Dutch central bank moves 86 tonnes of gold from US citing 'geopolitical unrest'

JJimmc414 about 3 hours ago 35 commentsRead Article on theguardian.com

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inventor7777•about 2 hours ago

Why did you modify the title to not include Canada?

According to the HN guidelines:

"Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

rollulus•about 1 hour ago

Not OP but the amount from Canada was next to nothing, which could make the title sound misleading. Just guessing.

teleforce•about 2 hours ago

Earlier this year France has pull out their last remaining gold held in US amounting to 129 tonnes moved to Paris [1].

[1] France pulls last gold held in US (361 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658146

bulbar•about 2 hours ago

There has been voices in Germany to do the same. I assume they just need longer for the planning and/or coordinate their effort so not not everybody does it the same time, to avoid another tantrum from that orange grumpy man.

That's of course also why a little bit was taken out of Canada.

jurmous•about 2 hours ago

Location Before After Change

New York 31.3% 18.5% −12.8 pp

Ottawa 19.7% 18.5% −1.2 pp

London 18.1% 32.1% +14.0 pp

Zeist 30.8% 30.8% 0 pp

Seems it is mostly because there was less trust in the USA, and added a little bit from Canada to make it less obvious.

wood_spirit•about 2 hours ago

Is it a coincidence that USA and Canada now have the same amount, but they equalised without transferring any to Canada, and they can say they reduced in both?

tristanj•about 3 hours ago

The American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002, also known as the "Hague Invasion Act", gives the President of the U.S. legal authority to invade the Netherlands to free detained U.S. service members imprisoned by the International Criminal Court.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

leoh•about 2 hours ago

I feel dumb but how is this related?

SanjayMehta•about 2 hours ago

I think it's an oblique threat. Just recently Trump made a direct threat on the bond markets.

https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/trump-suggests-he-can-use-...

drivingmenuts•about 1 hour ago

How would that even work? Park tanks on Wall Street and point them at stockbrokers?

RandomWorker•about 2 hours ago

On the grand scheme of things this is 12bil usd worth of gold. The GDP of Netherlands is 1.4 trillion USD. So, this is honestly a foot note.

fbrncci•about 2 hours ago

Not the right comparison to make when comparing gold vs paper currency that can be printed at a whim. The comparison would hold if they pulled out physical fiat currency reserves.

everybodyknows•about 2 hours ago

To put in human terms, it's roughly three day's labor of every worker in the Netherlands.

tosti•about 1 hour ago

Make that the cat wise.

SanjayMehta•about 2 hours ago

GDP is just a number in a spreadsheet. This is a physical asset.

applfanboysbgon•about 3 hours ago

When you think about it, it's really quite a remarkable state of affairs for a nation to trust another nation so implicitly they give it physical control of (a non-trivial portion of) their treasury, in a sense. And now that is coming unravelled. Another marker of human civilization's slow deteroriation. I remember a time when I thought things would only keep getting better and better with advances in technology and information sharing.... how naive I was.

bspammer•about 3 hours ago

They’re not moving it to the Netherlands. There’s still plenty of countries that the Dutch trust, but the US no longer seems to be on that list.

mullingitover•about 2 hours ago

They still keep gold with the New York Fed, this was just a rebalance:

> Before the deployment, the Dutch bank held 31.3% of its gold in New York and 19.7% in Ottawa.

> After the move, each country accounted for 18.5% of the Dutch gold reserve.

powcontech•about 2 hours ago

What building in Ottawa has 15 billion dollars of Dutch gold in it ?

wanderingpixel•about 2 hours ago

not human civilization, just the United States.

c23gooey•about 2 hours ago

all of human civilisation =/= the USA

maplethorpe•13 minutes ago

Yes, things are really great everywhere else.

applfanboysbgon•about 2 hours ago

I didn't say it was. Do you believe that there's an upwards trend in global geopolitical stability, or even simply general well-being? If you do, we certainly don't share that opinion.

0xy•about 2 hours ago

Omitting Canada from the title feels deliberate.

athrowaway3z•about 2 hours ago

The amount they took out of Canada is just a lot less.

https://images.cdn.nos.nl/1/4/H/9/t/9/6kexFuRByv6prhDGJSyWt3...

ChrisArchitect•about 2 hours ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526

matheusmoreira•about 3 hours ago

It's honestly quite impressive that it took them this long to do this.

riffraff•about 3 hours ago

Italy is the third country with the largest gold reserves since the 50s or so, and most of their gold is in the US.

The idea of repatriating it comes up from time to time, but the truth is that it's s logistical and diplomatic trouble with little positive outcomes.

grebc•about 3 hours ago

I don't think the US is a serious position to argue diplomatic issues atm.

I'd vote for it if I was Italian.

anotherhue•about 3 hours ago

> The operation took place between March and August of this year, it said.

chvid•about 3 hours ago

You can also ask why they move it to London and not mainland Europe.

MiroslavPokorny•about 2 hours ago

England has not been invaded in nearly 1000 years.

veqq•about 2 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1688_invasion_of_England

eqvinox•about 3 hours ago

These systems AIUI have huge amounts of inertia, by design.