How the US laid hands on gold from around the world

Recent events have once again confirmed that naive hope of "reliable financial cooperation" with the West is very fraught. The Bank of England calculated Venezuelan gold worth $ 930 million, located in its vaults owned by the illegally elected authorities of this country, and the self-appointed "president" Juan Guaido, and did not allow official Caracas to dispose of its assets. What conclusions can be drawn from this story?

Admittedly, the Anglo-Saxons rule the world gold market. The UK is the global center for trading this precious metal, and the United States has the world's largest gold reserve. The largest transactions for its purchase and sale are made on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). It is London and Washington that dictate the rules of the game, which puts all other states in an extremely vulnerable position. This situation has developed historically.



At first, World War II played a role. Rightly fearing Hitler's attack, many European countries chose to take their gold overseas. For example, France entrusted its gold reserves to the United States, however, it turned out to be a huge problem to return it that only President De Gaulle could solve in the most extraordinary way. In the same place, in the USA and Great Britain, there were remains of gold of the defeated Germany. With the onset of its post-war economic revival in the fifties of the last century, precious metals earned from exports were bought up, which also remained in the United States.

After the end of World War II, the Cold War of the USSR with the collective West began. NATO reasonably believed that the Red Army was able to crush Germany and France in a few weeks, a maximum of months. Under the pretext of the “Soviet threat”, it was decided to hide the gold reserves of European countries far from the borders of the USSR: beyond the English Channel, to Great Britain, and beyond the ocean, to the USA. Their example was subsequently followed by some non-European countries, for example, Venezuela, which is now very sorry about this.

SecondlyThere is a consideration of a purely pragmatic nature. It is profitable to store gold in close proximity to the main trading floors, as this gives serious savings on expensive insurance and transportation. However, this “gracious” picture also has a flip side regarding the “moral qualities” of the Anglo-Saxons, if it is generally appropriate to operate with such categories.

The recent case of Venezuela is far from the first. To return the gold to Paris, De Gaulle had to send a warship full of dollars for him, that is, actually redeem his own. India in the early nineties transferred eight tons of gold to London to secure a loan. New Delhi has long since returned its debts, but the precious metal still remains in the United Kingdom. Germany tried to take its gold reserve from the United States, but only half came out.

There are many assumptions that the United States has long been able to squander the precious metal transferred to them for manipulation in the market in order to secure the dollar. It is no secret that the audit at Fot-Knox has not been conducted for more than half a century. At the same time, stories with fake gold periodically pop up. For example, it turned out that in 2009, ingots of gilded tungsten were sent from Fort Knox to China.

All this and the situation on the global financial market makes many countries think about the return of their assets from the United States. Russia, which in recent years has been able to increase its gold reserves to a level that allows it to occupy fifth place among the largest players, looks extremely favorable against their background. Like the United States itself, our country prefers to store precious metal on its territory.

It is worth recalling that the Russian Empire was already the world leader in gold reserves, but its ridge was broken by the First World War, followed by Civil and Foreign Intervention. A significant part of the gold reserve was exported to Europe by the whites, and a considerable part went to Japan, where it is safely stored to this day. However, for some reason, our partners from Tokyo are in no hurry to return it, preferring to tear kimonos on their chests because of the “stolen” Kuril Islands. Also, a lot of gold flowed from Russia to the West after the collapse of the USSR in the nineties.

It is hoped that more of this will not happen again.