| ▲ | Dutch central bank moves 86 tonnes of gold from US citing 'geopolitical unrest'(theguardian.com) |
| 75 points by Jimmc414 19 hours ago | 58 comments |
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| ▲ | rich_sasha 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| If 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-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. |
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| ▲ | teleforce 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Earlier 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 |
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| ▲ | tristanj 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The 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_Pr... |
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| ▲ | leoh 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I feel dumb but how is this related? | | | |
| ▲ | fennecfoxy 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | So America thinks its above the ICC then? Explains a lot, lmao. | | |
| ▲ | Yiin 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | icc is as strong as it can enforce its strength, if no one can challenge you, you don't play by the same rules everyone else do. Pretending otherwise is asking for trouble. | |
| ▲ | selivanovp 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A lot of countries never recognized ICC's jurisdiction over them, USA included. | | |
| ▲ | glimshe 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | Russia, China, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan and India are also non-signatories, among many others. The ICC exists mostly for political statements. |
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| ▲ | quickthrowman 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes? Nation-states like the US (and China) are more powerful than any international organization and power dictates what happens in international relations. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying it is what it is. |
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| ▲ | inventor7777 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why 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." |
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| ▲ | rollulus 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not OP but the amount from Canada was next to nothing, which could make the title sound misleading. Just guessing. | |
| ▲ | Markoff 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | good luck with HN title length limit, I dont understand why is length limit so low, I have to edit almost all my submissions | |
| ▲ | Jimmc414 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 10 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. |
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| ▲ | bulbar 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There 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. |
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| ▲ | jurmous 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Location 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. |
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| ▲ | wood_spirit 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is 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? |
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| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| When 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. |
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| ▲ | bspammer 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They’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 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | They 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 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | What building in Ottawa has 15 billion dollars of Dutch gold in it ? | | |
| ▲ | camkego 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The 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. | |
| ▲ | theGeatZhopa 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I also would like to know. GPS location anyone? I'm asking for a friend | |
| ▲ | mi_lk 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes policeman right here |
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| ▲ | c23gooey 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | all of human civilisation =/= the USA | | |
| ▲ | maplethorpe 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, things are really great everywhere else. | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I didn't say it was. Do you believe that there's an upwards trend in global geopolitical stability, or even simply general well-being? If you do, we certainly don't share that opinion. |
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| ▲ | wanderingpixel 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | not human civilization, just the United States. |
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| ▲ | newtonianrules 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 86 tonnes worth of gold is about $12.25 billion, or approximately what Nvidia paid for HuggingFace. |
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| ▲ | emchammer 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nvidia is worth many times more than the central-bank holdings of a number of sovereign countries. It's a staggering comparison. |
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| ▲ | RandomWorker 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| On 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. |
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| ▲ | fbrncci 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not 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. | |
| ▲ | everybodyknows 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To put in human terms, it's roughly three day's labor of every worker in the Netherlands. | | | |
| ▲ | radiator 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The 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. | |
| ▲ | SanjayMehta 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | GDP is just a number in a spreadsheet. This is a physical asset. | | |
| ▲ | apexalpha 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | GDP is a proxy for economic output. This is a static collection of a certain element producing nothing. |
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| ▲ | Ysx 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A sad day for orange solidarity. |
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| ▲ | matheusmoreira 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's honestly quite impressive that it took them this long to do this. |
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| ▲ | riffraff 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Italy 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 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't think the US is a serious position to argue diplomatic issues atm. I'd vote for it if I was Italian. | | |
| ▲ | blooalien 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | > 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. |
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| ▲ | toyg 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The 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. |
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| ▲ | anotherhue 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The operation took place between March and August of this year, it said. | |
| ▲ | chvid 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can also ask why they move it to London and not mainland Europe. | | | |
| ▲ | eqvinox 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | These systems AIUI have huge amounts of inertia, by design. |
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| ▲ | ChrisArchitect 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526 |
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| ▲ | 0xy 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Omitting Canada from the title feels deliberate. |
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| ▲ | lucasblake 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| [flagged] |
