The transfer was carried out partially by buying and selling and partly by physically transferring gold, the Dutch national bank said.

  • codydodd@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    As a Canadian I cant help but interpret this as nothing against Canada, but insecurity about our increasingly belligerent neighbour.

    • Humanius@lemmy.world
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      That is basically it yeah. The vast majority of gold was moved from the US (essentially 41% of Dutch gold reserves in the US were moved out), while we barely moved anything out of Canada.

      The official reason is “crisis preparedness”, but I believe the actual unofficial and unspoken reason is that the US is simply too unreliable to store our gold.

        • marcos@lemmy.world
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          Yes. Crisis preparedness is just polite talk for “we expect shit to hit the fan, so we are acting on it”.

          IMO, it’s way worse than just claiming the US is unreliable.

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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            3 days ago

            The US has been unreliable for the entirety of its history. They relate to both world wars, and they’ve equipped numerous would be terrorists and dictators in various banana republics.

            Also they play Baseball which everybody knows is just Rounders which they renamed

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          3 days ago

          I think the implication is that the crisis could be anything and not to the result of any particular specific concern.

          Where as everybody knows that it’s because Trump is going to try and become a dictator in November when he inevitably will have a tantrum about losing the midterms.

          • Arctic_monkey@leminal.space
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            2 days ago

            Nah, you guys have two years until he makes his dictator play. Democrat wins in November will just serve as a justification.

    • mcv@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      We’re afraid the US might attack Canada and then Canada conquers our gold and keeps it as spoils of war. Not that you don’t deserve it, but better it be someone else’s gold.

      • Smaile@lemmy.ca
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        Idk if we could pull of anything other then a repel, if anything we’d encourage a splitting of the the USA, it’s clear a certain half of the country can’t be trusted and should never have been let back in without letting them fail on their own first.

  • 0x0@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    IT would’ve made more sense to move to Canada… or the Netherlands.

    • Tango@piefed.caOP
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      Desperate or vindictive. There was a recent debate over whether the EU should use the money in the Russian accounts it suspended to bankroll Ukraine, because Russia owes Ukraine reparations. One of the reasons that might not be a good idea is that a lot of EU money is in the USA, and with Trump it’s monkey see, monkey do. Except for “the EU should” read “the USA should”, for “Russian accounts” read "EU accounts, for “bankroll Ukraine” read "line Trump’s pockets, and for “because Russia owes Ukraine reparations” read “because Trump likes money”.

  • SGGeorwell@lemmy.world
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    This is the second story/country like this I’ve read about recently doing this same thing. I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a political signal or if these countries are anticipating some kind of breakdown in their ability to access the gold if it remains in the US. Do they think we wouldn’t give it up? Do they expect there will be war on this continent? Do they fear Trump will plunder it? It’s a somewhat unsettling consideration.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I hope they tested the gold bars for e.g. tungsten rods.

    And i hope our national bank gets smart enough to follow that move.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        They do have a nice and close weight, but their radioactivity gives them away.

        Tungsten has a density of 19.25g/cm3. Compared to Gold with 19.32g/cm3, they are rather close. Uranium is a little less dense at 19.16g/cm3.

              • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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                3 days ago

                No but seriously how did you do that? Did you upload a .gif as an image? This will open up an ocean of… Good use for me!

                • Tango@piefed.caOP
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                  3 days ago

                  Bear in mind though, that your instance (in your case, lemmy.world) will bear the cost of storing your .gif, and lemmy.world doesn’t have ad revenue to pay for that like Reddit does. So use .gifs sparingly.

                • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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                  3 days ago

                  there should be a button to view the source of my comments, but basically:

                  ![alt text](imagesourcehtmllink)

                  for those of y'all who would like to skip the tutorial, skip it

                  if you include the ! it renders the image or gif (the link needs to be a direct path to the image, not just the page it’s on. it might take a little experimenting. it did for me) and if you don’t it just has the text and a link to the image.

                  without the !

                  first image: I NEED TUNGSTEN TO LIVE

                  with the !

                  i have been told if we add “hovertext” after the link (but still in the parens) we can add hovertext, but i haven’t experimented with nor figured it out yet so i can’t really advise you on it, sorry. there’s always bigger fish.

  • Doorbook@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    If they can kidnap another country leader, and the entire alliance says nothing, you know they will say nothing of the US did the same to Canada.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    “Shit. That gold was earmarked for the ballroom plumbing! We can never have a nice ballroom now!” /s

  • SirLeToet@lemmy.world
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    That’s just about 1/3rd of the gold the Dutch have left in the US.

    Everyone likes to blame the orange turd, the Dutch started removing gold from the US prior to the orange turd and moved 122 tons in 2014. The administration at the time denied the Dutch from taking back more gold.

    • mirshafie@europe.pub
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      2 days ago

      America’s fall is not Trump’s fault. He’s just a very good poster boy for it, and a great accelerator.

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      The gold is a financial instrument and not a purchased commercial product being imported for consumption, so it is not subject to import duties or tax.

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Because keeping your strategic reserves in your own country kinda defeats the purpose, and we don’t have allies further west than the UK, on account of there not being any more land there.

      • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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        3 days ago

        Do you feel like France or Germany would be too close/too involved in a potential of conflict to be safe?

        • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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          It comes down to how likely it is.

          The likelyhood of the Netherlands being invaded, but not germany or france, is a lot smaller than the Netherlands being invaded but not the UK.

          Because lets be real, if anyone is going to be attacking Europe, it’ll be Russia, and they won’t be coming via the sea.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      If you think the UK isn’t politically stable you’ve just been watching too much fox news.

      • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
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        After Brexit and the UK following in the footsteps of just about every shitty thing the US does, I don’t see how one could call them stable.

        • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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          Farage, Boris… There are ugly undercurrents in British society and culture. I am throwing stones with sin here, because my country also struggles against those cuntdicks, but I’ve been there many times so I’m not speaking out of turn.

          Let’s keep in mind that Putin has been funding right wing extremism and fanned polarity in Europe for the better part of three decades now. It shows.

      • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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        Then again, how come your PMs only last an average of 6 months on the job before they get kicked out and are replaced before the replacement leaves in 6 months.

        Lettuce woman springs to mind, but holy shit.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          That’s just how the UK political system is, it’s not a sign of instability. We really do need to change our truly broken political system but that’s more about fairness and an actual representative government, than it is protecting us from from fascism.

          • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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            But that is a clear sign of instability, my man. I’m from Europe so I know what’s up, and GB has been in turmoil since Thatcher. In fact you’re Europe’s USA as far as I’m concerned- you’re basically OG USA really… I love the people, but you’re still dealing with your colonial past and the structures of its old institutions still governing you.

            You’re also a bunch of mad lads so I have hope for you.

      • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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        The UK is sleepwalking towards fascism. Same as France and Germany. Not that the left isn’t fighting tooth and nail against it but there is still a very strong pull towards authoritarian right wing politics and moderate centrists are not ready to stop licking oligarch boots.

    • Sunflier@lemmy.world
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      You load 16 tons what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

      Don’t worry: at this rate we’ll all owe our souls to the company store, and they’re unlikely to tolerate any damage to their inventory.