• thelastgallon 4 minutes ago

Any country that keeps gold in US or dollar reserves may end up looking very foolish. Sanctions and asset (financial and real) forfeitures coming soon to a country near you.

The simplest and easiest geopolitical strategy that is available to any country: switch completely to renewables (solar, maybe wind), EVs, green hydrogen/ammonia and synthetic fuels. Keep out of oil and natural gas. Keep out of dollar system. Any country can be immune to geopolitical drama, dollar shenanigans. Remember China has export restrictions on oil. When things get tough, most of the oil countries (with refining capacity to export) are going to have export restrictions. Thats the only way to deal with the mobs in their own country.

From: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KPq7jyQcemA

Richard Campbell: Politicians aren’t going to do things that aren’t popular, so we have to make these solutions popular for there to be a chance to build political will.

Richard Campbell: Corporations are inherently conservative, and power companies doubly so. Until there is a public groundswell demanding these changes, they won’t act. It’s up to us to make enough noise and show that these are good solutions worth pushing forward.

• hurril 2 minutes ago

Easiest. If that is the easiest way you see I am afraid to ask what the harder alternatives would be.

• Alien1Being 27 minutes ago

Because keeping your national gold reserves in a Mafia state run by a arbitrary kleptocratic elite is a very bad idea.

At this point international trust in the USA is at around the same level as trust in Iran and Russia .

China handily beats the USA in the trust rankings in most of the world.

• kristopolous 19 minutes ago

and it's going to be like that for decades unless november there's a broad sweep of offices and the other party actually exercises power for once and prosecutes politicians criminal behavior instead of that infuriating clemency nonsense they always do.

I'm betting they'll get elected and then sit on their hands as hard as possible calling it a "return to normalcy", fight their constituency, insist on doing absolutely nothing, and then get kicked right back out 2 years later and whine about people not voting for them.

• mzhaase 15 minutes ago

As a European, that would change nothing for me. The issue is systemic disinformation, fundamental lack of empathy and all those echo chambers. As long as this exists, the current situation will repeat or get worse.

• mdp2021 15 minutes ago

> november

Have the Dem restored "appealing" and leadership?

--

Edit: look, see? About the barbarity of sniping (the counterargument to the at least two hitters at time of edit is not the post from lyu07282). My post is obvious and direct - friend of mine met only days ago a minor intellectual stating that voting the current administration in the usa was "right" given the opponents, and it is one of a long series of encounters. That the acquaintances of the friend were insulted or not in response is irrelevant. That a regime gave power to another out of evident faults is a fact, and if the reaction of some is ventral - "oooh! boo!" - the highway downwards remains paved.

• lyu07282 11 minutes ago

The DSA is pretty much the only hope democrats have left to restore any amount of credibility and they are fought by pretty much everybody right now.

• mschuster91 4 minutes ago

> and it's going to be like that for decades unless in like november or so there's a broad sweep of offices and the other party actually exercises power for once and prosecutes politicians criminal behavior instead of that infuriating clemency nonsense they always do.

European here. I've written about that on Reddit but can't find it because the search there is dogshit so I'll have to write from memory...

We will not trust the US again any time soon, and so is our position regarding the UK. What both of you did, and especially how you got there, is an appalling history, a tale of a completely subverted democracy, and most importantly of a system that never got forced to be updated to centuries of learnings, unlike virtually all developed countries who underwent sometimes multiple wars, revolutions or the occasional peaceful democratisation.

Before we trust you again, you must undergo what we Germans had to post-1945. You have to update your constitutions, yeet out the fossil crap that in no small part led to the situation (FPTP voting, media regulations, in the case of the US making voting either a holiday or move it to Sunday like everyone else), prosecute not just the corrupt politicians but also the oligarchs that backed them, introduce an educational system that is actually worth the name to prevent the youth being corrupted, and demonstrate for many years that you can be trusted again.

Trust is easy to tear apart. All you need is a buffoon shitting in his own diapers [1] or a bus littered with propaganda [2] and a dumbass uneducated populace. But it takes decades and/or immense suffering to (re)build.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_Leave_bus

• Keyframe 4 minutes ago

I'm more interested in why was it centralized (there) in the first place? So it's easier to trade where when you make a sell/buy IOU is exchanged and a sticker on the bar is put or a bar changes pallet? I'd kind of understand that except these are central banks - how often do they even trade gold? Since we're in 2026, I actually googled that last question and it turns out central banks trade or adjust their gold reserve on a monthly basis. Somehow the thought of that seemed to me as too much of a high frequency trading for a central bank :)

• raffraffraff 17 minutes ago

I suppose it could turn very bearish in the next few years?

Something always occurs to me whenever I think about climate change. I think, "What is prosperity?" and the answers are mainly centered on stability and security. Not "stock market" stability, or "national security" but...

Weather stability (floods, droughts, severe storms that lead to crop loss or yield reduction, wildfires, power outages and destruction).

Food and energy security (crop loss or low yields leading to scarcity, food / gas / electric price increases etc)

When I think about my family I think: first priority is to guarantee shelter, food and basic comforts. Everything after that is important of course, but without those three things, it all tastes like ashes. I can't pretend to be happy without stability.

We can pretend that AI and GoogleAds are a great way to measure "prosperity" but in reality, if there's a threat to the basics, we can't pretend to be prosperous. "Value" can be destroyed very quickly when the foundations are gone.

I don't have any more detail than that. I'm a lowly infrastructure engineer. I don't go any deeper than those shower thoughts.

But is Europe looking at the state of the world and pulling it's reserves closer-to?

• cc62cf4a4f20 an hour ago

Because America can’t be trusted.

• eastbound an hour ago

Yes.

Also to note, why was the US trusted before? I think it's a heritage from the Marshall plan: The US saved us twice from Germany, therefore we owe them our nations and storing our gold there won't change much. A century later, it does.

I'd rephrase the question as: Would you trust your parents? In childhood years probably, because you owe them your education anyway.

• deepsun an hour ago

And because of the very convenient geographical location USA is unlikely to be invaded. You'd want your gold to be safe.

• kergonath 14 minutes ago

> Also to note, why was the US trusted before?

Trust was never absolute. What we trusted was that the US would act rationally to further their interests. The US benefited tremendously from economic development across the world (industrialisation, free trade, rebuilding after the wars, etc). Sometimes the US government miscalculated (like in Iraq), but there was nothing really destructive like what Trump is doing.

Even when we disagreed we could still talk things through and agree on other things. Now, you have Trump insulting allies and praising ennemies every day. Of course there is no trust.

• rjzzleep an hour ago

I think you should look up the Morgenthau plan and look at the state of Germany today. Of course people will say that it's all because of Germany's own decisions. To which I would counter that Germany doesn't any sovereign decisions and the last time it did that was in 2011.

• mschuster91 3 minutes ago

> I think you should look up the Morgenthau plan and look at the state of Germany today.

That plan never got implemented.

• lovich 44 minutes ago

I mean, we were trusted but also not fully.

This isnt the first time European powers repatriated gold from the US. In 1971 France sent their navy to take their gold back because of another conservative US leader who decided to try and leverage our power at the expense of international trust and lost us a portion of said power[1].

I am an American. I preferred when we were stronger because we sweetened the deal enough with everyone else that they let us be world financier/police/anti piracy force/etc.

This fucking machismo theory taking over the older conservatives and the "The Torment Nexus was actually an awesome idea" taking over the tech bros and younger conservatives is fucking destroying us. Both groups seem incapable of believing in a win/win deal. Its also zero sum game to these fuckers and thus our soft power, and eventually our hard power, is being lost.

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

• ElProlactin 39 minutes ago

It's not really "eventually" for our hard power.

Iran has exposed many limitations and weaknesses in America's defense capabilities, and it's a fraction of the threat China is.

We have 0 carrier strike groups in the Indo-Pacific right now.

• wood_spirit 21 minutes ago

Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan all also exposed the weakness of American might? Was the last big war that the US won WW2?

• kergonath 8 minutes ago

The US lost these wars politically. This has always been the US weakness rather than pure military power.

The US was better at getting what they wanted through either soft power or threat of military action than as a result of actual intervention. Which is why it’s really counterproductive when the government does not believe in soft power anymore. It’s the one thing you did well and that allowed you to get your way most of the time.

• jfengel 14 minutes ago

America won Iraq and Afghanistan in a walk.

They didn't do a great job of nation building afterwards, but the actual war part was very successful.

• lovich 31 minutes ago

I think its eventually in that if we put our might behind it we could take probably any 2-3 major military powers on the planet at the current moment, but that's with the caveat that putting our might behind it means tens to hundreds of thousands of dead military members which we as a nation have lost the stomach for.

I am saying eventually in that I think we will not even be able to do that if we found our grit again in the coming years as long as we are prioritizing raising testosterone in individual soldiers and removing qualified women and minorities from our military over having competent leaders and prioritizing logistics.

• ElProlactin 25 minutes ago

Sorry, the ship has already sailed.

1. In Iran alone, the US has depleted stocks of some of its most advanced and important weapons systems.

2. The US does not have the manufacturing capacity for an extended conflict (China does) and the US is in fact dependent on Chinese components and raw materials.

3. As it relates to a China contingency in the Taiwan Strait: the Strait is ~140 miles at its widest point, and the Chinese have spent 20+ years investing in A2/AD capabilities. Given the state of the US military right now, it's hard to see how the US could overcome China's geographic advantage.

4. Our most important allies don't trust us (and we're even threatening some of them) so don't expect them to help.

5. Some of the most experienced and competent military leaders have been pushed out by an unqualified alcoholic who is more interested in how many pushups the cannon fodder can do than he is in how many ships America can build.

• oleg_antonyan 31 minutes ago

Russia had assets in Europe, look what happened to those. We got so naive and relaxed in the abscense of big wars within the "western hemisphere" that some people geniunly forgot what will happen to all of their "assets" when shit hit the fan.

• baxtr 29 minutes ago

I really wonder why. Something must have happened

• brainwad 5 minutes ago

The something was the collapse of the USSR, right? "The end of history" etc.

• mdp2021 21 minutes ago

Not relevant to the point - "I gave my item to my former friend Paul". For some reason or for some other, it happens.

And miscalculations in game theory happen ("he wouldn't, given...").

• speedgoose 17 minutes ago

I put my gold in the safe of my best friend, he has a good safe. Then I rapped and killed his wife and children, and destroyed his house. But he doesn’t want to give me the gold back.

• mdp2021 10 minutes ago

You are doing the complexity of history, and the due diligence of objective assessment and focus, a great disservice with those gross similes.

Let us stick to a fitting analysis for the point of the limited trust entities can give each other, and let us stick to actual events for what the crimes committed are concerned (for the respect due).

• momocowcow 8 minutes ago

ok, but russia and the west were never best friends, just some russians have major crushes on western europe and would still trust the europeans to hold their gold more than their own russian compatriots :))

• oleg_antonyan 12 minutes ago

Case in point: a naive belief in "high moral". Bad guy (Ru) attacks good guy - bad, punish, cancel. When good guy (US) attacks bad guy - that's different, whataboutism etc. Such POV falls apart when good guy (US) attacks another good guy (EU), and while you may chose to ignore such possibility, European leaders don't (a rare case of competence on their side).

• grey-area an hour ago

The end of the US hegemony and the unstable regime in the US makes decoupling the best strategy.

• mdp2021 18 minutes ago

> unstable

Well. Not sure. Untrustable system, maybe. (The whole chain that brought to this stage is improper - and the damaging factors are still active.)

• kulahan 29 minutes ago

Does anyone in power anywhere actually think China has finally overtaken the US hegemony? Or are we pretending someone else might somehow hold that position?

• somenameforme a minute ago

China has historically been the most powerful nation in the world multiple times, but always remained relatively inward looking, while acting as more of a merchant towards the rest of the world. I don't see any reason to think that will substantially change. So the most likely scenario is we end up, and arguably are already in, a truly multipolar world where no individual nation is the hegemon.

• grey-area 24 minutes ago

The end of hegemony isn’t usually immediately followed by the appointment of a new leader, usually it means fragmented power and war.

Yes, China is a likely eventual successor and in some parts is the world has replaced the US in being the influential superpower.

• kergonath 2 minutes ago

> Does anyone in power anywhere actually think China has finally overtaken the US hegemony?

No, not really. For now we are headed towards a multipolar world rather than a hegemony.

• bergen 25 minutes ago

China is making trade deals and integration left and right and even Canada and Mexico are looking in other directions and cooperate more closely with china and eu. Maybe not a single power has to hold power

• fedpost a minute ago

Okay so possibly dumb question, but...what do you do with the gold when you "need" it? How is a bunch of shiny, admittedly "desirable", metal going to fix whatever class of crisis the article is hand waving?

Are we talking physical stuff like Germany deciding third time's a charm and Europe saying "fuck, okay America the gold is already there, do your thing and ship us a few thousand tanks and a few hundred thousand boys from the plains!"

...or are we talking not obscure "fuck, someone did stupid things with excel sheets, we need to make the numbers not say society is over, here everyone...do something with gold!"

• helsinkiandrew an hour ago

Good opportunity to post Periodic Videos tour of a Bank of England vault:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTtf5s2HFkA

• noduerme 29 minutes ago

Most of the major Bitcoin spikes and leveling-up of the price since 2012 have preceded or corresponded with governments tightening controls, and people using BTC they owned or buying it to evacuate capital to more lightly regulated countries. That's also why there hasn't been a Bitcoin rush for awhile, imho... it's no longer very useful for that, now that all the entrance and exit nodes are monitored. Gold is a bit hard to move, but this article may be underselling to what extent the recent spike in gold prices is attributable to demand for that kind of liquidity. The cross-border, anonymous kind.

The demise of Localbitcoins actual local meetups and trading for cash was the end of a significant way to move money out of regimes that people suspected were going to take it from them.

• csomar 27 minutes ago

Localbitcoin is dead but there are still venues to trade bitcoin/crypto for cash. They have mostly moved to p2p on facebook and discord.

• fedpost 13 minutes ago

There are a few platforms that facilitate personal transactions using stuff like Venmo and Zelle but I suspect most of the people who are continuously selling lots of coins are probably silk road type vendors so I have to imagine it's just a great way to get your Venmo account on the feds radar.

• aurareturn 42 minutes ago

If there is ever a conflict, US will seize assets of whatever country it is fighting with.

• cheema33 13 minutes ago

> If there is ever a conflict, US will seize assets of whatever country..

Canadians, and the rest of the world is finding out that you don't even need a conflict for US to lay claim over your stuff. "We want it", is perfectly legitimate and legal reason for the taking.

• cbg0 24 minutes ago

Sure, and you can replace US with almost any country in that sentence. The problem right now is there's a feeling that even decades-old alliances are no longer something you can count on when you're talking about the US.

• mano78 2 minutes ago

As Boston would sing, "More than a Feeling"

• Terr_ 13 minutes ago

Even on a less-than-war level, nobody wants wants their own national assets to be held-hostage or used for extortion, when this Republican administration next demands a "favor" or kowtowing humiliation for some perceived slight.

• momocowcow 14 minutes ago

Individuals can do the same. Sell gold ETF and buy coin/bullion. The cost of holding physical is lessened if held for +10 years.

• ArtTimeInvestor an hour ago

The dangerous situation we are in is that entities outside of the USA hold significantly more US assets than US entities own assets outside the USA.

So if the USA declares "ownership be damned", it would be a net win for the USA.

Or in simpler terms: The USA has been giving out IOUs for real goods for decades. It is now tempting to default on those IOUs. The USA did this before. Up until 1971, a dollar certified a claim to gold. Then the USA simply canceled that promise.

The current ramp up to AI dominance might be what holds the USA back from breaking more ties with the world. It is a race that must be won. And investments from abroad help. But when the whole world is operated by US AI factories things might look different. When every task around the world is performed by intelligence generated in the USA, just like every computer is run by US software now - there might be little incentive left to "pay the rent" for the rest of the world that now sits around idle, fiddling their thumbs.

• ElProlactin an hour ago

> The dangerous situation we are in is that entities outside of the USA hold way more US assets than US entities own assets outside the USA.

The dangerous situation we are in is that the US is berating and betraying its closest historical allies, eroding its credibility and soft power, and weakening its leverage at a time when threats to the Western order that has existed since the end of WW2 are growing rapidly.

Incidentally, the orange man in charge loves to tout "deals" in which foreign countries agree to invest substantial sums in the US, so any actions that lead foreign countries to believe their investments might be nationalized banana republic-style won't help the administration's efforts to attract investment and onshoring.

• AngryData 18 minutes ago

If the US did something so economically hostile it would tank its own stock market just from the world cutting off a bunch of trade.

• Terr_ 7 minutes ago

> cutting off a bunch of trade

Is there something in the last 19 months of tariff chaos which makes you believe the Republicans currently in power are remotely concerned about that?

• nairboon 38 minutes ago

Well, they could, but the moment Donald defaults on those bonds, he can say goodbye to those stock market highs and watch new unprecedented lows.

• nikitaga an hour ago

It's not going to be a net win for anyone. A country that needs to keep borrowing to stay afloat is not going to improve its position by effectively defaulting on its debt, regardless of the exact method or type of assets involved.

• ai_critic an hour ago

"If you owe the bank a million, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a billion..." etc.

And the US owes trillions.

• toolslive an hour ago

yes. but most of it is not to other countries. Most government debt (over 80% globally) is privately owned through sovereign debt instruments like bonds.

• wskinner 44 minutes ago

And who owns the bonds?

• dash2 37 minutes ago

Private citizens and companies, as the gp said.

• johnnyApplePRNG 37 minutes ago

Because North America is an obvious tire fire?

We can't even keep fresh food on our shelves https://trends.google.com/explore?q=moldy%20food&date=all&ge...

I have seen moldy produce all over the GTA here in Canada lately. The homeless situation in Hamilton Ontario is getting out of control.

The province posted a billboard the other day around the corner of my house showing some woman "protecting her community against encampments" (aka homeless people).

There are hoards of homeless people that live in the woods just around the corner of this billboard.

It didn't last 3 days.

Neither did the one they put up after it.

Neither did the non-encampment-scare-mongering-one they put up after it.

The homeless or whoever kept destroying it visually with paint/etc.

It advertises TSN sports now.

And I live in a "nice part of town". East hamilton is another planet. Children stabbing children over bicycles. Children shooting random passerbys. [0] Etc. It's bad.

[0] https://hamiltonpolice.on.ca/news/sarkodie-homicide-suspect-...

• dyauspitr 25 minutes ago

It’s a tire fire but not for the reasons you’re pointing out.

• throw34521 30 minutes ago

Dedollarisation next

• giov4 25 minutes ago

more interesting question: When do countries change gold reserves locations and for which reasons? past examples?

• grebc an hour ago

The orange one. Duh.

• dgellow an hour ago

He’s just one part of the explanation, it’s also all the people who are behind him. He’s mostly a front nowadays. If Trump is gone, things wouldn’t be better with Vance taking his place

• selectodude an hour ago

It’s the voters that put him back. You could say it was an aberration the first time but the second? Americans are too stupid and selfish to be trusted with the immense power they were given.

• hbarka 30 minutes ago

“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

• AngryData 28 minutes ago

I mean that is the biggest factor now, but also because most of the rest of our federal politicians are also worthless and corrupt.

• fedpost 8 minutes ago

He's the center of gravity who's enabling the decline at the moment. It's a rare case where doing the thing would probably result in less instability instead of more.

• miroljub 5 minutes ago

If you blame the loss of trust in America on a single person you live in a delusion.

Don't forget that Biden and not the orange one blew up the most important gas pipeline of the most important European ally^H vassal.

How can you trust USA after that?

• zdc1 an hour ago

Well, why would European gold be stored in America in the first place?

• nairboon 19 minutes ago

It's a remnant of the cold war and the two preceding hot wars. The plan was to ship big parts of the gold overseas, just in case Europe gets nuked and occupied in a ground invasion from the east. But lately there have been more threats for an invasion from the west, so gold goes back.

• bigbaguette an hour ago

It's probably a matter of liquidity, storing it where it can be exchanged when needed. Transport is quite expensive

• itake 30 minutes ago

Security: European have been taken over multiple times by Germany. Keeping the gold in the usa keeps the money a safe distance from the fight.

• stackghost 23 minutes ago

Gosh, have we in the West forgotten so much of our history already?

Much of the gold was moved out of Europe prior to and during WWI. Partly out of fears of German aggression b ut also because throughout the war, European countries bought massive amounts of materiel from America, which increased the flow of money out of European and into American coffers.

But gold itself is very heavy and thus cumbersome to transport. It doesn't make sense to run transatlantic gold shipments every time a few bars change hands. So central banks tended to keep the gold more or less in one big vault and just sort of move the bricks between one country's pile and another. So there would be, in essence, a large stack of gold in the US Federal Reserve, and that gold belonged to France, or whomever. When the war ended, European countries were devastated and needed goods from somewhere that didn't have depleted industrial capacity and whose farmlands weren't littered with UXO.

This situation more or less cemented America's position as the world's creditor, and so it simply was more convenient to keep a large portion of one's gold reserves in the country with whom you were doing a lot of business.

Now that Americans have decided they like being a military, economic, and cultural superpower less than they like electing a dementia-ridden child rapist, other countries have correctly realized that America's decline cannot be stopped, only slowed. After all, it's Americans themselves who are the root of the problem, and Trump is but a symptom. This instability is not going to stop when he leaves office. Better get your gold off the sinking ship, but do it slowly so as to not accelerate the sinking before you can get it all out.

Re: the gold situation after WWI, if you're interested I encourage you to read Liaquat Ahamed's excellent Lords of Finance, which won the Pulitzer, IIRC.

• wewewedxfgdf an hour ago

Lack of trust.

• testing22321 an hour ago

I’d be really interested to see all European countries & Canada dump their US bonds en mass if trump does anything untoward in Greenland, Canada or elsewhere.

• noduerme an hour ago

As an American trying to retain my sanity in this country, I have to tell myself that such things are just trollish nonsense from the ultimate reality television troll. It is comforting to me that 50% of what he says is bluster and the other 50% is pure fabrication. I think we have developed some resistance to it where, like, a few years ago we would say "OH MY GOD! HE CAN'T POSSIBLY BE THREATENING CANADA!" and now we're just like, "there goes crazy old man again, don't worry, he just shit his pants on the golf course".

Not saying it's right or sound that he's the elected leader of the country or that our politics is so warped... I mean, I blame it on being on the losing end of the most rigorously fought information war in history.

But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.

FWIW, the American people can't even support a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been blowing up our soldiers for decades. Hard to imagine they'd show much support for invading an ally.

• wanderingpixel 27 minutes ago

> But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.

Sorry, but no.

Even if there are no kinetic attacks towards allies right now, the "crazy old man" is causing real harm. Harm to global stability and the world order, economies, to businesses and individuals, to long term initiatives such as research and healthcare. But most importantly, real harm to the trust between ourselves. Western allies can no longer trust the USA, it is broken, we no longer have the same values.

The first time in 2016 we forgave, everyone makes mistakes and Europe is certainly not free of them. But the American people chose to elect him twice with full knowledge, now everyone suffers.

So the rest of the world forges its own path now. America's military, economic and cultural hegemony will decline. Not tomorrow, maybe not even quickly, but inevitably. Godspeed !

• noduerme 12 minutes ago

Which is it... Godspeed the decline, or you hope it doesn't?

I think it's a tragedy that America elected him twice, and it has already led to chaos among our allies and irreparable harm to the postwar order in which America was the seat of empire after Britain. I think that [the populist brain virus which took hold of America, in 2016 and particularly after covid] was done intentionally by Russia and China who are enemies of America. Is the loss of that order what you are bemoaning?

We are also a country that established itself from European colonies. Every time Argentina or Brazil or Chile or Venezuela or Colombia go through spasms of communist or fascist takeover, Europe takes that as an unsurprising fact, and the bankers keep doing business with them. There is something much more frightening about America reaching some polar political extreme, and it's not simply nuclear weapons (because several very extreme dictatorships have those).

What is scary about it is the same thing that's scary about the AfD in Germany... the idea that we are losing the generational knowledge we built to safeguard some of the world against savagery. In order to believe this, you must also believe that Germany and the US are not already, inherently savage and that some of the order brought by NATO and the postwar order has been a good thing, even up to and including the Cold War.

Then, we can define what is worth saving about America and why it matters.

• Terr_ a minute ago

[delayed]

• johanvts 19 minutes ago

I bought that initially, but Trump is causing real harm. The abandonment of WHO and USAid programs, stepping out of the paris accords etc. etc.

But the real issue is that he has been elected twice, it is not some one-off freak accident, a lot of americans just care more about transphobia or pizzagate than climate change or geopolitics and thats why its now clear to the rest of the world that we can’t trust the US any more.

• noir_lord 23 minutes ago

Except that “crazy old man” (I’d have gone with corrupt criminal malignant narcissist to be honest) isn’t just shouting at pigeons in the park he already screwed up the world economy by staring a war he can’t figure out how to exit and dozens of other things.

When the pigeon shouter threatens to annex Canada/Greenland you can shrug it off, when the leader of the largest economy and military says it, you can’t.

Words matter.

I’m British, We are often regarded as one of the US’s closest allies, I’m fucking furious with Trump and the people who support him, I’ve been boycotting everything US made that I can and I essentially see the current US as a globally destabilising force.

Are there decent Americans appalled by what they’ve become, sure, doesn’t make a difference to the outcome though either.

Trump isn’t the main problem, he’s a symptom of the disease that is the main problem, the US elected him twice, that rot goes to the core.

• stackghost 10 minutes ago

>But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.

Wow you guys really don't get it, do you? It's not nonsense to us.

• notorandit an hour ago

Because it is theirs?

Would you keep your food or car in someone else's garage?

• Erem 22 minutes ago

Everyone here keeps their money in bank or brokerage accounts, because we trust the law to protect us if the bank accounts try to steal our stuff.

We are seeing that foreign countries no longer believe the USA is still a nation of laws.

• ChrisArchitect an hour ago

Related:

Norway's Oil Fund Proposes Selling Roughly $80B in U.S. Treasurys

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49564189

Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526

• howcani an hour ago

Before asking "why", ask "if".

• tgv 37 minutes ago

That doesn't make sense to me. It's already happening.

• j3th9n 32 minutes ago

So far for "Russia will invade Europe". The USA seems a bigger threat.

• wood_spirit 5 minutes ago

Russia is invading Europe. They started years ago.

The US is enabling Russia.

In fact, the USA is supporting Russia. This might not be entirely intentional, and a lot of ways of trying to excuse it, but it’s what the reality on the ground adds up to.

• CamperBob2 an hour ago

Same reason they moved it out of Germany in 1930-1931?

• stop50 32 minutes ago

the pull out then was an reaction to the black friday.

• notnaut an hour ago

Please don’t tell me this is just the beginning…..

• cjfd 25 minutes ago

Well, who knows? The trajectory has been set in and it is downwards. After Nero and the year of the four emperors the Roman Empire still had ways to go. So, I would say also the US can potentially recover. On the other hand the saying 'it cannot possibly get worse than this' has also been disproven may times in history. In any case, I like to sum it all up by saying "The US is a superpower attempting to become a third world country".

• ChrisArchitect 38 minutes ago
• dyauspitr 26 minutes ago

Because Trump is tasked with ending American hegemony and Europe is getting ahead of that.

• usern20260720 an hour ago

If the European countries had wanted to be independent from the US, they would have adopted the gold standard for their currency

• lovich 35 minutes ago

lol, we(america) were the ones who fucked with the gold standard and had the system collapse due to lack of trust in the first place[1]

Please explain your logic behind the idea that European countries needed to have adopted the gold standard that the US unilaterally changed the rules on, to be independent from the US.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock

• deely3 an hour ago

Why? Honestly, how it will help?