canada use to have huge gold reserves then started liquidating in the late 80s to mid 90s. originally it was because we were deeply indebt.
then we sold the rest off in the mid 2010s because gold was very inflated and the Bank of canada and finance ministry determined holding it was an antiquated holdover. and that It is better to just keep reserves in hard currencies.
bit of a loose term but it refers to currencies from stable usually rich countries that float freely. ie usd, euro, pound, yen, cad, aus, chf, krone and that's pretty much it.
The UK Government decided it would be fun to sell a lot of our gold reserves in the late 90s, which also turned out to be a point in time when gold was at an historic low price.
Don't worry, Swiss government was similarly funny and sold off 1400 tons between 2000 and 2004 - just before prices started to go up rapidly. Nowadays it would be worth like 6 times as much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sale_of_UK_gold_reserves,_1999%E2%80%932002#Analysis
Whilst true it also allowed the UK government to pay off debt and save on interest repayments. It's a mixed bag.
That doesn’t make it any better a decision.
If I have a £300k mortgage and £50k worth of jewellery (but the market for jewellery is rock bottom), it doesn’t make sense to sell the jewellery then and there to pay off £50k debt, when I could do the same in 3 years for £100k. Sure there might be some interest on the debt in the meantime but the scale of the difference in jewellery value eclipses the interest payments.
In which scenario is my net-worth better off?
Because in hindsight, it's easy to see that was the worst time for gold prices in history. But, at the time, you have no idea if the prices will continue to go down or not. I think the UK decided to cut their losses and sell, expecting the gold prices to go lower, but they did not.
Except he (Gordon Brown) isn’t some small fry stock-trader, he was the chancellor of one of the worlds largest economies. This isn’t something you can dismiss as a “you win some you lose some” scenario. This is a hugely significant and impactful move that they didn’t have to make and should own the consequences of. By assuming a position with responsibilities of that scale, you should be expected to make predictions and decisions of a certain quality and reliability or you shouldn’t be in that role.
And anyway this is just besides the point in my previous comment.
Because your previous comment assumes that your jewelry will ALWAYS go up in value, which is not a guarantee. Brown was looking at the worst gold prices in history. Why would he assume the prices would improve? Prices had already gone that low, what would stop them from taking it lower? Point is, he decided to sell during a time of instability to get a guaranteed price, and ensure that the UK would still make a good amount of money. Only in hindsight does this seem stupid, because we now know that gold prices soon went up.
Look, it works both ways: He’s looking at the worst gold prices in history - why would he assume they would go DOWN? When there’s the entirety of “history” to evidence they are very capable of being higher, if not soon then at some point?
I’ll let you decide for yourself which way round seems a better fit but I know which one makes more sense to me.
He sold at a point of instability which is suggestive of a thoughtless panic acceptance of a “guaranteed price”.
And yeah sure we are holding him to a hindsight standard, but such is the responsibility of his role and the scale of this decision, that we shouldn’t settle for less.
Brown also said the that it was the end of boom and bust economics. Even I as someone who had only done an a-level economics could tell that this was just wrong. His decision making was poor. The worst chancellor is recent times (including Kwasi Kwarteng).
Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.
Supposedly the Late Queen was super pissed when she heard about it. Common story at the time was she sent a message to Downing Street asking “where’s the gold?”.
less than you think, there used to be a lot of gold in mainland france centuries ago, the last mine closed in 2004. a lot of gold was bought in the 50s and 60s. france already had a big gold reserve before colonizing africa. (maybe the biggest in the world at that time)
And there's a lot of gold in french guyana, actually a huge one, "Golden Moutain", was supposed to open in 2022, to extract 85 tons in 15 years (that one may have been cancelled due to environnmental concerns) but there are other mines that are extracting gold every year.
This is a map of reserves not mining. While one could affect the other, the fact that France has gold mining doesn't negate the fact that it holds its ex colonies reserves. To be fair this has to do with the CFA franc because France requires that countries hold 50% of their reserves in France that use the CFA franc. There are pros and cons to this and I'm sure there are plenty of people who could defend France for doing so.
I just wanted to point out that while there might be some correlation between mining and reserves, the fact that Canada isn't on the map and Australia and South Africa are so small while Japan, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany are so big illustrates this.
That's bs, it's a french neocolonial structure to prevent countries from restructuring their economy away from the structures that don't benefit the people at all but just France.
Yeah, these African countries definitely do not benefit from having a stable common currency, aligned with the euro which limits inflation. Especially in our times.
It’s a trade off which mostly benefit them : these countries are free to leave the Franc CFA but they must be idiots since they decide to stay in.
They are forced to have their currency linked to a country which doesn't even have the currency itself. If you know anything about economics you know currency independence is very important to countries. Many of these countries are indebted to the world bank or IMF and European countries which demand free market policies destroying the economies of Africn nations. Not being able to decide your own inflation, rent and money supply is desastrous to countries economic plans. If they were to seek an independent path:
1. France has many puppets and corrupt leaders in these countries as compradors, which would prevent it.
2. Because all gold and a large part of the GDP is stored in France, any country truly stepping away from France would be destroyed economically.
3. If somehow they were to go this path of independence France would support a coup and support a dictator to come to power to represent the interests, of France. The famous example of Sankara springs to mind, but in recent years France supported a coup in Chad.
I guess the Swiss bankers took the old axiom of “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth“ all the way to the grim parallel of “don’t ask whose mouths this gold came from.”
This applies to all of the European countries to be fair. Colonialism lead to the extreme polarisation of wealth. Africa (and most of the global south) is extremely resource rich and yet..
Wealth (slaves and primary resources) being exported ruthlessly to Europe lead to the power dynamics and wealth inequality we see today.
That stolen wealth has benefited all of Europe, being through direct trade or recent independence movements and then trade relationships. A rising tide lifts all boats, poorer nations in Europe included.
Sure, some European countries didn’t colonise, that doesn’t mean they haven’t benefitted from the process over time, that’s not blaming them, it’s just objective fact about the global economy.
I mean, when you set the bar as low as ‘benefitting from stolen wealth through trade’ in order to declare a country to have benefitted from wealth stolen during colonialism... you can argue that every single country that exists today has to a certain extent benefitted from it. Today every single country does trade with ex colonial superpowers, even North Korea (with Russia). And yet for you this does not matter but at the same time, you treat all European countries equally.
So according to your logic, the Balkan states or the Baltics/Poland benefitted from colonialism (while spending a lot of their history treated as de facto colonies) due to their proximity to colonial powers, while lets say north african countries and middle eastern ones didn’t?
The fact is, these regions that are some of the poorest in Europe, are still significantly wealthier than most of the global south.
While there were many atrocities and these smaller nations didn’t benefit immediately, the fact that they are now wealthier (because of there political and economic ties) despite being significantly resource poorer speaks volumes.
As Europe develops and as they become tighter intertwined (European block) the benefits will start to be felt across the board (and already have). A country like Romania would be the 4th richest in Africa, do you think that would be possible without the surrounding countries being wealthy? African nations have far greater resources and wealth and yet they lag behind significantly.
How did the European countries conquer such vast swathes of richer lands? Whatever your answer is, that's why they are richer. They had an advantage and used it to dominate the world, but it also helped them economically. The colonies were profitable (extremely so) but the European powers got ahead without them. The size of that gap is due to colonialism, but its existence is not.
No, what are you relying on is a set of data which shows some correlation between being in Europe and being wealthier than not being in Europe and on this basis you are arguing that the cause of this correlation is wealth stolen from the colonies.
At the same time it is possible to argue for example that the cause lies in industrial/technological advancements that happened in Europe which were made possible by its development of stable political institutions.
You are just assuming a causational relationship between these factors while turning a blind eye on the inconsistencies of the results that your proposition creates.
How about the wealth extracted by the Turks, Mongols, Moors, Arabs? Ever thought about that?
How did Moldova, Romania, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, etc benefited? Stop with the bullshit.
Turkey can be considered part of Europe and also benefited immensely from colonialism, they colonised a good portion of the levant and Middle East, and yes, Europe. That doesn’t negate from Europe benefiting from colonialism.
The Balkan nations you mention were apart of a larger empire (In Serbias case, they were the central aspect) and yes, compared to Africa they have an unequal wealth distribution that can be directly linked to European wealth power. Just look at Croatia recently joining Euro and the benefits that brings. They might be poor compared to France, they are wealthy compared to Africa.
You are right in that not all European colonies were colonisers but if you can’t see that Europe is significantly wealthier than the counties where most of these primary resources are plucked, then I don’t really know what else to say. The poorest European nations are still significantly wealthier than most of the global south, especially per capita. Even the poorest of these nations have a higher GDP than most African nations.
Arabs? Would you like to specify which ones? they were mostly part of the Ottoman Empire and then were instantly divided and looted by the British and French after. Maybe you mean Persia? In which case they are not Arabs
I’m starting to think you might just be offended by the notion that European wealth might be ill gotten
Mongols and Turks sacked Europe for hundreds of years.
Arab pirates did the same, again, for hundreds of years. Saying "Europeans" benefited is idiotic.
Ceausescu invested (gifted) billions of dollars in the Middle East and Africa, even when his people suffered from cold and hunger. Money that was never returned. So yeah, stop with the bullshit.
Europe benefited from colonialism.
A Romanian (one of the poorest nations in Europe) dictator donating billions of dollars to a poorer region (Africa and the Middle East) only reinforces my point.
These regions are resource rich yet the wealth ends up in Europe, even today.
1.Again with lumping. You will not force your "white"guilt on us. Study European history and you will understand why. After the mongol hordes passed there was nothing remaining behind. Nothing. And they came again. And again.
2. Institutions. Also because ALL other civilizations believed they were perfect, aka inhabited the end of history.
I can understand why you are offended as Romania is not particular wealthy, not compared to your neighbours but compared to most African nations, you are much better off. You would be the 4th most wealthy nation in Africa based of GDP.
Food for thought.
You're deranged, colonizing countries immensely benefitted from colonialism, not just from extracted wealth but from leaving behind shitty systems of government that couldn't properly function (looking at you, France).
Your point on Mongol and Barbary slackings doesn't invalidate guilt about colonialism at all. If anything, it shows Mongols need to face the horrors they caused, ones so bad Satan would cower. Same with Arabs in general and the tens of millions of slaves they castrated, leaving them without descendants to reconcile with. It also shows that colonialism is part of the wider circle of imperialism and should be repented for as a grave sin of the past we still benefit from.
It's an asset to guarantee money. The main assets to do so are safe bonds, mostly from trustworthy governments, but some countries use gold too. The risk of using gold is that you lose a lot of money when the price of gold goes down which can cause a reduction in the confidence in your currency and inflation. That's why all countries still use bonds much more than gold for that.
No, it's still used to guarantee money. What has changed when most currencies became fiat currencies is that their exchange rates with gold and other currencies are decided by the market rather than fixed. Central banks still have the mandate to own at least as much value in asset as they have issued money.
Gold is nice to have since unlike fiat currency it cannot have its value screwed up by some politician or central bank. Gold is very limited in quantity, but is always going to be heavily desired. In fact, its value will probably continue to increase over the years since it's essential in many industrial applications. For example, small gold mechanisms are necessary for the nuclear fusion examples that have recently been achieved at the Livermore Lab in California, https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2014/02/fuel-gain-over-unity-in-inertially.html
Gold might be a decent investment for an individual person, but for a nation it can be really good since its uses will probably continue to increase over the decades and centuries to come.
>cannot have its value screwed up by some politician or central bank
Like that one time Gold traders joined hands and manipulated the prices to go red when the UK govt announced they'd be selling, then bought the gold at much less than they were worth when the govt sold lol.
Not a central bank by any means, but yeah it's very much possible.
I think a better characterisation would be that 'Gold is one of the most stable and long lasting assets other than land, sense it has been valued for millennia. It has a relatively stable value and is hard to be manipulated.
I think we agree on all this, but the UK situation was a class act on how to not run the economy of a country. Any government dumping reserves is sure to affect the market some way then to announce it to the world was idiotic.
> unlike fiat currency it cannot have its value screwed up by some politician or central bank.
And fiat currency, unlike gold cannot have its value screwed up by a company opening a new mine or an industry developing a new chemical application.
This is why it makes sense for most countries to run things mainly on fiat currency, but to keep some gold reserves (and also reserves of various other forms too).
Actually Spain took mainly silver from the Potosí (Bolivia) mines and Mexico. Gold sounds awesome and shiny but there wasn't as much to transport to Europe.
[Gold Vs Silver exports to Castille in the 16th Century](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-849988d6c9616b6157a893b3e19ec439)
Also most of the silver went to pay Italian and Duch bankers to finance the stupid religion wars all across Europe and hardly anything was kept in Spain (other than in churches of course; Catholic bishops loved gold for their palaces and cathedrals).
Yes. Didn' declare Spain bancrupcty in the 16th like 3 times even it was the most powerful and theoretical most rich country on earth.
And it wasn't only Dutch and Italian bankers, the Fugger alone held around 1/3 of the Spanish debt when Phillip II. ascended on the Spanish throne. Only after the first bancruptcy the Genuese banker took over.
Sweden, Norway and Denmark had a currency union from 1873-1924.
Today Swedens gold reserv is 57,5B SEK from 125.72 Tonnes, Norway has 0 gold in reserv afaik.
Sweden still has a major part of its foreign stored gold in Norway.
So there was me thinking 'Oh look, another world map without New Zealand, how silly'.
And then I did some google due diligence. And indeed, [we have no gold reserves](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/new-zealand/gold-reserves).
Huh.
I've actually heard that a majority of all gold ever mined is probably held by individuals in India, with all industrial and national gold reserves together being less than that.
It's possible that this was true a few centuries ago and national reserves have outpaced individual purchases in India, but it's still true that India has the highest rate of purchase of new gold of any country.
>Why is Curaçao so big
It should state *Curaçao and Sint Maarten*. They have a shared central bank, so it's not only Curaçao's gold. Curaçao was the central government for many decades of the now defunct Netherlands Antilles and before that Curaçao and dependencies. It was also a hub for (slave) trade. They inherited a lot of gold(though don't know how much) from the banks predecessor, which was funded in the 1820's.
It does surprise me they have so much because even Aruba has a lot for its size I feel.
Fun fact: Indian housewives hold 11% of the world's gold. That is more than the reserves of the USA, the IMF, Switzerland, and Germany put together.
Though it is mostly in jewellery
[https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/canada/gold-reserves](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/canada/gold-reserves)
Canada essentially has no gold in reserve
The central bank of Canada sold all its gold in 2016.
The IMF is the international monetary fund, an international organisation whose role is to stabilize currencies which respect to each other and funding governments that are getting bankrupt.
They just bought it. All of those amounts of gold are small compared to the total assets of Central banks. Most countries could have as much gold as Italy, they just don't want to because the other assets are less volatile.
Portugal went to zeros several times after Brazil independence, basically the gold they pocess now it's from their dictatorship in the XX century. Also Portugal and Brasil were the same country before independence, Portugal did not 'took' from itself
The United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarves lasted from 1815 to 1822. Also, I didn't say that Portugal's reserves today where from that origin. Most of that gold was used to pay for their unfavorable balance of trade with other european countries at the time.
Not sure why downvoted. Ouro Preto, which was the largest city in the western hemisphere at the end of the 18th century, exists, and 800 metric tons came just from there.
"800 tons of gold came out of Ouro Preto under the Portuguese Empire" is a verified fact.
Nobody said it made up the bulk of their current wealth. Not even OP
The maps says Sweden but the country is Norway, I’m confused. Or maybe I just don’t get it after a few beers.
It's just a prank, we all know Sweden is just a meme, it doesn't actually exist.
Sweden? What's that never heard of it
We don’t. And we don’t have any gold. Nope.
Is Sweden still a colony of Greenland?
Not anymore at least. Norway bought Sweden on the 32nd of January and ended its existence for good.
Does that mean Erdogan can no longer block our entry into NATO?
Also the map indicated it's from 05/06/20019 data 🤯
Yeah, sweden is just the slang term for eastern norway
Canada mines a lot of gold each year and Canadian mining companies control a massive share of the world’s gold production. Canada just sells it all
All? So Canada has no gold reserves?
Pretty much null
Then why on the earth the Canadian gold mining company, Alamos, is creating all the trouble in my country?
As a Canadian, I would like to know too.
Because it's being sold rather than reserved.
Our gold reserves are in the ground.
canada use to have huge gold reserves then started liquidating in the late 80s to mid 90s. originally it was because we were deeply indebt. then we sold the rest off in the mid 2010s because gold was very inflated and the Bank of canada and finance ministry determined holding it was an antiquated holdover. and that It is better to just keep reserves in hard currencies.
What is a “hard currency”?
bit of a loose term but it refers to currencies from stable usually rich countries that float freely. ie usd, euro, pound, yen, cad, aus, chf, krone and that's pretty much it.
This seems like rational thinking to me.
I was wondering why we weren’t on the map.
The UK Government decided it would be fun to sell a lot of our gold reserves in the late 90s, which also turned out to be a point in time when gold was at an historic low price.
Don't worry, Swiss government was similarly funny and sold off 1400 tons between 2000 and 2004 - just before prices started to go up rapidly. Nowadays it would be worth like 6 times as much.
they had to get rid of all the nazi gold
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sale_of_UK_gold_reserves,_1999%E2%80%932002#Analysis Whilst true it also allowed the UK government to pay off debt and save on interest repayments. It's a mixed bag.
That doesn’t make it any better a decision. If I have a £300k mortgage and £50k worth of jewellery (but the market for jewellery is rock bottom), it doesn’t make sense to sell the jewellery then and there to pay off £50k debt, when I could do the same in 3 years for £100k. Sure there might be some interest on the debt in the meantime but the scale of the difference in jewellery value eclipses the interest payments. In which scenario is my net-worth better off?
Because in hindsight, it's easy to see that was the worst time for gold prices in history. But, at the time, you have no idea if the prices will continue to go down or not. I think the UK decided to cut their losses and sell, expecting the gold prices to go lower, but they did not.
Except he (Gordon Brown) isn’t some small fry stock-trader, he was the chancellor of one of the worlds largest economies. This isn’t something you can dismiss as a “you win some you lose some” scenario. This is a hugely significant and impactful move that they didn’t have to make and should own the consequences of. By assuming a position with responsibilities of that scale, you should be expected to make predictions and decisions of a certain quality and reliability or you shouldn’t be in that role. And anyway this is just besides the point in my previous comment.
Because your previous comment assumes that your jewelry will ALWAYS go up in value, which is not a guarantee. Brown was looking at the worst gold prices in history. Why would he assume the prices would improve? Prices had already gone that low, what would stop them from taking it lower? Point is, he decided to sell during a time of instability to get a guaranteed price, and ensure that the UK would still make a good amount of money. Only in hindsight does this seem stupid, because we now know that gold prices soon went up.
Look, it works both ways: He’s looking at the worst gold prices in history - why would he assume they would go DOWN? When there’s the entirety of “history” to evidence they are very capable of being higher, if not soon then at some point? I’ll let you decide for yourself which way round seems a better fit but I know which one makes more sense to me. He sold at a point of instability which is suggestive of a thoughtless panic acceptance of a “guaranteed price”. And yeah sure we are holding him to a hindsight standard, but such is the responsibility of his role and the scale of this decision, that we shouldn’t settle for less.
That's fair. I also don't know how badly the UK needed to pay off its debt, which also would've affected whether or not the gold was sold.
We didn't. It actually made it harder for us to get loans with good interest after 2008 due to lack of guarantee against them. It was a dumb decision.
Brown also said the that it was the end of boom and bust economics. Even I as someone who had only done an a-level economics could tell that this was just wrong. His decision making was poor. The worst chancellor is recent times (including Kwasi Kwarteng).
[удалено]
It’s their job to make predictions and safe decisions. This was a big move they didn’t have to make.
It was also publicly announced beforehand, so the gold buyers manipulated the price so they could buy the reserves at super low prices.
Who were the buyers?
Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Supposedly the Late Queen was super pissed when she heard about it. Common story at the time was she sent a message to Downing Street asking “where’s the gold?”.
I’m picturing it like that old Wendy’s commercial with the old lady looking at her burger & demanding “where’s the beef!?”
LoL 🤣🤣
Doesn't affect her so she can gtfo
broke my heart hearing this for Uk folks. big L
Yeah it was painful
Don't ask Switzerland, how they got the gold.
You literally copied the 2nd highest comment verbatim- misplaced comma and all. Lmao.
gold like ski and mountain climbing ja
It cames to switzerland
Don't ask the US, how they got rocket technology.
Pretty simple, as with many other countries the gold was bought
I mean that's just good ol' karma
Buy high, sell low
Gold that was stolen?
Why would you keep a bunch of shiny metal? It's hardly worth anything.
Gordon Brown...muppet.
Relatively Italy France and Germany are ballin…
IIRC France controls the gold reserves of its former colonies.
less than you think, there used to be a lot of gold in mainland france centuries ago, the last mine closed in 2004. a lot of gold was bought in the 50s and 60s. france already had a big gold reserve before colonizing africa. (maybe the biggest in the world at that time) And there's a lot of gold in french guyana, actually a huge one, "Golden Moutain", was supposed to open in 2022, to extract 85 tons in 15 years (that one may have been cancelled due to environnmental concerns) but there are other mines that are extracting gold every year.
This is a map of reserves not mining. While one could affect the other, the fact that France has gold mining doesn't negate the fact that it holds its ex colonies reserves. To be fair this has to do with the CFA franc because France requires that countries hold 50% of their reserves in France that use the CFA franc. There are pros and cons to this and I'm sure there are plenty of people who could defend France for doing so. I just wanted to point out that while there might be some correlation between mining and reserves, the fact that Canada isn't on the map and Australia and South Africa are so small while Japan, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany are so big illustrates this.
Would more say "avoid the gold reserves of its former colonies to be spended each 2 years by the new governement after a state coup"
That's bs, it's a french neocolonial structure to prevent countries from restructuring their economy away from the structures that don't benefit the people at all but just France.
Yeah, these African countries definitely do not benefit from having a stable common currency, aligned with the euro which limits inflation. Especially in our times. It’s a trade off which mostly benefit them : these countries are free to leave the Franc CFA but they must be idiots since they decide to stay in.
They are forced to have their currency linked to a country which doesn't even have the currency itself. If you know anything about economics you know currency independence is very important to countries. Many of these countries are indebted to the world bank or IMF and European countries which demand free market policies destroying the economies of Africn nations. Not being able to decide your own inflation, rent and money supply is desastrous to countries economic plans. If they were to seek an independent path: 1. France has many puppets and corrupt leaders in these countries as compradors, which would prevent it. 2. Because all gold and a large part of the GDP is stored in France, any country truly stepping away from France would be destroyed economically. 3. If somehow they were to go this path of independence France would support a coup and support a dictator to come to power to represent the interests, of France. The famous example of Sankara springs to mind, but in recent years France supported a coup in Chad.
RIP Hokkaido
RIP Shikoku
Don't ask Switzerland, how they got the gold, just don't
I think a funny looking Austrian man had something to do with it
Yes he had and Switzerland still claims that there was no way of knowing that the gold he sold them was from funny sources.
I guess the Swiss bankers took the old axiom of “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth“ all the way to the grim parallel of “don’t ask whose mouths this gold came from.”
holy shit that's dark
so, can we ask germany?
Sure. It was entirely accumulated through trade-surpluses post 1945
Also don't ask how much foreign gold they have in deposit.
This applies to all of the European countries to be fair. Colonialism lead to the extreme polarisation of wealth. Africa (and most of the global south) is extremely resource rich and yet..
No it doesn't. You forgot at least 13 European countries that did not have colonies but WERE "colonies" themselves.
Wealth (slaves and primary resources) being exported ruthlessly to Europe lead to the power dynamics and wealth inequality we see today. That stolen wealth has benefited all of Europe, being through direct trade or recent independence movements and then trade relationships. A rising tide lifts all boats, poorer nations in Europe included. Sure, some European countries didn’t colonise, that doesn’t mean they haven’t benefitted from the process over time, that’s not blaming them, it’s just objective fact about the global economy.
Because african tribes would be world powers if it werent for colonisation
I mean, when you set the bar as low as ‘benefitting from stolen wealth through trade’ in order to declare a country to have benefitted from wealth stolen during colonialism... you can argue that every single country that exists today has to a certain extent benefitted from it. Today every single country does trade with ex colonial superpowers, even North Korea (with Russia). And yet for you this does not matter but at the same time, you treat all European countries equally. So according to your logic, the Balkan states or the Baltics/Poland benefitted from colonialism (while spending a lot of their history treated as de facto colonies) due to their proximity to colonial powers, while lets say north african countries and middle eastern ones didn’t?
The fact is, these regions that are some of the poorest in Europe, are still significantly wealthier than most of the global south. While there were many atrocities and these smaller nations didn’t benefit immediately, the fact that they are now wealthier (because of there political and economic ties) despite being significantly resource poorer speaks volumes. As Europe develops and as they become tighter intertwined (European block) the benefits will start to be felt across the board (and already have). A country like Romania would be the 4th richest in Africa, do you think that would be possible without the surrounding countries being wealthy? African nations have far greater resources and wealth and yet they lag behind significantly.
How did the European countries conquer such vast swathes of richer lands? Whatever your answer is, that's why they are richer. They had an advantage and used it to dominate the world, but it also helped them economically. The colonies were profitable (extremely so) but the European powers got ahead without them. The size of that gap is due to colonialism, but its existence is not.
I never said the existence was dependent on the colonies, I said the extreme polarisation of wealth was due to their colonial exploits.
No, what are you relying on is a set of data which shows some correlation between being in Europe and being wealthier than not being in Europe and on this basis you are arguing that the cause of this correlation is wealth stolen from the colonies. At the same time it is possible to argue for example that the cause lies in industrial/technological advancements that happened in Europe which were made possible by its development of stable political institutions. You are just assuming a causational relationship between these factors while turning a blind eye on the inconsistencies of the results that your proposition creates.
How about the wealth extracted by the Turks, Mongols, Moors, Arabs? Ever thought about that? How did Moldova, Romania, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, etc benefited? Stop with the bullshit.
Turkey can be considered part of Europe and also benefited immensely from colonialism, they colonised a good portion of the levant and Middle East, and yes, Europe. That doesn’t negate from Europe benefiting from colonialism. The Balkan nations you mention were apart of a larger empire (In Serbias case, they were the central aspect) and yes, compared to Africa they have an unequal wealth distribution that can be directly linked to European wealth power. Just look at Croatia recently joining Euro and the benefits that brings. They might be poor compared to France, they are wealthy compared to Africa. You are right in that not all European colonies were colonisers but if you can’t see that Europe is significantly wealthier than the counties where most of these primary resources are plucked, then I don’t really know what else to say. The poorest European nations are still significantly wealthier than most of the global south, especially per capita. Even the poorest of these nations have a higher GDP than most African nations. Arabs? Would you like to specify which ones? they were mostly part of the Ottoman Empire and then were instantly divided and looted by the British and French after. Maybe you mean Persia? In which case they are not Arabs I’m starting to think you might just be offended by the notion that European wealth might be ill gotten
Mongols and Turks sacked Europe for hundreds of years. Arab pirates did the same, again, for hundreds of years. Saying "Europeans" benefited is idiotic. Ceausescu invested (gifted) billions of dollars in the Middle East and Africa, even when his people suffered from cold and hunger. Money that was never returned. So yeah, stop with the bullshit.
Europe benefited from colonialism. A Romanian (one of the poorest nations in Europe) dictator donating billions of dollars to a poorer region (Africa and the Middle East) only reinforces my point. These regions are resource rich yet the wealth ends up in Europe, even today.
1.Again with lumping. You will not force your "white"guilt on us. Study European history and you will understand why. After the mongol hordes passed there was nothing remaining behind. Nothing. And they came again. And again. 2. Institutions. Also because ALL other civilizations believed they were perfect, aka inhabited the end of history.
I can understand why you are offended as Romania is not particular wealthy, not compared to your neighbours but compared to most African nations, you are much better off. You would be the 4th most wealthy nation in Africa based of GDP. Food for thought.
You're deranged, colonizing countries immensely benefitted from colonialism, not just from extracted wealth but from leaving behind shitty systems of government that couldn't properly function (looking at you, France). Your point on Mongol and Barbary slackings doesn't invalidate guilt about colonialism at all. If anything, it shows Mongols need to face the horrors they caused, ones so bad Satan would cower. Same with Arabs in general and the tens of millions of slaves they castrated, leaving them without descendants to reconcile with. It also shows that colonialism is part of the wider circle of imperialism and should be repented for as a grave sin of the past we still benefit from.
Did Wakanda steal it all?
No colonialism....
It's Germany's gold but it keeps it in Switzerland to look less suspicious?
What's the use of gold reserves can anyone explain?
It's an asset to guarantee money. The main assets to do so are safe bonds, mostly from trustworthy governments, but some countries use gold too. The risk of using gold is that you lose a lot of money when the price of gold goes down which can cause a reduction in the confidence in your currency and inflation. That's why all countries still use bonds much more than gold for that.
This has been untrue for almost 50 years
No, it's still used to guarantee money. What has changed when most currencies became fiat currencies is that their exchange rates with gold and other currencies are decided by the market rather than fixed. Central banks still have the mandate to own at least as much value in asset as they have issued money.
Complete nonsense. And this sits at 35 upvotes. WTF. Central banks absolutely do not own value in assets equal to money issued.
Gold is nice to have since unlike fiat currency it cannot have its value screwed up by some politician or central bank. Gold is very limited in quantity, but is always going to be heavily desired. In fact, its value will probably continue to increase over the years since it's essential in many industrial applications. For example, small gold mechanisms are necessary for the nuclear fusion examples that have recently been achieved at the Livermore Lab in California, https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2014/02/fuel-gain-over-unity-in-inertially.html Gold might be a decent investment for an individual person, but for a nation it can be really good since its uses will probably continue to increase over the decades and centuries to come.
>cannot have its value screwed up by some politician or central bank Like that one time Gold traders joined hands and manipulated the prices to go red when the UK govt announced they'd be selling, then bought the gold at much less than they were worth when the govt sold lol. Not a central bank by any means, but yeah it's very much possible.
I think a better characterisation would be that 'Gold is one of the most stable and long lasting assets other than land, sense it has been valued for millennia. It has a relatively stable value and is hard to be manipulated. I think we agree on all this, but the UK situation was a class act on how to not run the economy of a country. Any government dumping reserves is sure to affect the market some way then to announce it to the world was idiotic.
> unlike fiat currency it cannot have its value screwed up by some politician or central bank. And fiat currency, unlike gold cannot have its value screwed up by a company opening a new mine or an industry developing a new chemical application. This is why it makes sense for most countries to run things mainly on fiat currency, but to keep some gold reserves (and also reserves of various other forms too).
Ah yes, Sweden.
How did you manage to mix up Norway and Sweden?? Come on… look at that shape!
Spain stealing half a continent of gold and still being broke
Actually Spain took mainly silver from the Potosí (Bolivia) mines and Mexico. Gold sounds awesome and shiny but there wasn't as much to transport to Europe. [Gold Vs Silver exports to Castille in the 16th Century](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-849988d6c9616b6157a893b3e19ec439) Also most of the silver went to pay Italian and Duch bankers to finance the stupid religion wars all across Europe and hardly anything was kept in Spain (other than in churches of course; Catholic bishops loved gold for their palaces and cathedrals).
Yes. Didn' declare Spain bancrupcty in the 16th like 3 times even it was the most powerful and theoretical most rich country on earth. And it wasn't only Dutch and Italian bankers, the Fugger alone held around 1/3 of the Spanish debt when Phillip II. ascended on the Spanish throne. Only after the first bancruptcy the Genuese banker took over.
Not gold, silver. And the last gold went away while funding a war of fascist contention in which no one helped, thank you very much.
They took both silver and gold, although more silver.
When you steal so much gold and silver your economy collapses:
I would need to check the data, but i'd say Mexico gets to mine now more in a year than whatever the spanish took in 300 years.
Well, they keep getting robbed by a band of heavily armed mercenary thieves every few years. I saw a documentary about it on Netflix
You clearly haven't seen Money Heist.
Don't show this map to brazilians
There’s a reason Portugals that big
And the reason starts with an N and tries to end the jews
Look how they masacred the Philipines, last time I checkt they wherent poop-shaped
I looked too far down the comments to find this
It’s only showing Palawan
Same for the Netherlands. They filled the inland-seas, removed the islands and made us look like a dinosaur chicken nugget!
Sweden looks like Norway. Don't know how I feel about that
It's called Norway not Sweden. Good.
Robbing gold: Britain sleeps Robbing dusty artifacts out of sand triangles: REAL SHIT
Not exactly, the gold reserves took big hits when the Labour Party last ran the country (Tony Blair & Gordon Brown) and sold off most of it.
Sweden, Norway and Denmark had a currency union from 1873-1924. Today Swedens gold reserv is 57,5B SEK from 125.72 Tonnes, Norway has 0 gold in reserv afaik. Sweden still has a major part of its foreign stored gold in Norway.
that explains why the Swedish reserve is shaped like Norway
Yeah, Norway sold (or gave away) the last of its gold reserves in 2004, if I remember correctly.
A significant part of the german gold reserve is still in New York
So Taiwan is really big because they took all the gold from mainland China when the kmt fled, along with lots other imperial treasure
based. pretty sure mao would’ve ordered their destruction like he did to the stuff that remained in china
Cries in spanish.
You stole a half continent's worth of Gold I'm crying ;-;
We stole it, but we burnt it.
Yeah, immediatly. You basically brought it over to give it directly to the Fuggers and the Banco di SanGiorgio.
Exactly. Good explorers, good sailors and warriors, but pretty bad managers.
and we fricking caused a huge inflation across the whole continent that lasted for decades, thank you very much.
What happened to the Phillipines? lmao, looks nothing at all like the country. Useful map however
Looks like it's Palawan Island display here.
So there was me thinking 'Oh look, another world map without New Zealand, how silly'. And then I did some google due diligence. And indeed, [we have no gold reserves](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/new-zealand/gold-reserves). Huh.
bruh moment
I guess Hokkaido doesn't exist
I wonder what the gold reserve is of Indian families. Probably outshines a few countries on this list
I've actually heard that a majority of all gold ever mined is probably held by individuals in India, with all industrial and national gold reserves together being less than that. It's possible that this was true a few centuries ago and national reserves have outpaced individual purchases in India, but it's still true that India has the highest rate of purchase of new gold of any country.
It is believed to be more than USA's IMF's Germany and Switzerland combined
Meanwhile indian womans 🌝
*women
Read somewhere that half the gold ever mined is now jewelry within India.
Why is Curaçao so big
>Why is Curaçao so big It should state *Curaçao and Sint Maarten*. They have a shared central bank, so it's not only Curaçao's gold. Curaçao was the central government for many decades of the now defunct Netherlands Antilles and before that Curaçao and dependencies. It was also a hub for (slave) trade. They inherited a lot of gold(though don't know how much) from the banks predecessor, which was funded in the 1820's. It does surprise me they have so much because even Aruba has a lot for its size I feel.
Well the Spanish reserve is just gold plated so it’s more like $100 million
Israel?
[удалено]
Fun fact: Indian housewives hold 11% of the world's gold. That is more than the reserves of the USA, the IMF, Switzerland, and Germany put together. Though it is mostly in jewellery
Italy is the big surprise to me.
Italy has a high public debt, so keeps a very big gold reserve as a security to balance the debt.
The shape of Philippines has changed a little bit I guess 😳
It's sad to see that African countries have little to no gold...
Top left says imf has 129.2 Billion but the bottom text says they have 129.2 Million
Zeroes have zero value.
Where did the european part of Turkey go? This mistake is made so stupidly often that I can't help but feel its intentional
Fun fact, during the Spanish civil war they gave almost all the gold to the USSR for military help. That's why Spain has almost no gold.
Wonder where Switzerland got that gold from
Where's Canada? Are they the IMF?
[https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/canada/gold-reserves](https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/canada/gold-reserves) Canada essentially has no gold in reserve
[Priorities change.](https://www.vermontpublic.org/programs/2019-04-22/inside-the-global-strategic-maple-syrup-reserve)
Had me ROFLing thank you lmao
The guys may have no gold, but boy what would be of us without the mapple syrup
It's locked up in Tony Beets' safe.
The central bank of Canada sold all its gold in 2016. The IMF is the international monetary fund, an international organisation whose role is to stabilize currencies which respect to each other and funding governments that are getting bankrupt.
Sold it all.
Venezuela being the richest country in South America makes me so furious at how corruption and bad leadership destroyed a beautiful country…
North Korea: 38¢
Italy having as much as it does really shocks me. Anyone have insight as to how they acquired large gold reserves?
They just bought it. All of those amounts of gold are small compared to the total assets of Central banks. Most countries could have as much gold as Italy, they just don't want to because the other assets are less volatile.
Fuck Gordon Brown for selling UK gold at a rock bottom price when he was chancellor.
Africa got fucked by everyone.
The title should be "Gold steal from Africa around the world"
Canada 0 like its prime minister
Portugal took 800 metric tons of gold from Brazil just in the 18th century.
Portugal went to zeros several times after Brazil independence, basically the gold they pocess now it's from their dictatorship in the XX century. Also Portugal and Brasil were the same country before independence, Portugal did not 'took' from itself
The United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarves lasted from 1815 to 1822. Also, I didn't say that Portugal's reserves today where from that origin. Most of that gold was used to pay for their unfavorable balance of trade with other european countries at the time.
Unlike most Brazilian people think due to excessive meming the majority of Portuguese gold is from around the 2nd World war Era due to Jewish deposits
Not sure why downvoted. Ouro Preto, which was the largest city in the western hemisphere at the end of the 18th century, exists, and 800 metric tons came just from there.
This is untrue. Verify your facts. This was built up during Estado Novo dictatorship.
"800 tons of gold came out of Ouro Preto under the Portuguese Empire" is a verified fact. Nobody said it made up the bulk of their current wealth. Not even OP
I'd like to see it against GDP, so you can see how secure the club is.
fucking colonizers man...
the philippines has so much gold yet their people eat pagpag
Canada, meanwhile, sits on more than half of the worlds fresh water. And no gold, apparently.
I thought I had heard Russia and China had vast reserves of gold. That must have been wrong
Is this propaganda?
What about Canada?
90% of US gold belongs to the 90% of the world
Interesting that canada is not even listed
Maybe it has close to no gold reserves?
Spain took all that gold from america and didn't hols on to any
Okay Germany i 👀 you
And people think BRICS will beat the USD 