Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

France pulls last gold held in US

mining.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 374 posts

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#2

Post by carefree-bob »

Good for France to relocate gold back to their own territory, but, uh, how can this result in a 15 B gain?

"The overall size of France’s gold reserves still remained unchanged at roughly 2,437 tonnes, which are now entirely held at the BdF’s underground vault in La Souterraine."

Is this some special form of French accounting, where the gold becomes more valuable when it returns to French soil?

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#6

Post by kzrdude »

carefree-bob wrote: post #2

Good for France to relocate gold back to their own territory, but, uh, how can this result in a 15 B gain? "The overall size of France’s gold reserves still remained unchanged at roughly 2,437 tonnes, which are now entirely held at the BdF’s underground vault in La Souterraine." Is this some special form of French accounting, where the gold becomes more valuable when it returns to French soil?

They sold the existing holdings and bought new of equivalent weight(?), so somehow they ended on profit on those moves.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#8

Post by somenameforme »

carefree-bob wrote: post #2

Good for France to relocate gold back to their own territory, but, uh, how can this result in a 15 B gain? "The overall size of France’s gold reserves still remained unchanged at roughly 2,437 tonnes, which are now entirely held at the BdF’s underground vault in La Souterraine." Is this some special form of French accounting, where the gold becomes more valuable when it returns to French soil?

Over about a year they sold their 'non-standard' (seems to be bars below the modern purity standards) US reserves, and replaced them with new reserves purchased elsewhere which are now stored in France. As the price of gold continued to rise as they did this, they ended up making a bunch of dinero while also centralizing their reserves.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#9

Post by berkes »

oyebenny wrote: post #4
aucisson_masque wrote: post #3

Not done for political reasons.

What makes you say that?

> BdF Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said the decision to keep the new bars in Paris is “not politically motivated,” as the higher-standard gold bars it bought were traded on a European market.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#10

Post by stackbutterflow »

carefree-bob wrote: post #2

Good for France to relocate gold back to their own territory, but, uh, how can this result in a 15 B gain? "The overall size of France’s gold reserves still remained unchanged at roughly 2,437 tonnes, which are now entirely held at the BdF’s underground vault in La Souterraine." Is this some special form of French accounting, where the gold becomes more valuable when it returns to French soil?

It's gold only if it comes from the Dore région of France. Otherwise it's just sparkling metal.
Post reply on HN