The French Central Bank believes it has seen the writing on the wall. From the Daily Caller: "French Bank Yanks Gold Bars From US, Makes $15,000,000,000." From the article:
France’s national bank removed and sold all of its remaining gold held by the U.S. Federal Reserve, netting a profit worth nearly $15 billion, multiple outlets reported.
The Bank of France announced it netted 12.8 billion euros — equivalent to $14.8 billion — after it finished pulling 129 tons of gold from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and replacing it with higher-quality gold stored in Paris, Radio France Internationale (RFI) reported Saturday. The massive amount of the precious metal represented 5% of the bank’s total reserves.
The article notes that this represents "the first time in about 100 years that France did not keep any of its gold at New York City’s Fed branch, mining.com reported." The article indicates that other central banks began considering this option after the U.S. froze Russian assets, fearful that they might be caught up in similar asset seizures. It was just that France was the first to act. The article continues (bold added):
“France is the only one that’s formally moved. Germany and Italy have talked about it,” Hanke, who served on President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, told the DCNF. “The discussion, the anxiousness and the risk of having their assets somehow frozen if they were in the United States came up when in February 2022 the central bank assets of Russia were frozen — because the standard before that had been these were untouchable central bank assets.”
“And so that was the start of things,” Hanke said. He noted that then-U.S. President Joe Biden “led the charge” in breaking from the precedent in which the “reserves of central banks were off limits” and “had sovereign immunity.”
“They had sovereign immunity, but we froze them,” the applied economics professor said. “Biden led that charge. That came from the United States. Everybody else piled on, but the lead was the United States.”
The article further adds:
Former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget J.D. Foster told the DCNF that, “symbolically,” France moving the gold means it is “further cutting ties with the United States, making it easier in the end for the United States to cut ties with Europe.” He said France’s ties with the U.S. are disappearing “one by one.”
“Substantively, it doesn’t mean a damn thing. These gold reserves are relics of a bygone era. We have fiat currencies now,” he said. “And think about it: $15 billion in gold reserves when trillions flow through New York markets hourly, some days every minute.”
“France, and most especially President [Emmanuel] ‘lame-duck’ Macron, remains a clown show. They are only doing this out of petty spite, like a three-year-old’s temper tantrum,” Foster added, referring to the French leader, who is term-limited in 2027. “Make no mistake — if somebody wants to give me $15 billion in gold bullion, I won’t complain, but relative to national output, the money supply, the vast flows of capital internationally, it’s a flea’s fart in a hurricane.”
Related? "Trump mulls punishing NATO countries that didn’t assist Iran war effort: report"--The New York Post.
According to other articles France didn't remove any physical gold. They got paid by the US for it and took that money and bought current standard gold bars (from an EU central bank IIRC).
ReplyDeleteThat makes the comment about replacing it with higher-quality gold make more sense.
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