Frank Giustra: Dutch Gold Exit Is a Crisis Signal — Your Cash Is Not Safe in the Banks

All right. Welcome back to the Daniela Kambonis show. Major news this week. The Netherlands has moved billions of dollars of its gold reserves out of the United States, out of Canada, transferred them to the U.K. amid global geopolitical tensions. On Wednesday, the DNB, Dutch Central Bank, said it had moved the gold reserves to ensure it is better prepared for severe crises. In this breaking edition of the show, Frank Jooster joins me now to get his take on this. Frank, this news headline has really grabbed worldwide attention. Is it just a sign of the times? Your take? Yeah. Well, listen, the message was polite, but unmistakable, OK? It was basically, thanks for looking after our gold, but we'll take it from here. And I think the countries around the world are starting to panic that the U.S. is starting to go a bit rogue and unpredictable, antagonistic, threatening, bullying. And they're following the footsteps of both France and Germany, to a certain extent, in terms of repatriating the gold and some other countries as well. Now, all these countries have to be a bit careful with respect to the U.S. And I think, you know, with respect to the Dutch, they left about 18% of their gold holdings in the vaults in Canada and the U.S. And I think that's the diplomatic equivalent of leaving a toothbrush in your ex's apartment to just pretend you haven't broken up. And it was very similar. Something else happened this morning or yesterday, where the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund had filed an application or a request with the Norwegian government to sell about, I think it was about $80 billion worth of U.S. treasuries, OK? And they went way out of their way to insist that this was not a geopolitical move, that they're not really bailing out on the U.S. or just reducing government bond exposures. They'll make it up with buying U.S. corporate bonds or mortgage-backed securities, et cetera, et cetera. And it just feels like it's, you know, it feels like when you break up with an ex that you know is a bit crazy and you just want to poke the bear, you have to be very careful how you exit that relationship because you don't want to antagonize America under Trump. He takes these insults very, very personally. But the bottom line is this. Gold in the U.S. in today's environment as a foreign country is probably not the best place to keep your gold, given how the U.S. is using all sorts of sanction threats, secondary sanctions now with this whole Iran Operation Outcast, you know, threatening countries and institutions around the world with secondary sanctions. So I think anybody in any country that's keeping their gold in the U.S. is thinking, having second thoughts about it. And this is just one more of many that have done it over the over the last few years. I wonder, you know, we always say do what the central banks are doing, not what they're saying. On an investor level, for Americans who hold their gold in the U.S., should they be thinking along the same lines? Well, you can ask me. My personal view is if I had gold in the U.S., I wouldn't keep it there either. Certainly not. I just think, you know, one of the other things that individual investors have to be concerned about is the financial repression that's going to come when we get a dollar crisis. Okay. And I, as you know, we've had this conversation many times. I see a dollar crisis coming at some point. Can't say when. I don't know. It could be a number of years. It could be tomorrow. Some event will trigger it. And how the U.S. will react to that is with financial repression, capital controls, currency controls, bail-ins, you know, in terms of, you know, using the Frank Dodd Act, which allows the bail-ins, which is basically to take your money out of your bank account if they need it. Because when you put your money in the bank, you're a creditor. That's all you are. And they will treat you that way as just one other creditor if they get into financial difficulty. So the Frank Dodd Act, after 2008, made it law that allows the banks to do what they call a bail-in, instead of a bail-out of the institutions by the government, it's a bail-in by the banks to steal your money if they need it. Or we can see a, you know, the sort of thing we saw in Greece, where they restrict the amount of money you can take out. All sorts of financial repression or any other law that forces you to invest in the U.S. or U.S. treasuries, you know, whether it's institutions or anybody that's got any relationship with government might be forced to take on bonds they don't want. And so I see this as all gearing up for an endgame here. And the world is seeing what's happening, and they're reacting, and they're positioning, they're preparing. And so should individual investors. Well, that's what I'm saying. If you're the U.S. investor with a lot of cash in the bank, what you're alluding to is you might be really exposed here. Yes, exactly. That's why I would keep minimal amounts in bank accounts. You know, there's many ways to save, keep your money. A commercial bank isn't the only way. So I would stay away from keeping too much money. Obviously, you need some money in your checking account, but savings account, forget about it. First of all, they don't pay you anything. And secondly, it's at risk. Okay, I wanted to ask you this quickly. I had Jim Rickards on right after War spoke, after Jackson Hole, where he said a lot, said nothing. The whole talk was called In Our Time. Jim Rickards' interpretation, he read all the pages, is that QE is officially off the table. Warsh will not use tricks, whatever he called it, gimmicks, that was used in the past. Do you agree that QE... I watched that interview, Daniela, and that caught my attention, what he said. And listen, I have great respect for Jim. You know, I've talked to him many times, and he's a very smart guy. I don't always agree with Jim's take on things. I just have a personal opinion that it's going a different direction. I don't think they're going to have any choice. I don't know how else you get out of this mess, especially if we get a global bond crisis, which is starting to percolate at the moment with all government bonds, and especially US treasuries, because of the level of debt and the level of the deficits. I don't see any other mechanism by which they can, if the yields start to get out of control in the 10 years, the 30 years, how they're possibly going to be able to rein those in. Now, I know they're hoping that the stablecoin gimmick will create demand for treasuries. And as I've said before, yeah, there's a chance that it could, but that means the stablecoins have become a universal mechanism for financial applications and payment systems and all sorts of other transactions. And that's not happening yet, but that's their hope. And that will replace the demand that's falling away from the petrodollar system that has been in place for 50 years. I heard what Jim said. I don't know how they avoid it. And the fact that Kevin Warsh said something, I mean, who cares what government officials say? They lie all the time. I agree with you. They do nothing but lie, especially these days. Every time you turn on the television, someone's gaslighting you about something, and you know it's a lie, and they know it's a lie, but we're in an era now where lying is acceptable. Well, I was kind of shocked by two interviews in that same week that I did. So that one comment by Jim Rickers, which I can't see happening, and two, Kevin O'Leary being so bullish on Canada now, kind of, okay, change this tune on Carney and everyone's entitled to change. Yeah. You know, I get it. I saw that interview as well. And as you know, I've known Kevin for many, many years. You know what? I had you in the back of my mind thinking, what is Frank thinking? Well, first of all, and I love Kevin. He's a good friend of mine. He really is. And we hang out socially at times, but he and I agree on nothing, absolutely nothing. And whenever he says things like, you know, Kevin gets on television, says a lot of things, and they're very interesting and get lots of headlines and stuff. But listen, as far as Carney's concerned, I'm not as bullish as he is, but I think that Carney is doing the right thing. Okay. I think Carney, and a lot of people might disagree with me, but I think Carney is basically come to the conclusion that you can't do a deal with the Trump administration. It's, you know, you come to a deal, they change the goalposts, you know, you agreed a deal, you put it in writing, they come back a few years later, they just did and say that it's a bad deal when it was their deal that they negotiated. So he's come to the conclusion that you can't really have a relationship, a trustworthy relationship with the current US administration. And what he wants to do is diversify our exports to other countries, including China. And that's obviously upsetting those in Washington, they don't want to hear that. And, you know, they're making all sorts of comments and threats about it. But at the end of the day, Carney is doing what's or trying to do what's right for Canada. Now, unfortunately, in Canada, we have interprovincial relationships, which aren't always rosy, and which get in the way of doing what is smart economically. So he's got to manage that part of it. He's got to manage the fact that these tariffs are, you know, this tariff war, if he's taking on America, there's going to be pain and he gets that. But if I were in his shoes, I don't know what I would do different. I really don't. I think you got to be tough. Trump only respects strength. And so you got to be strong. And if you cower to Trump, you know, you get treated like, you know, like a weakling. And you know, that's exactly how bullies behave. Absolutely 100%. As someone on the inside, and you know, mining, and we've been talking about all the great resources Canada has, and yes, they are great. But if permitting is not allowed, it's pointless. Are you optimistic, he will be able to move the needle on this and actually get projects going here? Yeah, I think he's doing a lot of things and to not only streamline the permitting, but also to attract foreign investment capital into the further mining sector, the resource sector in this country. He's throwing that big event in Toronto shortly, inviting institutions from all over the world. And he's trying to negotiate, do a trade deal with the EU. He's engaging with China, he's doing everything that should have been done a long time ago, instead of relying on the US for almost what 80% of our exports, which we've done forever. That wasn't a very intelligent thing to do. You never put all your eggs in one basket for that very reason. So I think he's doing what should have been done a long time ago. He's trying whether he's going to succeed in all these things. I don't know. But I admire the fact that he's trying. The last question I'm going to get in, it was the headline of the day, jobs numbers coming in stronger than expected in the US, gold sold off, kind of climbing back here. I already know what you're going to say to this, but I have to get the question in. I mean, gold's reacting, right? It's reacting to that headline. Any thoughts or interpretation when people panic at the sight of this? First of all, I never panic. And I look at like, I woke up this morning, when they put out those numbers on the employment, and I looked at the gold, and then you're exactly what's going to happen. And it's short term noise. That's all it is, okay? Because you got to stay focused on why gold has gone up, and why it will continue to go up, and has zero to do with the US job numbers. And it has to do with a structural change, with the global monetary system changing, and the world switching from US treasuries to gold. And that's a long term process. It's not going to happen overnight. This process will continue and continue because you can't dump all those treasuries. There are literally trillions of them sitting overseas. You can't just dump them in the market. It's a very slow process. And so that's driving the gold price. It's the debasement trade. It's the dollarization trade. And it's the insurance trade that if we get a blow up, because there's so many issues in the world, in these tariff wars, too much debt, bubble in the stock market. I could give you a laundry less a mile long. It's a perfect storm of potential problems that if these things trigger some sort of a crash or collapse, you want to own gold. And those are the reasons you own gold. You don't own it because it's going to go up tomorrow because the job numbers will get revised, whatever the headline of the day is. This is a long term structural change you're witnessing, and it has nothing to do with US job numbers. Frank Giustra telling it like it is always. I appreciate you joining us for all this breaking news this week. So thank you. Thank you so much. Maybe I'll see you in Lake America soon. Yeah, see you then. Take care. Thank you, Frank. And thank you all for watching. We'll have more great content coming your way.