This shows how much trust in the US has declined due to Trump. Netherlands is not the only or first country to do this, other countries have started this too.
The sociopathic criminals who dominate American business and politics are the cause of the kleptocracy; plus the tens of millions of citizens indoctrinated with mental illness from their disinformation and psychological warfare.
None of this should be a surprise to you if you've ever watched Fox News and derivatives; propaganda so on the nose it would make a nazi blush.
He opened the door, and I find it very, very unlikely that either side will close it after this. Dems and Reps will both use this to take control in ways that would have been unthinkable prior to Trump's first election. The only way to restore any measure of that trust would be to pass laws that prevent this kind of abuse, and there's no way that politicians will give up power they've gained.
They had the laws to stop him but since congress stopped legislating, it gave the supreme courts wide discretion to approve executive actions. Strong executive isn’t a flaw of the system, it’s the inevitable consequence of years of media illiteracy and vast sums of money in politics enabled by citizens united.
The ideal would be that a new president is elected who uses current powers to reverse/rebuild what Trump has torn down and have their "one big bill" that Congress seems to pull off per president be a reforms package that locks in additional checks and legislative powers against the Executive. The Unitary Executive theory is the most dangerous attack on our Constitution in a long time.
On the other hand, a right-wing Supreme Court may try to block any reforms that check the Executive. The Legislature's ultimate oversight power of the Exec is impeachment, and they have decided that no amount of corruption or crime or destruction should be checked as long as it "feels right".
Passed laws don't seem very constraining. Between simple disregard and disregard plus eventual compliance after lengthy court review, there's a lot of time spent under unlawful orders and regulations. There's no personal liability for (most?) of these unlawful actions and Trump doesn't seem to care about continuity of government or having a legacy of doing unlawful things.
Impeachment could be a check on his power, but impeachment is a kangaroo court with a political jury, so he would need to piss off a lot more Republican senators than he has.
A few presidental impeachments over unlawful acts ending in conviction would change future behavior. But it seems unlikely that we'll get there.
Trump is the effect, not the cause. I think it goes back to "Triangulation"[1], and the abandonment of principles, and a substitution of virtual signaling, which was done to allow for the unfettered pursuit of donor money.
It got worse when the 2016 primary election was subverted by DNC leadership.[2]
You could reach even further back and note the promise of socialized medicine by Obama, and the forced substitution of subsidized insurance oligarchy by Obama's chief of staff.[3]
It is result of long term conservative project. And somehow you managed to blame non-conservatives for it.
Trump is a cause of destruction. He is literally making those decisions. He is to blame. Trump and project 2025 are what republicans and conservatives were trying to achieve for years and years. Again, it hapened intentionally.
But noooooo, must blame Obama. Anyone except directly responsable organizations and people.
People pushing for project 2025 are conservative politicians and republicans. They were in government the whole time. And they were in government because conservatives and republicans want that plan.
They are not some kind of insane people outside of politics and government. They are literally the republican party.
I get that the Project 2025 is an evil plot, but that's missing the existing duopoly that allows the Donor class, and their alliances, both foreign and domestic, to override the will of the people.
Even if every single Republican got voted out, the rot is still there, just wearing the other hat.
Interesting. I am always suspicious of "great man" explanations of history and the same applies to current events - not that individual choices do not matter, but they are constrained and influenced by bigger social forces.
Something similar happened in the UK, as the major parties moved towards a consensus as they both went after critical centrist voters (because the left and right voters were not going anywhere else - at the time anyway).
It may be quirky for Americans to hear this, but one pivotal moment when it truly dawned on the average european citizen how corrupt the US has become, was when Trump phoned Infantino to drop a red card during the world cup. Blatant corruption for zero gain that even the Putin's and Xi Jin Pings never attempted. Any toddler could see how wrong it was and it was felt deeply in many hearts.
Needless to say trust is close to 0% throughout the population - even the right wing populists distance themselves from Trump - and this is the consequence. I fear we are heading into dangerous times.
To add to this, because I think it is important context for Americans who may not be aware, football is seen very officially by many European nations and national governments as a cultural counterpart to many international treaties within Europe that were born out of the desire to bring our respective cultures closer together after the second world war.
It is so important, that many countries make it illegal to hide international football matches behind paywalls, specifically.
It is so important, that there are articles written about its importance on EU institutes websites. For example, this one reflects on Footballs importance in relation to the First, Second and Cold wars. https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/alerts/european-footb...
To see Trump so flagrantly manipulate it sends a cultural signal that is hard for those outside of Europe to see, and that by some can be seen as the cultural equivalent of the political threats Trump has made against NATO.
At this point, your average European Trump supporter/right wing populist needs only reminding of Trumps interference to get a complete positional change - that's how bad it is.
> It is so important, that many countries make it illegal to hide international football matches behind paywalls, specifically.
Sports is peak diversion from real issues, Whether Europe, US or India and so on. The countries can go to hell, people can drown in endless real problems. But if people can be smothered with sport entertainment so they ignore real things whats better than that.
In India whole country can become absolute crap. Worst on any social, economic indicator but as long free cricket broadcast is on TV and mobile, life is good.
Nah it was an egregiously bad call by itself, and then the slow-mo VAR was used to justify it which is also against their own rules. So they corrected a mistake that could have severely impacted the result and integrity of the rest of the games.
> Blatant corruption for zero gain that even the Putin's and Xi Jin Pings never attempted.... was when Trump phoned Infantino to drop a red card during the world cup.
FIFA, a largely European organization created by Europeans for a sport that Americans barely care about and in the center of multiple corruption scandals and controversies over the last few decades and you're really going to sit here and try to tell others that the real wakeup call was when Trump made a phone call to ask that a star player who by many respects shouldn't have received a red card over at best a technicality in the first place be reinstated for the good of sport and competition...?
And you're also going to claim that this "level of corruption" is something Vladimir Putin or Xi Jingping and their corrupt authoritarian regimes would never dream of attempting?
There is a big difference between some sports association being greedy/unethical and elected officials abusing their position of power (especially when they sit in the highest positions and there are zero consequences).
Right, its just we all lose respect and we're real mad when Donald Trump makes a phone call about something that, well you know frankly the American public agreed with, and we don't lose respect or whatever and we're not outraged when that same extremely corrupt organization continues to do greedy, unethical, and corrupt things.
It's astounding that European governments would never do corrupt things. Totally never. And if they did, sorry they only draw the line at influencing FIFA.
Jeez dude. If you have a point to make, just make it. This weird sarcasm is borderline unreadable.
Anyway, everyone agrees with you that FIFA is a corrupt cesspool. The fact that Trump found a corrupt counterparty does not make his open and blatant corruption any less, well, corrupt.
The point here is that if he’s openly abusing his power for something so trivial, what is he doing behind closed doors?
Sorry my point wasn't clear. Let me state if plainly: the OP's comments and points about corruption and Vladimir Putin and Xi Kingpin somehow wouldn't stoop to this level of corruption are fucking stupid.
Yes, exactly that. And precisedly for that reason.
FIFA was corrupt. Infantino took it on another level, making it massively more corrupt then before. Then he created a peace price which combined corruption with astonishing lack of self respect and mockery.
And then Trump called over the red card, which contrasted with everything before as yes another never seen before level of corruption.
But second, FIFA is not an European institution. It is worldwide org and non European members are large contributors to the corruption. The middle east and afrikan members do like it corrupt, it suits their political goals.
> And you're also going to claim that this "level of corruption" is something Vladimir Putin or Xi Jingping and their corrupt authoritarian regimes would never dream of attempting?
Honestly, it even seems so. Trying to directly influence a soccer match, publically changing rules while not even understanding them is a new level.
Moreover, there is no reason to think Trump is less corrupt then Putin or Xi. If anything, he is equally or more corrupt.
Notably this was after he waged a violent attempt to overthrow the US government. I thought that would have been it for everyone but apparently I guess soccer is the thing.
I'm not Chinese, but I'm confused why people think Xi Jin Ping is worse, yes they have surveillance, there is single party authoritarianism, but they always take care of their people unlike US who when filthy rich getting rich, more and more on homeless on the streets. In addition to that there is surveillance by Flock and Palatir. Most of all they do not let corporation to manage govt, even though their big corps like Alibaba has tried. They have to wage the wars to capture someones natural resources, unlike US holding Iraq oil revenue captive, manage Venezuelan oil. Not to mention helping genocide with trillions.
Funny thing, I recently saw comment under Turkey cat video, saying something like
Yeah it was more as a figure of speech. I actually wanted to say even Hitler didn't steal gold medals during the olympics, but I felt that only weakened my point.
I know about dynasties expanding centuries some was prosperous others were not, same goes for European monarchies, amount of killing, abuse, looting done in colonies is staggering even though about most boast about how they conquered this and that.
> less comments under cat videos
I find cats interesting they have different personas kind of similar to humans than dogs who are people pleasing.
Aside from that world should be like this[1], where Chinese and Americans work together.
> “A more equal spread of the gold supply between North America, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. also helps to spread the risk.”
They’re not exiting all the gold held in North America; instead they’re rebalancing so that for more resilience against a backdrop of increased geopolitical risk.
No, but "removing" around half of it from one place is quite a bit. Though I doubt any single physical kg ever moved more than a few meters to the buying countries vault.
That's the fun thing about gold. It's literal gold, not numbers on a spreadsheet. Moving it really means moving it: bars are stamped and owned, and if the owner wants to move them, those bars need to get transported to wherever the owner says they should be.
It's also the idiotic thing about gold, a metal that has no more or less inherent monetary value than a fiat currency =)
That is the non idiotic thing about gold, since it is not fiat, is not easy to produce, and it is easy to verify, it can be used as a currency in less stable times/places. It’s a redundancy. Perhaps bitcoin satisfies many of these properties without the high costs to secure and move gold, but it needs electricity and a network?
I agree, the price of gold depends on demand like everything else. Although gold just has some inherent utility value in addition to scarcity that makes it less likely for the price to go to zero, other stuff like cryptocurrency have only scarcity and can go to zero much more easily.
Currency is inherently about trust: you believe it can be traded later for goods. The mechanism with fiat is that you need to trust your state and government.
In gold, you trust that everyone is believing gold has value. And that it is commmon knowledge (in the logic sense [0])
Saying that gold has no more or less inherent monetary value than fiat currency assuming a magic wand that can change a large percentage of people's belief.
gold has quite the inherent value - no oxygen reaction (all electronics) and partly jewelry.
if the gold has cheaper would be used quite alot due to being the only metal not oxidizing (the other one being platinum which is even rarer and comes from the same ore source)
you're confusing "value as a material" with "value as a currency". Currency is made up. Material properties are not. "If gold was cheaper" is literally "yes, everyone could wake up tomorrow and just decide that's the case, and now it is."
> It's also the idiotic thing about gold, a metal that has no more or less inherent monetary value than a fiat currency =)
I don’t know why people keep repeating that. Half of gold production is used in industry and for jewellery. And gold has never lost its value the way that some paper currencies have. It’s not like anyone can print gold bars.
The jewellery market stems from the 'inherent' value thing though.
I think the OPs point is that gold is an arbitrary metal that has been infused with value, just like fiat currency is some paper that has been infused with value. Paper also has 'useful' uses, but that isn't underpinning the value of fiat currency.
Yes, I'll grant that gold is stable in that it doesn't corroded , it's somewhat rare, etc, so it is better suited than other metals, there's still no intrinsic reason to value it though.
I don't think this is a hill that either the op or I is willing to die on though. It is an observation of human behaviour, rather than a statement that gold _should not_ be the world store of value.
>Yes, I'll grant that gold is stable in that it doesn't corroded , it's somewhat rare, etc, so it is better suited than other metals, there's still no intrinsic reason to value it though.
...you just provided intrinsic reasons for why gold has value. Humans need to trade, bartering goods and services directly is less efficient than using a currency, and gold has qualities that make it more useful as a currency than other materials. It is the opposite of an arbitrary metal, it is a material that has specific desirable qualities hence chosen to be used as a currency by many societies.
If they sell enough of it in the US and buy enough in London, traders who take the other side of that position will physically move it to London.
That's exactly the service the commodities markets provide: they will absorb a small trade without anyone incurring the costs of shipping precious metals, and they know who to call to get it shipped once there's enough supply/demand imbalance to make shipping it worthwhile.
In times of crisis it can be physically moved, e.g. under threat of Nazi invasion in 1939-1940 the UK physically moved over 1,500 tonnes of gold from London to Canada ("the largest known movement of physical wealth in history"[0]), and infamously at the start of the Spanish Civil War the Spanish physically moved 510 tonnes of gold from Spain to the Soviet Union (never to see it again[1]).
The Spanish case shows how tricky it is to sell your gold. Suddenly other countries found out that Spain had money from liquidating its gold and milked it dry.
Given Spain’s history it is incredible that the gold collected over centuries was spent in a few years.
The wiki article is very carefully tip toeing that there is no evidence that the Soviets defrauded or abused the Spanish, but it is hard to believe that 72% of the world’s gold reserves were visibly spent in a few years.
I did not investigate further but I understood the documents are not completely public, and my conspiracy hat tells me that is because it is a national humiliation.
At the time the Soviet Union had the Spanish government over a barrel because they were the only people who could/would supply significant quantities of desperately needed weapons (the opposing Nationalists were better equipped for reasons I'm not entirely sure of).
This also contributed significantly to the Communist (Stalinist) faction winning the internecine struggle on the left against the Anarchists and Trotskyists, but the quid pro quo was loyalty to the Soviet Union.
In hindsight we know they lost anyway, so this seems really silly, but at the time everyone involved believed they were in a completely existential struggle against fascism that was more important than literally anything else.
For anyone interested Orwell's Homage to Catalonia is an excellent book although it's just one man's perspective and may not be entirely historically accurate
It's a hedge against the risk of the current government. Leaving a bunch here is part of the hedge. It's not as "multifaceted" as you're making it out to be.
European countries aren’t worried that China will conquer the U.S. and they’d lose access to their gold because a hostile Chinese government controls it.
The increased risk is that the U.S. was considered basically risk free for allies, and now the U.S. isn’t considered risk free anymore and allied status is also at risk.
The Canadian government froze the bank accounts of truckers involved in a protest [1] [2] [3].
If a government is willing to go after the property of its own citizens without due process, foreign investors have to think: "What's to stop the same from happening to me?" Even if that foreign investor's a central bank.
[2] Maybe the truckers' protest went too far; they were blocking roads. The point isn't whether they deserved to be punished; the point is that their accounts were frozen without going through the laws and court system.
[3] This was in 2022, so it has nothing to do with the current US administration.
For anyone curious, this is hyperbole that people of certain political persuasions love to mischaracterise.
These were not "protests", they were a sustained attempt to appeal to the wrong level of government for policies of a foreign government by a bunch of people who were riled up on the internet. Highlights included nazi flags, guns, harassing and threatening women and local residents, etc.
what is most telling is that when you search for commentary about the Canadian federal government freezing bank accounts, a significant portion of links are from reactionary, right wing websites.
Why is "occupy" in quotes? The trucks jammed downtown Ottawa and were making a tremendous amount of noise. That isn't some peaceful protest that got a permit ahead of time, it was an attempt to shutdown the nation's capital.
why stop at Venezuela? Chile has valuable mineral deposits, and crave the freedom that only the mad king can give. Extend the empire to Tierra del Fuego I say!
Chile is a stable, market-driven democracy with a robust economy, whereas Venezuela has experienced severe political authoritarianism and a deep, multi-year economic collapse, and a massive humanitarian exodus of millions of citizens.
> whereas Venezuela has experienced severe political authoritarianism and a deep, multi-year economic collapse, and a massive humanitarian exodus of millions of citizens
none of which has been resolved by the US violently removing their leader and taking over their oil
Dutch gold reserve is only 50 billion which wouldn't even be enough to run the country for half a year. Other than the symbolical value it's pocket change.
Just in time before major European continental war begin. Strategic move.
For the context : German airport was officially attacked by Russia . And that’s only one of many incidents. UK is on the radar of official Russian hawks for a very long time
Comparing that German airport "attack" by Russia to the 9/11 attack by Mr. bin Laden - would you say that all gold reserves should have been moved out of the USA back in 2001?
Looking at TFA, they are moving it to a venue where selling off the gold can happen quickly. This kind of thing was not necessary for the USA's approach to funding the War on Terror because we decided on a really neat combo of Taking On Debt and also Just Not Accounting For Things which will surely have no consequence later on.
More a vs. US strategy than a vs. Russia strategy.
Russia has been weird for a long time, they are doing sub-threshold-of-war attacks for a while now.
But the USA? Outright threatening allies, talking about annexing some of them, making more threats against other allies who make moves to defend those allies? And he's got a known love for gold, started wars without bothering to inform allies he's now trying to punish for failing to provide help that he told them he didn't even want.
Yeah russia has been waging war against the west basically since putin came into power. That paranoid kgb fuck sees anything free as direct threat to their model of how to run a dictatorship and very much a personal threat on top of that (he may not be completely wrong given how proactive cia has been and their general methods of subversion). Divide and conquer, subvert EU and produce infighting on some emotional topics with ideal goal of breakup to pick countries one by one, subvert US to focus more inward and stop policing the world, ideally weaking it long term.
This is nothing new for anybody interested in the topic, its all very open and public (which is kind of the point I guess to manipulate public perception too). Every single secret service know this as 101 reality. In same way ie war in Ukraine started in 2014 in all measurable ways, not 2022.
US part... well its painful to watch, especially the incompetence or elephant-in-porcelain-shop part, of a shop that took many decades to build. But its good long term for Europe and rest of west - we became uber weak and over-reliant on US bases, their tech and power projection, and even if its 2026, influence not backed by real power means very little in actual world out there. Be provably strong or vanish seems to be mantra. Its smart to adapt to reality rather than expect the world to rearrange itself to some idealistic wishful thinking, however nice it may feel and however well it may have worked during easy peaceful times.
That was a rather obvious false flag attempt, presumably from Ukraine. It was a weaponized drone, the first that would have been directly used against NATO, that was found just outside a Ukrainian plane and by amazing coincidence just sat there instead of detonating.
When Russia wants to directly attack NATO they'll likely do exactly what the US/EU is doing and simply arm e.g. Iran/Houthis/etc with weapons/locations, let them push the button, and then go all Slava Allah or whatever while Russia is like 'oh we're not involved in this conflict you have with Iran.' Great precedent that's been set.
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That said I do expect Russia is likely involved in at least some of the incidents of weapons factories and other things that have been going boom, but it's always going to be done with plausible deniability - sleeper agents with no direct ties to Russia, and the like. They're not going to just start bombing planes in airports with drones.
> That said I do expect Russia is likely involved in at least some of the incidents of weapons factories
They're involved in all of them.
> sleeper agents with no direct ties to Russia
This isn't a movie. They pay criminals to do criminal activity. They're not utilizing "sleeper agents" to burn down a building.
>When Russia wants to directly attack NATO they'll likely do exactly what the US/EU is doing and simply arm e.g. Iran/Houthis/etc with weapons/locations, let them push the button, and then go all Slava Allah or whatever while Russia is like 'oh we're not involved in this conflict you have with Iran.' Great precedent that's been set.
What does this even mean? Are you equating Ukraine with Iran and the Houthis?
Wow. This post serves as a great example on how propaganda can brainwash people brain. Sure , Ukraine whose survival solely depends on EU, plans a false flag attempt . To achieve what ? Russia openly attacked territory of eu with drones , infiltration, poison operations , not to mention Slovakia , Orban etc . What is there to prove for Ukraine ???
> That was a rather obvious false flag attempt, presumably from Ukraine.
German officials have identified two Russians behind this, one of them linked to Russian secret services, and a number of other countries where those people have been active previously are corroborating.
No, the German US lapdogs put out a statement that the drones in Leipzig “are known to us from other Russian hybrid operations and its war against Ukraine” and that they “pointed to a high degree of technical expertise”.
So high in fact that the operation malfunctioned. Precisely what a false flag would do.
The US indeed would like to expand the Ukrainian proxy war to the Baltics so it can carry out its own plans of getting various oil rich countries.
All that these stupid politics accomplish is that the AfD will have 35% in the next elections so Germany can enjoy Trump-like corruption and the industry can exploit people even more. At this point one wonders if the CDU is in on it and the AfD is secretly already part of the uniparty, public theater of forbidding the AfD notwithstanding.
A false flag attack would malfunction? Why not do damage to really up the reaction? Even after an explosion there's plenty of pieces left to investigate and figure out where the devices came from. Just throw some parts made in [insert target of false flag here] and you're all set.
> The US indeed would like to expand the Ukrainian proxy war to the Baltics so it can carry out its own plans of getting various oil rich countries.
What "oil rich" Baltic states are you referring to? Is the US going to takeover Norway?
> Parts can be obtained from Russia by Russian speaking Ukrainians that are indistinguishable from Russians.
I'm not sure what the point of that is? I can order Russian parts online. Too many people watch movies and think all this subterfuge is needed.
> You are making up "oil rich" Baltic states. The comment said "various oil rich states", i.e. Iran and Venzuela.
I made up this quote up?
> The US indeed would like to expand the Ukrainian proxy war to the Baltics so it can carry out its own plans of getting various oil rich countries
What, exactly, are you referring to here? The US is going to expand the war in the Baltics to get the oil in Venezuela? How does that make any sense at all?
> No damage because they need the Antonovs.
Ok? Then blow up something next to it then, or some ground support people. Really make an impact and sell it!
> I assume you volunteer for the front?
Such an old argument that's never made any sense. I think there should be teachers, firefighters, police, doctors, etc. I do not need to become one of them because I think they should exist. I have, however, donated $XXk to Ukraine for their efforts, make donations to various groups on a monthly basis, and will donate another $5-10k from my Donor Advised fund this winter - all of which they need far more than some middle aged American dude showing.
I get that you are having problems dealing with your country's leadership making such horrible decisions, but pretending like it's all a big conspiracy is just detaching you from reality and will make the fall even harder for you.
Thinking that there's a major continental war about to begin is exactly what Russia wants people to think and what they push through their propaganda machine. It's also good for some governments, because then nobody questions military spending. Poland just bought 96 Apache assault helicopters for 10B USD. It takes just 1M USD in drones to take them down, just to show how absurd show of loyalty to US that deal was.
There's issues with defending the east flank. Namely, without taking full control of the Baltic Sea, Baltic States and Finland will run out of provisions in weeks.
Here we go again... Finland and the Baltics are "the East flank" when Russia and Germany want to go to war again. Excellent and fun battle fields for them, without a doubt. Far away from important regions and important people.
That's also what mostly happened in this case. 59 tonnes was sold in the US and bought back in London, 27 tonnes was physically transferred from the US to The Netherlands, and 27 tonnes was physically transferred from The Netherlands to London.
Another interesting aspect to this story is the flow of value from US Treasuries to gold.
Total gold held by central banks globally was valued at approximately $4tr at
the start of 2026, surpassing, for the first time, the roughly $3.9tr in US
Treasuries held by the same institutions. This marked a reordering of reserve
asset preferences with significant long-term implications. [0]
Implications are on the treasury side. Without treasury buyers the US dollar collapses or hyperinflates or the US government is bankrupt or some other widespread system failure, in any case the entire US economy falls apart without treasury buyers. But these things move slowly.
Considering the Netherlands’ strategic ties with the US, this sounds like quite a bold move. France doing so was one thing, but the Dutchs have always been rather Atlanticists.
Well they had to because UK across the Northern Sea was their competition and so France just below, while having Germans next door and Spain not being an ally. Did I mention they are bunch of tall assholes anyways?
> It is not in their interest to save the federal government, US dollar, or the economy.
I think "save" is not even in the room with us; they seem to be actively harming every industry: farming, food, oil, electronics, manufacturing, healthcare, etc. It's a full on assault.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", but in this case we're dealing with malicious actors and it's apparent these are malicious actions. DOGE was just the first step.
At first I thought they were trying to establish something that looked closer to Russia, where they can make life just hard enough for them to keep accumulating wealth indefinitely. Now I'm worried they're going for something that resembles Africa's poorest nations, where we fight amongst ourselves over resources that are increasingly constrained.
"A total of more than 27 tonnes of gold was physically transferred from the locations in North America to DNB Cash Centre in Zeist, Utrecht, between March and August. Another 59 tonnes of gold kept in New York was also sold off during this time, while the equivalent amount of gold was purchased in London."
One of the crazier ideas to address the deficit is revaluing gold reserves and throwing them at the deficit. Does anyone really think the Trump admin wouldn't consider seizing foreign gold reserves as part of such a move?
I know that instinctively sounds crazy, but this administration attacked Iran without a plan for their closing the Strait of Hormuz, and tariffed uninhabited islands based on an AI-generated list.
They're rational, but they're aggressive and dumb. Treat them as you would treat a guy who starts bar fights; one strategy is quietly moving to the far side of the bar, which is what this appears to be.
> Does anyone really think the Trump admin wouldn't consider seizing foreign gold reserves as part of such a move?
There has to be an adult in the room there to tell them this is a really bad idea. I mean I didn't think Putin would invade Ukraine so my track record is iffy but there's a reason the Belgians refuse to use Russian frozen assets - no one would ever put money there ever again. That'd be the end of their banking sector basically.
If we've learned anything from the last year, any such adult won't be listened to. Trump's a bully, he feels that America should use whatever hard power it has to enforce its interest and damn the soft power or the 2nd order effects that the "adults" care about. He also feels that Europe is or should be America's vassal, and is annoyed that they don't go along with his every whim. Seizing gold reserves would likely be an easy way to bring an uppity vassal to heel in his mind.
The long term ramifications won't even be considered.
A year ago the opposite was being reported on. No clue of the relative numbers, but its telling none of the stories about this are providing the long-term data.
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[ 0.30 ms ] story [ 25.3 ms ] threadNone of this should be a surprise to you if you've ever watched Fox News and derivatives; propaganda so on the nose it would make a nazi blush.
He opened the door, and I find it very, very unlikely that either side will close it after this. Dems and Reps will both use this to take control in ways that would have been unthinkable prior to Trump's first election. The only way to restore any measure of that trust would be to pass laws that prevent this kind of abuse, and there's no way that politicians will give up power they've gained.
On the other hand, a right-wing Supreme Court may try to block any reforms that check the Executive. The Legislature's ultimate oversight power of the Exec is impeachment, and they have decided that no amount of corruption or crime or destruction should be checked as long as it "feels right".
Impeachment could be a check on his power, but impeachment is a kangaroo court with a political jury, so he would need to piss off a lot more Republican senators than he has.
A few presidental impeachments over unlawful acts ending in conviction would change future behavior. But it seems unlikely that we'll get there.
It got worse when the 2016 primary election was subverted by DNC leadership.[2]
You could reach even further back and note the promise of socialized medicine by Obama, and the forced substitution of subsidized insurance oligarchy by Obama's chief of staff.[3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation_(politics)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Wasserman_Schultz#2016_...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel#White_House_chief...
Trump is a cause of destruction. He is literally making those decisions. He is to blame. Trump and project 2025 are what republicans and conservatives were trying to achieve for years and years. Again, it hapened intentionally.
But noooooo, must blame Obama. Anyone except directly responsable organizations and people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
They are not some kind of insane people outside of politics and government. They are literally the republican party.
Even if every single Republican got voted out, the rot is still there, just wearing the other hat.
Something similar happened in the UK, as the major parties moved towards a consensus as they both went after critical centrist voters (because the left and right voters were not going anywhere else - at the time anyway).
Trump can literally bomb cities in Europe and we would trade with the US. I doubt we will ever fully separate from the US.
This is the same level of delusion that: And Iran will never dare to close the strait.
Needless to say trust is close to 0% throughout the population - even the right wing populists distance themselves from Trump - and this is the consequence. I fear we are heading into dangerous times.
It is so important, that many countries make it illegal to hide international football matches behind paywalls, specifically.
It is so important, that there are articles written about its importance on EU institutes websites. For example, this one reflects on Footballs importance in relation to the First, Second and Cold wars. https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/alerts/european-footb...
To see Trump so flagrantly manipulate it sends a cultural signal that is hard for those outside of Europe to see, and that by some can be seen as the cultural equivalent of the political threats Trump has made against NATO.
At this point, your average European Trump supporter/right wing populist needs only reminding of Trumps interference to get a complete positional change - that's how bad it is.
Sports is peak diversion from real issues, Whether Europe, US or India and so on. The countries can go to hell, people can drown in endless real problems. But if people can be smothered with sport entertainment so they ignore real things whats better than that.
In India whole country can become absolute crap. Worst on any social, economic indicator but as long free cricket broadcast is on TV and mobile, life is good.
But yeah, people got upset...
FIFA, a largely European organization created by Europeans for a sport that Americans barely care about and in the center of multiple corruption scandals and controversies over the last few decades and you're really going to sit here and try to tell others that the real wakeup call was when Trump made a phone call to ask that a star player who by many respects shouldn't have received a red card over at best a technicality in the first place be reinstated for the good of sport and competition...?
And you're also going to claim that this "level of corruption" is something Vladimir Putin or Xi Jingping and their corrupt authoritarian regimes would never dream of attempting?
I'm going to assume you're being sarcastic...
orange man bad
It's astounding that European governments would never do corrupt things. Totally never. And if they did, sorry they only draw the line at influencing FIFA.
FIFA was corrupt. Infantino took it on another level, making it massively more corrupt then before. Then he created a peace price which combined corruption with astonishing lack of self respect and mockery.
And then Trump called over the red card, which contrasted with everything before as yes another never seen before level of corruption.
But second, FIFA is not an European institution. It is worldwide org and non European members are large contributors to the corruption. The middle east and afrikan members do like it corrupt, it suits their political goals.
> And you're also going to claim that this "level of corruption" is something Vladimir Putin or Xi Jingping and their corrupt authoritarian regimes would never dream of attempting?
Honestly, it even seems so. Trying to directly influence a soccer match, publically changing rules while not even understanding them is a new level.
Moreover, there is no reason to think Trump is less corrupt then Putin or Xi. If anything, he is equally or more corrupt.
Funny thing, I recently saw comment under Turkey cat video, saying something like
> Stray cats in live better than homeless in US.
What an ahistorical thing to say. Read more books, less comments under cat videos.
I know about dynasties expanding centuries some was prosperous others were not, same goes for European monarchies, amount of killing, abuse, looting done in colonies is staggering even though about most boast about how they conquered this and that.
> less comments under cat videos
I find cats interesting they have different personas kind of similar to humans than dogs who are people pleasing.
Aside from that world should be like this[1], where Chinese and Americans work together.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhd7vERQY3A
They’re not exiting all the gold held in North America; instead they’re rebalancing so that for more resilience against a backdrop of increased geopolitical risk.
It's also the idiotic thing about gold, a metal that has no more or less inherent monetary value than a fiat currency =)
https://www.macrotrends.net/1335/dollar-vs-gold-comparison-l...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money
I agree, the price of gold depends on demand like everything else. Although gold just has some inherent utility value in addition to scarcity that makes it less likely for the price to go to zero, other stuff like cryptocurrency have only scarcity and can go to zero much more easily.
In gold, you trust that everyone is believing gold has value. And that it is commmon knowledge (in the logic sense [0])
Saying that gold has no more or less inherent monetary value than fiat currency assuming a magic wand that can change a large percentage of people's belief.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic)
if the gold has cheaper would be used quite alot due to being the only metal not oxidizing (the other one being platinum which is even rarer and comes from the same ore source)
Just like a fiat currency.
I don’t know why people keep repeating that. Half of gold production is used in industry and for jewellery. And gold has never lost its value the way that some paper currencies have. It’s not like anyone can print gold bars.
I think the OPs point is that gold is an arbitrary metal that has been infused with value, just like fiat currency is some paper that has been infused with value. Paper also has 'useful' uses, but that isn't underpinning the value of fiat currency.
Yes, I'll grant that gold is stable in that it doesn't corroded , it's somewhat rare, etc, so it is better suited than other metals, there's still no intrinsic reason to value it though.
I don't think this is a hill that either the op or I is willing to die on though. It is an observation of human behaviour, rather than a statement that gold _should not_ be the world store of value.
...you just provided intrinsic reasons for why gold has value. Humans need to trade, bartering goods and services directly is less efficient than using a currency, and gold has qualities that make it more useful as a currency than other materials. It is the opposite of an arbitrary metal, it is a material that has specific desirable qualities hence chosen to be used as a currency by many societies.
That's exactly the service the commodities markets provide: they will absorb a small trade without anyone incurring the costs of shipping precious metals, and they know who to call to get it shipped once there's enough supply/demand imbalance to make shipping it worthwhile.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fish
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Gold_(Spain)
Given Spain’s history it is incredible that the gold collected over centuries was spent in a few years.
The wiki article is very carefully tip toeing that there is no evidence that the Soviets defrauded or abused the Spanish, but it is hard to believe that 72% of the world’s gold reserves were visibly spent in a few years.
I did not investigate further but I understood the documents are not completely public, and my conspiracy hat tells me that is because it is a national humiliation.
This also contributed significantly to the Communist (Stalinist) faction winning the internecine struggle on the left against the Anarchists and Trotskyists, but the quid pro quo was loyalty to the Soviet Union.
In hindsight we know they lost anyway, so this seems really silly, but at the time everyone involved believed they were in a completely existential struggle against fascism that was more important than literally anything else.
For anyone interested Orwell's Homage to Catalonia is an excellent book although it's just one man's perspective and may not be entirely historically accurate
Fact is, it was not a issue before, because of trust.
"for more resilience against a backdrop of increased geopolitical risk." is just nice wording for "Trump is burning down all bridges".
It is more multifaceted than that. To wit: they're leaving a substantial amount still in North America.
America's actions is a big part of it, but it isn't the only reason.
European countries aren’t worried that China will conquer the U.S. and they’d lose access to their gold because a hostile Chinese government controls it.
The increased risk is that the U.S. was considered basically risk free for allies, and now the U.S. isn’t considered risk free anymore and allied status is also at risk.
If a government is willing to go after the property of its own citizens without due process, foreign investors have to think: "What's to stop the same from happening to me?" Even if that foreign investor's a central bank.
[1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...
[2] Maybe the truckers' protest went too far; they were blocking roads. The point isn't whether they deserved to be punished; the point is that their accounts were frozen without going through the laws and court system.
[3] This was in 2022, so it has nothing to do with the current US administration.
These were not "protests", they were a sustained attempt to appeal to the wrong level of government for policies of a foreign government by a bunch of people who were riled up on the internet. Highlights included nazi flags, guns, harassing and threatening women and local residents, etc.
what is most telling is that when you search for commentary about the Canadian federal government freezing bank accounts, a significant portion of links are from reactionary, right wing websites.
> whereas Venezuela has experienced severe political authoritarianism and a deep, multi-year economic collapse, and a massive humanitarian exodus of millions of citizens
none of which has been resolved by the US violently removing their leader and taking over their oil
For the context : German airport was officially attacked by Russia . And that’s only one of many incidents. UK is on the radar of official Russian hawks for a very long time
Comparing that German airport "attack" by Russia to the 9/11 attack by Mr. bin Laden - would you say that all gold reserves should have been moved out of the USA back in 2001?
Russia has been weird for a long time, they are doing sub-threshold-of-war attacks for a while now.
But the USA? Outright threatening allies, talking about annexing some of them, making more threats against other allies who make moves to defend those allies? And he's got a known love for gold, started wars without bothering to inform allies he's now trying to punish for failing to provide help that he told them he didn't even want.
This is nothing new for anybody interested in the topic, its all very open and public (which is kind of the point I guess to manipulate public perception too). Every single secret service know this as 101 reality. In same way ie war in Ukraine started in 2014 in all measurable ways, not 2022.
US part... well its painful to watch, especially the incompetence or elephant-in-porcelain-shop part, of a shop that took many decades to build. But its good long term for Europe and rest of west - we became uber weak and over-reliant on US bases, their tech and power projection, and even if its 2026, influence not backed by real power means very little in actual world out there. Be provably strong or vanish seems to be mantra. Its smart to adapt to reality rather than expect the world to rearrange itself to some idealistic wishful thinking, however nice it may feel and however well it may have worked during easy peaceful times.
If a shooting war breaks out beween the US and the Bond Market, the gold isnt safe anywhere.
When Russia wants to directly attack NATO they'll likely do exactly what the US/EU is doing and simply arm e.g. Iran/Houthis/etc with weapons/locations, let them push the button, and then go all Slava Allah or whatever while Russia is like 'oh we're not involved in this conflict you have with Iran.' Great precedent that's been set.
---
That said I do expect Russia is likely involved in at least some of the incidents of weapons factories and other things that have been going boom, but it's always going to be done with plausible deniability - sleeper agents with no direct ties to Russia, and the like. They're not going to just start bombing planes in airports with drones.
No, it wasn't.
> That said I do expect Russia is likely involved in at least some of the incidents of weapons factories
They're involved in all of them.
> sleeper agents with no direct ties to Russia
This isn't a movie. They pay criminals to do criminal activity. They're not utilizing "sleeper agents" to burn down a building.
>When Russia wants to directly attack NATO they'll likely do exactly what the US/EU is doing and simply arm e.g. Iran/Houthis/etc with weapons/locations, let them push the button, and then go all Slava Allah or whatever while Russia is like 'oh we're not involved in this conflict you have with Iran.' Great precedent that's been set.
What does this even mean? Are you equating Ukraine with Iran and the Houthis?
So high in fact that the operation malfunctioned. Precisely what a false flag would do.
The US indeed would like to expand the Ukrainian proxy war to the Baltics so it can carry out its own plans of getting various oil rich countries.
All that these stupid politics accomplish is that the AfD will have 35% in the next elections so Germany can enjoy Trump-like corruption and the industry can exploit people even more. At this point one wonders if the CDU is in on it and the AfD is secretly already part of the uniparty, public theater of forbidding the AfD notwithstanding.
> The US indeed would like to expand the Ukrainian proxy war to the Baltics so it can carry out its own plans of getting various oil rich countries.
What "oil rich" Baltic states are you referring to? Is the US going to takeover Norway?
Parts can be obtained from Russia by Russian speaking Ukrainians that are indistinguishable from Russians.
You are making up "oil rich" Baltic states. The comment said "various oil rich states", i.e. Iran and Venzuela.
I assume you volunteer for the front?
I'm not sure what the point of that is? I can order Russian parts online. Too many people watch movies and think all this subterfuge is needed.
> You are making up "oil rich" Baltic states. The comment said "various oil rich states", i.e. Iran and Venzuela.
I made up this quote up?
> The US indeed would like to expand the Ukrainian proxy war to the Baltics so it can carry out its own plans of getting various oil rich countries
What, exactly, are you referring to here? The US is going to expand the war in the Baltics to get the oil in Venezuela? How does that make any sense at all?
> No damage because they need the Antonovs.
Ok? Then blow up something next to it then, or some ground support people. Really make an impact and sell it!
> I assume you volunteer for the front?
Such an old argument that's never made any sense. I think there should be teachers, firefighters, police, doctors, etc. I do not need to become one of them because I think they should exist. I have, however, donated $XXk to Ukraine for their efforts, make donations to various groups on a monthly basis, and will donate another $5-10k from my Donor Advised fund this winter - all of which they need far more than some middle aged American dude showing.
I get that you are having problems dealing with your country's leadership making such horrible decisions, but pretending like it's all a big conspiracy is just detaching you from reality and will make the fall even harder for you.
There's issues with defending the east flank. Namely, without taking full control of the Baltic Sea, Baltic States and Finland will run out of provisions in weeks.
You can buy incendiary armor piercing bullets that could take one down for $5, but strangely they've been utilized for decades.
Finland will run out of provisions in a weeks? How so? Will Russia control their western border?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation#France
https://www.bundesbank.de/en/tasks/topics/bundesbank-complet...
They've previously stated to be far more worried about the dependency on VISA and MasterCard than the gold reserves in the US.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2560460-dnb-maakt-zich-zorgen-over-am...
Yeah, that isn't really a thing anymore.
I will not get better until they are removed.
It is not in their interest to save the federal government, US dollar, or the economy.
They are all BRIICS backed and want the dollar and trans atlanticism, backed by the US military, to fail.
I think "save" is not even in the room with us; they seem to be actively harming every industry: farming, food, oil, electronics, manufacturing, healthcare, etc. It's a full on assault.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", but in this case we're dealing with malicious actors and it's apparent these are malicious actions. DOGE was just the first step.
At first I thought they were trying to establish something that looked closer to Russia, where they can make life just hard enough for them to keep accumulating wealth indefinitely. Now I'm worried they're going for something that resembles Africa's poorest nations, where we fight amongst ourselves over resources that are increasingly constrained.
"A total of more than 27 tonnes of gold was physically transferred from the locations in North America to DNB Cash Centre in Zeist, Utrecht, between March and August. Another 59 tonnes of gold kept in New York was also sold off during this time, while the equivalent amount of gold was purchased in London."
They do not explain _how_ it was moved, though.
I know that instinctively sounds crazy, but this administration attacked Iran without a plan for their closing the Strait of Hormuz, and tariffed uninhabited islands based on an AI-generated list.
They're rational, but they're aggressive and dumb. Treat them as you would treat a guy who starts bar fights; one strategy is quietly moving to the far side of the bar, which is what this appears to be.
There has to be an adult in the room there to tell them this is a really bad idea. I mean I didn't think Putin would invade Ukraine so my track record is iffy but there's a reason the Belgians refuse to use Russian frozen assets - no one would ever put money there ever again. That'd be the end of their banking sector basically.
The long term ramifications won't even be considered.
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.
A year ago the opposite was being reported on. No clue of the relative numbers, but its telling none of the stories about this are providing the long-term data.