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My favorite fact I learned just the other day is that gold held by the federal reserve is "on the books" at a value of $42.22 per troy ounce and would represent a sizable sum if valued at market rates. But since we'll never sell it I guess it doesn't matter much what we value it at.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/data/intlsumm/current.htm

It'd be a hilarious (though unlikely) situation if it turns out they lied about how much gold they had, but do have the value of gold that was claimed in the books.

FTX bankruptcy accounting.

Not sure it is that unlikely. They refuse to do an audit of the gold and have not done one in decades.

Fort Knox was not shown publicly since 1974

It matters a lot, it can make balance sheet look a bit better and therefore can help to reduce interest on treasury bills. I think and I'm almost sure Trump is not okay with the current rates.

> that gold held by the federal reserve is "on the books" at a value of $42.22 per troy ounce

Bizarre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYiR0Vh8Gjk explores that a bit.

And a bit of history: https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/koos-jansen/can-pretend-fo...

Huh, interesting. They claim to have $11B of gold but at market rates it's closer to $450B.

> Zachary Griffiths, head of investment grade and macro strategy at CreditSights Inc., said revaluing gold stocks “might be a viable consideration if we [the United States] had a debt problem, but we really have a deficit problem. It’s kind of crazy to say $800 to $900 billion doesn’t do a whole lot for us over the longer run, but it’s pretty much a fact.”

> Yawning fiscal deficits, currently nearly 7% of US gross domestic product, are one of the reasons investors flock to bullion to seek safety. That has helped drive gold prices to repeated record highs since last year. Total US federal debt held by the public now stands at nearly $29 trillion.

> “To use ‘a trick’ to try to plug at least the near-term deficit, I think the risk associated with that is far greater than any near-term benefit,” Griffiths said. “It seems desperate and shows an unwillingness to address the source of the problem, which is our outlays and revenues are way out of whack.” [1]

[1] “Wall Street Talk of Revaluing US Gold Is Drawing Attention — and Skepticism” by Jack Ryan, Yvonne Yue Li and Saleha Mohsin, February 13, 2025 (Bloomberg) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-talk-revaluing-us...

> I'm interpreting the situation as a revolt against US and British influence over the gold market as the productive capital moves to Asia

This doesn't make sense. If you think gold is the new dollar, this is a story about gold being flown into America. Mostly from Britain, because of historic financial ties, but also from elsewhere.

I was sneaking a generic comment in with context that has little to do with the article.

This article isn't particularly interesting on its own. Someone(s) wealthy thinks their physical gold is better off in the US than the UK. Cool. I wouldn't trust the UK with my gold either but it isn't clear what these wealthy people are thinking. There are some rumours that this is happening because of tariffs. That seems a bit weird; if the gold is happily stored in London then a tariff won't affect it - it'll still be in London. But whatever.

> if the gold is happily stored in London then a tariff won't affect it - it'll still be in London

People aren't taking gold out of London because they're scared about it being in the UK. They're taking it out because they can sell it for more in America. There is a price gap between physical gold in America and claims on gold outside it; that's the article's point.

America is a net importer of gold. Our top source of gold is Canada. If we put a 25% tariff on gold tomorrow, its cost would go up. Someone who brought in gold today would be able to sell it for more tomorrow. We know that today, so the price starts rising in anticipation of tariffs.

Put another way, if you can get gold into America on the eve of the tarriffs' rollouts you can capture some of the value of that tariff yourself.

But as far as I'm aware there are no gold tariffs, there has been no announcement of gold tariffs, any new general tariffs might have an exception for gold and the tariffs we've seen to date aren't even that big - gold already has years where the price goes up 25%. There also isn't a reason for Trump to put a tariff on gold; that won't help the US - there'll be a couple of gold bugs who can't afford as much gold and not much else changing.

It could be preparation for a tariff. But it might not be.

> there are no gold tariffs, there has been no announcement of gold tariffs, any new general tariffs might have an exception for gold

They might or they might not. I'm not going to defend the market's rationale. I won't even confidently pin tariffs as the reason for the price difference.

What is factually certain is that there is a price difference in the global metals market that is sucking physical gold into America. London has a big, liquid gold market that's tightly tied to New York; herego, we see the ripples there clearest.

This has nothing to do with BRICS or people de-risking from dollars. And it makes no sense for it to be a revolt against American influence over the gold market; the gold is being flown to America and paid for with dollars.

> isn't a reason for Trump to put a tariff on gold

Canada. Would be weird to exempt gold of all things.

I'm imagining a literal liquid gold market.

> This has nothing to do with BRICS

The things happening in the gold market might be related to the largest players in the gold market. It seems too early to rule that out. We don't know exactly what is happening here.

> Canada

I very much doubt that tariffs on Canada are a factor in the UK->US movements; it'd need to be a tariff on gold specifically. If the tariff is on Canadian gold, why would they need to slip English vaulted gold (presumably of all sorts of origins) in before the tariff barrier comes down? It'd be more sensible to wait until the tariffs are a known quantity and fly the gold in on demand.

The market price does that sort of logic on autopilot. If the price differential is enough to have European gold re-vaulted the market has to foresee something bigger than a Canadian tariff. Otherwise the price differential would be just enough to justify moving Canadian gold in early, but not enough to justify flying gold over the Atlantic.

> This has nothing to do with BRICS or people de-risking from dollars.

I think it indicates Americans are derisking. Buying gold and taking delivery could be a vote of no-confidence in both dollars and paper-gold.

There wasn't a reason for the Canada tariff proposal in the first place, and yet it happened - doing lasting damage to US-Canada relations despite being quickly reversed.

“Reversed” seems premature, we'll presumably know in a couple weeks whether the “pause” will stick.

Not even European countries have tariffs or taxes on bullion. Putting a tariff on gold would be like putting a tariff on foreign currency or a tariff on stock market investments. Highly unlikely to happen.

re: #3 a lot of the recent reporting (usually citing 'world gold council') points out that most of the large central bank purchasers are some combination of russian commodity purchasers, intertwined with the russian economy, or might otherwise want insulation from relying on USD for international exchange.

Because of that I'd also clarify/quibble on the 'confiscation' aspect. I expect the larger motivation is freezing russian entities out of SWIFT and dollar denominated banks. That interrupts foreign transactions even more than losing access to reserve capital.

PS: I dont think anyone's moved beyond freezing access to existing russian assets, eg disputing rightful ownership, yet.

>I dont think anyone's moved beyond freezing access to existing russian assets, eg disputing rightful ownership, yet.

They "just" appropriate "profits" from those assets, which effectively means inflationary erasure of purchasing power on the scale of several billions per year, and use assets to back Ukrainian loans with everyone's tacit understanding of future prospects of those loans.

> ...are some combination of russian commodity purchasers, intertwined with the russian economy, or might otherwise want insulation from relying on USD for international exchange.

I'm going to twiddle my thumbs for another year or two before even looking up data because the Ukraine war will be obscuring the trends - but that phrase could be describing all of Asia and most of Europe as far as I know. A lot of people trade with Russia. "want insulation from relying on USD for international exchange" could even include US citizens.

> I expect the larger motivation...

Do those aspects affect gold though; it seems like it'd maybe affect the crypto markets and international diplomacy. Scenarios where gold is used for everyday transactions still seem a bit far fetched to me. It seems more likely that people would trade in local currencies. Maybe, I suppose.

Reserve confiscation is something that the central banks have to worry about more directly and they tend to be gold holders.

>It seems more likely that people would trade in local currencies

Use of local currencies is certainly on the rise, but the problem is lack of bilateral financial trust caused by various factors, including capital controls. There is the recent example of Russian companies being unable to get rupee-denominated profits out of India, they had either to buy something from India or invest money there. China is also quite strict with its onshore RNB flows which is multiplied by risks of secondary US sanctions.

Honestly, I am really surprised that BRICS+ countries haven't yet developed a gold-based settlement system centered around central bank reserves. My main guess: such system would work fine with a more or less balanced trade, but many countries intentionally pursue the export-oriented model, which would work poorly with such system.

BRICS currency will not happen because China holds all the cards while keeping RMB non convertible. It's a charade with the only goal to piss of US a bit

> BRICS currency will not happen because China holds all the cards

More than that, like half of the BRICS have threatened to shoot at or actually shot at each other in the last decade [1]. A BRICS currency is like America proposing a currency union with North Korea.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS Egypt & Ethiopia, UAE & Iran, India & China, et cetera

Physical gold is a common middle and upper middle class method of transferring internationally and protecting wealth. (Feel free to read that as tax evasion or money laundering - in these situations it’s often a matter of perspective)

If you’re trying to do it with millions of dollars equivalent, it’s not great but functions. $100k+? Very common, and remarkably easy compared to other options. During times of great social upheaval and war, it’s often about the only option that works historically.

It doesn’t really help the ultra wealthy as much, unless you’re talking nations during wartime type situations, due to physical logistics and security problems.

And the poor can’t afford anything anyway, so this kind of thing isn’t exactly a problem for them.

Gold permabulls crack me up

Missing out on gains in every macroeconomic environment, QE, ZIRP, NIRP, rate hikes, deflation

to finally get a little rally that rewards their multiple decades of dollar cost averaging

all while apparently central banks have been hoarding it endlessly for twenty years and you’d think that would be the bull case to the stratosphere

but nope. anyway enjoy the all time highs. just needed threat of tariffs all along

> Missing out on gains in every macroeconomic environment, QE, ZIRP, NIRP, rate hikes, deflation

People who had 10% of their wealth in gold before 1929 only lost at most 30% of their wealth, something insane like that (losing 30% when nearly everybody loses all their savings is quite a feat).

I don't know if goldbugs and gold permabulls are literally only stockpiling gold coins and gold bars.

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if most gold permabulls only had 10% of their wealth in gold.

And if anything I've noticed when talking to people that most who like gold actually consider the USD and EUR to be toilet paper: it's not so much that they're goldbugs, but they're "anything that's not toilet paper bugs".

So from what I've seen those who bought gold overlap a lot with those who bought digital gold (aka Bitcoin).

I'm not sure who missed on gains here.

Exactly, gold reduces risk in ways no other asset can. It’s a preservation of wealth tool.

One thing we know about low risk investments —- they have low returns.

The basic trend in the gold market is it is in flux

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