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Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

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Re: Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

#51

Post by lovasoa »

roenxi wrote: post #14
_lvbh wrote: post #2

https://archive.is/20250623093918/https://www.ft.com/content... I have doubts the current US administration would let them without some sort of retaliation (e.g. more tariffs)

The US might literally just not give it to them. Germany has been trying to ask for their gold back for a while IIRC and they generally get an explanation that paraphrases to it being a very complex operation to pull off and they should come back next year. The US has enough leverage over Germany that the Nord Stream incident is still an unsolved mystery where everyone just moved on. Probably the Russians did it. Tha…

A consortium of investigative journalists investigated and attributed the attacks the Ukraine's secret service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_pipelines_sabotage

Re: Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

#52

Post by quchen »

pixelpoet wrote: post #15
amelius wrote: post #6

Question, how do you test if a bar of gold is really 100% gold without deforming it?

This was famously answered by Archimedes in his Eureka moment: https://www.longlongtimeago.com/once-upon-a-time/great-disco...

No, that measures volume, not gold content. Anything at least as dense as gold, maybe with with gaps in it to match the density, and a layer of gold around it is indistinguishable from pure gold this way.

A more reliable and still relatively cheap test is via conductivity.

Re: Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

#53

Post by holowoodman »

Invictus0 wrote: post #42
pixelpoet wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was famously answered by Archimedes in his Eureka moment: https://www.longlongtimeago.com/once-upon-a-time/great-disco...

That's a children's parable. You can easily defeat the test by using two metals, one denser than gold and one lighter, whose combination matches the density of gold, and then putting a veneer of gold on top of it.

You can nowadays look at a 3D-plot of internal density in an X-Ray computed tomography. On the chance that somebody mixed up an alloy that has the exact same density and X-Ray density as gold, you can try X-Ray absorption spectra which depend on nuclear resonances of different nuclei, so would conclusively prove presence and amount of non-Gold material.

And you can do activation analysis, where you activate the ingot with neutron radiation such that Gold isotopes form and decay. You then measure the decay gamma radiation spectrum and look for decay lines that are not gold but another material. This is non-destructive, but will make that ingot slightly radioactive for a while, but nothing that a few weeks of patience to wait for the decay can't fix.

Oh, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra would also work, but usually those machines are for very small samples in the milligram region. No idea whether there are some that could fit a gold ingot.

Re: Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

#54

Post by alphazard »

jgalt212 wrote: post #39
brainzap wrote: post #29

who even needs a ton of gold?

Who even needs a ton of Bitcoin?

Gold has numerous applications. Bitcoin's only application is inserting information in an append only ledger. It's among the most durable ledgers, but also the most expensive and slowest to insert into.

Re: Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

#55

Post by signaturefish »

amelius wrote: post #6

Question, how do you test if a bar of gold is really 100% gold without deforming it?

On the individual scale, something like a Sigma Metalytics resistivity analyser (passes an electric field through the sample, checks to see if resistivity, conductivity, weight or size all match up to what you'd expect from a homogeneous gold sample of that size or weight). On the commercial scale, an XRF spectrometer. Both methods are completely non-destructive, and highly accurate (the XRF more so).

(the two scales are due to price and bulk: the Sigma is about the size of a hardback book and a few hundred pounds, an XRF is the size of a large 3d-printer and many thousands).

Re: Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

#56

Post by JKCalhoun »

Invictus0 wrote: post #42
pixelpoet wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was famously answered by Archimedes in his Eureka moment: https://www.longlongtimeago.com/once-upon-a-time/great-disco...

That's a children's parable. You can easily defeat the test by using two metals, one denser than gold and one lighter, whose combination matches the density of gold, and then putting a veneer of gold on top of it.

It stands to reason that people were not doing this though before Archimedes hit on density.

Re: Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

#57

Post by bluecalm »

Poland also have around $50B in gold reserves. Is there some law or unwritten law that requires Central Banks to keep so much gold? It looks like waste of resources to me, especially so if it's kept abroad. Is there a scenario in which it's better than just keeping reserves in mix of various government's bonds or some other asset like land or something else.

Re: Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

#58

Post by quchen »

amelius wrote: post #24
bhickey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Density, conductivity, x-ray. Density alone won't rule out bars that are spiked with tungsten.

Maybe also moments of inertia?

Fake with a layer of gold around it has the same moments of inertia.

Re: Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

#59

Post by JKCalhoun »

amelius wrote: post #24
bhickey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Density, conductivity, x-ray. Density alone won't rule out bars that are spiked with tungsten.

Maybe also moments of inertia?

If the metals were thoroughly combined and met the density equivalent of gold I see no reason why the moment of inertia would not also match that of gold.

Re: Germany and Italy pressed to bring $245B of gold home from US

#60

Post by OtherShrezzing »

amarcheschi wrote: post #7

I have no idea of the strategy behind it, but for some reasons italy has a lot of gold despite not buying it since a few decades https://www.bancaditalia.it/compiti/riserve-portafoglio-risc...

A huge pile of gold in a secure location allows a government to operate in exile essentially forever without creating substantial debts for the home nation. It's not just "Italy's gold", it's "Contemporary Italy's gold".

Norway & the Netherlands moved their gold right before the Nazi invasions in the 40's, and were able to continue operating in exile as a result. Taiwan was established on the back of this tactic too, with the Chinese nationalists moving their gold out of the mainland into Taiwan when they realised they'd lose to the Communists.

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