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Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

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201–210 of 273 posts

Re: Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree not because "brainwashed MAGA crowd" but because people saying "it can't be worse" are almost always wrong. Unless you're starving in the ruins of your house in one of the world's war zones, in which case you're likely focussed on survival, not saying that. Pick any of the leader's third-rate third-tier henchmen or failsons for example of a worse option. Don't dismiss it out of hand. People in the UK voted…

>> People in the UK voted for Brexit because "well it can't be worse, can it?" They were suckers. I don't think that's true it all. They were promised that it would be better and sold pretty obvious lies. Same applies to Trump. Unfortunately the intelligence of the average voter is now at the bottom of the barrel and I wouldn't expect that to improve soon. Just look at the support people like Andrew Tate get among yo…

> don't think that's true it all.

It's not true of them all, but it definitely is true of at least some of them.

I know this because I heard it said in those words in a vox pops interview shortly before the Brexit vote.

Re: Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree not because "brainwashed MAGA crowd" but because people saying "it can't be worse" are almost always wrong. Unless you're starving in the ruins of your house in one of the world's war zones, in which case you're likely focussed on survival, not saying that. Pick any of the leader's third-rate third-tier henchmen or failsons for example of a worse option. Don't dismiss it out of hand. People in the UK voted…

> Pick any of the leader's third-rate third-tier henchmen or failsons for example of a worse option But none of them were on the presidential ballot in 2016, 2020, or 2024.* *Under one of the two parties that has any chance of actually winning.

Sure, but wait for 2028.

Re: Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the non idiotic thing about gold, since it is not fiat, is not easy to produce, and it is easy to verify, it can be used as a currency in less stable times/places. It’s a redundancy. Perhaps bitcoin satisfies many of these properties without the high costs to secure and move gold, but it needs electricity and a network? https://www.macrotrends.net/1335/dollar-vs-gold-comparison-l...

Gold is a fiat currency because it has no inherent value.

That is not what fiat currency means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

Re: Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> almost unheard of in the US for an elected politician to poll lower than 30%, it seems to be a floor Alan Keyes apparently set the floor at 27%, which is not far below 30% > Obama vs. Alan Keyes. ... Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. https://kfmonkey.blogspot.co…

To drive that home, Alan Keyes got to 27% by - running against a charismatic Obama - being a last minute insert when Jack Ryan was caught in a sex scandal (who was already fighting an uphill battle with sharing a last name with the corrupt former governor) - being a carpetbagger (he didn't live in Illinois at any point until running for senate) - running as a hard-line social conservative in a state where the GOP is…

And also being a person of colour, which is tough in the "hard-line social conservative" lane, where that is often a negative with those voters. Against another person of colour, who could pick up the other voters for whom it is a positive.

And the crazy.

Re: Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

#205
post #166
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but "removing" around half of it from one place is quite a bit. Though I doubt any single physical kg ever moved more than a few meters to the buying countries vault. edit: They physically moved 27 tons, the rest was traded away and bought again in London.

In times of crisis it can be physically moved, e.g. under threat of Nazi invasion in 1939-1940 the UK physically moved over 1,500 tonnes of gold from London to Canada ("the largest known movement of physical wealth in history"[0]), and infamously at the start of the Spanish Civil War the Spanish physically moved 510 tonnes of gold from Spain to the Soviet Union (never to see it again[1]). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org…

There's a good film about Norway getting their gold out ahead of the Nazis. Gold Run I think it's called.

Re: Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

#206
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US "Could care less" is the equivalent to the British expression "Couldn't care less". The intention and meaning is the same. So the original comment did mean to say what they said. My point was that what may look like a mistake or a contradiction is just cultural development of natural language. Another example is the British expression "It would be cheap at half the price"

> In the US "Could care less" is the equivalent to the British expression "Couldn't care less" No, it's not.

It is. The American version just does not say what it means.

Re: Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

#207
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In times of crisis it can be physically moved, e.g. under threat of Nazi invasion in 1939-1940 the UK physically moved over 1,500 tonnes of gold from London to Canada ("the largest known movement of physical wealth in history"[0]), and infamously at the start of the Spanish Civil War the Spanish physically moved 510 tonnes of gold from Spain to the Soviet Union (never to see it again[1]). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org…

The Spanish case shows how tricky it is to sell your gold. Suddenly other countries found out that Spain had money from liquidating its gold and milked it dry. Given Spain’s history it is incredible that the gold collected over centuries was spent in a few years. The wiki article is very carefully tip toeing that there is no evidence that the Soviets defrauded or abused the Spanish, but it is hard to believe that 72%…

At the time the Soviet Union had the Spanish government over a barrel because they were the only people who could/would supply significant quantities of desperately needed weapons (the opposing Nationalists were better equipped for reasons I'm not entirely sure of).

This also contributed significantly to the Communist (Stalinist) faction winning the internecine struggle on the left against the Anarchists and Trotskyists, but the quid pro quo was loyalty to the Soviet Union.

In hindsight we know they lost anyway, so this seems really silly, but at the time everyone involved believed they were in a completely existential struggle against fascism that was more important than literally anything else.

For anyone interested Orwell's Homage to Catalonia is an excellent book although it's just one man's perspective and may not be entirely historically accurate

Re: Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

#208
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better way to think about it is imagine that FIFA is a massive, roaring inferno of corruption and Europeans are ignoring it and then Donald Trump walks by and tosses a Mcdonalds wrapper on the inferno and it grows every so slightly and now all of a sudden everyone is concerned. Sorry don't care. Most Americans agreed with him doing that as well since the foul was stupid. There are things worthwhile criticizing folk…

He did not threw "Mcdonalds wrapper on the inferno". He shit on it and took a video of the shit and then threw a grenade on thr said shit. The peace prize would be the "Mcdonalds wrapper". The red card thing was huge additional escalation. The corruption about who gets the championship and who rips of who is bad. Changing outcomes is entirely different thing. > But equating Trump making this phone call to "some unhea…

I just can't help but just sit here and laugh at these things.

> Putin killed more people in Ukraine. He is worst in that regard. But we are talking about who is more corrupt or who would be insecure enough to call to change red card.

You're adding an additional detail here that wasn't mentioned in the OP, but there is no doubt about it that both Xi and Vlad would do the same thing, or they might just have someone killed or their family threatened, or sure they might not care about FIFA but didn't Russia under Putin run a state sponsored doping program with his tiny ego and huge corruption orientation? But sure, yea, neither of these guys would ever do something as corrupt as call FIFA and encourage them to overcome a questionable at best call so therefore everyone in Europe is so outraged about Donald Trump and whatever.

This entire conversation and this statement about how all Europeans allegedly feel is nothing but sensationalism.

Re: Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

#209

Fun fact, France did exactly the same earlier this year (though the trend has been there for decades). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation#France

There were discussions in Germany to do the same, but I don’t think they followed up on it

Although Germany already moved a sizable amount of Gold to Germany before Trump first took office and now has around half of the total in Frankfurt.

https://www.bundesbank.de/en/tasks/topics/bundesbank-complet...

Re: Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

#210
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After observing the talk as opposed to the actions of Meloni and Trump, I would bet that the AfD would continue the war as is. Weidel would make a "Notwendige Politikwende" speech and that's it. They'll then cut social services and enact pro-business laws and make some noise about immigration until ordered by the industry to allow it.

I don't think the fear in most politics is about the actions of the 'newcomers', but about potential of the old guard losing power. In the US if a third party started looking like a real threat, Rs and Ds would 100% come together to frame them as the greatest threat of humanity to ever exist, exactly as happened with Perot even in the age before hyper hyperbole. Like you alluded to Meloni went from end of the world t…

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