Last time this much gold crossed the Atlantic, the French were repatriating their gold reserves from New York — in the 1960s, a few years before the gold-based Bretton Woods monetary system collapsed. The time before then, in July 1940, Operation Fish had the Brits shuffle away 1,500 metric tons to Canada, to keep the treasure away from Hitler in the event the latter would capture London. The armies imminently circling London these days are of a different sort, clad in bankers’ attire rather than military uniform, their appetite for vaulted gold no less strong.

Gold has backstopped the global monetary and financial system for centuries — obviously so under the various gold standards (classical, interwar, Bretton Woods), but no less important during the last fifty-odd years of pure fiat money. Central banks have for the most part held on to the gold of ages past; in recent years some of them — Poland, Russia, China, India — have acquired sizable amounts. (The World Gold Council now routinely reports that the central banks buy above 1,000 tonnes a year.)

As of Friday evening, the New York and London gold prices were once more roughly in line, the golden arbitrage having rapidly closed. Lease rates, a type of gold interest rates, have come down as well from their heights above 5 percent just a few days ago. Maybe this is the beginning of gold’s new role in the global, geopolitical monetary system. Or maybe Ash is right, and it was all just a glitch in the glittering matrix that is the gold market.