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.

Italy should do it as well.

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 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.

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.

I become poorer by every day that I maintain a positive balance in my savings or checking accounts!

> 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?

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...

The biggest customer of Canadian Mint gold bullion are US customers 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/

> 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!

Hang on a minute lads, I've got a great idea...

This is why, “I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

I seriously doubt the US will honor this, and will likely just keep the gold for itself.

It is a profoundly untrustworthy country.

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.

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?

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.

Germans. We (also European) thankfully already got our gold back.

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've heard all the gold is headed for Singapore nowdays

Good luck with that.

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.

> 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