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Netherlands pulls gold out of the US
- ivolimmen 28d agoI am dutch and read the news this week but I found it weird that a part of it went to England. I was expecting a European country.
- retired 28d agoEngland is a country in Europe.
- onion2k 28d agoGeographically, yes, but that's not very important.
- sajithdilshan 28d agoLondon is still the financial hub in the Europe
- hadlock 28d ago[flagged]
- sajithdilshan 28d agoWhat do you mean for now? There is no other alternative in continental Europe due to language barrier
- owebmaster 28d agoWhy are you excluding Ireland?
- sajithdilshan 28d agoIreland is a tax-haven, not a financial hub.
- ben_w 28d agoEuronext collectively is big, but Euronext Dublin is about 1/27th the size of LSE by its own market cap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euronext_Dublin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euronext_Dublin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stock_Exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stock_Exchange That said, I'm not entirely clear how the exchange's market cap should or shouldn't be thought of in terms of the total market cap of assets that the exchange lets you trade. Or indeed the float of those assets, which is a concept I've only learned about due to SpaceX's nonsense IPO, so take my thoughts with an appropriate pinch of salt.
- chabska 28d agoWhy would language matter? Anyway, Frankfurt is the next biggest financial center after London, and it tend to get the business when a firm wants to move out of London .
- sajithdilshan 28d agoWhen it comes to being a financial hub English as a global language is paramount in modern world. You wouldn't expect a C-level executive from other side of the world to speak German. Further, if you've ever been in the financial scene in Frankfurt, it's unfortunately predominantly in German because most of the old people working in the institutions can only speak vacation English and they switch to German as soon possible. Also from where did you hear that Frankfurt gets the business that's leaving London? What is your source? That was the hope for the Germans with the Brexit, but it never happened. German laws and bureaucracy is still far too hostile and outdated compared to London.
- zhouzhao 28d ago>most of the old people working in the institutions A problem that will solve itself within the next few years
- sajithdilshan 28d agoAgree, the younger generation, or at least every young German (mostly millennials/GenZ) I’ve met is completely fluent in English, almost like native English speakers. Some even with an American accent which they picked up by watching YouTube videos
- tchalla 28d agoYes but we Germans are too stuck up with our language barriers.
- fakedang 28d agoAnd fax machines. Don't forget the fax machines.
- throwaway2037 28d agoThis post is weird. Finance people who work in Frankfurt and Amsterdam certainly speak English. Yes, they will also speak German, Dutch, and a variety of other langauges, but not speaking English is not the blocker here. I will also say that finance people in Paris under 40 are also (mostly) fluent in English. (Please don't bring up accent; no one in finance cares about your accent when speaking English; they care about your prices.)
- hvb2 28d agoLondon is not a financial center? Uh? By what metric? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Financial_Centres_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Financial_Centres_Index
- deleted 28d ago[deleted]
- deleted 28d ago[deleted]
- ericmay 28d agoIt was apparently important enough for the OP to try and draw a distinction when none was needed…
- wazoox 28d agoEngland is definitely a European country. I'm tired of people constantly making this political abuse of language of conflating "the EU" with "Europe". (And yes, saying "America" for "US of A" annoys me too. First step towards losing an imperialist state of mind is letting people from Canada and Brazil be in America).
- retired 28d agoIn all fairness, I deal with British tourists a lot and they always talk about "going to Europe" when they refer to their summer holiday in Benidorm.
- Oarch 28d agoWe are nothing, if not needlessly complex!
- ButlerianJihad 28d agoIn the San Francisco Bay Area, the locals refer to SF proper as “The City” (not “Frisco”.) So, they may live in Cupertino, Palo Alto, or Oakland, but when they say “we’re going to The City for a concert on Saturday!” we can hear them pronounce those capital letters as an unambiguous reference to the one, true City.
- kzrdude 28d agoI live in a city (a quite small one) and if I say that I'm going into the city, then it means I leave my neighbourhood (it's in the same city) and I'm going to the city centre.
- ben_w 28d agoSame. I'm in Berlin, I may say "I'm going to the city/town/village" for different parts of the city-state.
- hgoel 28d agoSame with NYC, "going to The City" usually just means going to Manhattan.
- sajithdilshan 28d agoI’m surprised why they don’t just move it back to their own country and put it in a safe in Netherland.
- jochem9 28d agoThe biggest chunk is in the Netherlands, but you want your gold also in other countries, so that you can still access is (and don't loose it) in case of an invasion. Hence almost half is in North America, a completely different (and (somewhat) allied) continent. It's also easier to sell in certain markets, such as London.
- hvb2 28d agoJust to be a pedant, 18.5 % in the US and same in Canada so 37%. I wouldn't call that almost half, it used to be about half before the move (NY at 31.3, 19.7 in Canada).
- clort 28d agoNot just so that you don't lose it in case of an invasion, but it is proof that you would be willing to help out the host country in the case they were invaded. Also, that you would not invade them. In the olden days, the local lords would marry their children together, to create familial groups and ensure that for the forseeable future the local areas would not have a conflict. Modern democracies don't have such valuable family members, we use valuable objects instead.
- chihuahua 28d agoThe United States and Canada must have enjoyed that feeling of safety, knowing that the Netherlands would not invade them. And of course, if someone were to invade the United States (or Canada), knowing that the mighty Netherlands would come to their help would be immensely reassuring.
- consp 28d agoLondon has an old school gold exchange. Pretty much you can buy and sell by moving a part between vaults (at least that's how I understood it to work in the past). Now I expect it to be just a spreadsheet but who knows.
- zmgsabst 28d agoMy understanding is that it’s on shelves in a shared vault and you relabel who owns that shelf/slot/bin.
- MisterMunchkin 28d agoI wonder if anyone checks the gold. You could end up with the problem Amazon had, where people were inserting fake items into the supply chain and then it was just getting mixed into the real products and nobody could tell who was doing the fraud. Because instead of treating each item as an individual thing, they were pooling everything with other items of the same type. So if I send in a brick and say it’s an iPhone 17 and you order an iPhone 17, you might get my brick.
- ridgeguy 28d agoTungsten is 1.0015 times denser than gold. A gold-coated tungsten ingot could be adjusted (tiny internal cavity) to have exactly the same mass as a solid gold ingot of the same volume. I've no idea what checks are done to exclude such artifacts from gold storage. If somebody accepted them and stacked them in a reserve vault, they might go decades without discovery. I guess it's not something to worry about. It's improbable, and even so, if everybody agrees on the value of undetected bogus W/Au ingots, makes no difference from the real thing.
- crote 28d agoThere have been rumours like this about the US gold storage for decades. Its audits only look at a tiny percentage of the holdings at a time, any kind of weighing or purity inspection is the exception rather than the rule, and third-party auditors or observers are not welcome. They basically look at a handful of bars, see that the seals on the other vaults are intact, and extrapolate that all the gold is perfectly fine. In other words: the US could be pulling the fraud of the century here, and we'd never find out. But a full audit would be extremely expensive, there's no sign that there's any kind of foul play, and other countries are doing more-or-less the same. And even if a country does notice that something is off with their US holdings, there's plenty of reason to keep it quiet and just play along.
- t0mas88 28d agoTheir goal isn't only safe storage, it's also being able to sell when needed. You can't quickly trade with the gold that's in their own safe storage facility in Zeist, because you would need to physically transport it. The reserve at the Bank of England is put there because there is a large market for gold trading there. So you can use the gold immediately to influence the markets. Putting it in a safe place in another European country wouldn't have added value over storage in Zeist.
- crote 28d ago> You can't quickly trade with the gold that's in their own safe storage facility in Zeist, because you would need to physically transport it. More specifically: very few people besides the NL government have any gold stored inside that facility, so intra-facility trade is basically nonexistent.
- deleted 28d ago[deleted]
- a3qhg 28d agoThe narrative is that the continent is going to be overrun by Russia (at the rate of mile per year like in Ukraine). So the elites think they need the gold in London to pay for their exile government luxury.
- bwanab 28d agoNo, that isn't the narrative.
- wolvoleo 28d agoEngland is a European country. Just not EU.
- mschuster91 28d agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49573455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49573455
- retired 28d agoDutch 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
- ktallett 28d agoI'm curious the reason why it was ever held in the US and Canada
- blooalien 28d ago> I'm curious the reason why it was ever held in the US and Canada Random Educated Guess; Probably part of some show of mutual trust to cement a treaty or other agreement, made way back when allied governments could mostly trust one another to hold to such agreements somewhat reliably?
- ericmay 28d agoEh I don’t think that’s a good guess. More likely is that there are just mechanical reasons to have moved some (they didn’t move all of it by the way) gold to London. Plus it’s not that much money in the grand scheme of things. Your implication here is something akin to the Netherlands thinks the US will invade Canada - remember the Dutch moved gold from there too, or that the US will decide to seize the Netherland’s gold (again, not that much money, huge irreparable harm to the US financial system, even Europe hasn’t confiscated Russian assets) but if the US felt compelled to seize Dutch assets what makes you think such a dramatic scenario wouldn’t result in the US compelling the UK to also seize those assets?
- tialaramex 28d ago> dramatic scenario wouldn’t result in the US compelling the UK to also seize those assets? The US can demand that we seize other people's gold, but if we acceded then it's game over for our financial industry - London is an important financial centre today but if it's actually just New York but on the far side of the Atlantic who cares? My guess is that the UK would say "No" and since that's presumably a demand from the Orange Buffoon not somebody sane the next thing would be an order to attack us militarily, which is strikingly dumb in this circumstance. Of course the US can destroy Britain though it might not be as easy in practice as it looks on paper - but the bloodshed would be horrific and all the victims speak English and have Internet access. Bombing a girl's school in Iran looks like a PR master stroke by comparison.
- ArtTimeInvestor 28d agoHow is the situation with Bitcoin? Do Europeans have options to hold Bitcoin in ETFs, ETPs etc that are not storing the coins in the USA?
- avazhi 28d agoPeople still buy BTC (let alone central banks)?
- GreenVulpine 28d agoAll the time. ETFs are at record inflows.
- KaiserPro 28d ago> Bitcoin in ETF yes, but why would you want to? The only thing you would gain is instant trade settling (assuming the exchange is open) I know it sounds like europe is a financial backwater, but we have all the things the US has, apart from the capitalisation.
- retired 28d agoWhen I was still in The Netherlands I could invest my pension in stocks, obligations, ETFs or park it as cash. I couldn't invest it in Bitcoin directly. It had to be on a special blocked account at a broker to ensure I couldn't touch it till my 73rd birthday.
- clort 28d agoInterestingly, 59 tonnes of gold was sold in USA and bought in London. So that means perhaps "Somebody" transferred 59 tonnes of their gold holdings to the USA.. who was that? This is similar to what the French did last year. The other thing I noticed, is that as the article chose to mention: > Gold that is held with the Bank of England must meet modern international trade standards with implication being that the gold it previously held in the USA was not meeting those standards, but is that just journalistic fluff? what are those standards? (could be exact weights in g rather than purity?) NB the Netherlands still has >200 tonnes of gold held in the USA & Canada.
- bootsmann 28d agoMost of this is googleable but there are thousands of traders that make sure the gold price is the same globally so nobody had to “move” their gold in the reverse for this trade to work. The difference between London and the US is that the bars are of different size (12.5 vs 1kg).
- JumpCrisscross 28d ago> there are thousands of traders that make sure the gold price is the same globally so nobody had to “move” their gold Physical versus contract differences are real and require moving the actual gold. What most users do is sell deliverable where they want it out and then buy contracts or deliverable where they want it and then let the market figure out how to move gold around to settle. (It probably won’t involve moving gold from where you had it to where you want it unless you’re in a cohort.)
- turbonaut 28d agoThe price of gold is not equal globally, there is a ‘loco swap’ price differential, reflecting the price of moving the metal, eg flights, security, tariffs that may be attracted, whether the location can service futures delivery etc
- carlosjobim 28d agoWhere in the world can you buy gold cheaper than anywhere else? Because if you knew that you would become a multimillionaire in a few weeks.
- Brendinooo 28d agoData from a chart in the article: Share of gold before relocation: New York: 31.33% Zeist: 30.83% Ottawa: 19.72% London: 18.12% Share of gold after relocation New York: 18.52% Zeist: 30.83% Ottawa: 18.52% London: 32.13% In other words, if you read the headline and thought the Netherlands was just pulling gold out of the US and it was pulling ALL of its gold out, you're not seeing the whole story. And if you read the whole article, you'll see that all of the anti-Trump framing comes from "experts", not from the actual people moving the gold. If you'd like to read the actual statement from the Dutch National Bank, it's here: https://www.dnb.nl/en/general-news/press-release-2026/dnb-improves-tradability-of-gold-reserves/ https://www.dnb.nl/en/general-news/press-release-2026/dnb-im...
- superb_dev 28d agoOf course the bank is not going to make a political statement, they have more important business to do. The article makes it pretty clear right at the top that the bank’s statement doesn’t mention Trump: > Experts say that rhetoric appears inherently related to the abrasiveness of the Trump administration towards traditional allies. Also, the “experts” are just right here. Are you gonna say that Trump hasn’t been throwing our allies under the bus?
- Brendinooo 28d agoI mean, if I hear the phrase "geopolitical unrest", I'm far more inclined to think "Iran"/"Russia" than "51st state". If the point is to get your gold away from the US and its president, why leave ~19% of if there? Why take gold out of Canada? Why is a two-word phrase inherently related to the abrasiveness of the Trump administration towards traditional allies"? And the bank's stated reason is: "Gold that is held with the Bank of England must meet modern international trade standards and is regarded as the world's most easily tradable gold and will therefore be the most readily available for DNB in a crisis situation. The gold reserves held in New York and Ottawa cannot be utilised as quickly and directly in such a situation." Why is that not the more plausible one, and the basis for the headline?
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- neves 28d agoWhen USA stole assets from Cuba and Venezuela, nobody minded. After they stole from Russia, everybody eyes opened.
- thephyber 28d agoStraw man fallacy. There are plenty of people who have been very concerned that both of those categories are weakening the foundations of the US-based financial system. It is likely to contribute to the migration away from the US petrodollar and the US dollar as the world reserve currency, thereby weakening all of the benefits we have because so many people use our currency. Arguably, though, the US has been "stealing" (in the form of sanctions and frozen assets) from other countries going back more than a few decades, at least as far as Iran in 1979, so your timeline doesn't hold up. "Stealing" is wordplay when it comes to Russia because they are at war and the things that are "stolen" are assets being frozen to help pay restitution for the war they started. And Russia would deny the oil stolen from their ships was theirs because the entire point of the "shadow fleet" is to obfuscate ownership, mix and match the fluid products, to create plausible deniability to avoid sanctions.
- inglor_cz 28d agoRussia is on the hook for a lot of damage done to Ukraine.
- thelastgallon 28d agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49573455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49573455 Why are European countries moving their gold out of North America?
- jeroenhd 28d agoThe Dutch transfer out of Canada is minimal and pretty much a token amount. Most gold has been transfered out of the USA. As for why, the American people elected Donald Trump for a second time and the recent trade wars have helped spread the notion that maybe the USA cannot be trusted by its supposed allies as much as it once could be.
- beloch 28d agoIt's a bizarre headline. New York: 31.33% -> 18.52% Ottawa: 19.72% -> 18.52% My guess is the original title focused just on the U.S., but the editors didn't want to draw attention from the big cheeto, so the headline was changed and now it looks less like the U.S. is the primary target. Honestly, if quick access to their holdings is a concern, I wouldn't hold it against the Dutch if they moved more gold out of Canada too. Unfortunately, you presently just don't know when a sovereign nation in the Americas might be embargoed by the U.S..
- jbverschoor 28d agoI mean.. the US has a history concerning gold and duping other countries
- throwaway2037 28d agoI don't follow. I couldn't find anything with a simple Google search. Can you explain more?
- aftbit 28d agoNixon
- le-mark 28d agoThey want to see how much of it is gold plated tungsten, good for them!
- jarrettcoggin 28d agoGold-pressed latinum, you say?
- Havoc 28d agoThat only gets discovered when all of it is pulled If there is dodgy stuff happening in the US it makes sense to keep the grift going as long as possible
- dpb001 28d agoLike this? https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-bought-nickel-received-stones-not-new-commodities-warehouse-2023-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-bought-nickel-recei...
- gilliethefoil 28d ago[dead]
- hnisjafx40 28d ago[flagged]
- amelius 28d agoIsn't lithium the new gold?
- AndroTux 28d agoI thought it was data
- throw0101a 28d agoI thought it was Bitcoin.
- conmod278 28d agoThat 40T$s will never be repaid. So what kind of monetary reset are we looking at? nonlinear as Luke says or gradual as Lyn says in the following video "We're Past The Point Of No Return" | Luke Gromen and Lyn Alden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoAuuJyBg6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoAuuJyBg6E
- throw0101a 28d ago> That 40T$s will never be repaid. Yes, and? A while ago the UK government refinanced bonds from WW1, the South Sea Bubble, Napoleonic and Crimean wars: * https://www.theguardian.com/business/blog/2014/oct/31/paying-the-price-of-war-britain-makes-good-on-historic-debts https://www.theguardian.com/business/blog/2014/oct/31/paying... Has the UK really experienced any issues related to not ever paying back its debt? (IMHO, most of the UK's problems can probably be sourced back to Thatcherism and more recently Brexit.) The only way for a country to repay its debt, versus refinancing it, is to run budget surpluses, which can work if done in a certain way, but most countries avoid for often good reasons: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity:_The_History_of_a_Dangerous_Idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity:_The_History_of_a_Da... After reading her book, I can't take Lyn seriously.
- conmod278 27d ago
- ls-a 28d ago[dead]
- hnhvkm0w0p 28d ago[flagged]
- niemandhier 28d agoGermany still has about 1200 t in the US. I wonder if they are going to move it too.
- neuronic 28d agoWhile there have been calls from economists to consider such a move for months [1], there is currently no need to wonder. The German fed (Bundesbank) has already commented that they believe the US to remain a trusted store. Bundesbank has independent authority over German gold which is NOT legally hard-related to government activity. It could still be influenced by politics, of course [2]. [1, paid source] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/mehr-wirtschaft/marcel-fratzscher-fuer-teilverkauf-deutscher-goldreserven-accg-200769183.html https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/mehr-wirtschaft/marce... [2, last section is relevant] https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/ausland/usa/id_101419346/gold-reserven-niederlande-holen-86-tonnen-aus-den-usa-zurueck.html https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/ausland/usa/id_101419346...
- 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 Book value ($M) Tonnes July 2006 8,967 6,606 July 2011 8,412 6,197 July 2016 7,883 5,807 July 2021 7,794 5,742 July 2026 7,812 5,755 The linked report is talking about a change of 1.5% from the latest-reported total amount in tonnes.
- csomar 28d agoJuly 2021 7,794 5,742 July 2026 7,812 5,755 Gold prices have exploded between these two dates. Am I missing something?
- 638d127673 28d agoThe table says book value. So might not be the market value of gold.
- sheepscreek 28d ago[dead]
- WarmWash 28d agoThe US government value of gold is hard pegged to $42/oz since 1973. Off by a factor of about 100 from market prices.
- aftbit 28d agoWhat is the value of this? Clearly the US won't sell me gold for $42/oz or the arbitragers would own the country, and nobody will sell the US gold for that amount ... so what does the $42/oz "peg" actually mean?
- wl 28d agoIf you're familiar with par value, it's the same thing. It's a measure to account for changes in asset holdings over time while neglecting changes in market value of that asset. They could have just used ounces to do the same thing here. It made more sense when there was a dollar peg.
- wolvoleo 28d agoGood but they should pull the rest too. Not just this small bit.
- xyst 28d agoIf only the rest of the world could follow.
- giov4 28d agobased on the fact that in the past was moved for safety and deals towards US, if it's now moved back to EU is it because it feels safer and less deal dependency?
- prymitive 28d agoThe funny thing is that with $40T of public dept US is basically taking money from other countries (in exchange for a pice of paper saying IOU) and then using that money to force these countries to do what’s in US best interests (real or perceived). And the bigger that pile of debt is the more every government is invested in us not going bankrupt, hence the leverage just gets stronger. US is basically a private equity typo of global power - getting others to lend them a knife it stabs them in the back.
- _mitterpach 28d agoWouldn’t that necessarily mean that if the US keeps making enemies of allies, then the premium required for these countries to give US money would be higher? Sure, I’ll lend you some, but I don’t trust you that much, you’ll have to pay me more.
- Wololooo 28d agoGo further with your reasoning... Why would anyone lend the US more...
- georgeecollins 28d agoI am not defending the US government but the reason why you hold treasuries is because if you want to buy something in two years, or ten years, etc. there is a good chance you will want to buy something with dollars. Oil, soy beans, New York real estate..
- anon84873628 28d agoUntil you can buy oil without dollars. This was an explicit agreement called the Petrodollar system, which was premised on the US navy securing international trade. If the US navy proves unable to do that (and exhausts its arms and demonstrates unpreparedness for future conflicts) then the whole premise falls apart. You might also stop buying real estate if the government seems unstable and economy is poised to collapse. Good soybeans also depend on fuel prices and the continued flow of fertilizer...
- tim333 28d agoGotta prepare for the US vs Europe war over Greenland! see: >“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace,” he wrote, adding that the US needed “complete and total control” of Greenland. not quite sure what's up with this timeline.
- obtainr 28d agoThe run up in gold last year was due to need for US to obtain enough gold to cover these foreign transfers.
- gregw2 28d agoThis is all about Greenland and reducing leverage Trump might wield to get it, right? They can't say that, it just gets them into a pissing match with Trump and what good is that but it's not hard to read between the lines. I also do wonder if the Netherlands knows anything more about CozyBear/FancyBear and the 2016 election than they've let on. ( https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/rare-insight-cyber-espionage-dutch-intelligence-two-russian-bears/ https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/rare-insight-cyber-espiona... )
- robotswantdata 28d agoJust a reminder: The Netherlands' 612 tonnes represent 0.28% of all gold ever mined and 1.7% of central bank reserves. Because gold is insanely dense (19.32 g/cm³), all the gold mined in human history fits into about ~340 shipping containers A standard 24,000-TEU cargo ship could hold every ounce of humanity's gold using under 1.5% of its physical volume. So the Dutch portion is a rounding error of global gold that fits in a single shipping container.
- inglor_cz 28d agoThat shipping container could not be easily lifted, right? The bottom would simply rip off under so much weight.
- robotswantdata 28d agoTrue and the same for the lorry or train. Likely 30 needed but they’d be very empty.
- permo-w 28d agoIt's interesting that this is reported as Netherlands pulls gold out of US and not Netherlands moves gold to Bank of England, even in the British press
- cyanydeez 28d agowin or lose, November is a giant cliff for the US. Is it going to go full autocracy, or is it going to go full civil war terrorism from the far right christian ethnostate.
- matltc 28d agoI love goooooold
- hnax 28d agoNational debt is a public millstone, and war makes it heavier; but just as a reminder, it was the US that has prevented Iran from having nuclear ballistic missiles on short notice (the acquisition of which would have instantly endangered the ME and the rest of the world, at immensely greater cost). Don't be fooled by "economic considerations": under the surface there is a battle going on the importance of which exceeds everything that the media throws at you. Try hard to understand!
- ChrisArchitect 28d ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526