Comment by morsch
4 hours ago
France completely exited New York, the Netherlands roughly halved what they've stored there. That was in 2026. They didn't physically ship any of it, they sold it and rebought in Europe.
Germany moved 111t from New York in 2016, and, afaict, nothing since then. There's still 1236t left.
Italy also keeps over 1000t in New York (no plans for repatriation).
> They didn't physically ship any of it, they sold it and rebought in Europe.
The Netherlands physically moved 27 tons of gold from the US and Canada (mostly New York) to the Netherlands this year.
> They didn't physically ship any of it, they sold it and rebought in Europe
This is effectively outsourcing that process to the banks.
Banks can keep it in US and stay happy, they don't necessarily immediately need physical gold. So it's quite efficient, lots of govts do similar stuff.
> Banks can keep it in US and stay happy
If the Banque de France holds physical in New York and sells it to JPMorgan (nothing moves) and then in Paris buys contract for physical from UBS, there will probably need to be physical gold that moves.
In all likelihood, Swiss gold held by e.g. a Gulf customer might be sold to Paris (nothing moves) and JPMorgan may entice Venezuela to take those contracts on its balance sheet (nothing moves). But if it’s a big trade, the price of delivering physical in Paris (or Genève) will go above spot in New York at which point it’s profitable for JPMorgan to take delivery, load up planes and physically ship gold.
7 replies →
The Yapese people have been doing the same thing [1] for centuries.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones
1 reply →
[dead]