Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art... Whether the exact ship was a battleship or a destroyer might make the search result.
I can’t open that link. Too bad.
Cloudflare DNS?
France pulls last gold held in US
241–250 of 374 posts
Re: France pulls last gold held in US
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US gold would have been on the books at the original purchase price, so something like US$35 from 1910 (when a penny had a purchasing power of 38 cents now). Having deemed it more efficient to sell that gold and buy the same amount to replace it, the new gold is on the books at the 2026 purchase price. As the 2026 money price is far higher than the 1910 price, the value on the books shows a dramatic realized capi…
That makes more sense, thank you! Though do gold assets on the books really never get adjusted? I guess that's up the central bank to decide but I would find it surprising.
Mark to market versus mark to book accounting for central bank gold reserves is an endless source of crank adjacent debates.
Re: France pulls last gold held in US
#243This article is poorly written. No new wealth was created.
They monetized an existing accounting/revaluation gain by selling older, non-standard bars and replacing them with compliant bars, while keeping the overall gold quantity unchanged. That is not the same as "we moved gold home and earned $15B on the move."
In simple terms:
- You buy x of gold at $10
- You sell it much later for $100
- You made a profit of $90, and you hold $100 of cash
- You rebuy x of gold for $100, back to the same gold exposure, but on the books, you have $90 of profit
Re: France pulls last gold held in US
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine they bought the gold in the US for 1b and sold for 16b. Yes they turned around and purchased 16b of order gold immediately but there's was still a transaction where they sold an asset for more than they bought it.
If you bought your house for $500k 20 years ago, sold it today for a million, then bought it again tomorrow for a million, would you describe that to your friends as having just made $500k? Like yes in the most pedantic technical accounting way it's a gain. In spirit I would call this an unrealized gain
No but I read the article and that was the way it described the gain.
Re: France pulls last gold held in US
#245This article is poorly written. No new wealth was created. They monetized an existing accounting/revaluation gain by selling older, non-standard bars and replacing them with compliant bars, while keeping the overall gold quantity unchanged. That is not the same as "we moved gold home and earned $15B on the move." In simple terms: - You buy x of gold at $10 - You sell it much later for $100 - You made a profit of $90,…
I don't get your point. Gold price increased, the gains were unrealized, now they realized when they rolled to a new position. The only nitpick would be that they did not mention the benchmark rate, so it's hard to guess the absolute gain.
What is poorly written or misleading here...?
That just looks like a normal capital gain to me.
Re: France pulls last gold held in US
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
De Gaulle was ahead of his time. He was very skeptical of the control that the US had over Europe through NATO. He left the alliance to build an independent French nuclear program which is paying dividends today amid the current leadership situation in the US.
Time to make the "De Gaulle was Right about everything" baseball cap.
Or a "De Gaulle Apology Form":
Re: France pulls last gold held in US
#247Good 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 a paper gain created by mark to book accounting treatment of central bank goal reserves. Not a real economic gain.
The US could re-create the same “gain” by selling and repurchasing their gold. Fundamentally doesn’t really matter.
Re: France pulls last gold held in US
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine they bought the gold in the US for 1b and sold for 16b. Yes they turned around and purchased 16b of order gold immediately but there's was still a transaction where they sold an asset for more than they bought it.
If you bought your house for $500k 20 years ago, sold it today for a million, then bought it again tomorrow for a million, would you describe that to your friends as having just made $500k? Like yes in the most pedantic technical accounting way it's a gain. In spirit I would call this an unrealized gain
Sure in the spirit it's an unrealized gain but wouldn't the tax man consider it a realized $500K capital gain? seemingly this is would be the more appropriate way of categorizing it?
Re: France pulls last gold held in US
#249This article is poorly written. No new wealth was created. They monetized an existing accounting/revaluation gain by selling older, non-standard bars and replacing them with compliant bars, while keeping the overall gold quantity unchanged. That is not the same as "we moved gold home and earned $15B on the move." In simple terms: - You buy x of gold at $10 - You sell it much later for $100 - You made a profit of $90,…
I don't get your point. Gold price increased, the gains were unrealized, now they realized when they rolled to a new position. The only nitpick would be that they did not mention the benchmark rate, so it's hard to guess the absolute gain. What is poorly written or misleading here...? That just looks like a normal capital gain to me.
What is the benefit of realizing the gains for France? They had gold, they still have gold. They don't pay tax on their gold or gains.
Re: France pulls last gold held in US
#250This article is poorly written. No new wealth was created. They monetized an existing accounting/revaluation gain by selling older, non-standard bars and replacing them with compliant bars, while keeping the overall gold quantity unchanged. That is not the same as "we moved gold home and earned $15B on the move." In simple terms: - You buy x of gold at $10 - You sell it much later for $100 - You made a profit of $90,…
I don't get your point. Gold price increased, the gains were unrealized, now they realized when they rolled to a new position. The only nitpick would be that they did not mention the benchmark rate, so it's hard to guess the absolute gain. What is poorly written or misleading here...? That just looks like a normal capital gain to me.
Capital gain and losses are when you need to pay taxes. If you sold 100K of SPY that you bought for 10K actually, and bought it back (It is a gain so there is no wash sale) immediately, you need to pay taxes for $90K. This is just an exchange based on the comments I am reading.