There is already arbitrary tariff. At this point, it is better to trade with other countries instead of chasing the US. Let the American citizen pay their tariff, their loss.
I wouldn’t worry too much about those threats. This administration is so erratic that you may see those same threats made against you for any other reason down the line even if you keep it put.
The Dutch absolutely should NOT follow suit. You guys stole our (Romanian) golden helmet when we sent it to a museum in the Netherlands[1] because you don't have any armed guards at museums.
Maybe send your gold to a country that actually protects priceless things, like the UK.
The UK under Gordon Brown foolishly sold off most of its gold reserves. If they had kept thrm, they would be worth £40B more today, or 10 times what it was sold for.
i just replied and then saw the comment was flagged LOL. For those that missed it the flagged comment said something stupid like “don’t obstruct ICE and you’ll be fine.”
I'd like them to explain, step by step, how holding a camera to document what ice is doing, can be considered obstruction. Are they doing illegal things that are obstructed by publicly available documentation?
Yep, Pretti was a citizen. As was the Hmong person they detained in his underwear. Most of the people they detain aren’t criminals.
> People are obstructing armed immigration enforcement and expecting to come away unscathed.
It’s scary that people actually think like this. These types of unprincipled excuses for lawlessness and murder are how authoritarians get into power. It might have been more excusable in the past but not today when the videos show the murder for the whole world to see.
> They just murdered a guy who was not obstructing them.
They shouldn't have shot him since he was not being violent. But he did obstruct: he was standing in middle of the street, acting like a traffic cop. When border patrol tried to arrest a woman, he got between them and the woman. That is obstruction!
A lot of people voted for him but not necessarily this. I think that’s the problem when you vote for wildcards. Especially ones with his history, he has no reason to do anything but cause chaos. It’s his entire personality type too.
I still don’t think a lot of people expected gestapo tactics that spill out onto the streets to ensue. I think people want better border protection but not necessarily this
Don’t get me wrong, I know just as many (or more) people are loving these tactics but there is not homogeneity amongst his voters.
> It was the second highest voter turnout in US history.
My dude, you have seized upon a statistic that, while technically true, is also utterly-effing-meaningless.
To illustrate, I've calculated the headlines for other Presidential elections:
1936 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1940 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1944 SECOND HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1948 SECOND HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1952 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1956 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1960 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1964 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1968 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1972 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1976 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1980 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1984 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1988 SECOND HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1992 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
1996 SECOND HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
2000 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
2004 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
2008 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
2012 SECOND HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
2016 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
2020 FIRST HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
2024 SECOND HIGHEST TURNOUT IN HISTORY!!!
VAP = counts everyone of voting age including people on visas who aren't allowed to vote.
We moved to VEP because the % of total population who aren't citizens started to grow rapidly. eg. see 2020 vs 2024. The eligible VAP count increased by 12M but actual VEP count only increased by 2M.
1/3rd voted for this, 1/3rd voted against, and 1/3rd are complicit.
The fact that the US did this twice beggar belief. For those of us in the rest of the world who have no say but are bombarded by this shit daily, we hold you all responsible (no matter what 1/3rd you're in).
Practically it is the same. And this is not a US exclusive situation. We see the AfD and other far right parties gaining popularity. People can vote for bad things.
People can also vote against a consequence decoupled elite that rule by virtual signaling to each other which was okay in a resource binge, ignoring the results their previous choices had for the lower echelons.
To hit the captain with a shovel may look like mutineer madness on any boat, but maybe a sign of necessary changes and reality grounding on a ship called "titanic" where the captain yells "right on, right on" into a pipe that does gurgling sounds.
Choosing not to vote is implicitly voting for the status quo, whatever it happens to be. It's accepting fate.
If voters saw the first Trump term and knew about Project 2025 (which was public and publicly discussed) and didn't care enough to vote against the implementation of what was happening right under their noses then that isn't much different than voting for him.
If anything it's worse. At least the right is actively evil. At least voting third party, futile as it is, is making a statement. Seeing Trump's movement gain and consolidate power, listening to their beliefs, seeing the preparation of political infrastructure, January 6th, stacking the Supreme Court, the normalization of white supremacy, and knowing fascism could be a vote away and not giving a damn shows a depth of poisonous cynicism and cowardice that should brand a person for life. That will brand our entire society for a generation.
So then, religous-supremacism and mafia-state methods are okay, if done with the right ethnicity? So what is the problem with ICE, as perceived by you, then in the first place?
Yeah, and--assuming Pretti was carrying at all--he did everything perfectly, never brandishing or even touching it.
FFS, I'd wager the ICE thugs didn't even think Alex had a weapon at all, not until they had already (A) shoved him (B) pepper-sprayed his face and (C) yanked him from the other disabled protester he was trying to shield and (D) threw the blinded Alex to the ground on his knees with both hands down on the pavement.
____________
To be more specific, since there are different angles out there, I'm referring to these [0][1], where one of the ICE agents can be seen removing something from Alex's belt.
Then, almost immediately, the adjacent ICE agent draws and shoots the blinded, restrained, and unarmed Alex Pretti, putting ~4 bullets into his back from behind.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/witness-videos-cbp-kill... -- At 1:01, grey-hat-jacket pulls something from Alex's exposed waist with his right hand. He swings his his arm away towards the road (see other footage) while black-hat-green-sleeves pulls his own sidearm and shoots.
It is. The MAGA subset of the right suddenly doesn’t care about the second amendment. I guess that should be expected after they’ve shown they don’t care about the first (people recording ICE) or fourth (warrantless raids) amendments too.
> Germany holds the world’s second-largest national gold reserves after the United States, with approximately $194B worth — 1,236 metric tons—currently stored at the Federal Reserve in New York
Moving that much gold makes me think that’s a great opportunity for the world’s biggest heist!
Not really, a Mini Cooper has a payload capacity of 450kg according to some googling.
That gives us ~2.7 Minis.
If we factor in the weight of the driver, then we can comfortably get away with 4 Minis, each taking 312kg of gold which leaves us with 138kg per Mini for the driver and any gear that might be needed for the heist.
Your calculations are off by some margin. Assuming 312kg per car, it would take 3962 minis to transport it all, somewhat more than the 4 you accounted for. Of course you could do this with 4 cars over a thousand round trips - I'm not sure which option is most likely to lead to success, I suspect both might arouse suspicion.
If a plan was made to repatriate it, chances are this will happens slowly over years, possibly decades. A lot of it might not even be "moved", but rather "swapped" for gold physically in the EU by means of various vehicles: such as selling gold at a slight loss in the US, and buying gold in the EU. Doing so might be cheaper than arranging for physical transport of large quantities.
When large quantities of gold are actually transported "at once", it usually happens in secret on warships. Maybe military planes would be used nowadays? Who knows. Good luck anyhow.
Wouldn't it be a "big loss" if the market believes that gold in Fort Knox is not retrievable? Same as in Argentina, where currency controls led to 1 USD in an Argentinian savings account to be worth less than 1 USD outside the country.
In normal times, yes. But I'm not sure if that still holds if there is a sense of urgency, because no one knows when Trump might get the next stupid idea.
Also I wonder if the rising gold price would interact with this, though I think this would make the "sell and re-buy" strategy actually more viable, at least if you buy first and then sell.
The Remmos and al-Zeins are probably thinking about that already, but as long as the Sparkasse isn't in charge of the transfer I'd say such a heist will be too difficult for the usual suspects.
Why do they think the US will give it to them? After all, last time this happened, the US didn't actually have the gold, it cancelled all gold IOUs — effectively stealing the gold — and that was the Nixon shock. It made the US very wealthy for the next half century.
Aren't you confusing two things? When Nixon suspended Bretton Woods, he wasn't refusing to repatriate gold, he was reneging on the promise that dollars could be converted into gold (one of the reasons being that it no longer had enough physical gold to redeem).
So countries like France held dollars and could no longer get them converted to gold. From my reading, before 1971, all the requests to convert dollars by France, Switzerland, and the UK were all honoured, contributing to the crisis. I don't believe anyone were refused conversion until 1971. And even then, everyone still had their dollars. All they lost was the ability to redeem for gold according to the fixed Bretton Woods price. Dollars could still be used to buy gold at market value.
But this article is talking about repatriating gold owned by other governments but physically held in vaults by the US. A bunch of countries (including Germany) have already repatriated vast amount that were housed by the US, and those requests have never been refused. The Federal Reserve is said to even keeps the bars owned by other countries physically separate, rather than commingled.
That's a refusal to repatriate, since other countries had sent their gold to the US to exchange for dollars with the understanding they could exchange it back at an time.
Is that happened? I'm not an expert on the history of Bretton Woods, but my understanding is countries that sent gold to be stored in the US retained ownership over it, and repatriation was never refused.
If they had converted gold to dollars, this only suspended their ability to "rebalance" between gold and dollars, and no value was lost.
The dollars were worth a small fraction of the gold. It's true that no value was lost — because that value was transferred from the other countries to the US.
That doesn't sound right. Money is fungible. Anyone who missed the "window" to convert in 1971 (which major countries like UK, Germany, and France didn't, as far as I can see) still had their dollars. The US-domiciled gold that backed the dollars had always belong the US; so the dollars being an "IOU" makes sense in a colloquial sense, I guess, but it's a gross simplification that misses the broader point about how Bretton Woods affected monetary policy. It shifted the US into being able to maintain a permanent trade deficit, and the US was free to devalue the dollar (effectively the world's default currency) without repercussion, which is good for the US but not for everyone else.
The dollars were worth much less than the gold. As soon as you couldn't exchange dollars for gold any more, the value of a dollar fell by a factor of several to reflect that.
That would be more or less equivalent to defaulting on government bonds, in the sense that the latter are only backed by the buyers trust that the US will pay them back.
The result would be catastrophic for the US: worst case would be a domino cash in of American debt.
Many Trump supporters actually believe a collapse of the dollar would be a good thing, and that Trump has a plan, because of (some vague bogeyman about the federal reserve). They don’t realize or want to admit that this would mean they would become poorer overnight.
Because gold repatriation isn't something that special or unthinkable. It happened multiple times already.
Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Germany have asked a significant portion of their gold back. The US gave them and the world kept working as before. The amount of doom posting in this thread is mildly amusing though.
>what exactly would happen as a consequence to the US?
It would trigger a loss of faith in the US and USD. Which could get really spicy given that the US relies on reserve currency status to keep things steady despite comparatively high debt/gdp
Hard to tell what would happen but I suspect its borderline enough that nobody sane wants to find out
Can you provide some references to them doing this the first time? You seem to like posting comments about the "Nixon shock" without providing anything to back it up.
Sorry — I thought this was well known. Until 1971 a united states dollar was an IOU for a certain amount of gold. The US cheated by printing more IOUs than the amount of gold it had. When foreign countries started withdrawing gold at a rate the US thought it would run out, in 1971, it cancelled all IOUs and kept the remaining gold for itself.
So you're referring to the end of the Bretton Woods System, which is its formal name.
> The US cheated by printing more IOUs than the amount of gold it had.
From the article you posted, it looks like the US was dealing with an issue whereby their reduction in global output meant that a reducing demand for dollars could cause a run on gold. I don't know if I would characterise this as "cheating" per se. The article states that there were many efforts, jointly between the US and other countries, to maintain the system, but these ultimately failed.
So I don't really get how this backs your claim that the US cheated? Sure it was controversial, and I'm sure there were many peoole who were unhappy about it, but it looks like they had little choice, given the system was failing and they were dealing with an extraordinary inflation crisis to boot.
If you've only printed enough dollars for the amount of gold you have, a run is no problem because you can exchange as much gold as people want. Gold and dollars can be allowed to be freely exchanged, no matter what. If you've cheated by printing more dollars than you have gold, then you have a problem.
The biggest customer of Canadian Mint gold bullion are US investors in New York, as Wall Street knows its refinement is always very pure and traceable. Note this mint saw an $8.3B uptick in sales in 2025 alone due to international political antics.
"The prohibition on gold ownership in the US was relaxed in 1964, and finally rescinded in 1977 when Gerald Ford signed proclamation Pub.L. 93-373."
However, during severe economic recession the US government has Nationalized private gold holdings >1oz in the past. Something like a 35% drop in markets due to a theoretical Magnificent 7 "AI" bubble correction does pose a nonzero risk.
Keep some Popcorn ready, as the price of Gold going any higher is getting weird. =3
That debt clock looks like a monopoly board. Lets be honest, the world economy has become one massive game of monopoly with big tech and big oil being the banks.
What would the founding fathers, the ghosts of the French Revolution or Plato say to that? Nothing, they’re all dead.
We should be doing the changing, not the long dead past.
There are different kinds of Death, and Socrates story of resolve still greatly affects peoples ideas of free speech and due process within a just rule of law.
Wait, I've watched this episode before. The US owed France large amount of gold (the legal mechanism for this was called "the dollar"). France asked to redeem their dollars for gold, and the US said "nah, we're keeping it, enjoy your dollars".
The fear in non-US nations is that the US will not respect the agreements and refuse to hand over the gold if requested. Given all the Trump admin is doing, I don't think it's unjustified
Or move it to Canada. One of the advantages of the US was that it was far from Europe and safe in case of invasion or war. The US clearly cant be trusted anymore , but Canada can, and it also across the atlantic.
An invasion from who? I agree with you that Canada couldn't defend against an invasion from the US, but I also don't think that any country without nuclear weapons could defend against an invasion from the US. But I think that Canada could probably defend itself from an invasion from most other countries—the Canadian military is generally competent, and NATO and NORAD would almost certainly offer assistance.
Even then, who would want to invade Canada? Despite the recent political blustering, it seems incredibly unlikely that the US would invade Canada, and the only other plausible invader that I can think of right now is Russia, but their military isn't doing very well at all right now.
If the threat model is "the US goes rogue and does crazy stuff", Canada is a prime risk of suffering from such madness, so moving your resources there doesn't really change anything.
Agreed, but I'd argue that there's a big difference between the US making it difficult to access gold reserves stored there and invading/blockading Canada to the point where gold reserves stored there are unusable. The first seems unlikely but possible, while the second seems almost unimaginable, and even if the second does happen, I'd be more concerned about access to food/medicine than access to gold reserves.
(Although I'm Canadian, so this may perhaps just be wishful thinking on my part)
If the USA cannot be trusted that they will honor the ownership of gold in their vaults, can it be trusted to honor the ownership of US equities and bonds held by foreigners?
He's described as a "permabear" on r/StockMarket and r/wallstreetbets. Common refrain is he could be right in principle, but getting the timing wrong can be the same as being wrong, for all practical purposes.
The timing matters if you want to make money off it. I'm just talking about how he was saying the US empire will fall a few years ago. Not the stock market.
I think it can also apply to how much credit we should give him if he ends up being right. If his predictions come true within the next decade, he'll be considered a prophet; if in the next half century, then not so much.
I don't have anything to go by for this, but I do wonder if there were any people who predicted the downfall of the Roman empire 200, 100, 50, etc years before it actually collapsed. I suspect all of them would have somehow based this on its decadence and excesses, but I also suspect none would have had a firm grasp on how it would play out.
I am similarly interested with such questions wrt to the US today.
The beginning of the end started with Nixon. It allowed US to print whatever money and never default. I find it insane that the world went along with it. Seems like a parody.
It's what Carney's speech alluded to when he cited Havel's The Power of the Powerless [1]. The sign was put in the displays because it was the best thing to do for the vassal states. Those days are slowly ending, more and more countries are going to stop displaying the sign.
This is also what at least part of the Americans doesn't get. Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, etc. weren't freeloaders, they were doing the bidding of the US in the UN, maintaining the system where the US can print money without limit, etc. All that soft power has been destroyed.
Why not just … sell the gold? What good is gold to a society anyway, regardless of where it is placed?
Instead of drawing the anger of the US, just .. slowly over time, sell all the gold off, and move the money back. And use it to build infrastructure or something. Much better than gold.
I can imagine the next big budget heist movie being written about this as we speak.
An armada of ships traversing the Atlantic with 1K tonnes of gold being waylaid in the middle of the ocean by a huge storm when unidentified submarines bore a hole in the cargo ship and make off with the gold: Oceans 15.
I wonder what they'd do if the US starts reducing NATO commitments. A perception that Europe is using financial blackmail to keep the US in NATO would have interesting effects on US politics.
Anyway, it's been clear to me that this sort of thing was Trump's plan all along. The goal is massive and permanent reduction in the size of the federal government. If that requires crashing the US ability to borrow more money, and crashing the value of the dollar, that's a price he's willing to make the US pay. US reputation abroad is of absolutely no importance to him; indeed, it's a negative, since a positive reputation allows borrowing that sustains the large federal government he hates.
The lesson for Europe is that depending on the US to defend them was a poisonous mistake, even if a very seductive one.
A post-crash US would be poorer, but also much more economically competitive. This would tend to encourage investment, so it's an interesting question how far the dollar would actually decline.
I wouldn't want to be in South Korea or Taiwan (or Japan, really) in this scenario.
> depending on the US to defend them was a poisonous mistake, even if a very seductive one.
It was a decision that was necessary to not loose the second world war to Germany and/or the Sovietunion. Until 30 years ago separating from the US would have meant allowing the Sovietunion to expand to the Atlantic. Separating from the US has been an open discussion for the last 30 years, but it was always felt to be a security risk and the US has actively used its soft power to remain the status quo.
Trump likes to frame is as if Europe said: "Please, USA, protect us, and we will just parasite on you and abuse our relationship to our advantage". Whereas in fact the whole story is the other way round. For example there were limits on the size of German army not that long time ago. And the USA did everything so that its interests are well represented n Europe. Now that Trump plays his "We don't need anyone" theme, the former allies of the USA are forming their own alliances, reduce spending in the USA and no longer feel obliged to turn a blind eye on things that were bothering them for decades.
The only reason why other countries sent their soldiers to stupid wars in Afghanistan and Irak that made no sense then and make no sense now was because they were honoring their commitments and saying OK, we send people to die but if the worst come and Russia attacks us, The USA will do their part. Now Trump openly says all this was for nothing. All trust in the USA is gone as nobody knows what Trump does when he wakes up next day. So we quietly work on making the best of the current situation.
I'm less interested in performative statements and more interested in underlying motivations and incentives. It's not a question of who is "right" but of what the actors get out of it.
Of course Europe was leaning on US defense. This enabled resources to be diverted to social spending instead, something that has become all the more vital as populations age. And it's not clear what the US gets out of defending Europe now. There's no perceived Soviet juggernaut and Russia can't even conquer Ukraine.
> There's no perceived Soviet juggernaut and Russia can't even conquer Ukraine.
It looks a bit like that to be the case, but legally Russia still isn't at war with the Ukraine, according to their own internal law. Hence the use of mercenaries and "volunteers" and the pinky promise that conscripts are not used near the Ukraine.
Stores of value are, for the most part, societal constructs. Anything has value as long as there is somebody willing to exchange something of theirs for it. That's also what makes value intangible as there is a built-in subjectivity in this.
Gold falls into the category "has always had value, so it will always have value" type of thoughts. And that's just what gives it value, out confidence that we can exchange it for something when you need it.
Gold has a few properties: one is that it has had value through history and another is that it’s a physical asset, and because of these two properties, it’s quite liquid. It’s also a metal that doesn’t naturally corrode.
Central banks of countries hold various kinds of assets, including bonds and currencies of other countries. But bonds and currencies are just “paper”…or are more vulnerable than gold to shocks in certain conditions.
The disadvantage of physical gold is that it doesn’t generate any income by itself, as compared to bonds.
During times of higher uncertainty, people and institutions (including central banks) flock to gold.
Central banks do a lot of things, including buying and selling currency with foreign partners. If you’re trading using weak or unstable currencies, gold may be a useful alternative.
Intangible financial systems rest (simplistically speaking) on fundamental concepts of trust and reliability (aka what I expect to happen will happen).
Once these factors start to breakdown, all these intangible forms of holding wealth loose value. Gold remains as a significant reliable long term store of value.
It can be used as a collateral for loans, last resort for currency buybacks, emergency resource in times of war... Mostly it's a reputational tool to inspire faith in the country's creditworthiness.
de-risking from the United States is the only choice for anybody who cares about national interests. The question is how to do it on the quiet, and not trigger Trump into another rage tweeted escalation.
Just not talking about it and doing it slowly seems to work? E.g. one of the Dutch pension funds has pulled 1/3rd of their investment of US bonds (10/30 billion) since early 2025. They won't talk about, you'll only see it in their public records/reports. They re-invested the money in Dutch and German bonds.
yeah this is probably the way. One of the features of fascism is general incompetence, springing from destruction of state capacity in favour patronage networks.
Sell. It's the cheapest option vs. moving (high risk).
$164 billions would make a nice investment into infrastructure without touching their "Sondervermögen".
Yet it's costly -- albeit they might get special conditions.
I hold Xetra Gold (tax free gains after 12mon).
Some argue it's safe, because it can be delivered to the relationship bank: it's not really, it's uneconomical, at least for average Joe (~3% up to ~20% of value, heavily depending on denomination).
Another question is why germany owns $530B worth of gold in the first place. This gold isn't backing a currency in any sense, if that is even how we still think about gold and currencies today. The opportunity cost of holding this amount of gold is immense.
Given a certain President's thin skin, and inclinations toward dramatic and confrontational behavior - if the Europeans actually wanted their gold back, it should have been done very quietly. Probably with obfuscated paperwork, or other shell games or smokescreens.
You also need to build the infrastructure to take on 1,000 tons of gold. I doubt that's done in a month. IIRC, London has the biggest storage after NYC, so that's probably where it'll end up in the interrim. Eventually, I'd guess Switzerland will rise to do more gold storage.
We're essentially creating the same scenario as WTI vs Brent oil, where gold is partitioned into multiple different products depending on location.
Idk man, these things are hilarious, I for one enjoy seeing Trump having toddlers tier meltdown on video every now and then. That's why I keep watching his live speeches, that and in the hope his body finally gives up in glorious 4k 60 fps
The more he pushes us away with his deranged tantrums the more independence we are forced to build, it's a win-win really
I am absolutly certain (without knowing or checking), that many of the germans involved in putting there gold in US hands, did so "reluctantly".
And now with panzers in the ukrain for the 3'rd time they are looking back overthere shoulders thinking right, general winter in front and our gold back there and how did they get in this mess anyway, reluctantly.
Some of the men who mentored me, spoke of there experiences going ashore in France and pushing on into Germany, which they did at great personal cost, but in spite of that, enthusiasticly.
Every time Russia publishes a "routine" update on there sovereign gold reserves it must make the euros twitch, with the germans developing a prounounced tick.
which is all my way of saying that I can find no way to sympathise.
To be clear: I find Trump contemptible. But I also try to understand why (powerful) people act the way they do, beyond the surface-level explanations.
The gold discussion imho misses the point if it’s reduced to “Trump is unhinged.”
What we just saw at Davos with Greenland reveals the actual pattern: the theatrics are the tool, not the objective. The erratic behavior generates uncertainty, which then gets converted into bargaining leverage.
With Greenland, Trump just demonstrated how this works: maximum escalation (tariff threats against a NATO partner), then “backing down” in exchange for concessions (“total and permanent access”). The result is a structural shift - Europe becomes more dependent on US decisions in the Arctic, not less.
The second-order effect: coercive bargaining within the Western alliance becomes normalized. Once you’ve done this with Denmark, the threshold drops for similar tactics on other issues - tech regulation, China policy, financial infrastructure.
The third-order effect for German gold: the real question isn’t whether Trump is “crazy enough” to freeze gold reserves. The question is what negotiating leverage the mere possibility creates. Even if the probability is 5% - what concessions would Germany make to bring that risk down to 0%?
That’s the actual logic: the more everyone believes he might do it, the more he can “sell” not doing it.
The economists aren’t arguing that (or if) confiscation is likely. They’re arguing that the risk is no longer negligible enough to ignore - and that the cost-benefit calculation of storing it there has fundamentally shifted.
Why do people continue attributing 4D chess to Trump? He is an egomaniac and just wants to be one of the few presidents that added land to the US (similar to being one of the few presidents who won the Nobel Peace Prize). He has said as much as it being 'psychological' to him.
So, he made the threats. Stocks start going down, bond yields start going up. Perhaps surprising to him there is a unified reaction from EU countries, the trade bazooka is on the table. More rational actors in his entourage/broligachy start to get worried, advising him to find a landing site. Along comes Mark Rutte who offers him a landing site that sounds great, but does not improve much over his starting position, but actually made it worse (there will be non-US NATO arctic troops on Greenland, not just 4 dog sleds or whatever he is always rambling about).
The longer-term damage for the US is much bigger. Tech sovereignty just moved to the top of the EU agendas and companies and government will move away from US tech, to a loss of hundreds of billions of income in the longer term.
Following incentives isn’t 4D chess. Still we can acknowledge that they exist even if they’re perverse and that even retarded moves sometimes pay off or appear to pay off, in some way in some term. Nobody is calling Trump a genius.
> With Greenland, Trump just demonstrated how this works: maximum escalation (tariff threats against a NATO partner), then “backing down” in exchange for concessions (“total and permanent access”). The result is a structural shift - Europe becomes more dependent on US decisions in the Arctic, not less.
What concessions? Can you name one thing that Trump got that the US did not have before?
If these actually are attempts at some sort of “the art of the deal” manipulation, they are failing catastrophically. He is achieving nothing while destroying the soft power the US benefited from since WW2.
> The second-order effect: coercive bargaining within the Western alliance becomes normalized
What? What does that even mean? Do you realize how hand-wavey this sounds? With this kind of vague ex-post rationalization totally blind to any negative consequences of the supposed “bargaining”, you could sanewash literally any action. Trump shoots the Prime Minister of Norway on live TV? He just wanted to promote better security of the Western leaders.
Someone else in this thread talks about the supposed lack of awareness of “the art of the deal” meme. No, I am aware of the “4D chess” theory to explain Trump’s behavior. I just don’t think it matches the observation. I think the “malignant narcissist with emotional maturity of an 8-year-old” works much better.
BTW, I like how Emily Maitlis talks about Trump’s “achievements” in Davos - it brings a bit of much-needed levity to the situation: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/34yP2X-nZCk
>What we just saw at Davos with Greenland reveals the actual pattern: the theatrics are the tool, not the objective. The erratic behavior generates uncertainty, which then gets converted into bargaining leverage.
He said this in his book The Art of the Deal, released in 1987. It’s been his playbook for all political campaigning and both terms of his presidency. It’s a meme to point this out in certain right leaning circles.
I was frustrated by the lack of awareness about this for awhile. I still am but I understand now that the media is also playing their part and doing their role. It’s absolutely justified - these ridiculous claims and arguments generate clicks, attention, revenue.
It’s something that should be kept in mind by the average voter though, and in social media discussion. Everyone wants you to be emotionally invested. Trump wants you to commit so he can pump fake tou, and the media gets solid quarterly numbers
Good idea, Netherlands should follow suit.
The fed is being dismantled in front of our eyes.
Militia's shoot US citizens for documenting their illegal behavior.
Insane
Good idea, but don’t be surprised when threatened with 100% tariffs. Canada got that threat (again? honestly lost track) just yesterday.
There is already arbitrary tariff. At this point, it is better to trade with other countries instead of chasing the US. Let the American citizen pay their tariff, their loss.
I wouldn’t worry too much about those threats. This administration is so erratic that you may see those same threats made against you for any other reason down the line even if you keep it put.
Italy should do it as well.
The Dutch absolutely should NOT follow suit. You guys stole our (Romanian) golden helmet when we sent it to a museum in the Netherlands[1] because you don't have any armed guards at museums.
Maybe send your gold to a country that actually protects priceless things, like the UK.
[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/art-thieves-blew-u...
The UK under Gordon Brown foolishly sold off most of its gold reserves. If they had kept thrm, they would be worth £40B more today, or 10 times what it was sold for.
[flagged]
They just murdered a guy who was not obstructing them.
They kidnap, beat and then throw away citizens and legal migrants.
i just replied and then saw the comment was flagged LOL. For those that missed it the flagged comment said something stupid like “don’t obstruct ICE and you’ll be fine.”
They are misinformed i’m afraid. This is the BEST case scenario: https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-immigration-us-citizen-...
worst case scenario is you’re sent to another country, or killed.
I'd like them to explain, step by step, how holding a camera to document what ice is doing, can be considered obstruction. Are they doing illegal things that are obstructed by publicly available documentation?
Yep, Pretti was a citizen. As was the Hmong person they detained in his underwear. Most of the people they detain aren’t criminals.
> People are obstructing armed immigration enforcement and expecting to come away unscathed.
It’s scary that people actually think like this. These types of unprincipled excuses for lawlessness and murder are how authoritarians get into power. It might have been more excusable in the past but not today when the videos show the murder for the whole world to see.
> They just murdered a guy who was not obstructing them.
They shouldn't have shot him since he was not being violent. But he did obstruct: he was standing in middle of the street, acting like a traffic cop. When border patrol tried to arrest a woman, he got between them and the woman. That is obstruction!
After that they shot him without any reason.
What scares me the most isn't that we got into this situation, but that so many people think it's going well.
I'm looking forward to the days when we can call in the EU's help. But, I assume right now, they're focused on energy, food, and physical security.
The majority voted for this- this is the will of the people.
A lot of people voted for him but not necessarily this. I think that’s the problem when you vote for wildcards. Especially ones with his history, he has no reason to do anything but cause chaos. It’s his entire personality type too.
The border - and thus illegal immigration and not integrating immigration, was the main debate point up to the election. He ran on ice..
I still don’t think a lot of people expected gestapo tactics that spill out onto the streets to ensue. I think people want better border protection but not necessarily this
Don’t get me wrong, I know just as many (or more) people are loving these tactics but there is not homogeneity amongst his voters.
No, the majority of Americans that voted in 2024 voted for Not-Trump. He got less than 50% of the popular vote.
If you mean Republican federal legislators, then that's a much more complicated question and I think you'll need to explain how you're doing the math.
The US is a democracy so the majority decided, there's no need to sugarcoat it
Plurality techhinially, but it’s splitting hairs really.
The majority did not. A third did.
It was the second highest voter turnout in US history.
> It was the second highest voter turnout in US history.
My dude, you have seized upon a statistic that, while technically true, is also utterly-effing-meaningless.
To illustrate, I've calculated the headlines for other Presidential elections:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...Percentage. Not total count.
Except per the link, 2024 is #8 on that list. Not #1.
Use VEP turnout % not VAP. VAP is flawed. And I said #2.
Picking the metric where half of them have a `-` blank value seems a bit flawed.
VEP = only counts people who can actually vote.
VAP = counts everyone of voting age including people on visas who aren't allowed to vote.
We moved to VEP because the % of total population who aren't citizens started to grow rapidly. eg. see 2020 vs 2024. The eligible VAP count increased by 12M but actual VEP count only increased by 2M.
edit: looks like there is VEP data for older years though I am guessing its not very accurate: https://election.lab.ufl.edu/voter-turnout/#:~:text=National...
Looks like the 1800s had much much higher turnout! I guess my statement is only valid for the last 100 years.
Which speaks to the weakness of US democracy. Nonetheless, only a third of the voting population voted for this.
Not really. 1/3rd voted for this and 1/3rd were ok with either candidate. Sometimes people democratically vote for bad shit.
1/3rd voted for this, 1/3rd voted against, and 1/3rd are complicit.
The fact that the US did this twice beggar belief. For those of us in the rest of the world who have no say but are bombarded by this shit daily, we hold you all responsible (no matter what 1/3rd you're in).
Not caring which option wins is not the same as voting for something.
Practically it is the same. And this is not a US exclusive situation. We see the AfD and other far right parties gaining popularity. People can vote for bad things.
People can also vote against a consequence decoupled elite that rule by virtual signaling to each other which was okay in a resource binge, ignoring the results their previous choices had for the lower echelons.
To hit the captain with a shovel may look like mutineer madness on any boat, but maybe a sign of necessary changes and reality grounding on a ship called "titanic" where the captain yells "right on, right on" into a pipe that does gurgling sounds.
You thought it was good enough. No action is a choice. You made the choice.
Choosing not to vote is implicitly voting for the status quo, whatever it happens to be. It's accepting fate.
If voters saw the first Trump term and knew about Project 2025 (which was public and publicly discussed) and didn't care enough to vote against the implementation of what was happening right under their noses then that isn't much different than voting for him.
If anything it's worse. At least the right is actively evil. At least voting third party, futile as it is, is making a statement. Seeing Trump's movement gain and consolidate power, listening to their beliefs, seeing the preparation of political infrastructure, January 6th, stacking the Supreme Court, the normalization of white supremacy, and knowing fascism could be a vote away and not giving a damn shows a depth of poisonous cynicism and cowardice that should brand a person for life. That will brand our entire society for a generation.
[flagged]
No one is required to integrate. You can think freely and be who you want. First amendment.
So then, religous-supremacism and mafia-state methods are okay, if done with the right ethnicity? So what is the problem with ICE, as perceived by you, then in the first place?
So, thought crime?
I thought right wingers were all about individual freedoms, now all of a sudden you want to dictate the values of your fellow citizens?
[flagged]
>Eh, the guy was armed at a protest.
I thought that was a constitutional right?
Yeah, and--assuming Pretti was carrying at all--he did everything perfectly, never brandishing or even touching it.
FFS, I'd wager the ICE thugs didn't even think Alex had a weapon at all, not until they had already (A) shoved him (B) pepper-sprayed his face and (C) yanked him from the other disabled protester he was trying to shield and (D) threw the blinded Alex to the ground on his knees with both hands down on the pavement.
____________
To be more specific, since there are different angles out there, I'm referring to these [0][1], where one of the ICE agents can be seen removing something from Alex's belt.
Then, almost immediately, the adjacent ICE agent draws and shoots the blinded, restrained, and unarmed Alex Pretti, putting ~4 bullets into his back from behind.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/witness-videos-cbp-kill... -- At 1:01, grey-hat-jacket pulls something from Alex's exposed waist with his right hand. He swings his his arm away towards the road (see other footage) while black-hat-green-sleeves pulls his own sidearm and shoots.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMsBIPjUq2k -- At 1:31, you can see grey-hat-jacket's right-hand swinging into the road, holding what looks like a weapon.
It is. The MAGA subset of the right suddenly doesn’t care about the second amendment. I guess that should be expected after they’ve shown they don’t care about the first (people recording ICE) or fourth (warrantless raids) amendments too.
You know what else was law enforcement? Yes, law enforcement by a democratically elected president?
The Gestapo.
Sometimes the law and its enforcers are the bad guys. Usually around the point where they abduct, brutalize and murder with impunity
Militia? No, the government! ICE is an official government agency.
i mean...
"civilians trained as soldiers but not part of the regular army"
I don't know if you're from the US, but here, militia applies solely to civilian groups and not government ones.
> Germany holds the world’s second-largest national gold reserves after the United States, with approximately $194B worth — 1,236 metric tons—currently stored at the Federal Reserve in New York
Moving that much gold makes me think that’s a great opportunity for the world’s biggest heist!
That's going to take a lot of Minis!
You're confusing movies. You'd need dump trucks and a lot of quarters to pay for the toll when robbing the Fed.
This is why, “I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust.”
Hang on a minute lads, I've got a great idea...
Not really, a Mini Cooper has a payload capacity of 450kg according to some googling.
That gives us ~2.7 Minis.
If we factor in the weight of the driver, then we can comfortably get away with 4 Minis, each taking 312kg of gold which leaves us with 138kg per Mini for the driver and any gear that might be needed for the heist.
Your calculations are off by some margin. Assuming 312kg per car, it would take 3962 minis to transport it all, somewhat more than the 4 you accounted for. Of course you could do this with 4 cars over a thousand round trips - I'm not sure which option is most likely to lead to success, I suspect both might arouse suspicion.
If a plan was made to repatriate it, chances are this will happens slowly over years, possibly decades. A lot of it might not even be "moved", but rather "swapped" for gold physically in the EU by means of various vehicles: such as selling gold at a slight loss in the US, and buying gold in the EU. Doing so might be cheaper than arranging for physical transport of large quantities.
When large quantities of gold are actually transported "at once", it usually happens in secret on warships. Maybe military planes would be used nowadays? Who knows. Good luck anyhow.
Wouldn't it be a "big loss" if the market believes that gold in Fort Knox is not retrievable? Same as in Argentina, where currency controls led to 1 USD in an Argentinian savings account to be worth less than 1 USD outside the country.
They did it previously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation#Germany
The French also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege#Oppositio...
(well, not really, as it weren't direct gold reserves but gold-backed dollar reserves)
Back in 2013, a rather different regime held power in the US.
In normal times, yes. But I'm not sure if that still holds if there is a sense of urgency, because no one knows when Trump might get the next stupid idea.
Also I wonder if the rising gold price would interact with this, though I think this would make the "sell and re-buy" strategy actually more viable, at least if you buy first and then sell.
The Remmos and al-Zeins are probably thinking about that already, but as long as the Sparkasse isn't in charge of the transfer I'd say such a heist will be too difficult for the usual suspects.
Maybe this time it would succeed since McClane has dementia.
Why do they think the US will give it to them? After all, last time this happened, the US didn't actually have the gold, it cancelled all gold IOUs — effectively stealing the gold — and that was the Nixon shock. It made the US very wealthy for the next half century.
Aren't you confusing two things? When Nixon suspended Bretton Woods, he wasn't refusing to repatriate gold, he was reneging on the promise that dollars could be converted into gold (one of the reasons being that it no longer had enough physical gold to redeem).
So countries like France held dollars and could no longer get them converted to gold. From my reading, before 1971, all the requests to convert dollars by France, Switzerland, and the UK were all honoured, contributing to the crisis. I don't believe anyone were refused conversion until 1971. And even then, everyone still had their dollars. All they lost was the ability to redeem for gold according to the fixed Bretton Woods price. Dollars could still be used to buy gold at market value.
But this article is talking about repatriating gold owned by other governments but physically held in vaults by the US. A bunch of countries (including Germany) have already repatriated vast amount that were housed by the US, and those requests have never been refused. The Federal Reserve is said to even keeps the bars owned by other countries physically separate, rather than commingled.
That's a refusal to repatriate, since other countries had sent their gold to the US to exchange for dollars with the understanding they could exchange it back at an time.
Is that happened? I'm not an expert on the history of Bretton Woods, but my understanding is countries that sent gold to be stored in the US retained ownership over it, and repatriation was never refused.
If they had converted gold to dollars, this only suspended their ability to "rebalance" between gold and dollars, and no value was lost.
The dollars were worth a small fraction of the gold. It's true that no value was lost — because that value was transferred from the other countries to the US.
That doesn't sound right. Money is fungible. Anyone who missed the "window" to convert in 1971 (which major countries like UK, Germany, and France didn't, as far as I can see) still had their dollars. The US-domiciled gold that backed the dollars had always belong the US; so the dollars being an "IOU" makes sense in a colloquial sense, I guess, but it's a gross simplification that misses the broader point about how Bretton Woods affected monetary policy. It shifted the US into being able to maintain a permanent trade deficit, and the US was free to devalue the dollar (effectively the world's default currency) without repercussion, which is good for the US but not for everyone else.
The dollars were worth much less than the gold. As soon as you couldn't exchange dollars for gold any more, the value of a dollar fell by a factor of several to reflect that.
That would be more or less equivalent to defaulting on government bonds, in the sense that the latter are only backed by the buyers trust that the US will pay them back.
The result would be catastrophic for the US: worst case would be a domino cash in of American debt.
It already happened — see Nixon shock — and was enormously beneficial for the US economy.
This is not the same thing at all, you're confusing fixed exchange rate with just giving back something you don't own.
Many Trump supporters actually believe a collapse of the dollar would be a good thing, and that Trump has a plan, because of (some vague bogeyman about the federal reserve). They don’t realize or want to admit that this would mean they would become poorer overnight.
Well there is that "project 2025" that we were told wasn't real.
There's an amusing anecdote about the Dutch queen who asked the prime minister if he read Mein Kampf.
Everyone is just desperately pretending none of this is happening.
[flagged]
> why do they think the US will give it to them?
Because gold repatriation isn't something that special or unthinkable. It happened multiple times already.
Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Germany have asked a significant portion of their gold back. The US gave them and the world kept working as before. The amount of doom posting in this thread is mildly amusing though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation#Germany
> Why do they think the US will give it to them?
Perhaps they think asking is the best way to find out.
Think they'll have to - you can only switch to a "trust me bro" system once.
Do you think Germany would invade the US if they did it a second time? Or, what exactly would happen as a consequence to the US?
>what exactly would happen as a consequence to the US?
It would trigger a loss of faith in the US and USD. Which could get really spicy given that the US relies on reserve currency status to keep things steady despite comparatively high debt/gdp
Hard to tell what would happen but I suspect its borderline enough that nobody sane wants to find out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege
Can you provide some references to them doing this the first time? You seem to like posting comments about the "Nixon shock" without providing anything to back it up.
Sorry — I thought this was well known. Until 1971 a united states dollar was an IOU for a certain amount of gold. The US cheated by printing more IOUs than the amount of gold it had. When foreign countries started withdrawing gold at a rate the US thought it would run out, in 1971, it cancelled all IOUs and kept the remaining gold for itself.
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/gold-convertibi...
So you're referring to the end of the Bretton Woods System, which is its formal name.
> The US cheated by printing more IOUs than the amount of gold it had.
From the article you posted, it looks like the US was dealing with an issue whereby their reduction in global output meant that a reducing demand for dollars could cause a run on gold. I don't know if I would characterise this as "cheating" per se. The article states that there were many efforts, jointly between the US and other countries, to maintain the system, but these ultimately failed.
So I don't really get how this backs your claim that the US cheated? Sure it was controversial, and I'm sure there were many peoole who were unhappy about it, but it looks like they had little choice, given the system was failing and they were dealing with an extraordinary inflation crisis to boot.
If you've only printed enough dollars for the amount of gold you have, a run is no problem because you can exchange as much gold as people want. Gold and dollars can be allowed to be freely exchanged, no matter what. If you've cheated by printing more dollars than you have gold, then you have a problem.
this. Especially USA may use all those gold to build a Gold White House.
When did that happen? Are you talking about Breton Woods? Because if that’s the case, you got it completely wrong.
The biggest customer of Canadian Mint gold bullion are US investors in New York, as Wall Street knows its refinement is always very pure and traceable. Note this mint saw an $8.3B uptick in sales in 2025 alone due to international political antics.
"The prohibition on gold ownership in the US was relaxed in 1964, and finally rescinded in 1977 when Gerald Ford signed proclamation Pub.L. 93-373."
However, during severe economic recession the US government has Nationalized private gold holdings >1oz in the past. Something like a 35% drop in markets due to a theoretical Magnificent 7 "AI" bubble correction does pose a nonzero risk.
Keep some Popcorn ready, as the price of Gold going any higher is getting weird. =3
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
That debt clock looks like a monopoly board. Lets be honest, the world economy has become one massive game of monopoly with big tech and big oil being the banks.
What would the founding fathers, the ghosts of the French Revolution or Plato say to that? Nothing, they’re all dead.
We should be doing the changing, not the long dead past.
> What would the founding fathers, the ghosts of the French Revolution or Plato say to that? Nothing, they’re all dead.
Well, the people are dead. Calling a ghost itself "alive" or "dead" is a categorical error.
There are different kinds of Death, and Socrates story of resolve still greatly affects peoples ideas of free speech and due process within a just rule of law.
Have a great day. =3
"The Evolution of Cooperation" (Robert Axelrod)
https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/pdfs/axel...
Wait, I've watched this episode before. The US owed France large amount of gold (the legal mechanism for this was called "the dollar"). France asked to redeem their dollars for gold, and the US said "nah, we're keeping it, enjoy your dollars".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock#American_policy_re...
That was the end of the US dollar convertibility to gold. This, unless I'm mistaken is actual French property held in US vaults.
The fear in non-US nations is that the US will not respect the agreements and refuse to hand over the gold if requested. Given all the Trump admin is doing, I don't think it's unjustified
Or given every past refusal. Trump's a next level on top of that. A nice layer of shit icing
Tangentially related to the above Wikipedia article: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
"Let me lay to rest the bugaboo of what is called devaluation." yeahhh thanks Tricky Dick, how did that work out for us...? :D
Or move it to Canada. One of the advantages of the US was that it was far from Europe and safe in case of invasion or war. The US clearly cant be trusted anymore , but Canada can, and it also across the atlantic.
Canada wouldn't be able to defend from an invasion
An invasion from who? I agree with you that Canada couldn't defend against an invasion from the US, but I also don't think that any country without nuclear weapons could defend against an invasion from the US. But I think that Canada could probably defend itself from an invasion from most other countries—the Canadian military is generally competent, and NATO and NORAD would almost certainly offer assistance.
Even then, who would want to invade Canada? Despite the recent political blustering, it seems incredibly unlikely that the US would invade Canada, and the only other plausible invader that I can think of right now is Russia, but their military isn't doing very well at all right now.
If the threat model is "the US goes rogue and does crazy stuff", Canada is a prime risk of suffering from such madness, so moving your resources there doesn't really change anything.
Agreed, but I'd argue that there's a big difference between the US making it difficult to access gold reserves stored there and invading/blockading Canada to the point where gold reserves stored there are unusable. The first seems unlikely but possible, while the second seems almost unimaginable, and even if the second does happen, I'd be more concerned about access to food/medicine than access to gold reserves.
(Although I'm Canadian, so this may perhaps just be wishful thinking on my part)
And dont give trump any more reasons.
The Netherlands has spread it's gold in London, Canada and New York.
This policy came from the late 1930s when secretly the government knew that Germany was likely going to invade.
If the USA cannot be trusted that they will honor the ownership of gold in their vaults, can it be trusted to honor the ownership of US equities and bonds held by foreigners?
Obviously not.
At the moment you can't really trust the US with anything.
Ray Dalio describes such actions as the beginning of the end.
It's kinda weird how Dalio has been predicting a fall for a while now.
He's described as a "permabear" on r/StockMarket and r/wallstreetbets. Common refrain is he could be right in principle, but getting the timing wrong can be the same as being wrong, for all practical purposes.
The timing matters if you want to make money off it. I'm just talking about how he was saying the US empire will fall a few years ago. Not the stock market.
I think it can also apply to how much credit we should give him if he ends up being right. If his predictions come true within the next decade, he'll be considered a prophet; if in the next half century, then not so much.
I don't have anything to go by for this, but I do wonder if there were any people who predicted the downfall of the Roman empire 200, 100, 50, etc years before it actually collapsed. I suspect all of them would have somehow based this on its decadence and excesses, but I also suspect none would have had a firm grasp on how it would play out.
I am similarly interested with such questions wrt to the US today.
Greenland thing and taking Russia side were beginning of the end. Lying about America never getting help was making the end loud and clear.
This is just Germans dealing with end being unavoidable.
The beginning of the end started when they came up with project 2025 really, they've been implementing what they said they would implement.
The beginning of the end started with Nixon. It allowed US to print whatever money and never default. I find it insane that the world went along with it. Seems like a parody.
It's what Carney's speech alluded to when he cited Havel's The Power of the Powerless [1]. The sign was put in the displays because it was the best thing to do for the vassal states. Those days are slowly ending, more and more countries are going to stop displaying the sign.
This is also what at least part of the Americans doesn't get. Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, etc. weren't freeloaders, they were doing the bidding of the US in the UN, maintaining the system where the US can print money without limit, etc. All that soft power has been destroyed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless
Why not just … sell the gold? What good is gold to a society anyway, regardless of where it is placed?
Instead of drawing the anger of the US, just .. slowly over time, sell all the gold off, and move the money back. And use it to build infrastructure or something. Much better than gold.
It's probably too late. They should have heeded the wisdom of Charles de Gaulle:
https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/10/05/why-france-repat...
I can imagine the next big budget heist movie being written about this as we speak.
An armada of ships traversing the Atlantic with 1K tonnes of gold being waylaid in the middle of the ocean by a huge storm when unidentified submarines bore a hole in the cargo ship and make off with the gold: Oceans 15.
I wonder what they'd do if the US starts reducing NATO commitments. A perception that Europe is using financial blackmail to keep the US in NATO would have interesting effects on US politics.
Anyway, it's been clear to me that this sort of thing was Trump's plan all along. The goal is massive and permanent reduction in the size of the federal government. If that requires crashing the US ability to borrow more money, and crashing the value of the dollar, that's a price he's willing to make the US pay. US reputation abroad is of absolutely no importance to him; indeed, it's a negative, since a positive reputation allows borrowing that sustains the large federal government he hates.
The lesson for Europe is that depending on the US to defend them was a poisonous mistake, even if a very seductive one.
A post-crash US would be poorer, but also much more economically competitive. This would tend to encourage investment, so it's an interesting question how far the dollar would actually decline.
I wouldn't want to be in South Korea or Taiwan (or Japan, really) in this scenario.
> depending on the US to defend them was a poisonous mistake, even if a very seductive one.
It was a decision that was necessary to not loose the second world war to Germany and/or the Sovietunion. Until 30 years ago separating from the US would have meant allowing the Sovietunion to expand to the Atlantic. Separating from the US has been an open discussion for the last 30 years, but it was always felt to be a security risk and the US has actively used its soft power to remain the status quo.
Trump likes to frame is as if Europe said: "Please, USA, protect us, and we will just parasite on you and abuse our relationship to our advantage". Whereas in fact the whole story is the other way round. For example there were limits on the size of German army not that long time ago. And the USA did everything so that its interests are well represented n Europe. Now that Trump plays his "We don't need anyone" theme, the former allies of the USA are forming their own alliances, reduce spending in the USA and no longer feel obliged to turn a blind eye on things that were bothering them for decades.
The only reason why other countries sent their soldiers to stupid wars in Afghanistan and Irak that made no sense then and make no sense now was because they were honoring their commitments and saying OK, we send people to die but if the worst come and Russia attacks us, The USA will do their part. Now Trump openly says all this was for nothing. All trust in the USA is gone as nobody knows what Trump does when he wakes up next day. So we quietly work on making the best of the current situation.
I'm less interested in performative statements and more interested in underlying motivations and incentives. It's not a question of who is "right" but of what the actors get out of it.
Of course Europe was leaning on US defense. This enabled resources to be diverted to social spending instead, something that has become all the more vital as populations age. And it's not clear what the US gets out of defending Europe now. There's no perceived Soviet juggernaut and Russia can't even conquer Ukraine.
> There's no perceived Soviet juggernaut and Russia can't even conquer Ukraine.
It looks a bit like that to be the case, but legally Russia still isn't at war with the Ukraine, according to their own internal law. Hence the use of mercenaries and "volunteers" and the pinky promise that conscripts are not used near the Ukraine.
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741989
Is there any point to a country having gold reserves? What is it being kept for? (Genuine questions, looking for factual answers)
Stores of value are, for the most part, societal constructs. Anything has value as long as there is somebody willing to exchange something of theirs for it. That's also what makes value intangible as there is a built-in subjectivity in this.
Gold falls into the category "has always had value, so it will always have value" type of thoughts. And that's just what gives it value, out confidence that we can exchange it for something when you need it.
It's almost the definition of a store of value. If it was actually useful it's called a strategic reserve, like for oil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_reserve
> A strategic reserve can be ... A commodity, such as intervention stocks of food or petrol ...
> Examples of commodity reserves: Global strategic petroleum reserves ... Gold reserve
Gold has a few properties: one is that it has had value through history and another is that it’s a physical asset, and because of these two properties, it’s quite liquid. It’s also a metal that doesn’t naturally corrode.
Central banks of countries hold various kinds of assets, including bonds and currencies of other countries. But bonds and currencies are just “paper”…or are more vulnerable than gold to shocks in certain conditions.
The disadvantage of physical gold is that it doesn’t generate any income by itself, as compared to bonds.
During times of higher uncertainty, people and institutions (including central banks) flock to gold.
Central banks do a lot of things, including buying and selling currency with foreign partners. If you’re trading using weak or unstable currencies, gold may be a useful alternative.
Intangible financial systems rest (simplistically speaking) on fundamental concepts of trust and reliability (aka what I expect to happen will happen).
Once these factors start to breakdown, all these intangible forms of holding wealth loose value. Gold remains as a significant reliable long term store of value.
Hence it’s worth maintaining by a nation.
It can be used as a collateral for loans, last resort for currency buybacks, emergency resource in times of war... Mostly it's a reputational tool to inspire faith in the country's creditworthiness.
Ask Russia, they are making bank on it. Especially with the rubble not being worth much.
Are they? I would have thought that Russia's oil exports to countries that are ignoring/bypassing sanctions are far more valuable to them.
Of course, but the price increase of gold made their reserves that much more valuable. The worth of their gold reserves increased by 200B since 2022.
de-risking from the United States is the only choice for anybody who cares about national interests. The question is how to do it on the quiet, and not trigger Trump into another rage tweeted escalation.
Just not talking about it and doing it slowly seems to work? E.g. one of the Dutch pension funds has pulled 1/3rd of their investment of US bonds (10/30 billion) since early 2025. They won't talk about, you'll only see it in their public records/reports. They re-invested the money in Dutch and German bonds.
yeah this is probably the way. One of the features of fascism is general incompetence, springing from destruction of state capacity in favour patronage networks.
I hope they've identified US assets of equivalent value to immediately sieze if there's any funny business.
It would definitely be fun to watch Germany try to lift that sword.
Rammstein?
Rammstein is a band. Ramstein is the most important US military bases in Europe. I guess you meant the latter?
Thank you, was confused there for a second XD
Aha, yes!
Well, they did write this lyric around 2004:
(hook)
We′re all living in Amerika.
Amerika ist wunderbar.
We're all living in Amerika,
Amerika, Amerika.
(verse)
Wenn getanzt wird, will ich führen,
auch wenn ihr euch alleine dreht.
Lasst euch ein wenig kontrollieren.
Ich zeige euch, wie es richtig geht.
Wir bilden einen lieben Reigen,
die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen.
Musik kommt aus dem Weißen Haus
und vor Paris steht Micky Maus.
(hook)
We're all living in Amerika.
Amerika ist wunderbar.
We′re all living in Amerika,
Amerika, Amerika.
(verse)
Ich kenne Schritte, die sehr nützen,
und werde euch vor Fehltritt schützen.
Und wer nicht tanzen will am Schluss,
weiß noch nicht, dass er tanzen muss.
Wir bilden einen lieben Reigen,
ich werde euch die Richtung zeigen.
Nach Afrika kommt Santa Claus
und vor Paris steht Micky Maus.
(hook)
We′re all living in Amerika.
Amerika ist wunderbar.
We're all living in Amerika,
Amerika, Amerika.
We′re all living in Amerika.
Coca-Cola, Wonderbra.
We're all living in Amerika,
Amerika, Amerika.
(outro)
This is not a love song.
This is not a love song.
I don′t sing my mother tongue.
No, this is not a love song.
(hook)
We're all living in Amerika.
Amerika ist wunderbar.
We′re all living in Amerika,
Amerika, Amerika.
We're all living in Amerika.
Coca-Cola, sometimes war.
We're all living in Amerika,
Amerika, Amerika.
Sell. It's the cheapest option vs. moving (high risk). $164 billions would make a nice investment into infrastructure without touching their "Sondervermögen".
Selling that amount of gold would crash the price, devaluing their other reserves too.
What they have to do is move, but quietly, without announcing it.
Not all at once, obviously.
Gold is moved around the world all the time
Yet it's costly -- albeit they might get special conditions.
I hold Xetra Gold (tax free gains after 12mon). Some argue it's safe, because it can be delivered to the relationship bank: it's not really, it's uneconomical, at least for average Joe (~3% up to ~20% of value, heavily depending on denomination).
Just cash it out. They'll never get it back
I agree that they will never get the gold back, but is it really more likely that the US hands over that sum in cash?
Another question is why germany owns $530B worth of gold in the first place. This gold isn't backing a currency in any sense, if that is even how we still think about gold and currencies today. The opportunity cost of holding this amount of gold is immense.
Given a certain President's thin skin, and inclinations toward dramatic and confrontational behavior - if the Europeans actually wanted their gold back, it should have been done very quietly. Probably with obfuscated paperwork, or other shell games or smokescreens.
Gold price is high, so why not just sell it?
Meanwhile Germany could silently buy gold at home and let the market handle where it comes from.
You also need to build the infrastructure to take on 1,000 tons of gold. I doubt that's done in a month. IIRC, London has the biggest storage after NYC, so that's probably where it'll end up in the interrim. Eventually, I'd guess Switzerland will rise to do more gold storage.
We're essentially creating the same scenario as WTI vs Brent oil, where gold is partitioned into multiple different products depending on location.
Germans. We (also European) thankfully already got our gold back.
The dividing line from alephnerdXMeyer
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46733802
https://magdamiu.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/13.png
"Frontman" reactions to Carneyism: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jim-csek-cpa-cma-10118726_thi...
(Lagarde= lower upper class?)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/courageous-carney-vs-deme...
https://www.ft.com/content/b4c07b4d-dd15-4a42-b744-ea4b5f696...
With that idiot a bullshit pretext might have done the trick.
"We just want to have it for a bit to polish it to ensure it is shiny. It's a requirement of German law under Saftsack gesetz 35.6"
"The German Bundespräsident want to add a new gold-plated ballroom to his residence, we have to melt all the gold."
Idk man, these things are hilarious, I for one enjoy seeing Trump having toddlers tier meltdown on video every now and then. That's why I keep watching his live speeches, that and in the hope his body finally gives up in glorious 4k 60 fps
The more he pushes us away with his deranged tantrums the more independence we are forced to build, it's a win-win really
He eats McDonalds everyday and does 0 exercise. Imagine how long he'd live if he ate healthy and exercised daily.
He also only gets a few hours of sleep. I wonder if that’s part of why his behavior is so unhinged.
I am absolutly certain (without knowing or checking), that many of the germans involved in putting there gold in US hands, did so "reluctantly". And now with panzers in the ukrain for the 3'rd time they are looking back overthere shoulders thinking right, general winter in front and our gold back there and how did they get in this mess anyway, reluctantly. Some of the men who mentored me, spoke of there experiences going ashore in France and pushing on into Germany, which they did at great personal cost, but in spite of that, enthusiasticly. Every time Russia publishes a "routine" update on there sovereign gold reserves it must make the euros twitch, with the germans developing a prounounced tick. which is all my way of saying that I can find no way to sympathise.
I seriously doubt the US will honor this, and will likely just keep the gold for itself.
It is a profoundly untrustworthy country.
I've heard all the gold is headed for Singapore nowdays
lol I doubt the US will honor this agreement.
It is a profoundly untrustworthy country.
Good luck with that.
[dead]
Repatriate the Cairo Museum
[flagged]
To be clear: I find Trump contemptible. But I also try to understand why (powerful) people act the way they do, beyond the surface-level explanations.
The gold discussion imho misses the point if it’s reduced to “Trump is unhinged.”
What we just saw at Davos with Greenland reveals the actual pattern: the theatrics are the tool, not the objective. The erratic behavior generates uncertainty, which then gets converted into bargaining leverage.
With Greenland, Trump just demonstrated how this works: maximum escalation (tariff threats against a NATO partner), then “backing down” in exchange for concessions (“total and permanent access”). The result is a structural shift - Europe becomes more dependent on US decisions in the Arctic, not less.
The second-order effect: coercive bargaining within the Western alliance becomes normalized. Once you’ve done this with Denmark, the threshold drops for similar tactics on other issues - tech regulation, China policy, financial infrastructure.
The third-order effect for German gold: the real question isn’t whether Trump is “crazy enough” to freeze gold reserves. The question is what negotiating leverage the mere possibility creates. Even if the probability is 5% - what concessions would Germany make to bring that risk down to 0%? That’s the actual logic: the more everyone believes he might do it, the more he can “sell” not doing it.
The economists aren’t arguing that (or if) confiscation is likely. They’re arguing that the risk is no longer negligible enough to ignore - and that the cost-benefit calculation of storing it there has fundamentally shifted.
Why do people continue attributing 4D chess to Trump? He is an egomaniac and just wants to be one of the few presidents that added land to the US (similar to being one of the few presidents who won the Nobel Peace Prize). He has said as much as it being 'psychological' to him.
So, he made the threats. Stocks start going down, bond yields start going up. Perhaps surprising to him there is a unified reaction from EU countries, the trade bazooka is on the table. More rational actors in his entourage/broligachy start to get worried, advising him to find a landing site. Along comes Mark Rutte who offers him a landing site that sounds great, but does not improve much over his starting position, but actually made it worse (there will be non-US NATO arctic troops on Greenland, not just 4 dog sleds or whatever he is always rambling about).
The longer-term damage for the US is much bigger. Tech sovereignty just moved to the top of the EU agendas and companies and government will move away from US tech, to a loss of hundreds of billions of income in the longer term.
Some 4D chess move...
Following incentives isn’t 4D chess. Still we can acknowledge that they exist even if they’re perverse and that even retarded moves sometimes pay off or appear to pay off, in some way in some term. Nobody is calling Trump a genius.
The only thing he accomplished was making america look like a fool again.
> With Greenland, Trump just demonstrated how this works: maximum escalation (tariff threats against a NATO partner), then “backing down” in exchange for concessions (“total and permanent access”). The result is a structural shift - Europe becomes more dependent on US decisions in the Arctic, not less.
What concessions? Can you name one thing that Trump got that the US did not have before?
If these actually are attempts at some sort of “the art of the deal” manipulation, they are failing catastrophically. He is achieving nothing while destroying the soft power the US benefited from since WW2.
> The second-order effect: coercive bargaining within the Western alliance becomes normalized
What? What does that even mean? Do you realize how hand-wavey this sounds? With this kind of vague ex-post rationalization totally blind to any negative consequences of the supposed “bargaining”, you could sanewash literally any action. Trump shoots the Prime Minister of Norway on live TV? He just wanted to promote better security of the Western leaders.
Someone else in this thread talks about the supposed lack of awareness of “the art of the deal” meme. No, I am aware of the “4D chess” theory to explain Trump’s behavior. I just don’t think it matches the observation. I think the “malignant narcissist with emotional maturity of an 8-year-old” works much better.
BTW, I like how Emily Maitlis talks about Trump’s “achievements” in Davos - it brings a bit of much-needed levity to the situation: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/34yP2X-nZCk
>What we just saw at Davos with Greenland reveals the actual pattern: the theatrics are the tool, not the objective. The erratic behavior generates uncertainty, which then gets converted into bargaining leverage.
He said this in his book The Art of the Deal, released in 1987. It’s been his playbook for all political campaigning and both terms of his presidency. It’s a meme to point this out in certain right leaning circles.
I was frustrated by the lack of awareness about this for awhile. I still am but I understand now that the media is also playing their part and doing their role. It’s absolutely justified - these ridiculous claims and arguments generate clicks, attention, revenue.
It’s something that should be kept in mind by the average voter though, and in social media discussion. Everyone wants you to be emotionally invested. Trump wants you to commit so he can pump fake tou, and the media gets solid quarterly numbers
War is coming. Act accordingly