There is an ancient saying of ‘He who has the gold, makes the rules’. This isnt just a cliche, but rather proven out by historical evidence. Wherever the largest stocks of gold were, the nations who have held it were usually the most influential nations of their time period.

Egypt, Rome, Byzantium, Western Europe and England, then the USA.

The US gold stocks have not been audited since the 50’s, and many analysts believe that what is claimed to be there is alot more than what is actually there.

China is still making strong strides to make the Yuan a fully convertible currency. When the veil spun by the mass media comes off, people will run to whats ultimately safe, which is gold and silver.

China May Overtake India in Gold Demand, Council Says

By Sophie Leung

July 24 (Bloomberg) — China may overtake India to become the world’s top gold consumer this year, the World Gold Council said, as the nation became the first of the major economies to rebound from the global recession.

Jewelry demand in China expanded in the first quarter while dropping in India, Marcus Grubb, a managing director at the London-based council, said today at a conference in Hong Kong. Chinese gold demand will keep rising, he said.

China’s economy grew 7.9 percent in the second quarter after a 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus package spurred record lending and consumption. India’s gold purchases slumped 54 percent in the six months ended June after a decline in the rupee pushed up the cost of owning bullion, cooling demand from housewives and jewelers, the Bombay Bullion Association said.

“There is a possibility that China might overtake India as the world’s largest gold consumer this year,” Hou Huimin, deputy head of the China Gold Association, said by phone from Beijing today. “India’s gold consumption is reportedly dropping this year due to the financial crisis.”

Total demand from India in the first quarter fell 83 percent to 17.7 metric tons, from 107.2 tons a year earlier, according to figures from the World Gold Council. Purchases in China rose 1.8 percent to 105.2 tons from 103.3 tons. Total Chinese demand for gold was six times that of India in the first quarter, the council said in May.

‘Consumption Growing’

“China’s consumption is growing and this year’s will surely be more than last year’s,” Hou said.

China consumed nearly 400 metric tons of gold last year, while demand in India was more than 650 tons, according to council data, which cited statistics from GFMS Ltd. Global demand rose 3.8 percent to 3,658.6 tons, or $101.8 billion, the council said Feb. 18.

Bullion prices have gained 7.6 percent this year as the global recession spurred demand for safe haven assets. Gold for immediate delivery was little changed at $949.65 an ounce at 5:39 p.m. in Hong Kong.

China, the world’s biggest gold producer, has increased reserves by 76 percent to 1,054 tons since 2003 and has the world’s fifth-biggest holdings by country, Hu Xiaolian, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said in April.

Growing demand in China won’t necessarily boost imports of the metal as rising production may be able to satisfy additional consumption, said the World Gold Council’s Grubb. China’s production of gold has risen at rate of 7 percent to 8 percent annually over the past five to six years, he said.

Imports

“It depends if the demand is rising faster than production,” Grubb said in an interview. “At the moment, they are roughly in balance.” China will seek to boost gold output to 290 tons this year from 282 tons in 2008, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on March 20.

Gold imports by India in the six months ended June 30 plunged to 63.8 tons from 139 tons a year earlier, the Bombay Bullion Association said July 13. Imports may fall further after the government doubled the import duty this month, it said.

“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.”

Original Article

Here is a little global economy roundup:

Many still think the economy is on the verge of recovery. While the rest of the developing world continues to steam ahead plowing through obstacles, the western world continues to spiral downward. This still does not take into consideration ALT-A and ARM loan resets through 2011.

July 9 (Bloomberg) — The $3.5 trillion commercial real estate market is a ticking “time bomb” that may lead to a second wave of losses at large U.S. banks, congressional Joint Economic Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said.

About $700 billion in commercial mortgages will need to be refinanced before the end of 2010 and “doing nothing is not an option,” Maloney, a New York Democrat, said at a committee hearing today. This “looming crisis” may lead to significant losses for banks, force shopping center and hotel owners into bankruptcy, and impede economic recovery, she said.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world forges onward.

The IMF  claims Asia cannot decouple from the western world economies and will not continue to grow until the west recovers…this article doesn’t agree. Also….has the head economist of the IMF forgotten that China has almost $2 Trillion in savings that it can spend?

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) – China wrestled the new-car sales crown from the U.S. through the first half of the year, topping 6 million cars and trucks at a time when the long-time global sales leader grapples with historic declines.

Do you really think the worlds leaders believe all this BS about green shoots? If they did, would they be plowing money into commodities like this? Or maybe is it, that they know that if you print $13.5 Trillion (and growing) you will see massive inflation of real prices, so they are buying while its cheap and using lip service to keep the dollar value from dropping to preserve as much buying power as possible?

BEIJING, July 10 (Reuters) – China’s imports of unwrought copper and semi-finished copper products in June hit an all-time record for a fifth straight month of 475,999 tonnes, from May’s record 422,666 tonnes, data from the General Administration of Customs showed on Friday.

Rats from a sinking ship

More Diversification out of Dollar…Japan has always been one of the biggest supporters of the USD…and now there is public discussion of diversifying out of it…this is very bearish for the USD (and very bullish for gold)…this may be a prelude to a new ‘basket of currencies’ as an index to a new global exchange currency

July 13 (Bloomberg) — Japan’s opposition party, leading in polls ahead of next month’s election, said the nation should consider shifting its $1 trillion of foreign reserves away from the dollar and buying International Monetary Fund bonds.

The next world reserve currency

President Medvedev has called for a gold backed currency over and over. This time, he isnt just calling for it, he is producing examples of it. He handed coins to the leaders of G8 delegations, a proto-type of a potential new global currency…and these coins were pure gold. Any move in this direction would be extremely bullish for gold. Read an article I wrote regarding shifting to a gold back currency to understand why.

July 10 (Bloomberg) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a “united future world currency.”

My colleagues have been right so far, having called the current economic crisis over a decade ago. This video proves it: Millennium Money as it was produced in the mid 90’s.

Our portfolios also reflect the fact that those who listened to us over the last few years are doing quite well right now. Those who did not…maybe not so much.

I will be sending out a ‘Rapid Trends Insider’ email later today with an exclusive chance to listen in on a recent round-table discussion with my colleagues regarding the global supply / demand situation, as well as an interview we did with David Morgan, one of the worlds top recognized silver analysts.

You can join our newsletter here: Rapid Trends Insider

By Shanthy Nambiar and Lilian Karunungan

June 8 (Bloomberg) — The BRICs are buying dollars at the fastest pace since before credit markets froze in September, protecting exports even as leaders of the biggest emerging markets consider alternatives to the U.S. currency.

Brazil, Russia, India and China increased foreign reserves by more than $60 billion in May to limit currency gains as the first global recession since World War II restricted exports, data compiled by central banks and strategists show. Brazil bought the most dollars in a year, India’s reserves gained the most since January 2008 and Russia added the most foreign exchange since July.

While Russian, Chinese and Brazilian leaders suggest substituting the dollar, the central bank purchases show just how dependant they remain on the world’s reserve currency. Russia is proposing the BRICs consider creating a new unit of exchange when they meet in Yekaterinburg on June 16. China and Brazil said last month they may look at ways of dropping the dollar for trade between the two countries.

“Foreign central banks do not want to see their currencies relentlessly strengthen,” said Daniel Tenengauzer, head of foreign-exchange and emerging-market debt strategy at Banc of America-Merrill Lynch in New York. “Such a move would dampen an already-weak outlook outside the U.S. and potentially risk even more capital-markets chaos if the dollar appeared to be heading toward a disorderly decline.”

The U.S. currency rallied in Asia today, gaining 1.3 percent against the Indian rupee to 47.74. Russia’s ruble fell 1.8 percent to 31.42 per dollar in London trading, while the yuan’s 12-month offshore forward contract, an agreement to buy an asset in the future, fell 0.5 percent to 6.731.

Real’s Rally

International reserve assets excluding gold held by the BRICs, an acronym coined by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Economist Jim O’Neill in 2001 for the biggest emerging markets, total $2.8 trillion, a 7.8 percent increase from a year ago and 42 percent of the world’s total, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The real, ruble, and rupee strengthened and the Dollar Index posted its biggest decline in 24 years last month as signs the global recession may be easing spurred investors to seek higher-yielding alternatives to the U.S. currency. A net $26.1 billion has flowed into emerging-market equity funds this year, EPFR Global, which tracks $11 trillion worldwide, said June 4.

The real rallied 11.2 percent last month, the ruble gained 6.9 percent and the rupee 6.4 percent. The yuan appreciated 21 percent between July 2005, when the government allowed it to trade, and July 2008. China has prevented the currency from strengthening since then as the economy slowed.

Currency Alternatives

The Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against the euro, yen, pound, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc and Swedish krona, lost 6.4 percent last month, the biggest decline since March 1985. It rose 0.9 percent today.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proposed on June 5 that nations use a mix of regional reserve currencies to reduce reliance on the dollar. The subject may be on the agenda when he meets his counterparts in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg, the Kremlin said this month.

China’s central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan suggested using the International Monetary Fund unit of account, known as special drawing rights, as an alternative in March. His Indian counterpart Duvvuri Subbarao hasn’t commented on that plan. IMF First Deputy Managing Director John Lipsky said on June 6 it’s possible to take such a “revolutionary” step over time.

Last month, China, the biggest importer of soybeans and iron-ore, and Brazil, whose main exports include soy, metals and petroleum, began studying a proposal to move away from the dollar and use yuan and reais instead.

Dollar ‘Discontent’

“What we are seeing is a public expression of discontent over the dollar, yet nobody knows what needs to be done specifically,” said Elina Ribakova, the chief economist in Moscow for Citigroup Inc.

Brazil, the only country to break down its dollar purchases, acquired $2.8 billion of the greenback in May, Russia bought at least $17 billion of foreign currencies, while India’s reserves rose by $10.6 billion, central bank data show. China may have purchased $30 billion in foreign exchange last month, Hong Kong- based research company SJS Markets Ltd. estimates.

At the end of 2008 the dollar accounted for 64 percent of central bank reserves, up from 62.8 percent in June 2008, according to the IMF in Washington. The currency has underpinned exchange rates since the 1971 collapse of the Bretton Woods system, which linked their value to gold.

Rising Holdings

Federal Reserve holdings of Treasuries on behalf of central banks and institutions rose by $68.8 billion, or 3.3 percent, in May, the third most on record, Bloomberg data show. About 51 percent of the $6.36 trillion in marketable Treasuries are held outside America, up from 35 percent in 2000. China is the biggest foreign owner of Treasuries, increasing its holdings to $768 billion as of March from $60 billion in 2000.

A steeper dollar decline would hurt BRIC exports, devalue their reserves and worsen the global credit crisis, said Mitul Kotecha, head of global foreign-exchange strategy in Hong Kong at Calyon, the investment banking arm of Credit Agricole SA.

“It would be shooting yourself in the foot to sell U.S. assets and move away from dollars too quickly,” said Kotecha. “As much as we are seeing in terms of rhetoric, the central banks have so much exposure they will be very careful.”

Intervention, where central banks buy or sell currencies to influence exchange rates, may help bolster the dollar, he said.

Currency Forecasts

The median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg is for the real to fall 7 percent to 2.1 per dollar by year-end, while the rupee will drop 0.6 percent to 48. The yen is forecast to weaken 4.4 percent.

“The dollar will stabilize against its major trading partners around the turn of the quarter,” said Michael Shaoul, chief executive officer at New York-based institutional brokerage Oscar Gruss & Son Inc., who called the emerging-market rally in February. “It got stronger than was warranted during the crisis and weakened rapidly during the recovery.”

Investors abandoned emerging markets after the September bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. eliminated demand for all by the safest, most easily traded assets, such as Treasuries. The MSCI EM Index tumbled 54.5 percent last year.

A shortage of the U.S. currency forced central banks to pump reserves into their economies. The Dollar Index rose 18 percent between June 30 and March 31.

Reserves Reversal

Asian central banks, excluding China, ran down foreign- exchange reserves by more than $300 billion in the 12 months ended April 30, according to London-based HSBC Holdings Plc. Russia’s slid by $213 billion in the eight months ended March 31, central bank data show. Brazil’s reserves dropped $5.7 billion in the six months ended Feb. 27.

Emerging-market central banks are buying dollars as stronger currencies threaten exports while the global economy contracts.

The IMF estimates the world’s gross domestic product will shrink 1.3 percent this year. Trade worldwide will plunge 9 percent, the most since World War II, the World Trade Organization said in March.

Brazil’s $1.3 trillion economy, Latin America’s largest, may drop 0.73 percent in 2009, the biggest contraction in 19 years, according to the median forecast in a May 29 central bank survey. Russia’s economy will contract at least 6 percent, Medvedev said this month. China’s exports, which account for 60 percent of its GDP, slumped 22.6 percent in April from a year earlier, according to the government.

Dollar Strength

“There might be a risk-appetite reversal which could mean some temporary dollar strength,” said Peter Eerdmans, head of emerging-market bonds in London at Investec Asset Management Ltd., which manages $700 million in developing-nation debt. “We have taken profits on some of our emerging-market positions.”

Brazil’s central bank President Henrique Meirelles said last month foreign currency flows are creating a “very favorable” condition for policy makers to boost reserves.

“Given the breadth and depth of the U.S. economy in relation to the world economy, it is unlikely the dollar will be displaced as the principal reserve currency anytime soon,” said Nikhil Srinivasan, who overseas $20 billion of assets as chief investment officer for Asia and the Middle East at Munich-based Allianz SE, Europe’s biggest insurer.

Original Article

For those of you who dont know, the USD is the world reserve currency, and for decades all world trade has been settled in it.

Governments of the world are not going to stand by until the US fixes it problems, China has been steadily putting the pieces in place to conduct global trade with or without the Dollar.

If using methods of trade settlement besides the dollar becomes common practice, it means further pressure on the dollar downward…which means dollars come home.
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia and China should consider switching to domestic currencies in bilateral trade without going to the dollar, Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with Kommersant daily published on Friday.

China has already entered similar agreements with Brazil and Belarus. The deal involves a currency swap agreement between the two countries. Trade turnover between Russia and China reached about $50 billion in 2008 and is set to increase.

“I think that we can think about such positions, for example the rouble against yuan,” Medvedev was quoted by Kommersant as saying. Russia’s own attempt to switch to the rouble in bilateral trade with Belarus has so far not been successful.

Leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, known by their BRIC acronym, are meeting in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on June 16 to discuss the role of the dollar in the global financial system among other issues.

Medvedev said bilateral currency deals between trade partners ease impact of the economic crisis in an environment when many countries have difficulties tapping international capital markets.

Original Article

In this article, Mr. Kim goes back through Greenspans famous essay and shows clearly why gold is the only means of counterbalancing what governmental and banking oligarchies do with fiat currency systems.

An excerpt:

Today, due to the proliferation of fragile and confusing financial instruments called derivatives and the fraudulent nature of our fractional reserve banking system, hundreds of billions, and more likely, trillions of more dollars exist than claims on real assets and goods.

The comparable analogy would be if, as an Apple (AAPL) store owner, I sold the same 100 Apple desktop computers to 10,000 clients. As long as no more than 10 of my customers required delivery in any given year, then my business could operate for many years without this fraudulent scheme ever being exposed. However, the instant my clients collectively decided they wanted to take delivery of all 10,000 computers in the same month, my ruse would be exposed and my business sentenced to a fate of bankruptcy.

Almost all of us would agree that this would be an insane way to run a business, yet we readily accept the fact that all major banks in every modern, developed nation run their businesses in this very manner. However, the development of such a situation would be next to impossible with the institution of a true gold standard and this is why Alan Greenspan once made the timeless statement that economic freedom and gold are inseparable.

The full article is here: Gold is the balance to fiat currency

An article on Reuters recently indicated a United Nations panel has decided much of the world would like to move away from the American currency as the world’s reserve currency. This panel wanted to look into a “basket of currencies” or perhaps another entirely different, new currency to replace the U.S. dollar. Additionally, both the Russians and Chinese have indicated similar concerns.

This event doesn’t surprise me in the least. If we go back a few years, it was only the Austrian school thinkers that stepped forward and said the U.S. dollar, or any fiat currency, was eventually doomed. Now other nations and the U.N. are saying they really don’t trust the U.S. dollar, which is what this amounts to. I wrote about something similar happening many times and one currency that I spoke about years ago was the golden yuan (renminbi). There was a meeting in Southeast Asia years ago, about a gold-backed yuan. I believe any basket of currencies tried will fail, because none of these currencies are tied to real value.

At some point the world monetary system will probably go back to some sort of a gold standard, but in my view it will not be a true gold standard but some kind of pseudo gold standard. No one really knows the future, and I’ll be the first to admit it, but what we are seeing now is what we see at the end of all great inflations and that’s a distrust of the fiat money system and/or a distrust of the leading currency. Russia is raising its hand and asking, “Why should anyone trust it?”

There are so many U.S. dollars in the financial system. In my view it is collapsing, but the reason the system hasn’t completely collapsed yet is because the U.S.’s trading partners, such as China and Japan, are holding on to dollars. So they’re not putting them into circulation, but once that happens or they get scared or try to exchange too many of those U.S. dollars for real goods or services, it could ignite more than an inflation — it could start a currency crisis.

Most of us know that there is manipulation going on in currency markets and in the financial system as a whole. The Working Group of Financial Markets (WGFM, also known as the Plunge Protection Team) was established after the crash of 1987 and was developed to prevent another crash. I must say again, “Great job, gentlemen.” It does not work on a long-term basis. Just take a look at the stock market averages; the very idea that any group is bigger than the market is ludicrous.

However, the WGFM certainly can influence the market on a short-term basis, and they have, again and again and again. Is Russia looking after their interest? The Dukat Project in Russia is one of the best silver mines around. Russia does have some decent mines and some very good mining techniques in addition to having a strong oil base. Russia watched the price of oil go from $147.00 down to below $40.00. Now Russia’s gross domestic product is in trouble because its main commodity has been cut by 70%. It’s the same thing in the metals markets when these prices get hammered down so badly that their “paper” worth is substantially decreased.

Many have asked where this will lead. If you review history and what happened to the Great British Empire when America started coming to the fore, you get a pretty clear picture of where the U.S. is going to go. The pound sterling was the settlement currency on an international basis. It had all the power, all the financial clout; but then here comes America, the up and comer, and they have CAPITAL — which, in the Austrian school of economic thinking, is the means of production. So when the waning of the United Kingdom was going on and the buildup of America began, it was a transition, meaning it was harsh but it was achievable.

That same scenario is taking place right now, except it’s the U.S. dollar that isn’t being trusted instead of the pound sterling, and Asia is the “capitalistic” society because they have a great deal of the means of production. The Asian countries are producing almost everything. And I think you’re going to see them continue to produce over the next decade or so, and you’ll see a continual decline of the U.S. Empire. It doesn’t mean America is going away but it certainly is not going to be the number one productive nation in the world. It’s going to be the Asian countries, primarily China.

However, I’m still bullish on America in some aspects. One is food; the U.S. can certainly get high yields out of the farmland it farms, although nutritional value is another matter and outside this discussion. Second is ingenuity; I think it’s almost built in to the gene pool that the American spirit is pretty much entrepreneurial. They are out looking for good ideas. How to build a better mousetrap, think outside the box, etc. And the third is education; when you look at it objectively, China is sending all their best students to American universities and there’s a reason for that. They still get the best education in math/engineering and science in the USA. America has a poor record during the mid to high school ages, but from the university level on up, America probably still has one of the best educational systems around.

Generally speaking, though, I agree with James Howard Kunstler, who said that the average U.S. citizen has become “an overstuffed, overfed clown.” Most Americans have gotten politically lazy and they’re going to pay for that in the future. They don’t read enough, they’re undereducated, and they refuse to get involved in the political system. They basically don’t have the American spirit that once prevailed. They’ve just become dulled down, but I believe — because of this economic “rearrangement,” if you will — that is going to reverse. So I’m very positive in the longer run that the American populace is not only going to wake up but shape up and move forward. It will be a leaner, meaner, and much more aware American in the next five years. And it’s going to be a tough transition for some and almost impossible for others.

Do gold and silver fit into this picture? Yes! To make the transition as painless as possible, everyone needs some gold and silver. The precious metals can be traded for any currency anywhere on the planet. Regardless of hearing more deflation talk in the news or inflation around the corner, the metals are a crisis hedge, a sure thing in a world of growing uncertainty.

It is an honor to be.

Sincerely,

David Morgan
Silver-Investor.com

Last Updated: 3:24pm BST 26/08/2008
The Telegraph.co.UK

Rule changes for commercial banks are acting as cover for exchange rate intervention, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

China has resorted to stealth intervention in the currency markets to amass US dollars, using indirect means to hold down the yuan and ease the pain for its struggling exporters as the global slowdown engulfs the economy.

A study by HSBC’s currency team in Asia has concluded that China’s central bank is in effect forcing commercial banks to build up large dollar reserves, using them as arms-length proxies in a renewed campaign of exchange rate intervention.

Beijing has raised the reserve requirement for banks five times since March, quickening the pace with two half-point rises in late June.

This is having major spill-over effects into the currency markets because banks in China have been required over the last year to hold extra reserves in dollars rather than yuan. The latest moves have lifted the mandatory deposit from 15pc to 17.5pc of total lending since March.

“China has used the pretext of reserve requirement hikes to help slow yuan appreciation. We estimate that the PBOC [central bank] intervened by about $49.6bn in June,” said Daniel Hui, the bank’s Asia strategist.

Beijing has also slashed the amount of foreign debt banks operating in China can hold. The effect is to oblige the banks to become net buyers of dollars, halting the flow of foreign “hot money”.

Given the sheer scale of China’s foreign reserves – now $1,800bn (£970bn) – any shift in its exchange policy now ripples around the globe. The covert buying may help to explain at least part of the explosive dollar rebound over recent weeks.

There is little doubt that the key driver behind the wild currency ructions this summer has been the blizzard of dire data from Britain, Europe, Japan and Australasia. The mounting danger of a full-fledged recession across the club of rich OECD nations appears to have caught the markets off guard.

The closely watched Dollar Index reached an all-time low in March. It crept up gradually in the early summer before smashing through resistance in July.

The world’s currency system is swivelling on its axis. Central banks in Asia and Europe have stopped raising rates, and some have begun to cut aggressively. The Federal Reserve is no longer nakedly exposed. Indeed, investors are already starting to look ahead to the next round of Fed tightening.

The 18pc slide in oil prices from a peak of $147 a barrel in July has added juice to the dollar rally. Russia and the Middle East petro-powers tend to recycle a high proportion of their vast earnings from oil into the eurozone, either by purchasing European bonds or expensive imports.

A Bundesbank study found 40 cents of every dollar spent by eurozone countries on oil imports comes back again one way or another. The figure for the US is just 10 cents. This trade bias has given oil a new character as a sort of anti-dollar driving the currency markets.

Even so, the China effect is a key ingredient in the dollar comeback. Beijing’s Politburo is clearly disturbed by the sudden downward turn in the economy as export markets freeze, and surging wage inflation in the country’s manufacturing hubs eats away at profit margins.

“They are now more worried about growth than overheating, and you are seeing that play out in the currency markets. There has been a remarkable change of view,” said Simon Derrick, exchange rate chief at the Bank of New York Mellon.

China’s PMI purchasing managers index fell below 50 for the first time in July, signalling an outright contraction in manufacturing output. Hong Kong’s economy contracted 1.4pc in the second quarter. The Politburo has rushed through special rebates for textile producers now caught in a ferocious downturn.

Much of the clothing, footwear and furniture industry has been hit, leading to mass plant closures in the Pearl River Delta.

“During the first half of this year, about 67,000 small and medium-sized companies went bankrupt throughout China, leaving more than 20m people out of work,” said the National Development and Reform Commission. “Bankruptcies of textile and spinning companies have numbered more than 10,000. Two thirds are on the brink of bankruptcy.”

Last week’s rebound on the Shanghai stock market stalled on fading hopes of a fiscal stimulus package. “It is unrealistic to expect the government to rescue the market,” said Li Ka-shing, chairman of Hutchison. “Speculators should be very cautious now. The worst is not over in the global credit crisis.”

Lehman Brothers warns of a risk that a housing slump and the 55pc equity crash since October could combine with a global downturn to set off a “vicious cycle”. House prices have already fallen 18pc in Guangzhou and 9pc in Beijing. Prices are now falling in cities that make up over half China’s population.

Interview with Nick Barisheff: Gold is Money

by: Pierre Daillie posted on: July 27, 2008

This week we interviewed Mr. Nick Barisheff, President & CEO, Bullion Management Group, and discussed with him the importance of gold bullion. Mr. Barisheff founded Bullion Management Group Inc. in 1997, and is the portfolio manager of BMG BullionFund, Canada’s only open-ended fund investing purely in gold, silver, and platinum bullion.

GreenLightAdvisor.com: What’s the most important thing people need to understand about gold?

Nick Barisheff: Many people think gold is a commodity like copper, zinc or pork bellies, but it has 3,000 years of history as money. It was money that no government created by edict. It was just adopted for usage by itself, and it was and still is the best form of money. Currently, we have a 37-year global experiment in paper money. All prior paper money experiments ended in hyperinflation, with the currencies becoming worthless. All previous hyperinflations were contained within a single country, but this time, because of the reserve status of the US dollar, it is likely to be global in nature.

Right now, the price of gold is rising while most currencies are losing purchasing power as well as their value against gold. Gold comes back into its monetary role when there’s a loss of confidence in the financial system or in paper money, and that’s when people are attracted to it.

Before 1971, the monetary system was governed by the Bretton Woods Agreement. Under that agreement, the US dollar was backed by gold, and other currencies were pegged to the dollar. Other countries could trade their US dollars for gold. Essentially, US gold indirectly backed all other currencies. Then things changed. As the US was getting into the Vietnam War and into President Johnson’s policy of guns and butter, US gold reserves started declining.

Countries holding dollars were presenting their US dollars and asking for gold in return, and that led to US gold reserves dropping from a peak of 22,000 tonnes to 8,800 tonnes. On August 15, 1971, President Nixon “closed the gold window” and stopped the exchange of US dollars for gold. Closing the gold window was a euphemism, but basically the US declared bankruptcy. When you can’t meet your obligations when they are due, that’s what it is. So from that point in time, we’ve had 37 years where the entire world has been on a global fiat currency monetary system.

Since 1971, when the dollar was freed from the constraints imposed on a currency backed by gold, the US has experienced increasing federal government and current account deficits. The US is now borrowing $800 billion annually to fund its consumption of foreign-made goods and commodities, and the federal government is running a deficit of almost $350 billion. At some point, foreigners will become unwilling to continue funding US expenditures, forcing the Federal Reserve to expand the money supply at a faster pace. This will result in rising inflation, rising interest rates and a continuous decline in the US dollar.

GLA: We’ve had the fastest money supply growth in almost 40 years that’s resulting in increased inflation. Why would an investor want to go into T-bills, given that interest rates don’t even cover half of the stated inflation rate, which we know isn’t even the real inflation rate?

NB: For the first time in history, we have an unlimited ability, by all central banks, to print, however much money we want, so to speak. Apart from the US M3 money supply growing at about 20%, we also have India and China growing theirs at about the same rate. China is at 18%, India is at 20%, and Russia is at 45%. As China or India sell goods to the US, they take in US dollars and they print yuan or rupees against those US dollars. Japan’s a little different; there, individuals and corporations can take their US dollars and buy US assets themselves. In China you have to turn your US dollars in to the central bank.

In today’s inflationary environment, many who invest in fixed income investment do not appreciate that instead of being “safe” investments, they are in fact guaranteed losses of purchasing power when you take inflation and taxation into account. We have done some analysis into a systematic withdrawal from our Fund for those investors requiring income. Based on the fact that precious metals have a long track record of staying ahead of inflation, an investor would be far better off in precious metals in terms of maintaining principal after inflation and having more after-tax cash flow to spend.

GLA: What did you think of John Embry’s (Sprott Asset Management) recent article about the manipulation of the price of gold? His assertion was that the central banks are deliberately keeping gold below $1,000 per ounce.

NB: John and Eric Sprott have recently written an extensive report called Not Free, Not Fair. The report brings forth a great deal of evidence that the precious metals markets may be manipulated. While it may seem like there’s a conspiracy to suppress the gold price, I think it’s simpler than that. It’s a well know fact that it is the job of central banks to manage their country’s currency, that’s part of their mandate. Central banks understand that gold is a currency, but one that they can’t expand as easily as paper money. I don’t think there is any lack of understanding on the part of central bankers that gold is an alternative currency.

GLA: Isn’t gold considered to be just a commodity with no real monetary role anymore?

NB: I’d like to refer to an article by Tony Fell , and it’s particularly interesting, given that he was chairman of RBC Capital Markets at the time of writing. He talks about how gold has three attributes: it’s a commodity, a store of value and a currency. He says so many people now think of gold only as a commodity or jewellery, or as an archaic relic, that there’s a feeling of “who needs it anymore?” People don’t think of it as money.

However, the daily sales volume gives a conclusive indicator that gold is much more than an industrial commodity. The physical turnover of gold by members of the UK’s London Bullion Marketing Association is about *$25 billion per day. We’re talking about net turnover between the LBMA members. The volume is estimated at 7-10 times that amount.

It’s pretty clear that these are currency transactions. That’s why gold, silver and platinum trade on the currency desks of all the banks and brokerages, not the commodity desks. What people need to know is that gold is a currency [like dollars or euros or yen]. Gold is not trading at these volumes as a commodity or as some archaic relic.

GLA: What are your thoughts on technical analysis, given that gold is a currency?

NB: Technical analysis works if you’re looking at widely distributed stocks like the S&P 500, for example, where there are many, many transactions that accurately reflect public sentiment. The price of gold, however, can be impacted by one country, or one very wealthy individual who wakes up one morning and decides to buy, and then you can throw the charts away. Or when a government decides to sell or a government intervenes. I’ve looked at technical analysis for gold in the past and tried to back-test with various techniques and found that they don’t work more often than they do. In the most recent case, there is no justification for the drop in gold price; it should have been rising because nothing has fundamentally changed. In fact, the fundamentals got worse and the gold price should have rallied. None of the problems went away; nothing was solved; the conditions are as bad as or worse than they were previously. So the drop in gold’s price has been a false decline.

GLA: So, it’s the value of paper currency that changes, not the value of gold [so to speak]?

NB: One of the attributes of gold as money is that you can’t simply create it at will, like paper money. It’s no one else’s promise of performance and it’s not someone else’s liability. It’s not going to zero, no matter what. And, whether we’re moving the measuring stick of inflation or deflation really doesn’t matter, because the way gold should be measured is in terms of purchasing power. It doesn’t matter if gold is priced at $1,000 in paper money per ounce or $2 in paper money per ounce, it will retain its purchasing power in either circumstance.

The first important step in the big picture of understanding gold is that it is a store of wealth with a 3,000 year history, and it’s money. Over the long term, it retains its purchasing power. That’s why they say that an ounce of gold will always buy a man’s suit.

Apart from that, the US dollar is down 85% in purchasing power since 1971. In 1971 you could buy a car with 100 ounces of gold; a car was about $3,500 and gold was $35 an ounce. With 1,000 ounces, or about $35,000, you could buy a house. Today, you could buy several cars or a luxury car with 100 ounces, and a mansion with 1,000 ounces. You could also buy more units of the Dow Jones Industrial Average with your ounce today than you could in 1971. So that ounce has preserved its purchasing power while currencies have lost over 80% of their value.

GLA: Apparently, in the last 40 or 50 years, there’s only been three years that there was net selling by gold investors, three years out of almost half a century. Is this true?

NB: People who hold bullion tend to hold it for a long time, as the core of their entire wealth. It’s not sold once you understand its basic characteristics, because you have to have a reason to sell it, you have to use it to buy something better. I tend to look at investment performance as to whether I end up with more gold ounces or less gold ounces rather than percentage returns; you get a different conclusion then. For example, if you had invested 44 ounces in the Dow in 2000, you would now get back only 14 ounces.

This current cycle is not a conventional bull market in precious metals; I think we’re in the midst of a change in the global monetary system. This is not going to be like a typical commodity cycle where we go up for four years and down for four years; I think we’re witnessing a transition into another monetary system, whatever form that may take. At the end of this period the US dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency.

GLA: What happens if the US dollar ceases to be the standard?

NB: What happened when the British pound ceased to be the standard? It just ceased to be the standard. Its decline in value is still ongoing. It’s happened to every empire throughout history: the British, the Roman, the Greek, the Spanish, the Persian, and the Chinese. Every single empire ended up debasing their currency in order to maintain the empire.

GLA: Is gold likely to increase further going forward or has it topped and investors have missed out?

Currently, we have a lot of noise in terms of the credit contraction, real estate bubble, record high debt at all levels, dangerous derivatives vulnerabilities and unsustainable US current account and trade deficits. These could still blow up into bigger problems at any time. However let’s hope they get resolved or at the very least postponed somehow.

But there are two factors that are not changeable in all of this.

First: The US has to print money on an accelerating basis. Has to – because of the underfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations – which at present are about $60 trillion. If you took all of the net earnings of US individuals and companies it would not be enough to pay that off. You can’t tax people enough and politically you cannot tell everybody, “Sorry, we can’t give you your Social Security – we don’t have the money. And no Medicare either.” So they have to keep printing money.

Second: The issue of Peak Oil – it used to be a debate as to when the production of oil would peak. Now it looks like that has already happened, in March 2006. As a result we have a situation where oil production is declining while demand is increasing, particularly from India and China. This will result in ever-increasing oil prices, and also increasing prices for almost every product and service.

As these two forces – increased money printing and peak oil – interact, the result is a declining dollar alongside constantly increasing oil prices. This leads to even greater oil price increases in an effort to offset the dollar decline. These two highly inflationary factors are working in tandem, and they can’t be changed.

Therefore, as oil rises and the dollar declines, commodities – and particularly precious metals – will continue to rise.

GLA: What’s the relationship between oil and gold?

NB: There’s not necessarily a great deal of correlation between the two in the short term. However, in the longer term, the correlation has been in the order of about 16 barrels of oil for every ounce of gold.

GLA: Has that been consistent long term and what is the outlook for precious metals?

NB: With only short-term fluctuations, this ratio has held up over the long term. At this point the price of gold is undervalued compared to the price of oil. Gold should be closer to $1,500 an ounce if you use this measure.

On top of this kind of inflationary issue eroding financial confidence, we’re at peak production in gold. When the price of gold was low, miners employed high-grading to get the most easily attainable gold out of the ground. As the price rises, miners resort to lower-grade mining, which has become worthwhile – but in some cases you have to sift through tonnes of ore for each ounce.

Platinum, for instance; it takes six months to get an ounce of platinum out of roughly 10,000 tonnes of ore. Right now, almost all the platinum produced originates in South Africa, and the mines are miles underground, and electricity intensive. Power shortages in South Africa are interfering with production and slowing things down. All these forces are coming together, slowing production and driving up prices.

With silver, most of the aboveground reserves have been depleted – most of the silver that is produced is consumed each and every year. Silver also has two demand drivers – monetary and industrial. The number of industrial applications are growing every year while the monetary demand has also been growing in the past few years. It is important to remember that “silver” means “money” in several languages.

GLA: Why is gold so important as an element of diversification for investors?

NB: Take a look at the cycle from 1968 to 1982 – during that time it took stocks the whole 14 years to break even. If you factor inflation into it, it actually took until 1995. So stocks didn’t look so good in the past cycle, and they are not looking very good now. The DJIA is well below its inflation-adjusted highs. Its performance is much worse when measured in gold ounces. The DJIA has declined from a high of 44 ounces of gold in 2000 to about 14 today, but if you look at a chart the Dow appears to be at new highs. It’s like taking the Zimbabwe stock market and saying, “Look how well Zimbabwean stocks have done; the market was up 8,000%.” But what if we adjust for the 100,000% inflation in that country? Not so good, is it?

BMG BullionFund is internally diversified. We buy physical gold, platinum, and silver in equal amounts. While some people like to focus on gold, they would miss out on the fact that silver and platinum have both outperformed gold since the beginning of this cycle in 2002.

GLA: What do you do about inflation?

NB: First, it is important to look at real inflation. What is real inflation? The real number is around 9%, not 3%. The calculations the government uses for the Consumer Price Index [CPI] are really meaningless as a true inflation indicator. The real definition of inflation is an increase in the money supply that leads to an increase in prices. Prices do not increase on their own unless you have a shortage; when you increase the money supply, what you’re really doing is debasing the currency, and as the purchasing power of the currency declines prices appear to be rising. So with the US money supply (M3) growing at 20%, Canada’s growing at 9%, and most other countries’ growing at around 15%, that’s going to result in rising prices and real inflation.

If you take real inflation into account, Wainwright Economics suggests that the appropriate bullion allocation for a bond investor’s portfolio is 18%, and for the equity investor’s portfolio 40%, and that’s just to break even with inflation. Although this may sound incredible, think of the 1970s. How much bullion was required just to break even in an equity portfolio? Bullion went up 2,300%, while equities were flat on a nominal basis. Inflation was 15%.

So without even getting wrapped up in a discussion about the complex subject of money, those two points are fairly straightforward. Ibbotson Associates confirmed that precious metals are the most negatively correlated asset class to the traditional financial assets, so it gives the biggest bang for the buck for the least amount of allocation. In the process you also achieve a more balanced, diversified portfolio. Advisors would do well to have an allocation to precious metals to protect their clients from under-diversification.

GLA: Do you think this pullback in gold is an opportunity to add to positions at this time?

NB: Yes as long as there hasn’t been a major change in the fundamentals that drive the price. When these pullbacks occur, you always get some technical interpretations, whether it’s conventional technical analysis or Elliot Wave, coming out with the idea that the bull market in precious metals is over and that it’s now going down forever and so on.

When these things happen, you have to ask if anything changed fundamentally to justify that decline. If nothing changed fundamentally, the only conclusion you can draw is that something’s wrong in the technical interpretations. In all likelihood the technical interpretation is wrong because there’s been an intervention by monetary authorities. Technical analysis only works when the markets are working freely.

GLA: Well, whatever it is they’re trying to do to knock the price down, once again, he who wins in the end is he who has the most ounces and the most shares. It’s got to have been a good year for you with gold prices up 10%, silver up close to 19% and platinum prices over 30%.

NB: Yes, it has. We have grown assets year-over-year by 80% this year alone, so it’s been a substantial increase, and performance-wise, we’re about 20% year-to-date.

GLA: Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge with us.

*All amounts expressed in US dollars, unless otherwise noted.

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Humans have this interesting tendency to forget history, even though through all of time it consistently repeats itself.

The cycle I am speaking of is the one where societies and economies cycle back and forth between paper fiat money backed by nothing but a governments promise that it has value, and currency that is backed by gold and silver.

This is not new, and in my opinion will happen again, as it always has, for thousands of years.

For a while now I have been going on about how the Chinese, OPEC, and other nations that have trillions of USD in their reserves are not going to simply sit on it and watch it devalue by 16%-20% a year because of a rampant monetary inflation policy of the Federal Reserve.

“Dollar crisis looms, says Nobel laureate Mundell
Reuters June 3, 2008 at 8:36 AM EDT

VALENCIA, Spain — A major dollar crisis could come within five years and China is discussing reforms to the global monetary system to protect its $1.6-trillion (U.S.) reserves pile, says Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Mundell.

Mr. Mundell, who has regular contacts with Beijing officials, said they are considering proposing ways to fix major currencies including the dollar and the euro, in a system similar to the one which operated under the Bretton Woods agreement from the end of World War Two until the 1970s.”

If you were China and seeing this happen to your National Treasury, would you sit there and do nothing or look for a solution?

The answer is obvious.

“China is worried about its pile of about $1.6-trillion in foreign reserves, built up during years of U.S. trade deficits, which loses value as the greenback depreciates. “

The excerpts from the above Reuters article shows that China seems to be interested in a gold backed system. If this were to occur, we need to take a serious look at what it means for the price and demand of gold.

I will give you one simple equation, which you can then apply to any nation, or the economy at large. If the USA were to go to a gold backed standard, that means each dollar in circulation would then have to be redeemable in gold. The current measure of USD in circulation based on private firm analysis is above $14 Trillion USD. The US Treasury claims it has 261,498,899.316 ounces of gold according to its website http://www.fms.treas.gov/GOLD/current.html . If we were to divide the number of USD in circulation by the amount of gold claimed to be on hand in the US Treasury, it would make the price of gold $53,537.00 per ounce.

You can perform this calculation on any nations currency, if you know the amount of currency in circulation and the country’s claimed national reserves in gold.

The bottom line is, if the world heads to any form of gold backed currency system, or any world government chooses to make its own currency backed in gold, then two things would happen:

1. That country will be the best runner up for the next world reserve currency

2. The valuation on gold will skyrocket beyond the angels

“Without reform, the global monetary system is headed for a dollar crisis within years, Mr. Mundell believes. “

I sure hope you own some gold before that happens.

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2,000 yrs ago As Rome debased its currency and expanded via inflationary methods, the question must be asked who was buying the tangible productive assets?

It was the Byzantine Empire! When the Byzantines finally did over run Rome, they did not collapse it, they merely replaced Rome’s leadership with their own leadership, and effectively ran Rome as a defacto Empire keeping all the same systems in place for another 200yrs.

Finally, the Byzantium leadership broke apart from a Moral decay into the nations we call Europe today!

So the Question now, is China & the East going to do the same thing and keep the current system running further expanding globally and running inflation even further sending the cost of tangibles higher for many yrs to come? It certainly looks that way!

- Simon Heapes, The Anglo Far East Bullion Company

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