yeah you're right. I wrote that poorly and seems I can't edit it now..
In the link I shared, he does propose the similar theta and omega notations and provides the existing definition for big O.
As a kid, I would have been all over this. The signal to noise ratio is pretty bad, but that was also true for shareware collections (how about another implementation of Mahjongg) and it didn't stop me. Granted, kids these days probably have other ways to spend their time.
France completely exited New York, the Netherlands roughly halved what they've stored there. That was in 2026. They didn't physically ship any of it, they sold it and rebought in Europe.
Germany moved 111t from New York in 2016, and, afaict, nothing since then. There's still 1236t left.
Italy also keeps over 1000t in New York (no plans for repatriation).
Banks can keep it in US and stay happy, they don't necessarily immediately need physical gold. So it's quite efficient, lots of govts do similar stuff.
If the Banque de France holds physical in New York and sells it to JPMorgan (nothing moves) and then in Paris buys contract for physical from UBS, there will probably need to be physical gold that moves.
In all likelihood, Swiss gold held by e.g. a Gulf customer might be sold to Paris (nothing moves) and JPMorgan may entice Venezuela to take those contracts on its balance sheet (nothing moves). But if it’s a big trade, the price of delivering physical in Paris (or Genève) will go above spot in New York at which point it’s profitable for JPMorgan to take delivery, load up planes and physically ship gold.
To supplement this, there was an interesting situation in 2025 [0] where a financial signal developed and we saw physical gold flows from London to New York. A very similar mechanism; governments do something, price signal develops, gold starts flying around.
You wouldn't need many ships. The volume of a single shipping container is enough for 1300 tons of gold. Of course gold is extremely heavy, you'd need a specially built container to support that much gold, but the point is the storage space of any ocean going ship can comfortably carry the entire gold reserve of an entire country.
If you actually loaded gold into shipping containers and obeyed the weight restrictions, all the gold in the world would take up less than 8400 TEU, which would be considered a mid size cargo ship.
This actually happened in 1965. De Gaulle, the president of France at the time, sent the French Navy over to America and took their reserve gold back home. This prompted other countries to do the same and by 1971 America had switched from a gold standard to a fiat currency.
You're leaving out some really interesting context there. After the Great Depression the economic equilibrium the world settled into, with the Bretton Woods treaty, is that participating countries, which was most of the non-Soviet aligned world, would agree to base their currency's value on the USD.
That'd obviously give the US an immense amount of power, so in exchange the US would agree to make the USD convertible to gold at a fixed rate by other countries (as opposed to e.g. individuals). So the whole point here is that if the US tried to print a whole bunch of money to exploit our 'exorbitant privilege', countries would be able to take their now devaluing USD and exchange into a gold at a stable rate and make a whole bunch of money. So it was intended to be a self correcting system.
The problem is that the US did print a whole bunch of money anyhow, and when France and other countries said 'hey we'd like to convert our USD to gold' we just said 'nah' and defaulted on our obligations, bringing Bretton Woods to an end in 1971. That signaled the beginning of the modern completely fiat economic system, and led to some wild quotes from the time. For instance the Secretary of the Treasury under Nixon (who was president in 71) has a great quote of, 'The dollar is our currency, but your problem.'
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It's critical to understand this history to understand what's happening today with countries increasingly seeking to replace the dollar. Many want something akin to Bretton Woods 2.0, but without any country being given a win button. And that's not so easy to devise!
The alternative that was the ICU with an international reserve would punish surplus nations and help deficit nations. A Bretton Woods 2.0 thus would be advantageous to the US while neutralizing much of the advantageous the EU and China have as export based economies.
> Many want something akin to Bretton Woods 2.0, but without any country being given a win button. And that's not so easy to devise!
The hard part is getting countries to agree on one system. Coming up with a good one is easy. You can either do EU style governance where countries vote on policy or go hands off and anchor everything to crypto.
> hard part is getting countries to agree on one system
To put it bluntly, America ended WWII with a global nuclear monopoly and then only industrial base on the planet that hadn't been bombed into smithereens. That put it in a unique position to set the terms of the peace. The only party that came out with any comparable leverage was the USSR on account of its massive army and willingness to maintain a wartime economy that would have been untenable in the democracies of the West. (Absent the USSR, it's again unlikely Bretton-Woods would have emerged–the Soviet threat created an incentive to coöperate.)
More than that, the end of WWII saw American complete its then priority of decolonization. That meant there were lots of newly created countries, not quite peacefully but not at the level of violence that usually accompanies new-country formation (with obvious exceptions, e.g. Partition and Israel/Palestine), that could be wooed with riches and ideology.
Notably the USD was also rapidly losing its global share (and it had already fell under 50%) until the collapse of the USSR. Then the newly formed nations, looking to the West, rapidly dollarized, and the USD influence began growing rapidly reaching above 70% in the early 2000s when it once again began to decline to where it's at today in the mid 50% range.
Only fools like the management of Apple, Microsoft, and Google would lend money to the United States government. Government bonds have fallen 80% relative to gold in the past few years.
> Government bonds have fallen 80% relative to gold in the past few years.
I think most people would suggest the converse..... that gold prices have doubled over the last three years compared to virtually any stable western currency.
India brought several tonnes back from London. Approximately 250T was brought back in 100% cases it was brought from totally ordinary cargo planes. From what I have heard, hardest part of securing customs exemptions at port of entry in India.
Gold is heavy sure, but its $/weight value is still much higher than basically any other cargo - the plane vs ship choice would be even more weighted towards the plane with gold than with most other cargo.
More detail: at current prices gold is $133k USD per kilo - at that price transport costs would be such a tiny fraction of the value of the cargo that it wouldn't make any sense to pinch pennies - you'd want to go with the absolute fastest, safest option.
High-end enterprise Xeon processors are worth more by weight than gold but Nvidia H200 processors are worth less. The Intel chips are worth 3-6x the Nvidia chips.
> is there any definitive evidence of the actual transport mechanism?
I can tell you from first hand experience that moving high value items isn't as exciting as you'd think.
ULDs are the standardized shipping containers of the sky. You can rent ones that have an inner armored layer and tamper evident seals. They fly as commercial cargo, usually on the flag carrier airline if its a government load. No special rituals or armed guards. Shipments are broken up so the loss of a single aircraft is at most $5 or $10 million.
There are some highly specialized aircraft that transport full loads but they tend to be closer to the supply side, moving bulk gold or diamonds from remote mines for processing.
Cash is the interesting exception (most non-US currency is produced by commercial printers) where a country will send its military to go pick up one big shipment.
I’ve found a few references for air but none for recent (2022-2026) sea movements yet. This article talks about illicit gold concentrates moving by sea but notes:
“In focussing almost exclusively on gold bars, jewellery, and high-grade recycled gold (over 40% purity), all of which generally travel by air, analysts have tended to disregard the maritime space as a significant arena for illicit gold flows (LBMA, 2022[9]).”
The Hong Kong gold vault stores at the airport, not the harbour:
“ Half of the world’s population, including those of China and India, lives and can be reached within five hours if the metal is loaded on a plane and sent from the Hong Kong airport”
> “Half of the world’s population, including those of China and India, lives and can be reached within five hours if the metal is loaded on a plane and sent from the Hong Kong airport”
This makes it sound like emergency delivery of gold is important. “Quick, we need to get 20 tons of gold to Nepal, stat! Go go go go go!”
No; but the volumes are tiny and the cost of freight is not very high. If I were talking about moving gold I would expect it to be flown because the risk of piracy would be too high. It is easier to plan, secure and monitor a flight.
It does amuse me greatly that major world powers are trading large piles of stones in a place without moving them just like that. That's deeply satisfying.
Buying in Europe creates a demand in Europe, and selling in US creates extra supply in US. So, the market takes care of the transfer from high supply to low supply area.
It's a long story, but Italy's gold is not really Italy's, in the normal sense. Italy lost WWII, and has been a de facto "vassal" of the US since then; the US has several military bases in Italy, and has a very strong influence on anything related to foreign policy, etc. Don't take my word for it, there's not a single link to prove this, but a bit of research should make what I say at least plausible.
Just to give a small hint: the 1998 "strage del Cermis" [0], in which a US aircraft mistakenly cut a cable supporting a cable car and resulted in the killing of 20 people. The pilot, Captain Richard J. Ashby, and his navigator, Captain Joseph Schweitzer, were put on trial in the United States and were found not guilty.
Try to imagine something different. An Italian military aircraft flies in the US, and mistakenly kills 20 people. What would have happened to the Italian pilot?
I remember that incident vividly. They did not "just" mistakenly cut a cable; they were hotdogging below allowed elevations in forbidden, populated areas.
The official story is that the maps they were given were out-dated and led to confusion in their location.
It was painfully obvious that the incident was inspired more by Top Gun than those notoriously bad maps the USAF uses....
But as you say, the USA investigated itself and assured its little buddy Italy that there was nothing improper. So sorry about those dead folks.
Germany's naturalization rate is not out of the ordinary for the EU, either per capita or per number of foreign residents. Italy, Belgium, Spain and others "hand out more passports" relative to their own population than Germany; Poland, Ireland, the Netherlands and others "hand out more passports" relative to the amount of refugees that live in their countries. Germany is very much middle of the road. So, you know, whatever.
You're in a sarcasm thread. Distillation is nothing like stealing. Distillation is what's gonna save us from mistreatment by would-be monopolists who "stole" everything they "own" in the first place.
I have a similar lamp that also makes you press and hold. Annoying. Yours even has that knob (mine is all touch) -- it should just have a physical detent at the end that cuts power, you know, like lots of dimmable lamps used to have.
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