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France pulls last gold held in US

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Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#331

Post by zahlman »

SR2Z wrote: post #303
newguy1000 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, tha…

Hold on - you say "we find more gold every day" and then go on to suggest that the money supply doesn't actually need to keep up with economic growth? If we had the technology to maintain 0% inflation, we would do that. We can't, and rather than risk deflation we instead target low positive inflation. This is because deflation leads to nightmare spirals where people start stuffing money into their mattresses instead…

> If we had the technology to maintain 0% inflation, we would do that. We can't, and rather than risk deflation we instead target low positive inflation.

I don't think this is quite right. My understanding is that a low positive inflation would be targeted anyway, because it stimulates the velocity of money; i.e. there's a downside to hoarding, since you need to beat inflation to come out on top. So people will be willing to invest to at least some extent in risk assets, or to buy things now rather than later.

Which, yes, makes inflationary spirals possible, but they've proven less damaging. The inflation numbers seen in regimes that actually collapsed as a result are absolutely dizzying; whereas the deflation seen in the Great Depression was... significant, but not nearly comparable.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#332

Post by bartvk »

RealityVoid wrote: post #301
newguy1000 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, tha…

> And even if there wasn't, imagine having an exchange currency that literally never inflated... that's GOOD. I fundamentally disagree. Value comes from building stuff not from hoarding. I maintain my intense dislike for gold. And I grant that it had the property of having most people on this earth consider it the peak of value. Sure common belief is a useful property. But I disagree that it's a positive outcome or t…

Your dislike aside, is it part of your investment portfolio? If not, what did you replace it with?

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#333

Post by Nevermark »

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.

So as trade increases, and the need for dollars increases, gold and the dollar increase in value together.

That sounds benign until you realize that is: deflation. It incentivizes everyone to hold their dollars instead of spending them, and parasitically gain from gold's increasing utility use as currency by others.

This further decreases dollars available on the market to use in trade, further increasing their value. Which ... yes this can be an economic death spiral. Or at least, a strongly growth conflicted world.

A world in which you can make 5-10% a year by avoiding economic activity or investment is not a healthy world.

(And you can't increase gold supply to counteract this, because gold supply is also always balanced against the cost of extracting gold. Unless everyone else on the planet except the US government is prohibited from mining gold, there is no play there.)

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#335

Post by kazinator »

mort96 wrote: post #76
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the full press release: "In 2025 and at the start of 2026, while the volume of gold reserves remained unchanged, the Banque de France had to align a residual portion (5%) with technical guidelines, resulting in a significant realised currency gain. This exceptional foreign exchange income totalled EUR 11 billion for 2025." -- the keyword here likely being "realized"

Is the logic that it's "unrealised" while the gold is stored in the US but becomes "realised" once it is stored in Paris? Why?

No, it becomes realized when it is sold. They held a bunch of gold that appreciated in value. On paper, they became richer. By selling it that became realized. After that, they bought gold again (different type elsewhere but it doesn't matter). That did not make them any poorer; they just converted cash to gold.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#336

Post by lostlogin »

mistrial9 wrote: post #224
hypeatei wrote: post #112

Earlier 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.

France is currently contacting selected partners to build a collective nuclear weapon coalition, probably focusing on Norway due to their location and recent oil wealth. Given recent events, reasonable people may disagree strongly on the directions that is leading.

Europe isn’t pulling its weight in defence spending.

But if it tries to it’s also a problem?

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#337

Post by RealityVoid »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #320
JTbane wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I don't get why people don't understand this- there is not enough gold to base the entire global economy on it.

That makes no sense, do you think people are talking about using gold coins instead of paper money in their wallet?

In effect, some of them are. Look how many decry the death Breton Woods. They don't want to necessarily have good coins on them, but they want them to be tethered as a proxy. Why?

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#338

Post by 1718627440 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #317
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.

> what if the US would use actual physical gold coins instead of dollars? The problem here is, what if the demand for dollars increases? In principle the US would get more gold and mint more currency, but gold is a finite resource. "All the gold ever mined" is around 200,000 metric tons, ~32k troy ounces per metric ton is ~6.4B troy ounces. In 2022 (just before the recent gold rally) the price was ~$2000 per troy oun…

> The problem here is, what if the demand for dollars increases?

The price for gold and dollar would rise, until the worth of dollars is as high as the demand is?

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#339

Post by 1718627440 »

JTbane wrote: post #310
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.

Yeah I don't get why people don't understand this- there is not enough gold to base the entire global economy on it.

There is also not enough paper money to base the entire global economy in it, so I fail to see the problem.

Re: France pulls last gold held in US

#340

Post by AnthonyMouse »

1718627440 wrote: post #338
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what if the US would use actual physical gold coins instead of dollars? The problem here is, what if the demand for dollars increases? In principle the US would get more gold and mint more currency, but gold is a finite resource. "All the gold ever mined" is around 200,000 metric tons, ~32k troy ounces per metric ton is ~6.4B troy ounces. In 2022 (just before the recent gold rally) the price was ~$2000 per troy oun…

> The problem here is, what if the demand for dollars increases? The price for gold and dollar would rise, until the worth of dollars is as high as the demand is?

> The price for gold and dollar would rise, until the worth of dollars is as high as the demand is?

The name for that is deflation.

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