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Why are European countries moving their gold out of North America?
- grey-area 29d agoThe end of the US hegemony and the unstable regime in the US makes decoupling the best strategy.
- kulahan 29d agoDoes anyone in power anywhere actually think China has finally overtaken the US hegemony? Or are we pretending someone else might somehow hold that position?
- bergen 29d agoChina is making trade deals and integration left and right and even Canada and Mexico are looking in other directions and cooperate more closely with china and eu. Maybe not a single power has to hold power
- kulahan 25d agoEven Canada and Mexico aren't stupid enough to align with China, and if you think a power vacuum will simply exist and remain in balance in perpetuity, I've got a bridge to sell you. If you're just talking about the relatively brief period before it's clear who will emerge as the default hegemony, I don't really care about that period and am discussing after.
- bergen 19d agoNothing says a hegemony has to form, this is not a given. Power vacuums can be filled by different actors at once.
- grey-area 29d agoThe end of hegemony isn’t usually immediately followed by the appointment of a new leader, usually it means fragmented power and war. Yes, China is a likely eventual successor and in some parts is the world has replaced the US in being the influential superpower.
- kulahan 28d agoNobody appointed the US leader of the world, what are you talking about? It's just a matter of "whoever is most powerful and influential". There's no war needed, and the US never conquered the planet. I'm not doubting that China is the likely eventual successor, I'm doubting that they can succeed anything at this particular point in time. Nobody wants China in charge. It would make any issues experienced with the US in charge like a joke. Maybe once their dictator dies?
- kergonath 29d ago> Does anyone in power anywhere actually think China has finally overtaken the US hegemony? No, not really. For now we are headed towards a multipolar world rather than a hegemony.
- somenameforme 29d agoChina has historically been the most powerful nation in the world multiple times, but always remained relatively inward looking, while acting as more of a merchant towards the rest of the world. I don't see any reason to think that will substantially change. So the most likely scenario is we end up, and arguably are already in, a truly multipolar world where no individual nation is the hegemon.
- Lio 29d agoI think it will change. China is currently trying to take control of the whole South China Sea. They’re in a cold war with the Philippines and Vietnam. Next it will go for Taiwan. Then either Siberian or Indian territory with the same “these used to be ours” justifications. At the same time I think will use shadow fleets to take as much fish stocks from around the world as it can. Not acting yet is not the same as not being expansionist. With all that “we’ll smash your head on the concrete” rhetoric China’s wolf warriors are very clear on where they’re headed.
- kulahan 28d agoEveryone is just gonna stop trying to acquire influence for some reason...? Or do you just think that, for some reason, this would now magically balance itself out any time any world leader thinks "wow that's a huge vacuum that needs filling!"
- somenameforme 28d agoEmpires expand when the benefit exceeds the cost. The US is currently doing quite poorly against Iran. The US military is not incompetent, nor is the Iranian army supercompetent, so why? It's technology. The traditional way the US invaded countries was by assassinating the leadership, gaining air superiority, and then basically playing shoot fish in a barrel. Iran, and likely all major US adversaries now, were/are fully prepared for the US assassinations. And gaining full air superiority is no longer possible in the era of drones, because you're no longer shooting down a small number of high value targets (like planes), but instead a practically infinite amount of low value targets that can be readily replenished. Spending interceptors that cost millions of dollars to shoot down drones that cost thousands of dollars just doesn't work. We might be able to obtain air superiority in terms of e.g. Iran being unable to fly fighter jets over their own country, but that says nothing about their ability to launch endless drones and otherwise inflict a severe toll on any invading army. So it's likely that modern war has mostly gone back to times long since past where the bottleneck is no longer cost in $$, but cost in lives. And that makes militarism far less attractive for every single country, even moreso in the era of plummeting fertility rates when the people who are going to be killed are precisely those who are supposed to be birthing and raising your next generation. So there will certainly be wars when nations see the benefit as being especially high, but I think the idea of trying to casually 'project strength' half way around the globe is probably already dead. The cost is too high, and the benefit too low.
- expedition32 29d agoEurope-China trade has already overtaken the US. If only you knew how bad things really are... As for hegemony? Well the Chinese actually don't want to be world police.
- mdp2021 29d ago> unstable Well. Not sure. Untrustable system, maybe. (The whole chain that brought to this stage is improper - and the damaging factors are still active.) -- Edit: Again. First, that the current regime in the usa would be unstable is an idea to be justified. Especially given the efforts made before the 2024 elections already to plan its stabilization. Then, from a system engineering perspective, the political system in the usa remains broken by design. See the 2000 elections as a strong demonstration. Then, if there have been progress to fix the issues, show it. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49573845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49573845
- grey-area 29d agoYou’re not sure that Trump is unstable?
- mdp2021 28d agoI take it that you are joking ;) I am not sure that the regime they have created will disappear with their fronter.
- grey-area 28d agoOh I see. Well these do seem like end times for US democracy, very similar to the fall of Rome. So yes the problems are broader than Trump and probably won’t end with him, but he is the most dangerous character so far and I’m entirely unsurprised that other countries are disengaging As we’ve seen from the violated norms so far and the attack on the capital building, it would not be a big step to dictatorship disguised as firm leadership in time of war or civil disturbance.
- CamperBob2 29d agoSame reason they moved it out of Germany in 1930-1931?
- notnaut 29d agoPlease don’t tell me this is just the beginning…..
- cjfd 29d agoWell, who knows? The trajectory has been set in and it is downwards. After Nero and the year of the four emperors the Roman Empire still had ways to go. So, I would say also the US can potentially recover. On the other hand the saying 'it cannot possibly get worse than this' has also been disproven may times in history. In any case, I like to sum it all up by saying "The US is a superpower attempting to become a third world country".
- stop50 29d agothe pull out then was an reaction to the black friday.
- grebc 29d agoThe orange one. Duh.
- dgellow 29d agoHe’s just one part of the explanation, it’s also all the people who are behind him. He’s mostly a front nowadays. If Trump is gone, things wouldn’t be better with Vance taking his place
- selectodude 29d agoIt’s the voters that put him back. You could say it was an aberration the first time but the second? Americans are too stupid and selfish to be trusted with the immense power they were given.
- hbarka 29d ago“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
- kombine 29d agoThis is brilliant. How do we reconcile it with democracy though?
- testing22321 29d agoI’d be really interested to see all European countries & Canada dump their US bonds en mass if trump does anything untoward in Greenland, Canada or elsewhere.
- noduerme 29d agoAs an American trying to retain my sanity in this country, I have to tell myself that such things are just trollish nonsense from the ultimate reality television troll. It is comforting to me that 50% of what he says is bluster and the other 50% is pure fabrication. I think we have developed some resistance to it where, like, a few years ago we would say "OH MY GOD! HE CAN'T POSSIBLY BE THREATENING CANADA!" and now we're just like, "there goes crazy old man again, don't worry, he just shit his pants on the golf course". Not saying it's right or sound that he's the elected leader of the country or that our politics is so warped... I mean, I blame it on being on the losing end of the most rigorously fought information war in history. But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense. FWIW, the American people can't even support a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been blowing up our soldiers for decades. Hard to imagine they'd show much support for invading an ally.
- wanderingpixel 29d ago> But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense. Sorry, but no. Even if there are no kinetic attacks towards allies right now, the "crazy old man" is causing real harm. Harm to global stability and the world order, economies, to businesses and individuals, to long term initiatives such as research and healthcare. But most importantly, real harm to the trust between ourselves. Western allies can no longer trust the USA, it is broken, we no longer have the same values. The first time in 2016 we forgave, everyone makes mistakes and Europe is certainly not free of them. But the American people chose to elect him twice with full knowledge, now everyone suffers. So the rest of the world forges its own path now. America's military, economic and cultural hegemony will decline. Not tomorrow, maybe not even quickly, but inevitably. Godspeed !
- noduerme 29d ago
- helsinkiandrew 29d agoGood opportunity to post Periodic Videos tour of a Bank of England vault: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTtf5s2HFkA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTtf5s2HFkA
- dbdr 29d agoVisit of the underground vault in Paris, narrated by Stefan Zweig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txyKenOq5Pw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txyKenOq5Pw
- cc62cf4a4f20 29d agoBecause America can’t be trusted.
- eastbound 29d agoYes. Also to note, why was the US trusted before? I think it's a heritage from the Marshall plan: The US saved us twice from Germany, therefore we owe them our nations and storing our gold there won't change much. A century later, it does. I'd rephrase the question as: Would you trust your parents? In childhood years probably, because you owe them your education anyway.
- rjzzleep 29d agoI think you should look up the Morgenthau plan and look at the state of Germany today. Of course people will say that it's all because of Germany's own decisions. To which I would counter that Germany doesn't any sovereign decisions and the last time it did that was in 2011.
- gregorygoc 29d agoWhat happened in 2011 and why were there no sovereign decisions afterwards?
- mschuster91 29d ago> I think you should look up the Morgenthau plan and look at the state of Germany today. That plan never got implemented.
- deepsun 29d agoAnd because of the very convenient geographical location USA is unlikely to be invaded. You'd want your gold to be safe.
- aequitas 27d agoUnless it’s invaded from the inside.
- s5300 29d ago[dead]
- usern20260720 29d agoIf the European countries had wanted to be independent from the US, they would have adopted the gold standard for their currency
- deely3 29d agoWhy? Honestly, how it will help?
- lovich 29d agolol, we(america) were the ones who fucked with the gold standard and had the system collapse due to lack of trust in the first place[1] Please explain your logic behind the idea that European countries needed to have adopted the gold standard that the US unilaterally changed the rules on, to be independent from the US. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock
- mitxela 29d agoI guess he means the Bretton Woods system, where the US dollar was backed by gold and everything else was backed by the US dollar, wouldn't have existed. Everything would have been backed by gold, instead.
- upboundspiral 28d agoIf America had not forced the gold standard we might have gotten an international currency as proposed by Keynes. The idea was soundly rejected because it would have led to rapid post war reconstruction with a loss of American power (they wanted to play at empire). http://www.sofer.com/blog/keynes-on-the-balance-of-trade.html http://www.sofer.com/blog/keynes-on-the-balance-of-trade.htm... edit: some links from the world economic forum (in favor of it) https://www.weforum.org/stories/economic-growth/yanis-varoufakis-imagining-a-new-keynesian-bretton-woods/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/economic-growth/yanis-varouf...
- ArtTimeInvestor 29d agoThe dangerous situation we are in is that entities outside of the USA hold significantly more US assets than US entities own assets outside the USA. So if the USA declares "ownership be damned", it would be a net win for the USA. Or in simpler terms: The USA has been giving out IOUs for real goods for decades. It is now tempting to default on those IOUs. The USA did this before. Up until 1971, a dollar certified a claim to gold. Then the USA simply canceled that promise. The current ramp up to AI dominance might be what holds the USA back from breaking more ties with the world. It is a race that must be won. And investments from abroad help. But when the whole world is operated by US AI factories things might look different. When every task around the world is performed by intelligence generated in the USA, just like every computer is run by US software now - there might be little incentive left to "pay the rent" for the rest of the world that now sits around idle, fiddling their thumbs.
- ai_critic 29d ago"If you owe the bank a million, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a billion..." etc. And the US owes trillions.
- toolslive 29d agoyes. but most of it is not to other countries. Most government debt (over 80% globally) is privately owned through sovereign debt instruments like bonds.
- jeeeb 29d agoThat cuts both ways. US entities own huge amounts of overseas assets including debt. A more appropriate saying would be cutting off your foot to spite your leg. Thankfully no one has done that yet.
- wewewedxfgdf 29d agoLack of trust.
- zdc1 29d agoWell, why would European gold be stored in America in the first place?
- bigbaguette 29d agoIt's probably a matter of liquidity, storing it where it can be exchanged when needed. Transport is quite expensive
- itake 29d agoSecurity: European have been taken over multiple times by Germany. Keeping the gold in the usa keeps the money a safe distance from the fight.
- stackghost 29d agoGosh, have we in the West forgotten so much of our history already? Much of the gold was moved out of Europe prior to and during WWI. Partly out of fears of German aggression b ut also because throughout the war, European countries bought massive amounts of materiel from America, which increased the flow of money out of European and into American coffers. But gold itself is very heavy and thus cumbersome to transport. It doesn't make sense to run transatlantic gold shipments every time a few bars change hands. So central banks tended to keep the gold more or less in one big vault and just sort of move the bricks between one country's pile and another. So there would be, in essence, a large stack of gold in the US Federal Reserve, and that gold belonged to France, or whomever. When the war ended, European countries were devastated and needed goods from somewhere that didn't have depleted industrial capacity and whose farmlands weren't littered with UXO. This situation more or less cemented America's position as the world's creditor, and so it simply was more convenient to keep a large portion of one's gold reserves in the country with whom you were doing a lot of business. For some countries, repatriating gold is a matter of sovereignty, and e.g. France started repatriating its gold reserves in the 1960s. Now that Americans have decided they like being a military, economic, and cultural superpower less than they like electing a dementia-ridden child rapist, other countries have correctly realized that America's decline cannot be stopped, only slowed. After all, it's Americans themselves who are the root of the problem, and Trump is but a symptom. This instability is not going to stop when he leaves office. Better get your gold off the sinking ship, but do it slowly so as to not accelerate the sinking before you can get it all out. Re: the gold situation after WWI, if you're interested I encourage you to read Liaquat Ahamed's excellent Lords of Finance, which won the Pulitzer, IIRC.
- ChrisArchitect 29d agoRelated: Norway's Oil Fund Proposes Selling Roughly $80B in U.S. Treasurys https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49564189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49564189 Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526
- aaron695 29d ago[dead]
- notorandit 29d agoBecause it is theirs? Would you keep your food or car in someone else's garage?
- Erem 29d agoEveryone here keeps their money in bank or brokerage accounts, because we trust the law to protect us if the banks try to steal our stuff. We are seeing that foreign countries no longer believe the USA is still a nation of laws.
- howcani 29d agoBefore asking "why", ask "if".
- tgv 29d agoThat doesn't make sense to me. It's already happening.
- aurareturn 29d agoIf there is ever a conflict, US will seize assets of whatever country it is fighting with.
- cbg0 29d agoSure, and you can replace US with almost any country in that sentence. The problem right now is there's a feeling that even decades-old alliances are no longer something you can count on when you're talking about the US.
- Terr_ 29d agoPlus even on a less-than-wartime level, nobody wants wants their own national assets to be held-hostage or used for extortion, whenever this Republican administration next demands a "favor" for domestic bragging or kowtowing-humiliation for a perceived personal slight.
- mano78 29d agoAs Boston would sing, "More than a Feeling"
- cheema33 29d ago> If there is ever a conflict, US will seize assets of whatever country.. Canadians, and the rest of the world is finding out that you don't even need a conflict for US to lay claim over your stuff. "We want it", is perfectly legitimate and legal reason for the taking.
- lyu07282 29d agoit gets easier to understand if you adopt the anti-imperialist position, these are vassal states, the us hold incredible influence over them. Gold reserves are just one of thousands of levers at their disposal, if some european nation has a revolution and seeks to assert their sovereignty then the US has a lever to pull. The point to question is the existence of the lever in the first place, the US doesnt have gold in any other country, china or iran doesn't put gold in the US because it gives the US this lever. Thats one of the mechanisms of imperialism, it means if some "western-aligned" (people dont like the word vassal) nation acts in their own interests against the US the US can pull that lever. Why would any nation ever place such a lever in the hand of the US? It's the same exact mechanism why many african nations have the french CFA currency, it gives french the lever to pull its a remanent of colonialism in the case of france.
- danavar 29d ago[flagged]
- gfrecvh 29d ago[flagged]
- cbg0 29d agoThree EU countries versus some random on the Internet calling them "foolish", I'm pretty sure your take is bad.
- gspr 29d agoThat must be why von der Leyen renamed the Mediterranean to Lake Europe recently. Give me a break. In the present situation, the US is a lunatic asylum on fire, and the EU is a regular ol' boring place with boring problems.
- SadErn 29d ago[flagged]
- ChrisArchitect 29d agohttps://archive.ph/NsOz0 https://archive.ph/NsOz0
- johnnyApplePRNG 29d ago[flagged]
- dyauspitr 29d agoIt’s a tire fire but not for the reasons you’re pointing out.
- j3th9n 29d agoSo far for "Russia will invade Europe". The USA seems a bigger threat.
- wood_spirit 29d agoRussia is invading Europe. They started years ago. The US is enabling Russia. In fact, the USA is supporting Russia. This might not be entirely intentional, and a lot of ways of trying to excuse it, but it’s what the reality on the ground adds up to.
- lostmsu 28d agoYou are as wrong as your parent comment. Not only Russia is invading US, but US is less of the supporter of Russia than EU. EU literally funds Russia and doesn't plan stopping completely.
- oleg_antonyan 29d agoRussia had assets in Europe, look what happened to those. We got so naive and relaxed in the abscense of big wars within the "western hemisphere" that some people geniunly forgot what will happen to all of their "assets" when shit hit the fan.
- baxtr 29d agoI really wonder why. Something must have happened
- brainwad 29d agoThe something was the collapse of the USSR, right? "The end of history" etc.
- mdp2021 29d agoNot relevant to the point - "I gave my item to my former friend Paul". For some reason or for some other, it happens. And miscalculations in game theory happen ("he wouldn't, given...").
- speedgoose 29d agoI put my gold in the safe of my best friend, he has a good safe. Then I rapped and killed his wife and children, and destroyed his house. But he doesn’t want to give me the gold back.
- mdp2021 29d agoYou are doing the complexity of history, and the due diligence of objective assessment and focus, a great disservice with those gross similes. Let us stick to a fitting analysis for the point of the limited trust entities can give each other, and let us stick to actual events for what the crimes committed are concerned (for the respect due).
- dbdr 29d ago
- throw34521 29d agoDedollarisation next
- noduerme 29d agoMost of the major Bitcoin spikes and leveling-up of the price since 2012 have preceded or corresponded with governments tightening controls, and people using BTC they owned or buying it to evacuate capital to more lightly regulated countries. That's also why there hasn't been a Bitcoin rush for awhile, imho... it's no longer very useful for that, now that all the entrance and exit nodes are monitored. Gold is a bit hard to move, but this article may be underselling to what extent the recent spike in gold prices is attributable to demand for that kind of liquidity. The cross-border, anonymous kind. The demise of Localbitcoins actual local meetups and trading for cash was the end of a significant way to move money out of regimes that people suspected were going to take it from them.
- csomar 29d agoLocalbitcoin is dead but there are still venues to trade bitcoin/crypto for cash. They have mostly moved to p2p on facebook and discord.
- fedpost 29d agoThere are a few platforms that facilitate personal transactions using stuff like Venmo and Zelle but I suspect most of the people who are continuously selling lots of coins are probably silk road type vendors so I have to imagine it's just a great way to get your Venmo account on the feds radar.
- noduerme 29d agoUsing Venmo or Zelle obviates the reason for using Bitcoin to move money from one country to another, which is that you don't want the transfer to be traced, and you may or may not have access to the banking system where you're going (eg the enormous flood of Bitcoin out of China and Hong Kong during the crackdown). Venmo and Zelle are American banks that just add a new type of KYC endpoint. From there, it's easy to see the whole blockchain back to where you acquired it. Localbitcoins facilitated a cash exchange that was extremely useful for people seeking to move money out of repressive regimes and convert it into local currency they could live on. To your point, that money didn't have to be acquired on Silk Road or something... I used to get paid for work in BTC, and used it to pay rent for a couple years in Argentina by selling it to a dude I'd meet once a month at a Starbucks.
- Alien1Being 29d agoBecause keeping your national gold reserves in a Mafia state run by a arbitrary kleptocratic elite is a very bad idea. At this point international trust in the USA is at around the same level as trust in Iran and Russia . China handily beats the USA in the trust rankings in most of the world.
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- kristopolous 29d agoand it's going to be like that for decades unless november there's a broad sweep of offices and the other party actually exercises power for once and prosecutes politicians criminal behavior instead of that infuriating clemency nonsense they always do. I'm betting they'll get elected and then sit on their hands as hard as possible calling it a "return to normalcy", fight their constituency, insist on doing absolutely nothing, and then get kicked right back out 2 years later and whine about people not voting for them. The change has to be sweeping. The current people in power doing crypto pump and dumps: Internet trolls posting rage-baiting AI slop as official government communications as like the FDA and the CDC, then betting on polymarket about who they're going to bomb, teenaged 4chan trolls ctrl+f'ing for keywords to cancel things like cancer research because it has a "woke word" like "diversity" in published medical literature, these should be structurally impossible from getting near power again. Don't ever forget this happened. There's no undo. Decades down the drain. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/halted-nih-clinical-trials-list-reveals-slashed-treatments-for-cancer-covid/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/halted-nih-clinic... And the Wild threats to invade neighboring countries. Someone needs to do to America what America did to Venezuela. But instead, these criminals get to keep their jobs and it goes completely unpunished. Seriously, felony is not the right term. It's way beyond that.
- mzhaase 29d agoAs a European, that would change nothing for me. The issue is systemic disinformation, fundamental lack of empathy and all those echo chambers. As long as this exists, the current situation will repeat or get worse.
- dyauspitr 29d agoBecause Trump is tasked with ending American hegemony and Europe is getting ahead of that.
- giov4 29d agomore interesting question: When do countries change gold reserves locations and for which reasons? past examples?
- kergonath 29d agoTypically they move gold to allies when it’s safer to keep the reserves away (e.g., it’s really hard to imagine the US getting invaded, but that happened to almost all European countries in the last century or so) or when politics become unstable. They take the gold back when the calculus changes. Famously, France got a chunk of its gold back from the US in the 1979s (and finished that process this year). The rabbit hole goes quite deep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation .
- giov4 29d agooh thanks! wasn't lazyness but looking for exactly this type of context from somebody else. based on that and the link, we can say that it's a process started long time ago and now simply accelerating and escalating after Ukrainian conflict and confiscation of a european partner assets? shouldn't the risk of confiscation ,when having resources held abroad and in other jurosdiction always be considered? I was pretty much surprised when Bank of England said Venezuelan gold was not Venezuelan gold anymore and took it hostage, then what is the sense of having it abroad if the abroad partner can switch idea of ownership anytime?
- kergonath 28d ago> we can say that it's a process started long time ago and now simply accelerating and escalating after Ukrainian conflict and confiscation of a european partner assets? For France, not really. It was De Gaulle and his successors wanting to remove levers that the America government could use against France. It was a sovereignty issue, not really fear that the gold would be seized or frozen. It took decades because it was not really a top priority either. For the Netherlands (which is why the BBC is talking about this), it’s directly a consequence of Trump using underhanded tactics against allies. In the words of the Dutch government, "geopolitical lawlessness". It has more of a sense of urgency, as well. > what is the sense of having it abroad if the abroad partner can switch idea of ownership anytime? There are practical reasons to have some gold abroad. The stuff is heavy and cumbersome, and vulnerable in transit. So, when transactions can be managed by just moving a bunch of ingots from one pile to another in the same facility, it makes transactions easier. Other than that, countries do not do that if they don’t trust the reserves won’t be seized. In practical terms, either they are close allies, or they have some leverage so stealing the gold has a cost. In the end, it’s a risk/reward analysis on both sides.
- meindnoch 29d agoI used to wonder how Rome could fall without anyone knowing exactly why. Surely an empire that lasted five centuries, and conquered all of Europe, must have been brought down by some great event, some unmistakable rupture. Watching the American Empire fray in real time, I think I understand now. Empires do not always fall with a crash. Sometimes they simply lose the will to continue. Apparently, empires can collapse out of something almost like boredom. Maybe "boredom" is the wrong word. But collapse may begin when a civilization can no longer summon enough belief, energy, or attention to sustain itself.
- raffraffraff 29d agoI suppose it could turn very bearish in the next few years? Something always occurs to me whenever I think about climate change. I think, "What is prosperity?" and the answers are mainly centered on stability and security. Not "stock market" stability, or "national security" but... Weather stability (floods, droughts, severe storms that lead to crop loss or yield reduction, wildfires, power outages and destruction). Food and energy security (crop loss or low yields leading to scarcity, food / gas / electric price increases etc) When I think about my family I think: first priority is to guarantee shelter, food and basic comforts. Everything after that is important of course, but without those three things, it all tastes like ashes. I can't pretend to be happy without stability. We can pretend that AI and GoogleAds are a great way to measure "prosperity" but in reality, if there's a threat to the basics, we can't pretend to be prosperous. "Value" can be destroyed very quickly when the foundations are gone. I don't have any more detail than that. I'm a lowly infrastructure engineer. I don't go any deeper than those shower thoughts. But is Europe looking at the state of the world and pulling it's reserves closer-to?
- momocowcow 29d agoIndividuals can do the same. Sell gold ETF and buy coin/bullion. The cost of holding physical is lessened if held for +10 years.
- deleted 29d ago[deleted]
- thelastgallon 29d agoAny country that keeps gold in US or dollar reserves may end up looking very foolish. Sanctions and asset (financial and real) forfeitures coming soon to a country near you. The simplest and easiest geopolitical strategy that is available to any country: switch completely to renewables (solar, maybe wind), EVs, green hydrogen/ammonia and synthetic fuels. Keep out of oil and natural gas. Keep out of dollar system. Any country can be immune to geopolitical drama, dollar shenanigans. Remember China has export restrictions on oil. When things get tough, most of the oil countries (with refining capacity to export) are going to have export restrictions. Thats the only way to deal with the mobs in their own country. From: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KPq7jyQcemA https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KPq7jyQcemA Richard Campbell: Politicians aren’t going to do things that aren’t popular, so we have to make these solutions popular for there to be a chance to build political will. Richard Campbell: Corporations are inherently conservative, and power companies doubly so. Until there is a public groundswell demanding these changes, they won’t act. It’s up to us to make enough noise and show that these are good solutions worth pushing forward.
- hurril 29d agoEasiest. If that is the easiest way you see I am afraid to ask what the harder alternatives would be.
- XorNot 29d agoHow is it hard? It's difficult to build electrical generation these days and not go renewables because they're so cheap and fast to deploy. It's not a total solution, but market forces wise everything says "build solar and batteries with your money". Governments practically don't need to do anything for this to be the default.
- ifwinterco 29d agoBatteries don't solve the storage problem, but surely you know this. China is pursuing the strategy you're describing, but there's a reason they're also building nuclear, they're increasing LNG infrastructure, they haven't phased out coal, and they've built a huge amount of oil storage. Solar and wind can be part of that strategy but it's not so simple, otherwise people would do it
- Keyframe 29d agoI'm more interested in why was it centralized (there) in the first place? So it's easier to trade where when you make a sell/buy IOU is exchanged and a sticker on the bar is put or a bar changes pallet? I'd kind of understand that except these are central banks - how often do they even trade gold? Since we're in 2026, I actually googled that last question and it turns out central banks trade or adjust their gold reserve on a monthly basis. Somehow the thought of that seemed to me as too much of a high frequency trading for a central bank :)
- Galanwe 29d ago- Because USD is the main trading currency, much more liquid than anything else - Also for physical resources, you want geographical diversification, and America is far enough that to be orthogonal to e.g. European conflicts
- fedpost 29d agoOkay so possibly dumb question, but...what do you do with the gold when you "need" it? How is a bunch of shiny, admittedly "desirable", metal going to fix whatever class of crisis the article is hand waving? Are we talking physical stuff like Germany deciding third time's a charm and Europe saying "fuck, okay America the gold is already there, do your thing and ship us a few thousand tanks and a few hundred thousand boys from the plains!" ...or are we talking more obscure "fuck, someone did stupid things with excel sheets, we need to make the numbers not say society is over, here everyone...do something with gold!" type situations? In the former case, this all makes a lot of sense given that the US has both demonstrated a reluctance to assist other countries (sans Israel?) and a lack of capacity to do much if they did care. I can't help but feel like in a lot of cases you're just going to suddenly crash the gold market and create a bunch of inflation because currency itself is not a "means of production" that you can make things with, it's an old IOU.
- mitxela 29d agoYou just hold onto it until you want to trade it for something else. Right now there are liquid international gold markets. Like bitcoin, people who are trying to get rich quick by day trading are much of the liquidity.
- sajithdilshan 29d agoThe article truly looks like an AI slop, instead of getting to the point it just keeps on rambling and jumps back and forth. Also it says about Germany moving gold 10 years ago (2016), but no financial crisis happened back then.
- nxdmum 29d agoMainly because the US Dollar debt at some 39 to 40 trillion is now unserviceable and the US is going to default the debt payment. So countries are preparing for that eventuality - the US ship is on the event horizon but being slowly but surely sucked into the Black hole. The last govt was ensuring spending all the unspent budget - even if they knew it was bad for the country . The current govt will be left holding the baby when the crash comes. The only question is how long can you hold - 1 year 2 years before the ship crosses the edge of the event horizon
- amanaplanacanal 28d agoYou say that like the current government is spending less. Republicans only talk about spending less, they don't actually do it. They do cut taxes though, so the debt grows even faster.
- jackb4040 28d agoYou mean to tell me the army of school shooters deporting millions of manual laborers didn't pay for itself?
- H4cks0r1337 29d agoWhat is moving the gold reserves to the UK, whose entire political "class" are pathetic US lapdogs, going to solve?
- timbit42 28d agoEasier to trade in London.
- jokethrowaway 29d agoThe US empire is ending. Probably when the Chinese burst the AI bubble the whole fake web economy will come crashing down and close this 30 years of inflated money.
- trilogic 29d agoEven animals have a stability pact. Humans, especially politics need stability, when you mess it up, fear takes over and among other things, defensive stuff happens. So this is a simple reactive defensive act.
- eucryphia 29d agoAfter Bernie’s Bros have run out of other’s money, they’ll run out of other country’s gold.
- tim333 29d agoImpressed they write 1000+ words without saying Trump. I mean he's attacking Canada, threatening European territory in Greenland, rolling out the red carpet for the guy Europe's at war with. What do you expect?
- penguin_booze 28d agoThat's step 1 done. Steps to follow are: move off the US dollar, cancel trade agreements with the US and restore your own laws in your country, evict US military bases from your country.
- rsanek 28d agoFor those seeking a more level-headed view, the Fed reports on foreign-owned gold monthly. Going back a couple of decades: Month Tonnes July 2006 6,606 July 2011 6,197 July 2016 5,807 July 2021 5,742 July 2026 5,755
- mdp2021 28d agoYes, but that data is dumb in itself without an analyst explaining what caused that trend and what is happening now and which new forces will apply to that trend.
- jaybrendansmith 28d agoThe Democratic party needs to call the Netherlands and Europe and say "Give us please until November to fix this. If we fail to do that, trust your instincts!"
- krapp 28d agoThey're too afraid to be seen as "leftist" and of alienating moderates to do anything of the sort.
- AnimalMuppet 28d agoThe Democrats won't take the presidency in November. The fundamental trust issue is with the presidency, not Congress.
- jackb4040 28d agoIt's one thing for the Democrats to convince themselves Trump was a fluke ten years and 2 elections later. But it's not gonna convince other nations who aren't getting paid to tell the party establishment what they want to hear.
- jaybrendansmith 28d agoWe are all in this together. As goes the US, so does the rest of the world. You can pretend otherwise, but wait until he takes Greenland, then Canada, and then god knows what else. He's going to bring it all down around us if we don't stop it.
- etempleton 28d agoSimple. No one trusts the current administration and no one should. The long term damage being done is astronomical. They are a magical combination of malicious and incompetent. The only thing that could make it worse is if they were more competent at being malicious.
- jackb4040 28d agoThis feels a little bit outdated. When he was elected for the first time a decade ago it was a "current administration" problem. When he came back it became clear it was not a fluke, America failed to generate any compelling alternatives, and entire new sectors of the US Economy (tech billionaires) now see his political project as their best option.
- etempleton 28d agoI think people constantly underestimate how destructive he is. They think Trump can be a pawn for their interests, but he is irrational, volatile, and stupid. The democrats and the Biden administration paved the way for Trump 2 by not having a primary.
- jackb4040 27d agoAgain, I don't think you can chalk up this much of the global capitalist project being won over for this long to "the wool being pulled over their eyes". It doesn't mean they're right, but they have sophisticated strategic calculations we should try to understand. American "business as usual" politics came into conflict and have become increasingly untenable. Trump directing a highly motivated third of the population to embrace brutal imperialism is destructive. But demonstrably we have seen that there was even less appetite for a government that campaigned on being nicer while actively committing a genocide.
- burnt-resistor 28d agoMultiple reasons, not just the US. Might be that 2027-2028 are shaping up to be the riskiest time in living memory including such factors as ENSO heat, floods, droughts, and food insecurity.
- 627467 28d agoI assume there's a financial cost for doing this? I assume gold reserves in others coffers act as collateral so having them at home makes them a lot less useful financially useful?
- massimodeluisa 27d agoStupidity.