***possibility of French gold being repatriated***
Is that the gold DeGaulle bought from the US government at $32 dollars an oz back in the late 1960s?
I was around then, and it came out we were trying to keep the foreigners from draining all our gold by swapping their greenbacks for silver certificates and then paying them off in silver at about $1 an ounce. They began melting every silver coin they could get their hands on for the ingots.
Then they blamed the silver shortage on the people hoarding their silver coins.
People held a quarter in each hand - one silver one clad. Since both said 25c and bought the same amount of goods, people kept the silver and spent the clad.
Gresham's Law lives.
There's a good, cheap book on Amazon called Wooden Nickels that tells the story of that swindle.
[sidebar] When silver hit $20 an ounce, I raided my dime and quarter coin collections (sold $1000 face common dates when silver was $10 and thought I was clever). I had made many gold and silver coin deals but I was stunned when I walked into a coin store with $54 face and walked out with $1,080. I still marvel at it today.