FRESH

Hacker News

Home

France pulls last gold held in US

610 points by teleforce

by u1hcw9nx

8 subcomments

>However, an operation to repatriate its gold holdings began in the 1960s leading up to the US termination of the Bretton Woods system, which effectively stopped foreign governments from exchanging dollars for gold.
French-US monetary history after WWII:
Under the Bretton Woods agreement (1944-1971), the US dollar was the world’s reserve currency, and it was pegged to gold at $35 per ounce. Other countries pegged their currencies to the dollar.
around 1965, De Gaulle initiated a systematic, aggressive policy where they converted USD into physical gold every time French acquired USD from trade, then French Navy picked those gold bullions from NY. By 1971, the US gold reserves had decreased so much that they did not cover the dollars circulating globally and Nixon "closed the gold window,"

by cladopa

14 subcomments

This is not gain at all. At least in theory: You own some tons of gold at the start of the process, you have the same tons of gold at the end of the process.
The only real gain is that you have gold in the US custody and the US can be tempted to just use it without telling you anything.
In other words, you had "paper gold" or "virtual gold" that the US can confiscate anytime, for example after invading Greenland, blackmailing France to do nothing.
You gain custody of what is yours.

by codethief

7 subcomments

Is anyone here actually reading the article? Yes, they really made a gain of $15B:
> But instead of refining and transporting the gold, it opted to sell the bars and purchase new bullion in Europe. […] Due to rising gold prices, the move helped the bank to generate a capital gain of 13 billion euros ($15 billion),

by shin_lao

1 subcomments

This article is poorly written. No new wealth was created.
They monetized an existing accounting/revaluation gain by selling older, non-standard bars and replacing them with compliant bars, while keeping the overall gold quantity unchanged. That is not the same as "we moved gold home and earned $15B on the move."
In simple terms:
- You buy x of gold at $10
- You sell it much later for $100
- You made a profit of $90, and you hold $100 of cash
- You rebuy x of gold for $100, back to the same gold exposure, but on the books, you have $90 of profit

by carefree-bob

8 subcomments

Good for France to relocate gold back to their own territory, but, uh, how can this result in a 15 B gain?
"The overall size of France’s gold reserves still remained unchanged at roughly 2,437 tonnes, which are now entirely held at the BdF’s underground vault in La Souterraine."
Is this some special form of French accounting, where the gold becomes more valuable when it returns to French soil?

by tonfa

1 subcomments

On that topic, video about the underground vault: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txyKenOq5Pw

by rstarast

0 subcomment

This seems to be the source article (Reuters, March 24): https://www.reuters.com/business/french-central-bank-books-1...

by KingOfCoders

4 subcomments

Germany also needs to pull all gold. We have 1236t there.

by Arubis

1 subcomments

Not your keys, not your coins.

by jt2190

0 subcomment

> 2. Improvement in income from non-monetary activities
> Net income from assets denominated in euro rose by EUR 2 billion, driven by an increase in outstandings. Income from assets held for own account rose by EUR 12.2 billion as a result of an exceptional item. In 2025 and at the start of 2026, while the volume of gold reserves remained unchanged, the Banque de France had to align a residual portion (5%) with technical guidelines, resulting in a significant realised currency gain. This exceptional foreign exchange income totalled EUR 11 billion for 2025.
> Net operating expenditure remained under control, falling to EUR 831 million from EUR 888 million in 2024. Since 2015, net operating expenditure has fallen by an average of 4.1% in volume terms.
> Overall, after transferring EUR 5 billion from reserves and booking a corporation tax charge of EUR 1.5 billion, net profit for 2025 totalled EUR 8.1 billion.
> A total of EUR 0.4 billion of this amount has been allocated to the special reserve, in accordance with regulations, while the remainder has been used to clear the deficit in retained earnings (EUR 7.7 billion) that was left after the allocation of the net loss in 2024
> After clearing these past losses in their entirety, the Banque de France’s net equity – comprised of own funds plus unrealised capital gains on asset holdings – is now extremely solid at EUR 283.4 billion, up from EUR 202.7 billion in 2024. The Banque de France’s net equity includes a revaluation reserve of state gold and foreign exchange reserves (RRRODE) of EUR 11.4 billion, to cover future monetary expenses
I assume that this increased equity makes selling bonds a bit easier?
From: “Net profit of EUR 8.1 billion, enabling the clearing of losses carried forward” https://www.banque-france.fr/en/press-release/net-profit-eur...

by PowerElectronix

1 subcomments

I doubt the claim, honestly. Such an institution would never buy and sell to trade the market, they probably never stopped being exposed to gold by buying and selling simultaneously and the 15b is the realized gain of the sold gold, which is only in paper as they still hold the gold.

by hackerbeat

1 subcomments

Good. The US is not to be trusted anymore.

by didgetmaster

0 subcomment

I wonder if someone in Fance recently saw the Die Hard movie where thieves robbed the Federal Reserve Bank in NY.

by BrtByte

1 subcomments

Feels like one of those stories where the headline makes it sound geopolitical, but the details are mostly about accounting and logistics

by RobotToaster

1 subcomments

At least they got their gold this time.
The last time they asked for their gold back Nixon "temporarily" ended the convertibility of the USD to gold.

0 subcomment

by fenykep

0 subcomment

Site doesn't load for me. https://archive.is/ePH8u

by happyPersonR

0 subcomment

lol at all the finance folks
This isn’t reddit. This is a technical forum. We talk about cool tech stuff.

by gtsnexp

1 subcomments

The "BdF’s underground vault in La Souterraine" sounds profoundly interesting.

by trwhite

0 subcomment

When is it correct to use “tonnes” or “tons”?

by jmyeet

0 subcomment

The funny thing about this is that since 1945, France keeps and uses the majority of the gold reserves of 14 former French colonies in West and Central Africa and uses that power to make them use the CFA Franc, a currency pegged formerly to the French Franc but now of course to the Euro [1].
It's worth noting that the stated reason here isn't because of, say, US instability but rather "standardizing" the gold. It doesn't say what that means but I assume France is basically selling some New York held nonstandard gold to "standard" gold held in France. "Standard" here probably means a given size and purity. Yes, there are different purity levels to gold. So think the heavy bullion bars you see on movies.
[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-the-france-backed-afr...

by fasdfplasjk5425

1 subcomments

Looks like we're at the beginning of
FBRICS

by dev1ycan

0 subcomment

Charles de Gaulle was such an incredible man, nearly 60 years after his death he still keeps influencing the direction of France (for the better)

by aucisson_masque

6 subcomments

Not done for political reasons.

by barkingcat

0 subcomment

good target for the Louvre thieves!

by TacticalCoder

0 subcomment

$15 B gains... Just to put things in perspective: France has a GDP of about 3.5 trillion USD and a public debt of 117% of that amount. $15 B is not even a drop in the bucket.
To add to France's problem: in 2024 the PIB growth was 1.2%, which doesn't even counter inflation. And it's been like that since 2008: inflation adjusted in USD, no growth (while both the US and China's GDP inflation-adjusted skyrocketed).
The EU, and the eurozone in particular, is totally losing the plot: 1 company in the top 50 companies by market cap, ASML (and it's not french).
One.

by wolvoleo

1 subcomments

We in Holland should do the same but our government (especially the right wing VVD) adores the US so they never bothered :(

by shevy-java

1 subcomments

Considering how Project2025 declared Europeans as enemy, it really is time to focus on more reliable partners than the current (and most likely future) USA version. Trump is a war-president - when he babbles about what Project2025 tells him to say, he stumbles over his own lies increasingly so, most likely because his brain no longer works that well. The recent "we can not extend health care and social care because we must wage wars" was kind of a slip-up of the real agenda - not that this is a real secret either, but even folks who voted for Trump thinking he cares about him (as if billionaires care about other people ever), should now realise the path the USA has decided to walk. ICE shooting down US citizens also show this - you protest, you get shot.

by Alexzoofficial

0 subcomment

[dead]

0 subcomment

by picsao

0 subcomment

[dead]

by renewiltord

0 subcomment

[flagged]