> 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.
Moving that much gold makes me think that’s a great opportunity for the world’s biggest heist!