¹) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Goldreserven#Diskussi...
You said something close enough.
Yes, they're both terrible. Biden's admin allowed a genocide to take place in Gaza while pretending to give a damn about it and repeating propagandist lies from Israel. But the Trump admin is openly looting everything they can get their hands on.
The real answer is something HN doesn't like so I won't advocate it openly, but it involves society paying to take care of people to provide homes, provide medical access, things like this. Neither party is interested in that.
But only one is brazen about harming peopler and making content from it or unashamedly posting AI-generated memes.
Seems kinda different to me.
Consent.Manufacture();
There are enough people on HN who think working social democracy is a great option; not everybody here is a libertarian cryptobro, an eastern european with decades-long PTSD or a hardcore conservative.
It's a lot more than "a single president". It's the two thirds of American voters who either voted for him or couldn't be bothered to vote against him, even after having seen how he behaved in his first term.
That's why he's not the biggest problem. He's more of a symptom than a cause. He won't be around for ever, but even after he's gone, most of those same people will still be around.
Without populism, he'd have nothing.
It's true that he 'duped' them, but we're all duped on some level.
Is it possible that we're not actually that resilient, but instead it will just take tens of years for the damage to fully manifest?
What's happening is a much simpler, more drastic concern: does the US respect its international commitments?
Not just the US: a lot of countries implemented stimulus packages to get their economy going post-COVID.
The inflation of these programs was unexpected/predicted:
* https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/in...
I think it's also worth noting that a lot of people have 'forgotten' other factors happening besides stimulus and monetary (central bank) policy—especially when it comes to energy and food prices:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukrai...
Since then, it flip-flopped on the Paris Agreement, single-handedly put tariffs on goods imported from literally every single country in the world, withdrew from WHO and so on and so on.
Not only does the US not respect the commitments it already agreed to, it hasn't done so for the past 10 or years.
If countries enter the lunatic phase of money printing you never quite know what they're going to do next. But it probably isn't going to be good for asset owners and it may well already be too late to get things out of well known vaults. Better to be a bit early.
They're not motivated by an abstract argument. Any moment you're going to see a comment about how they should've put their money in crypto or some foolishness like that. This is not about central banking or government issued currencies. This is about a specific risk of dictatorship and war.
That was purely an accounting gain (because of selling that gold and buying it back). After realising this PnL the gold is now held at a much higher cost basis.
pedantic, adjective.
marked by a narrow focus on or display of learning especially its trivial aspects
> This is not about central banking or government issued currencies. This is about a specific risk of dictatorship and war.
It's about both things. And the parent comment you are dismissing was also about the power of the president to upend the established order.
This is a very weak punishment for what Russia is doing every day.
There's many simple, small changes the US could put in place to make its political system less corrupt.
There were several young Presidential candidates running in both parties over the last few cycles, but voters chose the oldest from each side. Which tells me that voters don’t really care about age as much as they do other things.
Which, when I view it from that lens, kind of makes your argument seem like: “people are voting for politicians based on things I think they shouldn’t, so I want to make a law saying they can’t”
It beggars belief that this comment is even worthy of debate; the fact people actively disagree is astonishing.
Don't take the down votes personally, just know there's really scummy people out there
If you listen to the immigrants supporting "pulling up the ladder", you wouldn't be making such bad faith attacks. Typically the arguments come from legal immigrants that took no benefits, attacking policies of mass immigration or illegal immigrants and giving social benefits to immigrants. This isn't pulling up the ladder, this is a fiscally conservative view that someone who pays taxes can hold and is a reasonable policy to have.
You can look through my replies to find people who are not like your straw man.
At least to me, he is very predictable. He has an MO, and he never deviates very far from it. And he publishes his stream of consciousness on social media, which exposes a lot about what he's thinking at any given moment.
If his decision to attack Iran was predicted, the markets would have prepared beforehand.
Nation states would have prepared.
Instead we have economic chaos the world over.
Also, he's 79, and turning 80 this year. I'd be good with a limit of 75, which would mean no one in office at 80+.
I can see the logic in the age limit, but I think the most likely scenario is that Trump stays in power until death.
Such comments either are propaganda or they play into the hands of propagandists.
There is a huge difference in the degree of corruption and malfeasance of this administration. Implying that the current regime is so similar to prior ones downplays the critical importance of restoring competence.
Meh
It's not like the US has never e.g. openly threatened NATO allies with war: There is quite literally a standing law that allows the US president to invade the netherlands if any US military personnel is ever detained by the International Criminal Court. This law has been on the books for over 20 years and has the publically announced intention to prevent the US from being prosecuted for all the other atrocities committed in e.g. Iraq. This bill was supported by both democrats and republicans.
The reality is that the US' stance towards the rest of the world has not changed with the recent administrations (nor would I expect it to: Trump does not happen in a vacuum). What did change was willingness of the rest of the world to act on the US' actions.
Do you not remember Abu Ghraib, or Gitmo?
When it comes to war crimes, this administration is no worse than those past.
The previous presidents were just more competent stewards of these activities.
In some ways, not being from the US, I don't dislike Trump. He may be a senile buffon and apparent pedophile, but at least he laid bare what the US truly stands for. He was elected twice after all, and still has substantial support.
At least other countries can stop pretending the US is in any way friendly.
The fact that the US is not as powerful as it used to be may actually make it dangerous. "On a smaller scale" doesn't mean it cannot destroy the world's economy, as we are seeing now.
When there'd be UN resolutions before the armed intervention, a casus belli with (non-fake) evidence of genocide, a peacekeeping force with troops from 39 countries, and captured leaders tried. And the peacekeeping force was able to deliver peace reasonably effectively, instead of bleeding troops and money for decades on end.
And although to some it seemed like an American president trying to distract domestic political attention from his sexual misdeeds, it was just a consensual blowjob from an adult woman.
Peace had just come to Northern Ireland, western relations were improving with Russia (newly democratic) and China (sure to soon adopt democracy as they open up to the world). The first parts of the International Space Station had just been launched. School shootings weren't a thing, the one a year later would be shocking and the cause of major soul-searching. Also Half-Life was game of the year.
— Agent Smith, looking out the window at a circa-1998 American city skyline
The problem, as always, isn't the technology. Rather it's how people with power use the technology. Today that technology is"AI". But several decades ago it was the replacement of human judgement with financial modeling and line-goes-up über alles.
(note that even though I'm critiquing "capital" I'm not what you would call an anti-capitalist)
Sorry to break it to you, but heads in sand doesn't make history not happen...
Before that the USA was aiding and fostering violent dictatorships, helping them to perform coups all around if they were amenable to the US's interests (aka: they were anti-commies) like in Latin America, Iran itself, etc.; bombing countries where their right-wing coups failed like in Vietnam during its independence period after French rule, for example.
See for yourself compared to the past https://youtu.be/X6GRMdn8ZD4?t=6
And now tell me it's all the same as before and I'm burying my head in the sand.
Just like the invasion of Ukraine became the most important topic globally for years, and made everyone virtue signal about how important sovereignty supposedly is, whereas sovereignty somehow didn’t matter in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, South Sudan, Iran, Lebanon, and I don’t know where else.
The big difference before was that america commit war crimes, but it did so in a socially acceptable way and was able to keep a polite face in important company. It's like how being a manager at tech companies is 95% speaking affluently and sounding like you know what you're doing (and also like 80% being white). We used to sound like we knew what we were doing. Now we don't.
The trouble is that everyone chooses their own favorite bits from the past and ignores the rest, plus succumbs to unrealistically positive stereotypes about the past.
Or maybe 20ish years before that when we violently restructured the government or Iran at the behest of supposed allies?
Or how about when we sold our industry overseas because a steel mill who's pollution we can't control on the other side of the world is better than one in Ohio?
It boggles the mind that people cannot grasp that the sum total of bad and shortsighted decisions of the past are what created the present conditions.
Then again as a Brit I am a bit biased
The French sold theirs and bought new stock on the European market.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws
2: "[O]rganizations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."
How they dealt with Iran is how I expect them to deal with everyone else - They started bombing the country during negotiations.
What is amazing is that they just didn't seize Germany's gold yet.
It seems there are still 138 tons of gold left over that will be recovered by 2028:
https://www.mining.com/france-pulls-last-gold-held-in-us-for...
14 French-speaking Africian former colonies keep significant (>50%) of their gold reserves with the French treasury and use the CFA Franc as a currency, which is pegged to the Euro.
The colonial model is one of discouraging or even outright banning being self-sufficient. Crops that might otherwise feed the local populace are replaced to exportable cash crops. In particular, that's the World Bank/IMF model of "helping".
Anyway, Germany isn't a US imperial interest in the same way Cote d'Ivoire is for France... yet. Still, there are other mechanisms beyond gold that the US uses to influence or even control Germany (ie NATO).
[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-france-backed-afr...
This is almost exactly echoes how European leaders were completely fine with the US illegally blockading and invading Venezuela and then a week later Trump wants Greenland and suddenly they care about "territorial integrity" and what not.
The one that is stuck in a ridiculous quagmire in Ukraine, barely able to move frontlines in years?
Can Russia even afford to attack anyone else at this point?
Second best might have been for Germany to get its gold back in mid-2021 - Biden in the White House, but events of 6 Jan '21 making it really obvious that the US wasn't nearly so stable as in the good old days.
Vs. raising the subject now*, with a very temperamental administration in Washington, feels ill-advised. Though I'm probably marking myself as a senile idealist, to even think of a national gov't, or leading media outlet, intelligently working for its nation's long-term interests.
From another angle, I could see leaving it in NYC as a symptom of advanced calcification of Germany's politics and gov't bureaucracy. Moving the gold home would require major decisions, real organizing, and competent execution. Vs. the relative do-nothing of inaction, forever turning the crank of old routines, is so much easier.
*Yes, I noticed the article's 2 Feb 2026 date.
They repatriated the remaining gold (5% of reserve) over 2y.
The bulk of the gold that was held in the US was moved back in 60s.
Do you think Europeans are going to have a problem buying/selling US stonks any time soon?
People ship million-dollar assets all the time. It would be a huge task to make 160,000 such trips, though.
The arb means you’re still suffering a price difference. You’re just paying “the market” to solve it for you.
Such bars would not be to the 99.9 percent gold standard set by the London Bullion Market Association. They would instead be at about 90% purity, since American gold coins had 10% copper added, which makes the gold harder and more wear-resistant.
See https://www.bundesbank.de/en/press/press-releases/bundesbank... however, no explanation is given, only that the bars were melted, purified and then recast.
https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/743058/9869caef634ce... - Federal Reserve Bank of New York starts at page 2016 (PDF:2019)
... to put it mildly. Nobody has audited the gold in decades and even its owners (banks of foreign countries) are not allowed to inspect it.
Like they had any authority to dictate what Germany can do with their property, but hey
Moving 1,400 tonnes might take years. The window to act is closing.
Also the US has fairly strong private property rights.
I think the question is moot now.
Update: corrected a bit of history.
"We're going to take all of their oil. And there is nothing they can do about it..."
The question should why has not Germany pulled gold out to server two goals:
1. Financial gain 2. another step towards economic independence from USA
France already did the right thing....
Pay attention, as it does not hurt the world and economic system for multiple world reserve currencies to exist....EU might as be a reserve currency.
But we live in a world where it is considered poor form to expect history qualifications in elected office, so this kind of crash, followed by the long descent, is baked in.
They were only insured up to something like 100kEuro, and it was values above that amount that got "bailed in" when the banks failed.
One, Russia’s stuff hasn’t been seized. Europe tried. But, in true form, failed to get its act together.
Two, is the argument really that Trump would be constrained by precedent if Europe and the U.S. got into a situation where seizing the former’s gold comes on the table?
It sounds optimistic, but after Stalin came Khruschev, a much more "normal" person. Though it is true he didn't last even a decade. But there was a lot of political thaw in between, and some of this thaw survived.
Those assets are frozen, not seized.
Confiscation would be e.g. definitively taking control and disposing of it, the proceeds going in to the general funds of the relevant country.
If you’re someone guarding the gold, you’d have to be stupid not to replace it with tungsten. A single bar is a lifetime of wages. It’s not like anyone will ever notice, it’s a reserve that will never be spent.
So maybe that happens, but it's a lot more complicated. And, of course, there are measures against that happening.
The New York Fed’s gold is constantly being checked by bajillions of people.
> last time they did, a bunch of bars were made of tungsten
Source?
Chinese gold has been tungsten spiked, fairly often actually, but it’s a known fraud vector there so is broadly audited.
(this comment also covers France recently bringing home their gold)
I don't think many people share this sentiment.
Agreed, but tempering their tendencies for isolationism doesn't mean trusting a country that threatens to invade so-called allies. There are many other places, starting in the EU (since Germany is already in the EU, of course).
1. Long-term backlash against unchecked globalization. Every western country has to come to grips with the long-term impacts of the deindustrialization that globalization has enabled - this impacts their domestic societal stability, their long-term economic growth, and their ability to act internationally and independently.
2. One particular western leader (who happened to come to power, at least partly riding the wave of the backlash above) has accelerated this trend by taking the possibility of trans-Atlantic (+plus a few Pacific trends) tradebloc to form "globalization lite" as a middle ground solution (honestly, I have no idea how viable this would have actually been), and took it behind the shed and shot it, and then burned the corpse.
Globalization was bearable in part because America did infact run the game, and tended to run the game reasonably well. US aligned nations could all see China growing in strength, but they all figured that as long as they played their role and played nice, that when the time came, they could join the US in whatever new game it wanted to play, or join the US in helping push back. What they perhaps did not count on was just has careless America could be, or that America would want to stop playing with them at all.
Towards your point on confidence and trust. As others have pointed out, Trump has also violated trust in all sorts of ways. Trump delights in norm and trust breaking, as a form of dominance display - both as meat for the base, but also to satisfy his own impulses. But perhaps worse, I think a lot of people are now also calculating that Trump could easily misuse or violate trust without really knowing it. Iran should have clarified to everyone that the Trump administration is willing the act on deeply flawed (or perhaps absent) second order (or even move-countermove) planning.
Does this demonstrate a lack of imagination or some kind of hermetically sealed alternative reality?
Is this sarcasm? It’s hard to tell these days.
Perversely, I’m not even sure that US seizing foreign owned gold would crash the gold market. Remember prices are set by incremental sales, not total held. So there would likely be a rush to buy gold domiciled outside the US, creating upwards price pressure if only temporary.
And he seems to be trying to crash it each spring (Tariffs, Iran).. looking forward to next season.
The market is not stupid enough to ignore what he does after hours, it just blunts the knee jerk reaction by a few hours.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1163519987825...