• bedwyr@piefed.ca
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      12 days ago

      The pee tape is hardly the most damaging I’m sure, a pee tape wouldn’t even register, he would say deep fake and his supporters would buy it.

      I bet it’s more fucking underage girls, with backup evidence and not just recordings. Plus dirty business deals but that wouldn’t register either.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        I’ve just assumed from the start that the “pee tape” was something that was made up because it became an open secret that Putin had blackmail material and they needed something out there that sounded plausible as blackmail material without screaming “he’s fucking evil”.

        And despite the Epstein files that were released being cherry picked, they still revealed that the actual blackmail material was way worse. My current assumption is that Putin caught wind of what Epstein was up to and KGB’d his way into it. The whole thing (with Russia) has looked like a combination of an adversarial and cooperative relationship. It’s possible Epstein was arrested and the whole thing brought to light specifically as an attempt to reduce Putin’s power over them (the western elite that Epstein had slowly built up blackmail material on over the years), because before it became public knowledge, he probably just had to bring up that he knows about it and could tell the world to get cooperation from those caught in the web.

        Edit: apparently I changed the opening sentence without removing the previous one, removed that now.

      • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
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        12 days ago

        I think they used the “geopolitical consequences of refusing to assist a formal ally” tape.

        Bit like how people are now wondering what happens if the US refuses to assist NATO.

  • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    12 days ago

    Is my math wrong or is that not less than 3% of it? Which according to the article from 1998 to now they haid raised their gold 5 fold meaning comparing today to 1998 when they have 485% of the gold they had in 1998.

    The U.S. in that time has never seemed to try to raise or lower their gold reserve so one could say they have ~100% of what they had in 1998.

    I’m not so sure gold in this context shows enough overall to compare such numbers

    • GardenGeek
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      12 days ago

      Afaik countries planing for war fill their gold reserves in order to stay liquid even if their they’re blocked/sanctioned by others… cause you’ll always find someone willing to buy gold.

      That’s also the reason China enlarging their gold reserves makes Taiwan nervous.

      • Madagaskar_sky@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        I think it’s the very fact they had to dip into it. They don’t have enough liquid cash floating around, so they ALSO have to now start dipping into the emergency funds.

    • bedwyr@piefed.ca
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      12 days ago

      Idk but I know the price of gold is way overvalued, it’s 30x what it was in 2001 or so. The gold to silver ratio is the metric used throughout history, and 15 silver to one gold, or 13 by some estimates, is traditional. The ratio now, is 70/1.

        • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          Countries are expecting to need wartime finances. The world reserve currency is in question, which puts all currencies in question. Stocks and real estate are overvalued.

          Just off the top of my head. There is a lot of instability and uncertainty. Gold is safe.

          This price means a lot of very powerful people with obscene amounts of money think the future is going to be extremely rough.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        Wonder if that’s because we now have practical uses for gold across several industries.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          12 days ago

          It could be, but I’d doubt it. We also have industrial uses for silver, and the amount of gold needed for things like electronics is relatively small. It could have some effect, but I don’t think it should be this dramatic.

          • bedwyr@piefed.ca
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            9 days ago

            If practical uses drove the cost platinum and pallidium would still cost more than gold, (they did for some years around 2001,) as they are catalysts for chemical processes, and can be used like gold to handle high currents without burning up.

            Silver actually has a lower specific resistance than gold and platinum and the like, it can handle high voltages though not as much as gold and platinum.

    • axus@lemmy.ca
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      12 days ago

      They’ve been stealing gold from Africa, so the net decrease might be low even if the amount sold is higher

    • majster@lemmy.zip
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      11 days ago

      Well the point of the article is: Russia is failing, for real this time.

      Could be true could be exaggeration.

      • Sina@beehaw.org
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        11 days ago

        I’d love that to be true, but a country with 2,264 metric tonnes of gold in reserves is far from financially starved. (for reference that’s USD 300 billion)

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    12 days ago

    By early 2022, holdings reached 74 million troy ounces, or 2,300 metric tons,

    Troy ounces? Why not the weight in bananas?