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France pulls last gold held in US

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Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#291

Post by Tangurena2 »

rdtsc wrote: post #150
u1hcw9nx wrote: post #105

>However, an operation to repatriate its gold holdings began in the 1960s leading up to the US termination of the Bretton Woods system, which effectively stopped foreign governments from exchanging dollars for gold. French-US monetary history after WWII: Under the Bretton Woods agreement (1944-1971), the US dollar was the world’s reserve currency, and it was pegged to gold at $35 per ounce. Other countries pegged the…

> trade, then French Navy picked those gold bullions from NY I couldn’t find any clear news source or academic reference to that event. I see a lot of references on gold buying/selling sites mostly. I would imagine a Fench Navy ship docked NY and loading tons of gold would make quite a stir.

Historically, if a ship carrying gold sinks, whoever salvages the gold/loot gets ownership of it. However, if the ship is a warship, the loot belongs - FOREVER - as the property of the nation-state (or their descendants). This has led to some legal battles over nautical salvage in the Atlantic (were those "Spanish Galleons" military or non-military? Hundreds of millions of dollars depends on that answer during some lawsuits in the 1990s) or nautical salvage in South East Asia where artifacts from long gone kingdoms (that didn't reflect borders created centuries after they collapsed) end up in court over what country gets to show them in museums.

So yes, if you need to move national quantities of gold/silver across the ocean, then for legal reasons, it is best to ship it via your navy.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#292

Post by ajross »

regnull wrote: post #273
kccqzy wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to imply that Charles de Gaulle and his policy of converting dollars to gold caused the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. That was a myopic view. The whole Bretton Woods system was doomed from the beginning due to design defects. The system was conceived with the primary goal of maintaining balance of payments equilibrium for all countries at the expense of economic growth and liquidity. It had become cl…

Ok, bear with me for a moment - what if the US would use actual physical gold coins instead of dollars? Then your argument of "gold would flow out" would not hold - so the only reason for it to flow out was that the gold standard was fake - the lax money policy of the US was the issue, not the gold standard itself.

That doesn't make any sense to me. Under Bretton Woods, a "dollar" was a contractual equivalent to a fixed amount of gold. There's no difference. When people are talking about "flow out" they're not talking about literally motion of currency[1], just who owns it.

[1] Which is backwards in your reasoning anyway. If you're a foreign power wanting to hold dollars, and dollars are physical gold coins, then you quite literally need to move them physically out of the country, right?

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#294

Post by racl101 »

wolvoleo wrote: post #164
ezst wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not?

Oh there's just some stupid 'rebranding' going on. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-49921029 As I hate our government I don't play by their rules. Besides, Holland is shorter and easier to pronounce.

I kid you not one time I saw the Netherlands spelled as: The 'Neanderthals' . I had such a good laugh. Almost choked on my coffee.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#295

Post by butlike »

RealityVoid wrote: post #286
regnull wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, bear with me for a moment - what if the US would use actual physical gold coins instead of dollars? Then your argument of "gold would flow out" would not hold - so the only reason for it to flow out was that the gold standard was fake - the lax money policy of the US was the issue, not the gold standard itself.

Gold is silly as a measure of value. It's just a piece of shiny metal. The amount of value in the world is increasing so you want to exchange medium to grow with it else you're pulling breaks on the actual economy.

Well it's also soft, bacteriostatic, and conductive.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#296

Post by RealityVoid »

butlike wrote: post #295
RealityVoid wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold is silly as a measure of value. It's just a piece of shiny metal. The amount of value in the world is increasing so you want to exchange medium to grow with it else you're pulling breaks on the actual economy.

Well it's also soft, bacteriostatic, and conductive.

OMG, we should totally base our economic exchanges on copper instead!

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#297

Post by ezst »

wolvoleo wrote: post #164
ezst wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not?

Oh there's just some stupid 'rebranding' going on. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-49921029 As I hate our government I don't play by their rules. Besides, Holland is shorter and easier to pronounce.

I obviously don't have a horse in this race, but this seems... more correct this way? And with Holland being a region (or two) and not the majority of the territory, how do the Dutch not living in Holland feel about it? It would seem like referring to Canada as "Québec", way to piss-off the non quebecers...

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#298

Post by engineeringwoke »

RealityVoid wrote: post #286
regnull wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, bear with me for a moment - what if the US would use actual physical gold coins instead of dollars? Then your argument of "gold would flow out" would not hold - so the only reason for it to flow out was that the gold standard was fake - the lax money policy of the US was the issue, not the gold standard itself.

Gold is silly as a measure of value. It's just a piece of shiny metal. The amount of value in the world is increasing so you want to exchange medium to grow with it else you're pulling breaks on the actual economy.

Yes, it's just a shiny piece of metal. However, it is a pure element and there is a limited amount of it, unlike pretty much anything else except maybe silver.

Otherwise this happens.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL

This is the origin of the entire white collar world and all of its odd bedfellows, and it will die in our lifetime. All of our jobs will go with it, unfortunately.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#299

Post by newguy1000 »

RealityVoid wrote: post #286
regnull wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, bear with me for a moment - what if the US would use actual physical gold coins instead of dollars? Then your argument of "gold would flow out" would not hold - so the only reason for it to flow out was that the gold standard was fake - the lax money policy of the US was the issue, not the gold standard itself.

Gold is silly as a measure of value. It's just a piece of shiny metal. The amount of value in the world is increasing so you want to exchange medium to grow with it else you're pulling breaks on the actual economy.

Gold is actually really good at transferring and measuring value. Think about what a "good" measure of value would be have. It needs to last over time, not corrode or dissolve to the forces. It needs to be distributable, Divisible.. to be ubiquitous. Hard to create/refine, hard to find, so supply can't easily be inflated. It doesn't matter what the object that is being used for exchange of value or holding value, that's why you can trade and barter random objects. But if you condensate down the properties that make a GOOD money, then gold is more than just a shiny metal. "The amount of value in the world is increasing so you want to exchange medium to grow with it.." we find more gold every day, so there is an easing already happening naturally. And even if there wasn't, imagine having an exchange currency that literally never inflated... that's GOOD. We have been hoodwinked into thinking that we need inflation to keep up with goods and services, literal stockholm syndrome taught by the FED.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#300

Post by oasisbob »

therealpygon wrote: post #265
lazide wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most delivery trucks (like a box truck) have capacities more like 10 or 20 tons. A heavy freight truck, like used to load ships? Even more.

You don’t generally just throw gold in a box truck… it typically moves by armored freight.

Maybe in some volumes, but I think most people would be shocked by the overall volume of gold that moves by UPS in small brown boxes.
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