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

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

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 329 posts

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

#221

Post by petesergeant »

djtango wrote: post #107
petesergeant wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they could sell the gold in the US to purchase gold that’s already physically closer for a slight premium. Possibly that ends up being cheaper than actual transport.

In December there was a large movement of physical gold from London to New York as banks closed their EFP arbs. This was enough to put a lot of pressure on the market. I imagine if Germany did that with their reserves a similar effect would come about.

The question is if it screws the market prices more than the cost of lifting and shifting the gold themselves, which presumably would not be cheap.

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

#222

Post by Aldipower »

Eupolemos wrote: post #205
gruez wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When another nation wants to subjugate or invade you and/or your neighbors, not being against is being pro them. "You're either with us or against us"

When under threat of invasion, that is logical, not controversial.

Yes, from the Ukrainian perspective. But this topic is about Germany.

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

#223

Post by Lionga »

Eupolemos wrote: post #205
gruez wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When another nation wants to subjugate or invade you and/or your neighbors, not being against is being pro them. "You're either with us or against us"

When under threat of invasion, that is logical, not controversial.

Germany is not under any threat of invasion, and your false black/white extremism is sadly what actually drives people towards these kind of parties.

There is a lot of nuances there.

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

#224

Post by user____name »

bboygravity wrote: post #110
SuperShibe wrote: post #87

The Germans in this article all appear to be aligned to either BSW (populist far-left, pro-Russia, anti-US) or AfD (populist far-right, pro-Russia). BSW wasn't even elected into the parliament and AfD, while being part of the parliament, has virtually no power due to not being part of the government coalition and all other parties sharing an informal agreement to not pass legislations with the help of AfD. What I'm t…

That's all fine and dandy, but also IMO it's entirely possible that the US cannot deliver their gold if these countries (and/or others) wanted it back. Just look at what happened when Venezuela wanted their gold back. It took ages and that was a relatively tiny amount. It's extremely naive for many EU countries to still believe that they "have" "their" gold stored in the US. And even more naive to not try and get it…

> The entire US banking and financial system relies on NOT delivering or owning the underlying (fractional reserve banking, federal reserve printing money out of thin air

This is sadly a very common misunderstanding of how money is created inside the financial system, even by professional economists and financial advisers. In reality money is not valued at parity with some physical material but as a simple act of accounting [0,1,2,3,4]. Historically a currency (subset) has been pegged against rare minerals as a method of insurance against state or exchange rate instability, the flip side is that this restricts state spending and economic growth -- a growing economy needs a growing stock of currency to service loans and avoid debt driven deflation, as in e.g. the great depression [5,6,7]. This is why gold/silver standards are always episodic in world history [8]. Even in the fien-de-secle gold standard era the majority of currency in circulation had its origin in endogenous bank lending [9]. The typical stability and viability of a currency is from the fact that it can be used to procure real goods in the wider market, which in turn is because money contracts are legally enforced via social power relations, e.g. by a local government with the power make and enforce such rules. Incidentally this is why cryptocurrencies act as an investment asset and not as a currency, it lacks the enforcement component and it appreciates in value, which is never what you want for a currency [10].

[0] Bank of England, Money Creation in the Modern Economy https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m... [1] Deutsche Bundesbank, The role of banks, non- banks and the central­ bank in the money creation process https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/654284/df66c4444d065... [2] Richard A. Werner, A lost century in economics: Three theories of banking and the conclusive evidence https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105752191... [3] Augusto Graziani, The Monetary Theory of Production https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/monetary-theory-of-prod... [4] Basil J. Moore, Horizontalists and Verticalists https://www.cambridge.org/sc/universitypress/subjects/econom... [5] Scientific Origin, What Was the Gold Standard, How It Worked, and Why It Ended https://scientificorigin.com/the-gold-standard-what-it-was-h... [6] Irving Fisher, The Debt Deflation Theory of Great Depressions https://www.jstor.org/stable/1907327 [7] Hyman P. Minsky, The Debt Deflation Theory of Great Depressions https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232609677.pdf [8] Marc Lavoie, Endogenous Money: Accomodationist https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287788671_Endogenou... [9] David Graeber, DEBT: The First 5000 Years https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years [10] Wikipedia, Silvio Gesell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Gesell

Apologies for the lengthy response, it's a personal pet peeve.

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

#225

Post by user____name »

user____name wrote: post #224
bboygravity wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all fine and dandy, but also IMO it's entirely possible that the US cannot deliver their gold if these countries (and/or others) wanted it back. Just look at what happened when Venezuela wanted their gold back. It took ages and that was a relatively tiny amount. It's extremely naive for many EU countries to still believe that they "have" "their" gold stored in the US. And even more naive to not try and get it…

> The entire US banking and financial system relies on NOT delivering or owning the underlying (fractional reserve banking, federal reserve printing money out of thin air This is sadly a very common misunderstanding of how money is created inside the financial system, even by professional economists and financial advisers. In reality money is not valued at parity with some physical material but as a simple act of acc…

Rip line endings :(

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

#226

Post by mdavid626 »

kadrian12 wrote: post #120
mdavid626 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very skewed view of the political landscape. Would be nice to forget this pro/anti Russia narrative. Please also note that AfD has become the strongest party in Germany. Sure, firewalled, but question is, for how long.

Not true. CDU/CSU was the strongest party in the last election. Stick to the facts, please.

Yes, exactly, stick to the facts! Read my comment again, I haven’t said anything about the last election. If you check the latest polls, AfD surpassed CDU (not the union CDU/CSU!).

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

#227

Post by amelius »

weberer wrote: post #126
signaturefish wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They have handheld XRF analyzers nowadays. They cost around $20k.

Interesting. How deep into a gold bar would that work?

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

#228

Post by slightwinder »

regularization wrote: post #131
SuperShibe wrote: post #87

The Germans in this article all appear to be aligned to either BSW (populist far-left, pro-Russia, anti-US) or AfD (populist far-right, pro-Russia). BSW wasn't even elected into the parliament and AfD, while being part of the parliament, has virtually no power due to not being part of the government coalition and all other parties sharing an informal agreement to not pass legislations with the help of AfD. What I'm t…

You're correct this does not matter this year. But in the 2013 German election, AFD got no seats, and now it has the second most seats. BSW was not around in the 2021 election, they got about 5% of the vote but Die Linke managed not to lose their vote to BSW. BSW probably picked up voters who would have gone to either AFD or Die Linke (kind of like voters in the early 1930s who switched between the KPD and NSDAP). Th…

> But in the 2013 German election, AFD got no seats

They were founded in 2013 and missed the seat by just 0.3%.

> BSW probably picked up voters who would have gone to either AFD

AFD-Voters were the lowest group they grew from[1]. They mostly harvest from the political left, but also some (probably non-extrem?) right voters.

[1] https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2025-02-23-BT-DE/analy...

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

#230

Post by mdavid626 »

bc569a80a344f9c wrote: post #141
sharpshadow wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the latest polls they surpassed the CDU. It was the moment when Merz announced 1 Trillion money rain after campaign to not make new debts.

https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ No, they haven't. Not a single poll has them surpassing the CDU. I genuinely don't understand why you'd lie about something like that. It's trivial to look it up.

When someone has a different opinion, it doesn’t mean they are lying. Please stop this thinking. Also would make sense to read carefully. AfD has more votes in the polls than CDU (not the union CDU/CSU! - which are essentially two parties).
Post reply on HN