8 ms·
Is Germany's gold safe in New York ?
- KingOfCoders 6mo agoNo.
- jjgreen 6mo agoNot really "should Germany move it?", rather "can Germany move it?"
- lambdaone 6mo agoAt today's prices, that's around 1400 tons of gold. It's made out of lots of individual gold bars, and they can certainly move it in increments, by road then air or sea, unless the American government stops them doing it. People ship million-dollar assets all the time. It would be a huge task to make 160,000 such trips, though.
- fakedang 6mo agoThey can also sell it in the US, buy it in Europe, as France did. It's also the preferable route because IIRC the Chinese have had suspicions about the quality of their gold holdings held in the US for sometime now. That is, US-stored gold is not of the same quality grade as in the rest of the world.
- shrubble 6mo agoThe usual claim, which is difficult to prove without physical access to the bars, is that some bars were made by melting and casting the confiscated gold coins that FDR gathered in the 1930s. Such bars would not be to the 99.9 percent gold standard set by the London Bullion Market Association. They would instead be at about 90% purity, since American gold coins had 10% copper added, which makes the gold harder and more wear-resistant. See https://www.bundesbank.de/en/press/press-releases/bundesbank-successfully-wraps-up-run-up-phase-of-gold-repatriation-670568 https://www.bundesbank.de/en/press/press-releases/bundesbank... however, no explanation is given, only that the bars were melted, purified and then recast.
- radiator 6mo ago> US-stored gold is not of the same quality grade as in the rest of the world ... to put it mildly. Nobody has audited the gold in decades and even its owners (banks of foreign countries) are not allowed to inspect it.
- raphman 6mo agoThe Deutsche Bundesbank has a long list of every single gold bar in their possession (including those currently stored in GB and USA), including their weight (to 0.1 gram) and purity (at least 995/1000 as far as I can tell). https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/743058/9869caef634ce1ae4042328093d247d0/472B63F073F071307366337C94F8C870/goldbarrenliste-data.pdf https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/743058/9869caef634ce... - Federal Reserve Bank of New York starts at page 2016 (PDF:2019)
- saguntum 6mo agoI don't read German well and don't care to run this through a translator, but this is fascinating. I wonder how this list was compiled, by whom, and when it is used (is the gold audited)? You could randomly sample bars from the list to check the status of the gold periodically. I'm curious if other countries maintain similar lists.
- raphman 6mo agoI don't think they regularly audit the gold bars. But according to an article I read, the German Bundesbank used these lists to check off each of the bars transferred between 2013 and 2017 (when they transferred ~ 300 tons each from Paris and New York¹). Back then, they brought the gold bars to Germany, weighed them at multiple checkpoints, and melted them here. AFAIK, no discrepancies between list and actual weight/fineness were found. I think this list is not only used for internal audits but also to assure the public and banks that Germany indeed knows in detail where its gold is stored. ¹) https://www.bundesbank.de/de/aufgaben/themen/bundesbank-schliesst-goldverlagerung-vorzeitig-ab-644174 https://www.bundesbank.de/de/aufgaben/themen/bundesbank-schl... (in German)
- fakedang 6mo agoYeah, gold that hasn't been audited but only records held by USA's "Trust me bro"s.
- PowerElectronix 6mo agoOr like france did. Sell in the US, buy in london with delivery to your european vault of choice.
- forkerenok 6mo agoIf they don't want to push down the prices with excess supply, they'd have to sell very slowly. Like France did.
- SturgeonsLaw 6mo agoIf they're buying the same amount elsewhere then the buy pressure equals the sell pressure, might make an arb opportunity across the currencies
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> the buy pressure equals the sell pressure, might make an arb opportunity across the currencies The arb means you’re still suffering a price difference. You’re just paying “the market” to solve it for you.
- pjc50 6mo agoYes, you're paying arbitrage instead of shipping fees. Which is not unreasonable for commodity markets with different settlement locations.
- IshKebab 6mo agoYeah and in theory they should be equal.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> in theory they should be equal Related. Not equal.
- 9dev 6mo ago> unless the American government stops them doing it. Like they had any authority to dictate what Germany can do with their property, but hey
- rrr_oh_man 6mo agoThere’s nuance and a difference between ownership and possession
- 9dev 6mo agoAs is between authority and ability
- paganel 6mo agoYes, it's called the nuclear umbrella, Potsdam '45 and the fact that the Soviets are out of the equation. Even with the Soviets in place the Americans had no second thoughts about getting rid of Bretton Woods when it suited them.
- SanjayMehta 6mo agoPossession is 90% ownership. In this case, especially with Trump, it's 100%
- Joker_vD 6mo agoWell, France did it, sixty years ago, didn't it?
- chvid 6mo agoAnd the US almost killed their president for it.
- rrr_oh_man 6mo agoThere’s also the tinfoil theory that France did the same to Gaddafi
- pjc50 6mo agoWhat are you talking about?
- chvid 6mo agoThe unproven but persistent conspiracy theory that the US was behind one or more assassination attempts on Charles de Gaulle. Often brought up in connection with gold, the exorbitant privilege, and beer.
- Joker_vD 6mo agoIts persistence is truly a mystery. After all, the US never had, and probably never will, tried to overthrow or assassinate a country leader with strongly held anti-American views.
- jopsen 6mo agoOf course, why not? Imagine anything blocking it would crash wall street. Do you think Europeans are going to have a problem buying/selling US stonks any time soon?
- ekidd 6mo agoThe other article on France's gold reserves mentioned that France sold their older gold bars in the US, and used the money to purchase higher-standard gold bars in Europe. In their case, they did that over many decades and just finished now.
- tonfa 6mo ago> In their case, they did that over many decades and just finished now They repatriated the remaining gold (5% of reserve) over 2y. The bulk of the gold that was held in the US was moved back in 60s.
- jbverschoor 6mo agoAnd that is a way to cover up non-existence, packed as convenience
- functional_dev 6mo agoor rather "move when?" Moving 1,400 tonnes might take years. The window to act is closing.
- jopsen 6mo agoWindow is not closing.. the stonk market would go to zero. Any doubt about being able to move assets out of the US would cause a run on US stonks. Also the US has fairly strong private property rights.
- abdusco 6mo agoWe've seen time and again that rights and laws mean shit to the current administration.
- jopsen 6mo agoMy point is: Blocking withdrawal of financial assets from the US would be wall street ending. No foreign investors would put money into US stonks. It's not impossible, sure, but probably worse than the great depression.
- PowerElectronix 6mo agoThe fact that this question needs asking tells a lot about how other countries see the current administration.
- roenxi 6mo agoThey've been asking this question since before 2013. The writing has been on the wall since the US started demonstrating that it thinks debt monetisation is an acceptable strategy.
- gchamonlive 6mo agoHave outlets like Deutsche Welle been speaking like this since 2013? I don't really think so. Not to defend the past administrations, but that the question is starting to hit mainstream media does in fact tell a huge lot about this current one.
- _heimdall 6mo agoFrance was back in 1971, though it was less about safety and more about whether we actually had enough gold to delivery.
- gchamonlive 6mo agoWhich is ironic given it was once a huge colonial power
- raphman 6mo agoThis has been a topic of continuous debate since at least ~2000 in Germany. The German Wikipedia has a whole section covering it¹. Obviously, the debate gets more intense every time the relationship between Germany and USA gets strained. ¹) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Goldreserven#Diskussion_um_die_Lagerung_im_Ausland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Goldreserven#Diskussi...
- 6mo ago
- 0x3f 6mo agoNot really Trump-specific is it, given Europe seized a ton of Russian assets. Maybe they just realized how easy that was and that nobody is going to war over it.
- OgsyedIE 6mo agoExactly this. There were thousands of warnings that the western order conducting arbitrary seizure of treaty-protected deposits held by the outgroup was always a slippery slope to everybody getting hurt, right back to confiscating insured Cypriot bank deposits a decade and a half ago. But we live in a world where it is considered poor form to expect history qualifications in elected office, so this kind of crash, followed by the long descent, is baked in.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> arbitrary seizure of treaty-protected deposits One, Russia’s stuff hasn’t been seized. Europe tried. But, in true form, failed to get its act together. Two, is the argument really that Trump would be constrained by precedent if Europe and the U.S. got into a situation where seizing the former’s gold comes on the table?
- pjc50 6mo ago> insured Cypriot bank deposits They were only insured up to something like 100kEuro, and it was values above that amount that got "bailed in" when the banks failed.
- patrickmcnamara 6mo ago> given Europe seized a ton of Russian assets Those assets are frozen, not seized.
- 0x3f 6mo agoTo me frozen and seized are roughly interchangeable and mean, minimally, a temporary capture of control of an asset. Although maybe there's some strict legal difference I'm not aware of, I'm not sure there's much practical difference from the Russian PoV. Confiscation would be e.g. definitively taking control and disposing of it, the proceeds going in to the general funds of the relevant country.
- dingdingdang 6mo agoHaving your stuff stored in another country is ultimately a voucher of confidence, I can't see Trump or anyone else willingly misusing that trust. I do think the Western leaders need to temper their tendencies for isolationism these days, what's the alternative guys? And why even think that other people/cultures will want you in their swimming-pool if you can't keep your own one clean/functional? (this comment also covers France recently bringing home their gold)
- knuckleheads 6mo agoYou really can’t see Trump abusing someone’s trust?
- 0x3f 6mo agoThe guy only releases bad news when the markets are closed to avoid some minor corrections. I doubt he's about to crash the gold market.
- steanne 6mo agothat's not why. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundowning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundowning
- steveBK123 6mo agoYes the increasing erratic behaviour and vulgar language are signs. This weekend was I believe the first F bomb dropped in writing by him.
- flotzam 6mo agoHe posted it at 8:03 AM though... (12:03 PM UTC, and he was in D.C.) https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116351998782539414 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1163519987825...
- 6mo ago
- apples_oranges 6mo agoI want America to go back to being as it was before
- gib444 6mo ago17th century America would be ideal ! Then again as a Brit I am a bit biased
- Ekaros 6mo agoI have always said that going back 1400s would be best.
- bryanrasmussen 6mo ago1346 target year, with a good supply of ciprofloxacin.
- pjc50 6mo agoSlavery-era America was .. not a good place for everyone.
- guzfip 6mo agoI’ll take 19th century for the homesteading act. The government should give away its excess land to me, not sell it to their cronies.
- BigTTYGothGF 6mo agoThere's a lot fewer Native Americans left to genocide these days tho.
- praptak 6mo agoYou can't go back. When Trump goes away, the conditions that let him rise to power are still there.
- 6mo ago
- bighead1 6mo agoYou could replace the word Germany with the US and this article would still make sense.
- SanjayMehta 6mo agoCharles de Gaulle warned of French gold deposits being at risk, his successor sent French warships to recover French gold. That was decades ago. I think the question is moot now. Update: corrected a bit of history.
- MagicMoonlight 6mo agoIt’s brave to assume the gold is still there. Nobody checks it; last time they did, a bunch of bars were made of tungsten. If you’re someone guarding the gold, you’d have to be stupid not to replace it with tungsten. A single bar is a lifetime of wages. It’s not like anyone will ever notice, it’s a reserve that will never be spent.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> Nobody checks it The New York Fed’s gold is constantly being checked by bajillions of people. > last time they did, a bunch of bars were made of tungsten Source?
- kasey_junk 6mo agoIt’s a long time gold bug conspiracy theory. There was a case of a Canadian bar that came from a bank that had a tungsten core but there was a huge outcry about that and it was decades ago. Chinese gold has been tungsten spiked, fairly often actually, but it’s a known fraud vector there so is broadly audited.
- vbezhenar 6mo agoYou can't just walk in and out carrying 12kg bars. Also I don't think you can just buy a bar of tungsten, you gotta smelt it, coat with gold, not trivial. That kind of operation would involve a lot of cooperating people. You also need to convert gold to dollars which might not be as trivial as you think. So maybe that happens, but it's a lot more complicated. And, of course, there are measures against that happening.
- fredgrott 6mo agoits the wrong question! The question should why has not Germany pulled gold out to server two goals: 1. Financial gain 2. another step towards economic independence from USA France already did the right thing.... Pay attention, as it does not hurt the world and economic system for multiple world reserve currencies to exist....EU might as be a reserve currency.
- KellyCriterion 6mo agoisnt the question more like: "Is it _still_ there?" :-))
- Havoc 6mo agoAnd is there enough to cover all the IOUs
- devsda 6mo agoProbably safe as long as Germany is amenable to supporting "American interests" which can be anything and everything as decided by a human RNG they choose to elect.
- Havoc 6mo agoAs the Greenland fiasco showed not even that is enough.
- jbverschoor 6mo agoIt wasn’t safe in the 70s lol
- darshil2023 6mo ago[dead]
- fmajid 6mo agoOf course not. That's why Charles de Gaulle repatriated French gold from the New York Fed in the 1960s. Before Trump, there was Nixon, the US has form in reneging on its commitments. It seems there are still 138 tons of gold left over that will be recovered by 2028: https://www.mining.com/france-pulls-last-gold-held-in-us-for-15b-gain https://www.mining.com/france-pulls-last-gold-held-in-us-for...
- 8593376393 6mo ago[dead]
- mrlonglong 6mo agoPull it. The French sold theirs and bought new stock on the European market.
- OutOfHere 6mo ago"Pull it" and "sell it" are different actions. Given the timing, it seems like a financial loss to sell it relative to holding it as gold.
- daneel_w 6mo agoDoesn't that depend on when they acquired the gold and at what price? It has roughly tripled in just 10 years, and increased tenfold since the early 2000s.
- FabHK 6mo agoWhat loss? The idea is to sell it in NY, and buy it back in Europe. You lose the bid-ask spread.
- mrlonglong 6mo agoNah. Sell this rather suspect gold and buy better quality gold on the European market. Did you even read the article?
- OutOfHere 6mo agoGold is gold. There is no such thing as suspect gold. It can always be subject to a purity test. Those who buy much gold, e.g. Apmex, always do it. The fact that France was able to sell the gold validates that it was gold.
- mrlonglong 6mo agoThere's different grades of fine. What may be acceptable in the US is probably not what the EU's idea of what purity it should be.
- jmyeet 6mo agoWe don't even need to theorize how this can go wrong. We've got a real example: the French CFA system that is used to do economic colonialism in West Africa [1]. Basically, it works like this: 14 French-speaking Africian former colonies keep significant (>50%) of their gold reserves with the French treasury and use the CFA Franc as a currency, which is pegged to the Euro. The colonial model is one of discouraging or even outright banning being self-sufficient. Crops that might otherwise feed the local populace are replaced to exportable cash crops. In particular, that's the World Bank/IMF model of "helping". Anyway, Germany isn't a US imperial interest in the same way Cote d'Ivoire is for France... yet. Still, there are other mechanisms beyond gold that the US uses to influence or even control Germany (ie NATO). [1]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-france-backed-african-cfa-franc-works-as-an-enabler-and-barrier-to-development/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-france-backed-afr...
- cbHXBY1D 6mo agoSure. Or the Bank of England stealing $5B of Venezuela's gold since 2019 - which they still won't give back: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/06/bank-of-england-venezuelan-gold-nicolas-maduro-us-uk https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/06/bank-of-eng... This is almost exactly echoes how European leaders were completely fine with the US illegally blockading and invading Venezuela and then a week later Trump wants Greenland and suddenly they care about "territorial integrity" and what not.
- raincom 6mo agoWhat prevents African countries that use CFA from starting their own currencies?
- t1234s 6mo agonot according to Die Hard 3
- cindyllm 6mo ago[dead]
- mathgradthrow 6mo agoThis is the dumbest thing that has ever been posted on this site.
- lo_fye 6mo agoBetteridge's Law of Headlines states that any headline ending in a question mark can be answered with "no".
- raffael_de 6mo agoI'm a huge fan of those kinds of "laws"¹. My favorite one is Conway's law². Having said that Betteridge's Law never really convinced me. As far as my gut is concerned it's just always true for one in two cases. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws 2: "[O]rganizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."
- relaxing 6mo agoBetteridge’s law needs allowances for cases where the issue at hand is opinion or speculation. In this case, the non-clickbait headline would be “Germany’s Gold isn’t Safe in New York”, but the facts aren’t there to go to press with that.
- wolvoleo 6mo agoWith Trump? Obviously not. The rule of law doesn't concern him. They should remove it asap like France.
- OutOfHere 6mo agoWhat would Germany want if it were to get attacked by Russia with the US conspicuously missing from NATO?
- notrealyme123 6mo agoBetter allies?
- surgical_fire 6mo agoWhich Russia? The one that is stuck in a ridiculous quagmire in Ukraine, barely able to move frontlines in years? Can Russia even afford to attack anyone else at this point?
- OutOfHere 6mo agoGiven the news below, Germany is clearly preparing for war: German men 18-45 need military permit for extended stays abroad https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47639976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47639976
- surgical_fire 6mo agoNothing wrong with preparing. This is, however, a non-sequitur to the post I was replying to.
- rasz 6mo agoYes, russia can take over Baltics with units pulled from just one of the Ukraine fronts.
- andrewstuart 6mo agoGermany should ask for its gold in 3 years from now.
- gloosx 6mo agoAm I missing something but I can't see full article? All I see is like a 100 words preview, is this the whole thing?
- croisillon 6mo agoi believe the post is a [video] and the 100 words are an AI summary
- dmos62 6mo agoLove this movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hard_with_a_Vengeance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hard_with_a_Vengeance
- bell-cot 6mo agoFor Germany's national interests, the ideal probably would have been repatriation back in early 2010. A decade after Poland had joined NATO, half a decade after the Baltic States had - the threat of Russia somehow seizing the gold was at a nadir. The 2007-9 fiscal crisis was safely past, the Euro crisis not yet too dire, Obama was in the White House, and the winds were otherwise favorable for quietly sailing Germany's gold back home. Second best might have been for Germany to get its gold back in mid-2021 - Biden in the White House, but events of 6 Jan '21 making it really obvious that the US wasn't nearly so stable as in the good old days. Vs. raising the subject now*, with a very temperamental administration in Washington, feels ill-advised. Though I'm probably marking myself as a senile idealist, to even think of a national gov't, or leading media outlet, intelligently working for its nation's long-term interests. From another angle, I could see leaving it in NYC as a symptom of advanced calcification of Germany's politics and gov't bureaucracy. Moving the gold home would require major decisions, real organizing, and competent execution. Vs. the relative do-nothing of inaction, forever turning the crank of old routines, is so much easier. *Yes, I noticed the article's 2 Feb 2026 date.
- mattalex 6mo agoGermany already repatriated about half of its gold reserves between 2013 and 2017 from paris and new york to frankfurt. There has been a recent (as in "18th of march" recent) petition to the Bundestag to repatriate the gold. The reason not to repatriate the remaining gold back then is because Germany has substantial trade with the US, which is why Germany held gold in new york to begin with: It's the easiest way to resolve USD-Euro currency exchange at the central bank level (this is also why germany got rid of the paris gold reserves: with the euro you don't need currency exchange anymore). Also, as you mentioned, the idea of "officially" repatriating gold with the current administration is quite dicey. It is very possible that the correct way of resolving this is to just stop buying gold in new york and let the currency exchange flux deal with the slow unwinding of the reserves without explicit repatriation.
- bell-cot 6mo ago> [...] why Germany held gold in new york to begin with: It's the easiest way to resolve USD-Euro currency exchange at the central bank level [...] Interesting. Might you know how much US gold is held in Frankfurt (Germany), for the same purpose?
- dist-epoch 6mo agoTrump is literally saying stuff like: "We're going to take all of their oil. And there is nothing they can do about it..."
- surgical_fire 6mo agoOf course not, it is a profoundly untrustworthy country. How they dealt with Iran is how I expect them to deal with everyone else - They started bombing the country during negotiations. What is amazing is that they just didn't seize Germany's gold yet.
- josefritzishere 6mo agoBetteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.
- krunck 6mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- Rantenki 6mo agoIf a headline asks a question, the answer is always "NO". Ahhh crap.
- fleroviumna 6mo ago[dead]
- pseudohadamard 6mo ago"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no". Betteridge has never been more on-point.