Alex’s Notes: Hold on to your gold, and buy more.

The Chinese are pretty smart cookies. Ya, I know, I go on and on about the Chinese, but why shouldn’t I?

In many ways, they are taking the exact same path the US took in its rise to dominance.

The US used to have strategic stockpiles of virtually everything, from base metals to rare metals used in military applications, to silver, gold, oil, etc. Today, those stocks stand depleted, or completely sold off.

China on the other hand is buying raw materials hand over fist. The copper consumption of the Chinese is off the charts for example. This is a simple and expedient way for China to diversify their massive stockpile of USD denominated foreign reserves (roughly $2Trillion) and buy up commodities while the USD is still retaining its value, as well as position themselves in the investments that will hold the greatest value moving forward.

If I were diversifying out of my reserves I would also buy US Treasuries, not because I thought they were worth anything, but because it maintains the buying power of my other $2Trillion USD…call it the cost of doing business. Keep in mind, the Chinese have also found a means of using their USD Treasuries as collateral for direct exposure to the commodities markets via hedge funds…this puts a backstop in place that if the US wanted to slam commoditites prices to prop up the dollar it would do so at the potential risk of devaluing the Treasury instruments the Chinese are using as collateral for their margin calls. Quite brilliant.

Then, when the fiat system resets, China will be holding the aces…commodities…both in raw form and the companies that produce them.

Gold and silver will be much more relevant as money moving forward, do not forget there are 1.4 QUADRILLION dollars worth of OTC derivatives currently in the process of blowing up…it is the biggest paper market on earth..that virtually no one knows about or talks about. As the current fiat currency cycle hurtles towards a reset, people will rush into ‘honest money’.

China to deploy foreign reserves

By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing

Beijing will use its foreign exchange reserves, the largest in the world, to support and accelerate overseas expansion and acquisitions by Chinese companies, Wen Jiabao, the country’s premier, said in comments published on Tuesday.

“We should hasten the implementation of our ‘going out’ strategy and combine the utilisation of foreign exchange reserves with the ‘going out’ of our enterprises,” he told Chinese diplomats late on Monday.

Mr Wen said Beijing also wanted Chinese companies to increase its share of global exports.

The “going out” strategy is a slogan for encouraging investment and acquisitions abroad, particularly by big state-owned industrial groups such as PetroChina, Chinalco, China Telecom and Bank of China.

Qu Hongbin, chief China economist at HSBC, said: “This is the first time we have heard an official articulation of this policy … to directly support corporations to buy offshore assets.”

China’s outbound non-financial direct investment rose to $40.7bn last year from just $143m in 2002.

Mr Wen did not elaborate on how much of the $2,132bn of reserves would be channelled to Chinese enterprises but Mr Qu said this was part of a strategy to reduce its reliance on the US dollar as a reserve currency.

“This is reserve diversification in a broader sense. Instead of accumulating foreign exchange reserves and short-term financial assets, the government wants the nation to accumulate more long-term corporate real assets.”

State-owned groups, particularly in the oil and natural resources sectors, have stepped up their hunt for overseas companies and assets on sale because of the global crisis.

China Investment Corp, the $200bn sovereign wealth fund, has been buying stakes in overseas resources companies and has taken a 1.1 per cent stake in Diageo, the British distiller.

In an interview published in state-controlled media, the chairman of China Development Bank said Chinese outbound investment would accelerate but should focus on resource-rich developing economies.

“Everyone is saying we should go to the western markets to scoop up [underpriced assets],” said Chen Yuan. “I think we should not go to America’s Wall Street, but should look more to places with natural and energy resources.”

“India’s gold demand as reflected in imports have fallen drastically in the first six months,” Harmesh Arora, vice president of the Indian association said today in a phone interview from Mumbai. “There are still no signs of demand picking up as global prices are moving higher,” said Arora, who also believes China could overtake India in gold consumption.

Still, India meets most of its demand from imports, some of which are brought in through unofficial channels and are not represented in official data, said Mukul Sonawale, partner of Mumbai-based Narrondass Manordass Co. and a past president of the Bombay Bullion Association.

“China can emerge as the world’s biggest consumer only on paper,” he said. “The official figures of imports will be quite deceiving as they don’t capture all the imports. With India doubling the import duty on gold, the unofficial channel is bound to increase.”

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