The American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002, also known as the "Hague Invasion Act", gives the President of the U.S. legal authority to invade the Netherlands to free detained U.S. service members imprisoned by the International Criminal Court.
When you think about it, it's really quite a remarkable state of affairs for a nation to trust another nation so implicitly they give it physical control of (a non-trivial portion of) their treasury, in a sense. And now that is coming unravelled. Another marker of human civilization's slow deteroriation. I remember a time when I thought things would only keep getting better and better with advances in technology and information sharing.... how naive I was.
I didn't say it was. Do you believe that there's an upwards trend in global geopolitical stability, or even simply general well-being? If you do, we certainly don't share that opinion.
Earlier this year France has pull out their last remaining gold held in US amounting to 129 tonnes moved to Paris [1].
[1] France pulls last gold held in US (361 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658146
Location Before After Change
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.
Why did you modify the title to not include Canada?
According to the HN guidelines:
"Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
On the grand scheme of things this is 12bil usd worth of gold. The GDP of Netherlands is 1.4 trillion USD. So, this is honestly a foot note.
[delayed]
GDP is just a number in a spreadsheet. This is a physical asset.
The American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002, also known as the "Hague Invasion Act", gives the President of the U.S. legal authority to invade the Netherlands to free detained U.S. service members imprisoned by the International Criminal Court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
I feel dumb but how is this related?
I think it's an oblique threat. Just recently Trump made a direct threat on the bond markets.
https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/trump-suggests-he-can-use-...
Omitting Canada from the title feels deliberate.
It's honestly quite impressive that it took them this long to do this.
Italy is the third country with the largest gold reserves since the 50s or so, and most of their gold is in the US.
The idea of repatriating it comes up from time to time, but the truth is that it's s logistical and diplomatic trouble with little positive outcomes.
I don't think the US is a serious position to argue diplomatic issues atm.
I'd vote for it if I was Italian.
> The operation took place between March and August of this year, it said.
You can also ask why they move it to London and not mainland Europe.
England has not been invaded in nearly 1000 years.
These systems AIUI have huge amounts of inertia, by design.
When you think about it, it's really quite a remarkable state of affairs for a nation to trust another nation so implicitly they give it physical control of (a non-trivial portion of) their treasury, in a sense. And now that is coming unravelled. Another marker of human civilization's slow deteroriation. I remember a time when I thought things would only keep getting better and better with advances in technology and information sharing.... how naive I was.
They’re not moving it to the Netherlands. There’s still plenty of countries that the Dutch trust, but the US no longer seems to be on that list.
They still keep gold with the New York Fed, this was just a rebalance:
> Before the deployment, the Dutch bank held 31.3% of its gold in New York and 19.7% in Ottawa.
> After the move, each country accounted for 18.5% of the Dutch gold reserve.
What building in Ottawa has 15 billion dollars of Dutch gold in it ?
all of human civilisation =/= the USA
I didn't say it was. Do you believe that there's an upwards trend in global geopolitical stability, or even simply general well-being? If you do, we certainly don't share that opinion.
not human civilization, just the United States.