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Dutch central bank moves 86 tonnes of gold from US citing 'geopolitical unrest'
- matheusmoreira 14d agoIt's honestly quite impressive that it took them this long to do this.
- eqvinox 14d agoThese systems AIUI have huge amounts of inertia, by design.
- chvid 14d agoYou can also ask why they move it to London and not mainland Europe.
- MiroslavPokorny 14d agoEngland has not been invaded in nearly 1000 years.
- jochem9 14d agoIt's easier to sell gold in the UK because of certain laws they have.
- anotherhue 14d ago> The operation took place between March and August of this year, it said.
- riffraff 14d agoItaly is the third country with the largest gold reserves since the 50s or so, and most of their gold is in the US. The idea of repatriating it comes up from time to time, but the truth is that it's s logistical and diplomatic trouble with little positive outcomes.
- grebc 14d agoI don't think the US is a serious position to argue diplomatic issues atm. I'd vote for it if I was Italian.
- blooalien 14d ago> I don't think the US is a serious position to argue diplomatic issues atm. Yeah, first we'd have to prove that any of our politicians can even define the word 'diplomacy', then we'd have to prove that they'd be willing to actually try diplomacy before resorting instantly to pathetic attempts at bullying.
- toyg 14d agoThe truth is that the current government is part of the international right-wing info-complex, and desperate to buddy up with Trump, so they are fundamentally unwilling to burn political capital for such a move. If they lose the next round of elections in April 2027 and Trump is not reigned in by then, the issue will probably come up again.
- tristanj 14d agoThe American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002, also known as the "Hague Invasion Act", gives the President of the U.S. legal authority to invade the Netherlands to free detained U.S. service members imprisoned by the International Criminal Court. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
- leoh 14d agoI feel dumb but how is this related?
- SanjayMehta 14d agoI think it's an oblique threat. Just recently Trump made a direct threat on the bond markets. https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/trump-suggests-he-can-use-the-military-on-bond-markets-if-we-have-to-use-that-we-will/ https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/trump-suggests-he-can-use-...
- drivingmenuts 14d agoHow would that even work? Park tanks on Wall Street and point them at stockbrokers?
- mafuy 14d agoHis chain of thought has a length not beyond his nose. It's typical for dementia, and I have to see it all the time with my parent. Only the very last sentence is kept in mind, all other context is mostly gone. I wish a reporter would ask him what question he heard and answered, because I'm sure he would be unable to correctly answer.
- throw0101d 14d ago> How would that even work? Park tanks on Wall Street and point them at stockbrokers? People are not quite sure, but Krugamn (for one) is willing to fight: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK20wZ0ofwY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK20wZ0ofwY
- applfanboysbgon 14d agoWhen you think about it, it's really quite a remarkable state of affairs for a nation to trust another nation so implicitly they give it physical control of (a non-trivial portion of) their treasury, in a sense. And now that is coming unravelled. Another marker of human civilization's slow deteroriation. I remember a time when I thought things would only keep getting better and better with advances in technology and information sharing.... how naive I was.
- bspammer 14d agoThey’re not moving it to the Netherlands. There’s still plenty of countries that the Dutch trust, but the US no longer seems to be on that list.
- mullingitover 14d agoThey still keep gold with the New York Fed, this was just a rebalance: > Before the deployment, the Dutch bank held 31.3% of its gold in New York and 19.7% in Ottawa. > After the move, each country accounted for 18.5% of the Dutch gold reserve.
- powcontech 14d agoWhat building in Ottawa has 15 billion dollars of Dutch gold in it ?
- mi_lk 14d agoYes policeman right here
- theGeatZhopa 14d agoI also would like to know. GPS location anyone? I'm asking for a friend
- camkego 14d agoThe Bank of Canada at 234 Wellington Street. If you try standing around taking photos for over fifteen minutes or so, let us know how that works out.
- jurmous 14d agoLocation Before After Change New York 31.3% 18.5% −12.8 pp Ottawa 19.7% 18.5% −1.2 pp London 18.1% 32.1% +14.0 pp Zeist 30.8% 30.8% 0 pp Seems it is mostly because there was less trust in the USA, and added a little bit from Canada to make it less obvious.
- wood_spirit 14d agoIs it a coincidence that USA and Canada now have the same amount, but they equalised without transferring any to Canada, and they can say they reduced in both?
- 0xy 14d agoOmitting Canada from the title feels deliberate.
- athrowaway3z 14d agoThe amount they took out of Canada is just a lot less. https://images.cdn.nos.nl/1/4/H/9/t/9/6kexFuRByv6prhDGJSyWt352cDYomcaqaSS69GN/1x0x1920x1080-1280x720.webp https://images.cdn.nos.nl/1/4/H/9/t/9/6kexFuRByv6prhDGJSyWt3...
- RandomWorker 14d agoOn the grand scheme of things this is 12bil usd worth of gold. The GDP of Netherlands is 1.4 trillion USD. So, this is honestly a foot note.
- SanjayMehta 14d agoGDP is just a number in a spreadsheet. This is a physical asset.
- apexalpha 14d agoGDP is a proxy for economic output. This is a static collection of a certain element producing nothing.
- everybodyknows 14d agoTo put in human terms, it's roughly three day's labor of every worker in the Netherlands.
- tosti 14d agoMake that the cat wise.
- fbrncci 14d agoNot the right comparison to make when comparing gold vs paper currency that can be printed at a whim. The comparison would hold if they pulled out physical fiat currency reserves.
- radiator 14d agoThe sum of 12 billion USD would be correct for paper gold probably. But in practice, the supply of paper gold exceeds that of physical gold.
- teleforce 14d agoEarlier this year France has pull out their last remaining gold held in US amounting to 129 tonnes moved to Paris [1]. [1] France pulls last gold held in US (361 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658146
- inventor7777 14d agoWhy did you modify the title to not include Canada? According to the HN guidelines: "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
- rollulus 14d agoNot OP but the amount from Canada was next to nothing, which could make the title sound misleading. Just guessing.
- Markoff 14d agogood luck with HN title length limit, I dont understand why is length limit so low, I have to edit almost all my submissions
- Jimmc414 14d ago10 characters had to be removed to fit under the title length limit. “and Canada” was the only real option that maintained coherence. There were no editorial motives behind that selection.
- timbit42 13d agoToo long to fit screen of Commodore VIC-20.
- lucasblake 14d ago[flagged]
- bulbar 14d agoThere has been voices in Germany to do the same. I assume they just need longer for the planning and/or coordinate their effort so not not everybody does it the same time, to avoid another tantrum from that orange grumpy man. That's of course also why a little bit was taken out of Canada.
- ChrisArchitect 14d ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526
- Ysx 14d agoA sad day for orange solidarity.
- rich_sasha 14d agoIf you’re inclined to wear a tinfoil hat: Germany had a really hard time repatriating their own gold (hmm) from the US, with the Americans reportedly putting every possible obstacle in their way to slow them down. Even inspecting the gold to see it was there was apparently too much: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-politicians-demand-to-see-gold-in-us-federal-reserve-a-864068.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-politici... with inspections first being refused, then being allowed only to see the entrance to the safe, then only allowed to see one of nine rooms containing the gold, and to look at a small few, but not all gold bars. I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation.
- newtonianrules 14d ago86 tonnes worth of gold is about $12.25 billion, or approximately what Nvidia paid for HuggingFace.
- emchammer 14d agoNvidia is worth many times more than the central-bank holdings of a number of sovereign countries. It's a staggering comparison.