How France Secretly Repatriated All Its Gold Before Nixon's Dollar Devaluation

[searcher]

Posting as an interesting read.

How France Secretly Repatriated All Its Gold Before Nixon's Dollar Devaluation

President de Gaulle of France initiated the secret operation “Vide-Gousset” and repatriated 3,313 tonnes of gold reserves from the vaults of the Federal Reserve in New York and the Bank of England in London from 1963 until 1966. De Gaulle feared America’s deficit in its balance of payments would...

www.gold-eagle.com

 

[nickndfl]

Today I would start a company that buys bullion from local shops around the US or just use a few bird dogs with cash to clean out NYC and other bullion hot spots.

 

[Fatrat]

That gold was French gold, they exchanged American dollars for it fair and square.

 

[Voodoo]

Ya I don't think they just stormed in and stole our gold. Kinda seems like something that would be declared as a War.

 

[Someone_else]

That gold was French gold, they exchanged American dollars for it fair and square.

When I was a kid, my dad told me he disliked the French because they "betrayed" us in some move that took our gold in some dishonest manner. Like so many topics, he was short on details. Years later, I set aside his bias against the French and took a French language course. This was well after taking German and Russian...

 

[Fatrat]

In 1966, France, under President Charles de Gaulle, asked the United States to remove all of its military forces and bases from French soil. This decision was part of France's broader policy to assert its strategic independence and reduce American influence. The US military subsequently relocated its assets to other NATO countries, primarily Germany and Belgium.
This pissed off a lot of Americans...

 

[SilverStacker]

In 1966, France, under President Charles de Gaulle, asked the United States to remove all of its military forces and bases from French soil. This decision was part of France's broader policy to assert its strategic independence and reduce American influence. The US military subsequently relocated its assets to other NATO countries, primarily Germany and Belgium.
This pissed off a lot of Americans...

Less then you think. We were far more pissed off at the extent of collaboration with the Nazi's by Vichy during WW2. That and de Gaulle was a generally demanding and unpleasant character to deal with in the first place. The police forces under Vichy hunted down French Jews with an efficiency that impressed even the Nazis. The Vichy Govt. itself having been voted into being freely by the French Parliament and given authoritarian powers it didn't hesitate to act upon the anti-semitism that was rife in France in that era. All told about 76,000 Jews were rounded up by the French Police and in one action 4,000 children were taken from their parents and sent to the death camps for "special treatment".

There was a lot of bad blood from the collaborators and how they shot at our troops during Operation Torch in North Africa. And after the war they were truly vicious in the way they tried to maintain their colonial powers in the world. All of this rubbed Americans the wrong way for a lot of years and if they sent a warship into our waters without our permission we should have sunk it.

 

[Fatrat]

I'm glad we divorced, I just wish we hadn't taken custody of The War in South-East Asia.