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.
Not sure why people call this Russian propaganda. India flew in lots of their gold too recently. Central banks have been increasing their exposure to gold a lot recently as well. If trust in the US is low then it makes sense to move your reserves. Countries are rightfully fearful of their reserves being frozen for whatever reason.
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.
https://archive.is/20250623093918/https://www.ft.com/content...
I have doubts the current US administration would let them without some sort of retaliation (e.g. more tariffs)
> A secret report by Germany’s Federal Audit Office leaked to the public last week states that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York refuses to allow Bundebank staff to even view the gold, triggering suspicions that the vaults are empty as well as calls for the gold to be shipped back to Berlin.
> The Fed implements stringent security controls, and refuses even Bundesbank staff full access to the German gold hoard. A team of personnel demanding access in 2007 were only allowed to visit the anteroom of the reserves, and when Bundebank auditors visited in May 2011 only one of nine compartments was opened for direct handling.
> The Federal Reserve’s fervent secrecy has engendered suspicion and concern, with some claiming that Germany’s gold has long ago disappeared or been lent out, and that only promissory notes of nominal value are sitting in the vault.
https://www.mining.com/germans-begin-to-demand-their-gold-ba...
I have no idea of the strategy behind it, but for some reasons italy has a lot of gold despite not buying it since a few decades https://www.bancaditalia.it/compiti/riserve-portafoglio-risc...
I think people greatly overestimate the importance of gold. Gold cannot feed your people, or win a war or cure a disease. And in a crisis likely won't be useful for buying things that do.
Gold is maybe just a bit better than fiat currency. Even in terms of inflation, what would happen to the market value of gold (not in Dollar terms, but in terms of what it can buy) if the government decided to spend down $200B in gold to buy stuff with?
Germany has been doing this for years now. [0]
Probably Italy too...
0: https://discoveryalert.com.au/news/germany-gold-repatriation...
The TradFi version of "not your keys, not your crypto".
Question, how do you test if a bar of gold is really 100% gold without deforming it?
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.
Why would any country store it's own gold outside its own borders?
For any nation state, storage and security costs will be tiny compared to geopolitical risk and leverage they're giving away by storing it abroad.
Sounds like the start of the plot for a heist movie
IMO the US should have never been trusted, but maybe the argument that this a Trump issue creates critical mass to move this forward.
There is enough incentive for the US to not be transparent about the actual gold that is left.
Honestly at this stage all countries should pull their gold.
The system was somewhat reasonable when the US acted more or less benevolent, but clearly when we're in a space where the US threatens to invade allies then they clearly are no longer trustworthy
Pirates be awakened.
Bring it home. US can't be trusted anymore. Bring it home.
who even needs a ton of gold?
Trump administration should call in ex AOL execs for some consulting work.
There is no way the current admin will let this go without a fight, or at all.
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I am absolutely startled by the amount of AfW and BSW apologism on this thread.
At some point I have to wonder if this is even organic - especially given that companies like Upvote Club have openly advertised being able to bypass the bot detectors on HN. And nation state bots have occasionally been on HN - one similar nation state backed disinfo network that Meta cracked down on in 2023 was posting on HN as well.
https://archive.is/6CDR5