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Ok, bear with me for a moment - what if the US would use actual physical gold coins instead of dollars? Then your argument of "gold would flow out" would not hold - so the only reason for it to flow out was that the gold standard was fake - the lax money policy of the US was the issue, not the gold standard itself.

All the facts are true here, but "design defect" is silly. The entire purpose was to keep a country like the US from exploiting its position, and becoming the "world's reserve currency" which is just a euphemism for running up massive debts to poorer states.

Bretton Woods was sabotaged by the US and the USSR through the single vehicle of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White. Without a Bancor, the entire system simply became a mechanism to exploit the poor.

I agree with you that Bretton Woods was doomed from the beginning, both Keynes and Friedman said so, and this should be a better known POV. Economists are not historians though, and historians write human-driven stories (i.e., it was Nixon who ended Bretton Woods, it's not that it was going to inevitably collapse as an econometric question).

All that said, Bretton Woods matters because people look at the gold standard as a time when wages in the United States rose. Like that's why Bernie Bros on HN care. It's the same reason they oppose globalization: me me me. So it's worth knowing why it was flawed. They don't comprehend that before and after Bretton Woods, hourly wage charts measured a fundamentally different thing.

I think it's better to attack the charts - I mean, you're responding to a Charts Guy, a guy who's like, look at this Gold Denominated Chart guy - because that's what their brains work on. Don't worry about economics. These guys are not economists. They are Charts. The real attack on their worldview is that, well, just because the year in the X axis is an increasing, doesn't mean that you can compare a bigger year to a smaller year. They would really like the world to be ordered that way, but it's not, and taking leadership on convincing them of that is very hard.

Gold is very dense. 10 Tonnes of gold takes up less than a cubic meter of volume.

Moving tonnes of gold doesn’t look like huge pallets of gold with tarps over them like a James Bond movie. It looks like a handful of supply crates.

I imagine that the French Navy visits NY ports of a regular basis. Pretty normal for Navy’s to sail into the ports of allies during peace time. There would be nothing unusual about a French Navy vessel sailing into NY loading up with some supplies and leaving.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=10tonnes+of+gold

I seem to be having more luck with French language sources, mostly the Bank of France records. From what I can tell the shipping was done mostly commercially with some later by air[1]. Reportedly De Gaulle was frustrated with the speed of change wanted to use the Colbert warship but was dissuaded by the minister of finance.[2]

[1]https://archives-historiques.banque-france.fr/ark:/56433/115...

[2]https://www.lesechos.fr/finance-marches/banque-assurances/st...

> I couldn’t find any clear news source or academic reference to that event.

It happened though. Here are the sources for it:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock#Criticism_and_decl...

- https://www.thegoldobserver.com/p/how-france-secretly-repatr...

- https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/1994/128/arti...

As a French speaker, I looked up French sources and found https://www.lesechos.fr/finance-marches/banque-assurances/st... - here is a snippet translated to English below. But many more references can be found by googling "opération vide-gousset".

1963: Operation Empty-the-purse ("vide-gousset")

It was also by warship that De Gaulle planned to conduct "Operation Empty-the-purse" in 1963, the code name for the repatriation of French gold deposited at Fort Knox in the United States (1). More than 1,150 tons—the result of converting French dollars into gold, a decision made by De Gaulle in response to the lax monetary policy of the United States—were being used to finance a growing trade deficit through the printing of money.

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, then Minister of Finance, recounts (2): "De Gaulle was getting impatient and asked me at every meeting: 'So, has that gold finally come back?' One day, he told me: 'We need to move much faster: we're going to send the navy cruiser 'Colbert' which will bring back all the gold that's still there.'" “I told him that if we did that, we would alienate American public opinion forever.” Ultimately, De Gaulle abandoned the Colbert plan, and French gold returned from the United States in small quantities. Not for very long, it's true. The events of May 1968 and the ensuing monetary crisis depleted the reserves, which fell from 4,650 tons to 3,150 – 1,500 tons had crossed the Atlantic again to defend the franc, which De Gaulle refused to devalue.

https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...

Whether the exact ship was a battleship or a destroyer might make the search result.

https://www.helleniscope.com/2025/07/31/august-1971-the-day-...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/august-15-1971_b_4284327

One armored car can carry a ton of gold. If they left and drove to the closest US Navy port, where the French ship would dock. it wouldn't raise eyebrows.

Just like the majority of the classical economists and policymakers, you would call him a blithering idiot and overzealous nationalist two decades ago. It was thought that this kind of behavior caused world-wars. I mean it did cause them. It is just we're speed running the next one that changed the narrative.

The whole of international politics is the real rules vs the unwritten rules.

Nitpick, but France never left NATO proper, only the integrated command, and reintegrated it in 2008 under Sarkozy.

> to build an independent French nuclear program

For which France was helped by the UK, so it certainly would make sense if France helped the europe and uk to build its own nuclear deterrence.

He also called Brexit before the UK had even joined.

France is currently contacting selected partners to build a collective nuclear weapon coalition, probably focusing on Norway due to their location and recent oil wealth. Given recent events, reasonable people may disagree strongly on the directions that is leading.

Certainly debatable.

De Gaulle started this 'policy' in 1965 and it's mainly the current leadership situation that's been a problem—60 years later. So to a certain extent the policy in question was 'wrong' for decades. How "right" can you really consider them when it was a problem year after year, decade after decade:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Penny

It reminds me of the folks that keep saying there will be a major crash on Wall Street year after year after year… and then it just happens to be occur.

* https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2023/12/rich-author-poor-re...

Time to make the "De Gaulle was Right about everything" baseball cap.

Underrated comment

"I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."

Is the logic that it's "unrealised" while the gold is stored in the US but becomes "realised" once it is stored in Paris? Why?

A gain of $15b? That's roughly the value of 100 metric tons of gold, remarkably close to the 129 tons that the article says was moved... did they double the value of their gold?

but you sold it...

(I know share rehypothication exists, but it shouldn't)

If it were that simple, the gain would be much more. Gold sold at $35/troy ounce then; over $4000 now.

EDIT: Wow, gold prices!

They can be melted and brought to the modern standard, which is what they did with the rest of their holdings on the old continent. They sold these only because it was cheaper than transporting it.

The article even says exactly that:

"Due to rising gold prices, the move helped the bank to generate a capital gain of 13 billion euros ($15 billion), bringing it to a net profit of 8.1 billion euros for the 2025 financial year after a net loss of 7.7 billion euros in 2024."

I would have thought the audience here would understand something as straight forward as a capital gain.

Capital gain and losses are when you need to pay taxes. If you sold 100K of SPY that you bought for 10K actually, and bought it back (It is a gain so there is no wash sale) immediately, you need to pay taxes for $90K. This is just an exchange based on the comments I am reading.

What is the benefit of realizing the gains for France? They had gold, they still have gold. They don't pay tax on their gold or gains.

I think the GP was saying that there was no gain. France has the same amount of gold they did last week. The whole article is like saying "holy shit, france has the exact same amount of wealth they did last week!"

Imagine they bought the gold in the US for 1b and sold for 16b. Yes they turned around and purchased 16b of order gold immediately but there's was still a transaction where they sold an asset for more than they bought it.

First thought: Maybe they bought the gold first? Or the gold price was at a temporary high when they sold it?

Second thought: The numbers don't seem to check out: 129t are 4,147,456.307 troy ounces (1 troy ounce = 31.1034768 g). The total gains of 15e9 USD would thus correspond to gains of $3,616.68 per troy ounce, which seems excessively high, given that today's gold price is at ~$4,712. Even if they sold everything at the current all-time high of $5,589.38 on January 28 (and that's a big if), they would have had to buy for not more than $1,972.70, a price we last had in fall 2023.

They must have had an exceptional crystal ball!

Gold is down 10+% since its recent peak. They likely sold then and repurchased later.

Dumpling $15B on the market should lead to a drop. Anyway, the gold price is not always going up.

Gold prices probably went up due to turmoil in middle east.

That makes more sense, thank you! Though do gold assets on the books really never get adjusted? I guess that's up the central bank to decide but I would find it surprising.

The gold price is fluctuating. It doesn't always go up.

Sell at high, buy at low?

Same amount of gold was sold and bought. So, presumably not.

That accent somehow migrated two characters too far.

True connoisseurs prefer the metal from Lingots.

The French gold originally deposited by France in US reserves in the 1950s was of the exact same purity as the French gold now, what is meant by "non-standard" just means "not stored in France".

If it was a lower purity, then when they sold the 129 tons, they would not have obtained 129 tons of "higher purity" gold and still turned a profit. They would have gotten fewer tons of gold. Your logic has the wrong sign.

Also, the fact that gold prices are rising means when France sold the gold and then purchased it later, the higher price to obtain the same quantity of gold would mean they incurred a loss, not a profit. Here, too, your sign is wrong.

Finally, at current prices, 129 tons of gold is worth $19 Billion dollars in total. It seems hard to believe that short term price declines (which is what is needed to turn a profit) would be such that gold fell over 80% in value, which is what would be needed to sell 129 tons of gold, then wait a while and buy 129 tons of gold, and end up with a profit equal to over 80% of the price of gold in question.

Moreover, rising gold prices would cause the French to earn a loss, not a profit

> As the price of gold continued to rise as they did this,

Seems counterintuitive to me. This would only make gains when they bought the new gold before selling the old, or when there's some arbitrage going on between Gold/USD, Gold/EUR and USD/EUR.

If they first sold the old for USD, then bought the new for USD, with a rising gold price, they'd miss the price-gain during the time between the trades, when they held the USD. It'd be a loss, not a gain.

If there's some arbitrage going on, then I highly doubt that brings $15B gain. The differences would have to be huge.

I think the (author (AI)) writing that article is simply mixing up stuff. I think this gain is not a cause-effect of the conversion, merely the gains from rising gold prices on the gold it holds over that period.

I don't understand this. Did they increase the overall amount of gold they held?

The profit is just realizing the gains (resetting the cost basis for accounting purpose).

But that statue would rotate to face the sun!

If Turkmenistan can have it, why not the US?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Monument

(Though it no longer rotates.)

Maybe the fact that US soldiers and military bases exist inside Germany's borders is slightly more important than where the gold is. First regain your sovereignty, I'd say.

US also has gold reserves and investments in Germany. They can be seized.

I’m pretty sure Trump thought or heard mention of Minchin (first Trump Treasury Secretary) visit to Fort Knox in 2017 recent to that comment and just blurted out the first thing that came to his mind - like most of his off the cuff remarks, it doesn’t make any sense on close examination but appeals to MAGA supporters.

It's a trust issue. And trust and competence are inextricably linked.

Most of us with career-track jobs use electronic deposit to an account at a bank, and keep things there. The account is "yours", and the trust is established over time--most people using most banks continue having access to their deposit of record most of the time. When that fails, you get a bank run--which is systemically undesirable, but also ends with people not having "their" money. They thought it was theirs, but it turned out not to be.

If your bank started publishing poorly-written notices about how they'd terminate accounts and retain holdings for certain customers based on arbitrary behavior, and kept changing that definition, would you leave "your" money there--even if the only alternative were to purchase precious metals and lock them up yourself?

Russia's frozen assets probably were considered safe by the similar calculations. Everything is safe until it is not.

If you search Google for "France sells US gold for 13b euro gain" you'll find lots of results. The reasons provided across the various articles are:

1. The bars were of an old variety and therefore not standard tradable.

2. Transporting them, refining them, and recasting exceed the cost of selling kind #1 and obtaining kind #2

Here's one such link though it appears there's some primary source everyone is rewriting: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20260404-french-central-bank-ne...

It appears that the gain mentioned is a realization of their asset value. I would also speculate that what happened is that they wanted LBMA bars because those are a standard variety and therefore easily tradable. An arbitrary LBMA bar is generally fungible. I would also speculate that they held many bars in the US from ancient times. After 2008, they repatriated 200-ish tonnes and 'upgraded' them (which I would speculate again is 'ensured they were LBMA-standard').

https://www.moneymetals.com/news/2024/10/05/why-france-repat...

These articles all have the flavour of the game of telephone common in this style of article where the currency that the gain is in changes wording, the motivation seems to shift, and phrasing lacks real detail instead relying on 'upgrading' and 'refining'.

I wish there were a good LLM agent that were capable of tracing all this back to the real original source that spawned all these things, but the information environment is currently full of smoke and getting real news is quite hard.

I can't realistically conclude whether this was politically motivated or not. The original motivation is sufficiently strong on its own, but it is completely normal for governments to move something to be earlier, or to do a marginal thing if there is other gain.

They started the process in 2005 [1]. The goal has been to upgrade all their goal to modern purity standards (99.999% purity). The repatriation to France may have been done for national security reasons, but not political as in ideological.

[1] https://www.banque-france.fr/fr/actualites/resultats-2025-de...

> BdF Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau said the decision to keep the new bars in Paris is “not politically motivated,” as the higher-standard gold bars it bought were traded on a European market.

Reading the article is what made him say that.

Oh yes that's what I mean. I don't like calling it the Netherlands.