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

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

#81

Post by ceejayoz »

reactordev wrote: post #71
kasey_junk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gold in question is physical gold. Almost certainly standardized bars.

Considering the US only has 8,000 tonnes of gold total, this is going to be interesting. I don’t think their gold is just sitting in a closet in manhattan.

https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/goldvault.html

> As of 2024, the vault housed approximately 507,000 gold bars, with a combined weight of 6,331 metric tons. The vault is able to support this weight because it rests on the bedrock of Manhattan Island, 80 feet below street level and 50 feet below sea level.

> Following the verification process, the gold is moved to one of the vault’s 122 compartments, where each compartment contains gold held by a single account holder (meaning that gold is not commingled between account holders).

It’s a very fancy closet.

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

#82

Post by tboyd47 »

bluecalm wrote: post #57

Poland also have around $50B in gold reserves. Is there some law or unwritten law that requires Central Banks to keep so much gold? It looks like waste of resources to me, especially so if it's kept abroad. Is there a scenario in which it's better than just keeping reserves in mix of various government's bonds or some other asset like land or something else.

Law of the jungle

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

#83

Post by hoseja »

signaturefish wrote: post #55
amelius wrote: post #6

Question, how do you test if a bar of gold is really 100% gold without deforming it?

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…

Does XRF penetrate the sample? Isn't it a surface measurement?

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

#85

Post by samus »

alphazard wrote: post #54
jgalt212 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who even needs a ton of Bitcoin?

Gold has numerous applications. Bitcoin's only application is inserting information in an append only ledger. It's among the most durable ledgers, but also the most expensive and slowest to insert into.

Gold doesn't derive its value from those applications. It is valuable for the same reason as Bitcoin is: I can't create it out of thin air to screw you over when I settle a transaction.

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

#87

Post by SuperShibe »

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 trying to say is that these two do not represent the German political landscape at all. They also, while on different ends of the left-right-spectrum, both only represent the pro-Russian minority of the German political landscape. This is not a debate happening in Germany right now and no other party has expressed support of any position.

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

#88

Post by cantor_S_drug »

kasey_junk wrote: post #47
cantor_S_drug wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an auxilary question. Why don't countries have Gold Embassies around the world? Accounts which can be settled in Bulk (e.g. say $100 million gold equivalent size). This way no one country has monopoly on reserve asset.

They do. Countries frequently store gold with trading partners or allies. Germany for instance has extensive foreign gold reserves.

But then the next question is why aren't those used as settlements mechanism?

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

#89

Post by petre »

bluecalm wrote: post #61
holowoodman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official line in Germany is actually that Ukraine most probably did it: https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/ndr-wdr/nordstream-17... https://www.br.de/nachrichten/deutschland-welt/nord-stream-s... https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos... Knowledge or agreement by Selensky is unclear, but there seem to be hints. Poland might have been complicit or at least turned a blind eye and seems to…

From purely incentive based analysis I would bet on Ukraine/Poland as well. I am Polish and the news was received very warmly here by both citizens and government officials.

The news of the Nordstream bombings was received warmly in most of Central and Eastern Europe, not just Poland. The men and women who carried out the operation are heroes.

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

#90

Post by jxjnskkzxxhx »

The US has a history of pulling this kind of stuff on its allies. To mind comes pulling out of Breton Woods. To those not aware, at some point in the past the US told the world: the dollar is as good as gold, you can convert it at any time you want, pinky promise. Later: lol joking, I'm keeping the gold, enjoy your dollars.

I wonder what it says about Europe that its leaders are still falling for these rugpulls. That they are uneducated is the most generous reading I can think of.

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