffers of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York? Has anyone looked lately?

MR. TRUMAN. Well, I didn't want to tell too many secrets in this temple!

VICE CHAIRMAN CORRIGAN. Obviously, we knew what happened to the gold, but I don't think we knew what it did to exports.

MR. TRUMAN. What happens in the Census data is that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is treated as a foreign country. [Laughter] And when a real foreign country takes some of the gold out of New York and ships it abroad, it counts first as imports and then as exports. However, the import side is not picked up in the Census data. So there you get the export side of it.

MR. LAWARE. Great accounting!

MR. BOEHNE. Great confidence building!

MR. TRUMAN. That's because you haven't been filling out your import documents!

MR. ANGELL. Let me run this by again. You mean a country owns gold and has it stored in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and if they ship it out, that's an export?

MR. TRUMAN. And in the balance of payments accounts it also counts as an import, so it washes out.

CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN. The Federal Reserve Bank's basement is a foreign country. When they move it out of the basement into the United States, it's an import. Then, when they ship it out again, it's an export.

[Sixstrings]

Not sure what your point here is. Foreign governments store gold with the Federal Reserve, that's no secret. It's just a sign of confidence that this is the safest place to keep it. But the gold is theirs, they can withdraw it if they choose to.