> As of 2024, the vault housed approximately 507,000 gold bars, with a combined weight of 6,331 metric tons. The vault is able to support this weight because it rests on the bedrock of Manhattan Island, 80 feet below street level and 50 feet below sea level.
> Following the verification process, the gold is moved to one of the vault’s 122 compartments, where each compartment contains gold held by a single account holder (meaning that gold is not commingled between account holders).
It’s a very fancy closet.
Like HN, I don't visit the site for the great design, I come for the golden content.
...
Sry, I had to...
> The market value of a gold bar depends on its weight, purity level, and the prevailing market price for gold. Rather than market pricing which fluctuates daily, the New York Fed uses the United States official book value of $42.2222 per troy ounce for gold holdings.
Nothing prevents Germany from just gifting Poland a few bars in exchange for resolution of some minor border dispute.
The gold is stored in Manhattan, in the Fed Reserve Bank of NY.
I imagine if Germany did that with their reserves a similar effect would come about.
There is a famous tale of Archimedes doing exactly this when posed with the problem of determining if a certain crown is made of pure gold.
Other metals would require too big additions of expensive rhenium/osmium/iridium/platinum to match the density of gold.
The best choice for matching the density of gold is tungsten, but even with that the cost for an exact match of the density would be high. The tungsten objects that are found easily in commerce have a density significantly lower than gold, because they are made from tungsten powder sintered with nickel, not from pure tungsten, which is hard to melt.
The conductivity test is good, but not easy to perform when the object has a complex form. Surface conductivity is easy to measure on any object, but the object could be plated with pure gold, so surface conductivity would show no difference.
For a gold bar of standard dimensions, it should be easy enough to make a text fixture allowing the measurement of the bulk conductivity.
And you can do activation analysis, where you activate the ingot with neutron radiation such that Gold isotopes form and decay. You then measure the decay gamma radiation spectrum and look for decay lines that are not gold but another material. This is non-destructive, but will make that ingot slightly radioactive for a while, but nothing that a few weeks of patience to wait for the decay can't fix.
Oh, and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra would also work, but usually those machines are for very small samples in the milligram region. No idea whether there are some that could fit a gold ingot.
The chemistry NMRs are spectrographs, so you dial through a whole frequency spectrum and look at the reflected/transmitted signal. With that you get different peaks for different nuclei plus some deviations for crystal or molecular structure.
But I have to admit, that I'm a little rusty on that topic, so you might be right anyways.
It could be done now but most of the candidate elements cost more than gold. Uranium looks feasible if the gold veneer will block the radiation which otherwise might tip off the recipient.
19.283 g/cm3 vs 19.254 g/cm3
A more reliable and still relatively cheap test is via conductivity.
Anyway, moving that much gold would be slow, inconvenient, and a significant risk.
(the two scales are due to price and bulk: the Sigma is about the size of a hardback book and a few hundred pounds, an XRF is the size of a large 3d-printer and many thousands).
Norway & the Netherlands moved their gold right before the Nazi invasions in the 40's, and were able to continue operating in exile as a result. Taiwan was established on the back of this tactic too, with the Chinese nationalists moving their gold out of the mainland into Taiwan when they realised they'd lose to the Communists.
There's a benefit to having your country's wealth being physically difficult to move.
If we support you and are at war with your occupier then why not?
You never know what the orange man will propose in the next hour.
But I'm with you. I wouldn't call it "advantage taking" though. I rather would call it a friendship based on "trust, reliance and opportunities" for all. Now, we see, it was wrong. The US can't be trusted anymore. It was an egoistic and toxic relationship - I'm happy it has an ending, now.
Let me guess who you voted for.
This is one of the primary reasons Bitcoin exists. As long as I can remember the seed phrase it’s always with me. And main reason why I would rather have bitcoin than gold.
Transporting all that gold will be a tad more difficult though. I wish they luck though.
There is enough incentive for the US to not be transparent about the actual gold that is left.
Depends on when gold was shipped to the US. For the better part of the 20th century there was absolutely no reason for most of it's friends and allies to not trust the US. Especially if you deposited your gold with the US around the world wars or any time before the mid 60s really.
I propose, they had never been trusted. Nations do not believe in trust. At the International Relations level, IR Realism is basically the only generally accepted policy. You may have a few Constructivists, but the smartest ones still put trust and norms below power calculations.
Its really that the average person has essentially no understanding of IR and history.
I assure you that verification methods have been happening. The amount of trust was less than the amount of verification.
Also you have the physical money and don't rely on computers or similar. More secure (if you ignore Die Hard 3).
If countries start moving the gold away it's a) sign that they need the money elsewhere or b) they don't trust the current location anymore.
II World War hasn't started with German attacking Poland 1.IX.1939 and Russia (Soviet Union) on 17.IX.1939. There was Spanish Civil War earlier (1936), annexation of the Sudetenland - part of Czechoslovakia in 1938.
It is plausible to me that building up a gold reserve might be worth it, longterm, purely because the gained trust/perceived stability nets you slightly better conditions when financing megaprojects alone (like the Fehmarn tunnel): Over a few centuries you might save tax dollars thanks to investing into bigger gold reserves earlier.
And gold is objectively useful if things go to shit-- just look at Russia for a recent example-- gold is nice for mitigating sanctions and stabilizing your currency under bad conditions.
Probably Italy too...
0: https://discoveryalert.com.au/news/germany-gold-repatriation...
What I'm trying to say is that these two do not represent the German political landscape at all. They also, while on different ends of the left-right-spectrum, both only represent the pro-Russian minority of the German political landscape. This is not a debate happening in Germany right now and no other party has expressed support of any position.
Otherwise following the logic if Afd tells Merz not to jump from that bridge he should do the opposite.
Maybe there should be a real debate on that topic, or maybe Germany should even pursue such a repatriation of their gold reserves, but as a matter of fact there's no such debate or plan besides fringes parties, that's it.
This is as true in the middle east, europe, africa, south america or asia.
They exist for the reason to liquidate them in case of national emergencies/severe economic crises. It's easier to liquidate these reserves when they are stored in trading hubs. That could be New York and London, or maybe even Shanghai, if China wasn't a systemic rival.
Storing all of them at "one's place" is a larger risk than splitting it up and storing them in several places, each with a different risk profile.
Does that happen often (gold sale)?
That exposes you to the risk of the country holding it. But for much of recent history, the US was seen as a lesser risk than a Russian invasion. Whether that is still the way the risks balance... I think we each may hold our own opinion on that.
Can't tell about the past where the risks of war with USSR were valid, but I think Russia invading Germany or Italy in the future is pure BS.
[Edit: First example I could find: https://www.newsweek.com/putin-ally-says-poland-next-ukraine...
I believe that Medvedev also said similar things, but I can't immediately find a link.]
Note that I'm not a German national but I live in Germany (former DDR / East) since 9 years.
It has not. They got 20% in the last Bundestag election, compared to 28.4% for CDU. Unless they get significantly stronger it seems very unlikely that anyone wants to be in a coalition with them on the short or medium horizon.
If/when the coalition starts infighting, then…
No, they haven't. Not a single poll has them surpassing the CDU.
I genuinely don't understand why you'd lie about something like that. It's trivial to look it up.
Just look at what happened when Venezuela wanted their gold back. It took ages and that was a relatively tiny amount.
It's extremely naive for many EU countries to still believe that they "have" "their" gold stored in the US. And even more naive to not try and get it back.
The entire US banking and financial system relies on NOT delivering or owning the underlying (fractional reserve banking, federal reserve printing money out of thin air, failures to deliver every single day on everything from stocks to government bonds, failing CDS'es and so on).
Modern banking and finance, not just in the US, relies on fractional reserves. This is not a movie.
From the news:
Earlier this year, President Donald J. Trump and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk suggested that the regime would investigate Fort Knox, the Kentucky-based facility that stores U.S. gold reserves.
“We are going to go into Fort Knox to make sure the gold is there,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One in February. “You know that we are going to go into Fort Knox? Did you know about that?”
Several months later, the White House has not announced a formal investigation.
Rep. Massie submitted a bill - titled the Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2025 - mandating the comptroller general to conduct and publish a full audit of the nation’s gold reserves.
Co-sponsored by Reps. Warren Davidson (Ohio), Addison McDowell (N.C.), and Troy Nehls (Tex.), the bill would grant the Government Accountability Office and third-party independent auditors access to any public or private depository where gold reserves and records are stored. This would include deep storage locations such as Fort Knox.
The bill would also require full disclosure of all gold-related transactions, such as leases, loans, sales and swaps over the past 50 years.
If the legislation is signed into law, the audit is projected to take up to one year and will be conducted every five years.
“Amerikans deserve transparency and accountability from the institutions that underpin our currency,” Massie said in a statement.
“In February, President Trump said, ‘We are going to Fort Knox to make sure the gold is there.’ The Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2025 will provide the full disclosure President Trump seeks and the Amerikan public deserves.”
This is sadly a very common misunderstanding of how money is created inside the financial system, even by professional economists and financial advisers. In reality money is not valued at parity with some physical material but as a simple act of accounting [0,1,2,3,4]. Historically a currency (subset) has been pegged against rare minerals as a method of insurance against state or exchange rate instability, the flip side is that this restricts state spending and economic growth -- a growing economy needs a growing stock of currency to service loans and avoid debt driven deflation, as in e.g. the great depression [5,6,7]. This is why gold/silver standards are always episodic in world history [8]. Even in the fien-de-secle gold standard era the majority of currency in circulation had its origin in endogenous bank lending [9]. The typical stability and viability of a currency is from the fact that it can be used to procure real goods in the wider market, which in turn is because money contracts are legally enforced via social power relations, e.g. by a local government with the power make and enforce such rules. Incidentally this is why cryptocurrencies act as an investment asset and not as a currency, it lacks the enforcement component and it appreciates in value, which is never what you want for a currency [10].
[0] Bank of England, Money Creation in the Modern Economy https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/m... [1] Deutsche Bundesbank, The role of banks, non- banks and the central bank in the money creation process https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/654284/df66c4444d065... [2] Richard A. Werner, A lost century in economics: Three theories of banking and the conclusive evidence https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105752191... [3] Augusto Graziani, The Monetary Theory of Production https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/monetary-theory-of-prod... [4] Basil J. Moore, Horizontalists and Verticalists https://www.cambridge.org/sc/universitypress/subjects/econom... [5] Scientific Origin, What Was the Gold Standard, How It Worked, and Why It Ended https://scientificorigin.com/the-gold-standard-what-it-was-h... [6] Irving Fisher, The Debt Deflation Theory of Great Depressions https://www.jstor.org/stable/1907327 [7] Hyman P. Minsky, The Debt Deflation Theory of Great Depressions https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232609677.pdf [8] Marc Lavoie, Endogenous Money: Accomodationist https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287788671_Endogenou... [9] David Graeber, DEBT: The First 5000 Years https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years [10] Wikipedia, Silvio Gesell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Gesell
Apologies for the lengthy response, it's a personal pet peeve.
You're basically falling into "the populist trap" in which they take a fact or something true and wrap it with a lot of BS and conspiracy theories. If you disregard the true core "just because it's from the wrong party" you give them political lever. We've seen that playbook working out for 10+ years.
De Masi did a great job as a financial expert in a parliamentary group, highly regarded by people over the whole political spectrum. I don't understand why he joined BSW but that doesn't weaken his point here.
And since we're already publicly discussing Trump blackmailing us with decommissioning US IT-Services without further notice, it is exactly right to talk about assets like gold being stored on US soil.
Extremists should never be ignored, especially in unstable times, but mentioning that these people are currently not in power and aren't even in the parliament is good context.
This is the future of European, and US elections. Undermining Russia is important to the rulers of Europe and the US, but not as much to workers and voters. You can see the sea change with Trump in office and socialist candidates like Bernie, who is getting huge crowds in Idaho and Oklahoma, or AOC and Zohran in New York. Young people can't afford houses, even programmers are having trouble since the 2022 layoffs - can you imagine the Amazin RTO in Seattle mandate would be possible in 2021? Wealth inequality leads to disruption, and political parties are made to appeal to the masses - either fascist or socialist. The political tendencies arising are no anomaly.
I can see how Trump being in office is indisputable sign that populists are getting popular, but what does "huge crowds" cash out to? "crowds" should be as little as 1000 people. Combine that with to urban-rural and education polarization, and it doesn't seem too hard to get a 1000 college educated city dwellers to show up to a rally in Idaho.
They were founded in 2013 and missed the seat by just 0.3%.
> BSW probably picked up voters who would have gone to either AFD
AFD-Voters were the lowest group they grew from[1]. They mostly harvest from the political left, but also some (probably non-extrem?) right voters.
[1] https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2025-02-23-BT-DE/analy...
AfD has SO many connections to the Kremel. At least a big part of AfD is obiously influenced by russian agenda. BSW is a different topic. They might just align with many points russia likes, but you can not be sure either.
BSW or AfD with power in the Bundestag would be russias wet dream in regards to german politics.
>The Germans in this article all appear to be aligned to [...]
So the person we don't like seems like they might be affiliated with a political party which seems like it's pro-Russia — this is unreasonably contrived when you zoom out and look at the whole argument.
The AfD, the SPD and the BSW all have factions that historical ties to the Kreml network
Wikipedia, just like reality, has a "well known liberal bias".
If you have issues with the content of an article, present additional sources with data backing up your views.
Being against military expenditures and alliances when the other nation is arming like there is no tomorrow is being pro getting invaded.
It is not complicated.
I fear the things are much much more complicated then you think.
"You're either with us or against us"
There is a lot of nuances there.
Remember that in the 1990's the US put Ukraine under pressure to give up its nuclear arsenal (2nd in the world at the time) against promises that its sovereignty and independence would be respected (Budapest memorandums). Who is going to believe the US now?
Apparently, many Ukrainian men would. Or maybe they'd seen it like a mere change in upper management, initially. Otherwise the Ukrainian government would not have felt it necessary to forbid them from leaving the country or to press/force them into military service.
(And, frankly, the people affected are the only ones whose opinion should matter in this situation.)
> Bleeding to repel the Russian invasion, you mean
It's always easy to spill other people's statistical blood from the other side of the planet.
They just take russian talking points and deliver them to their voters. It's just conveniently the same shit. And business trips to russia are just there to enjoy the scenery.
If they talk like russians, are present in russia, do interviews in russian media and don't condemn russian warcrimes...
Maybe it's just as easy?
An example of:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
?
Picturing BSW as far-left, while not uncommon, strikes me always as very strange. While it's a bit unclear where to put them with their wild mixture of populism, the only reason they are by some seen as leftwing is because of the history of their founder. She was previously a member of the left party, but for many years, even while she still was a member of that party, has not held any views that could count as far-left.
The only reason some still put her in the far-left camp is that she was, looooong ago, a member of the communist platform in the PDS, the predecessor of the left party in Germany.
Examples for the BSW's left politics are * higher taxes for the rich * higher taxes for large and international companies * take on new debt to finance stuff * more state-aided social housing.
I wonder what it says about Europe that its leaders are still falling for these rugpulls. That they are uneducated is the most generous reading I can think of.
And let’s not forget that part of the deal was that the US would guarantee maritime security, which they have fulfilled for nearly 100 years. I would say that’s worth quite a bit more than whatever gold is in dispute, given that it allowed for the rise of globalization in the first place.
What really caused the end of the BW financial system was the inability of a world economy to be backed by gold in the first place. This coincided with the US leaving the gold standard in 1971, and this was only ~5-10 years after the instability began. So the system still enjoyed 15-20 years of operating as intended.
Stupid Atlanticists
> The Fed implements stringent security controls, and refuses even Bundesbank staff full access to the German gold hoard. A team of personnel demanding access in 2007 were only allowed to visit the anteroom of the reserves, and when Bundebank auditors visited in May 2011 only one of nine compartments was opened for direct handling.
> The Federal Reserve’s fervent secrecy has engendered suspicion and concern, with some claiming that Germany’s gold has long ago disappeared or been lent out, and that only promissory notes of nominal value are sitting in the vault.
https://www.mining.com/germans-begin-to-demand-their-gold-ba...
Here is a very fun, deeply speculative article from Zerohedge on this topic, from 2013:
> That's right, ladies and gentlemen, as a result of our cursory examination, we have learned that the world's largest private, and commercial, gold vault, that belonging once upon a time to Chase Manhattan, and now to JPMorgan Chase, is located, right across the street, and at the same level underground, resting just on top of the Manhattan bedrock, as the vault belonging to the New York Federal Reserve, which according to folklore is the official location of the biggest collection of sovereign, public gold in the world.
> At this point we would hate to be self-referential, and point out what one of our own commentators noted on the topic of the Fed's vault a year ago, namely that:
> Chase Plaza (now the Property of JPM) is linked to the facility via tunnel... I have seen it. The elevators on the Chase side are incredible. They could lift a tank.
> ... but we won't, and instead we will let readers make up their own mind why the the thousands of tons of sovereign gold in the possession of the New York Fed, have to be literally inches across, if not directly connected, to the largest private gold vault in the world.
Edit: more details about the underground vaults- https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/ronan-manly/keys-gold-vaul...
Gold is maybe just a bit better than fiat currency. Even in terms of inflation, what would happen to the market value of gold (not in Dollar terms, but in terms of what it can buy) if the government decided to spend down $200B in gold to buy stuff with?
Worth noting the UN partition plan was never actually adopted in a binding way.
In a crisis, the value of gold holds more than that of the Papiermark, or even the US dollar - I can buy only one egg for the two I could have bought five years ago. Gold is uniform, portable, divisible and durable - useful attributes in a crisis, and worth more than Confederate dollars.
Gold is useful - for filling teeth, for electronic coating. It's value has stayed normal for thousands of years - although in times of inflation or crisis it might become a little overvalued temporarily as people flee to its safety. One could switch to other precious metals like silver, but this happens to them too.
The best you can say is that gold is tangible, portable and universal. So you can bring it with you (often in the form of jewelry) as you flee, and it will likely return to value in some other time/place.
That hasn't been the case after the Dollar and all other currencies were unpegged from gold. Adjusted by inflation it has been a very volatile asset in the last 50 years:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Gold_pri...
The system was somewhat reasonable when the US acted more or less benevolent, but clearly when we're in a space where the US threatens to invade allies then they clearly are no longer trustworthy
It will surprise most Americans to realize the world is not governed by Liberalism/Institutions, despite the veil presented. However, at the highest level the world is managed by the principles of IR Realism.
'Trust' is subordinate to national interests, the purpose of trust is small, only enough to make deals. However, even then, deals are always backed by verification methods and checked consistently.
None of this is unique to the US, The West, or this century.
And the biggest of that is:
——
"Look, I don't know... I really don't know. We're talking about a country's gold, very valuable, very beautiful. And we might freeze it. Or we might not. I mean, who knows? It's a big decision, a very big decision. Some people say, 'Freeze it, Mr. President! It'll be great, the best!' Others, and good people, they say, 'Maybe not, maybe we do something else.' But I'll tell you what, I do like frozen things. They're nice. Very nice. You know, you freeze something, it's solid, it's secure. It's beautiful. It's really beautiful. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. It's all on the table. Believe me."
—-
And you’d still say itself far fetched? :-)
For any nation state, storage and security costs will be tiny compared to geopolitical risk and leverage they're giving away by storing it abroad.
Source: all that stolen wealth in WW2.
It really seems like one option here is best for maintaining the status quo with the existing government, whilst the other is best for the people of the nation.
Countries also keep cash funds at the NY Federal reserve too
At some point I have to wonder if this is even organic - especially given that companies like Upvote Club have openly advertised being able to bypass the bot detectors on HN. And nation state bots have occasionally been on HN - one similar nation state backed disinfo network that Meta cracked down on in 2023 was posting on HN as well.
acheong08•5h ago
I have doubts the current US administration would let them without some sort of retaliation (e.g. more tariffs)
reedf1•5h ago
PicassoCTs•4h ago
627467•4h ago
stackedinserter•4h ago
Arnt•4h ago
This isn't difficult.
hn14442•3h ago
roenxi•5h ago
The US has enough leverage over Germany that the Nord Stream incident is still an unsolved mystery where everyone just moved on. Probably the Russians did it. That's a lot of leverage.
niffydroid•4h ago
JyB•4h ago
owebmaster•4h ago
StefanBatory•4h ago
Our foreign minister for example in Poland, thanked USA for doing so :P I for example I'm happy NS2 got blown up, as it means relative safety for us. Germans won't be able to just go on about their business with Russia in the future.
belorn•3h ago
The Andromeda ship was operated by an Ukrainian national, and rented by a company from Uzbekistan, the owner of which holds a Russian and a Ukrainian passport which resident is located in the annexed Crimea.
In addition there are around 5 more ships that have been in the area.
There have been and still are multiple investigations. Sweden and Denmark dropped the cases citing lack of jurisdiction/basis to continue investigation. Germany issued an arrest warrant toward suspected operators of the Andromeda ship.
There was an alleged leaked Dutch intelligence report that implicated Ukrainians that was given to the The Washington Post, but military analysts from Sweden and Denmark has expressed strong doubts of the practicality of an 15.4-metre sailing boat to do a 80 meter technical dive using a crew of 6 to plant that much explosives (over 500kg) and at 3 different sites. As such they has described the Andromeda theory as a distraction and false flag.
holowoodman•4h ago
Knowledge or agreement by Selensky is unclear, but there seem to be hints. Poland might have been complicit or at least turned a blind eye and seems to have let a wanted suspect escape to Ukraine.
bluecalm•4h ago
petre•4h ago
dontlaugh•3h ago
vintermann•3h ago
pydry•4h ago
andy_ppp•4h ago
orbital-decay•4h ago
andy_ppp•2h ago
orbital-decay•1h ago
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/11/...
[2] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nord-stream-wie-e...
[3] https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos...
lovasoa•4h ago
ggm•4h ago
If of course it's just a bargaining tool, you would think there is a quit pro quo.
Whilst the impact of a refusal to repatriate would be high remember the gold is probably not performing very much of a role, beyond a defensive one, and is nothing like the whole of their stocks. And the cost to US standing in enacting a refusal to NATO allies would be significant: You would expect future gold deposits to seek safer harbours for one, and the retention of the dollar as a hedge currency would be called into even more question.
In any case, it's a matter for law. On what grounds could the US refuse?
bryanrasmussen•4h ago
yeah, I mean, this administration really doesn't seem to mind taking on significant costs - to the country I mean. I don't think the administration likes the idea of bearing significant costs themselves.
jeroenhd•4h ago
> On what grounds could the US refuse?
"You need our trade more than we need your trade" is a very useful property to have when it comes to international law. Putting people you don't like on sanction lists, like people investigating your ally's war crimes, also seems to work pretty well. When push comes to shove, there's always "we have more guns than you", though American diplomatic action generally prefers to overthrow governments and install new, more US-aligned leadership as a head of state.
If it's a matter of law, you need someone to enforce that law.
gsky•3h ago
delfinom•2h ago