Why is Venezuela selling its Gold reserves?

Another equally important question to answer is, where is the cash going?

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | OCTOBER 1, 2012

After loudly announcing the arrival of its gold reserves from Europe on national media, the Venezuelan government is now selling that same gold and allegedly ‘injecting’ the cash from the sales into the economy. “Labeled as a historic event for the country, the arrival of the last shipment of Venezuelan gold arrived from Europe last January, but just as fast as it arrived, it is now leaving the Bolivarian territory.

The government led by Hugo Chavez had to resort to selling the country’s gold reserves to add dollars into the economy. Last January, heavily armored tanks and trucks escorted Venezuela’s gold from one of its ports to the Venezuelan Central Bank coffers, while government-sponsored media parroted about how the return of the gold was a move to strengthen national sovereignty and Venezuela’s economic future. The Venezuelan gold had been in European banks for about two decades before returning to the country, after Hugo Chavez ordered the return back in 2011.

The arrival of the gold that began last year prompted the government to start the sale of gold in order to put more US dollars into the Venezuelan economy. The first sale accounted for 3.2 tonnes of gold, which attempted to alleviate the shortage of dollars. The move to sell gold to get dollars was not made public until recently in Venezuela, after the International Monetary Fund revealed details about the transaction last week.

Early last week, the news agency Reuters published details about the IMF report, which states how Venezuela’s gold reserves decreased by  10.98 tonnes in 2012. The country saw its 372.93 tonnes turn into 362 , 05 tonnes as it was accounted for last August. Just last month, the Central Bank of Venezuela sold 3.2 tons for about $ 300 million.

Last Wednesday, the chairman of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly, the government deputy Ricardo Sanguino, admitted to Caracas’ daily El Mundo that the government had indeed cashed over three tonnes of gold. According to information published by the local press, the sale was made to alleviate the cash dollar shortage facing the country and to cover the payment of imports, which in the past year  increased by 20%.

The main source of foreign cash are Venezuela’s oil exports, which also finance 60% of the national budget. Oil reserves are short right now, while President Hugo Chavez seeks reelection for another 6-year period.

Venezuela possesses today the largest proven reserves of oil while its oil price exceeds $ 102. But state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PdVSA) produces below its capacity. A month ago, there was an explosion of fuel tanks of the largest of its refineries. The event killed 48 people and paralyzed operations at the government installation.

Imports are the oxygen of the Venezuelan economy. About 80% of food products consumed in the country are imported: powder milk, meat, sugar, chicken, coffee offered at subsidized prices in the popular market network managed by the state and , along with all this, the government also subsidizes all the social programs that benefit the poorest people who usually support of Hugo Chavez.

These imports are controlled by the government, which since 2003 maintained a strict policy of exchange of products. The purchase of foreign goods is tightly controlled by the Commission of Administration of Foreign Exchange, which decides who, what and how much Venezuelans can buy in foreign currencies.

Only entrepreneurs closer to the government have access to the official rate of 4.3 bolivars per dollar. The rest of the people need to go to the two parallel currency markets operating in the country.

The move to sell gold to flood the currency market with US dollars is seen as a political one from Hugo Chavez, who needs to keep his supporters happy until October 7, the day of the presidential election.

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What will Money be like? The Future is Being Written Now

By AMERICANFREED | JUNE 22, 2012

Reform of monetary system … IMF should build multiple reserve currencies including SDR and supervise their issuance and cross-border capital flows … Today, the most urgent task for the G20 is reform of the international monetary system. With sharply fluctuating exchange rates, it is difficult to monitor international capital flows, identify financial risks in advance, and save the global system once a crisis happens. If the current international monetary system cannot be successfully reformed, a new great financial crisis will soon be upon us. So, the G20 should focus on its historical mission to urgently reform the international monetary system. – China Daily

Rigged Gold Market, A Secret Payoff To China … “Gold is a reserve currency, as far as the market is concerned,” Sprott Asset Management’s Eric Sprott told FinancialSense Newshour’s Jim Puplava in an Oct. 2011 interview. Sprott went on to say that central banks and the shrewd money know the endgame for the dollar will include gold as the backbone of a new global monetary system—a system that presently finds China sorely lagging in gold reserves when compared with the core EU nations and the U.S … – ETF Daily News

The world’s new monetary system is being constructed as we write. You can spot the evidence in various articles, both mainstream and alternative. This article will profile two such stories.

First, there is an ETF Daily News article entitled, “Rigged Gold Market, A Secret Payoff To China.”

It complements a most important article from China Daily entitled, “Reform of the Monetary System.”

Together these two recent articles may provide us with significant insights into what is REALLY going on.

According to the ETF Daily News, Western powers-that-be are secretly funneling gold to China in anticipation of a new monetary system now being constructed. China needs more gold to be part of the planned new world monetary order – or so the Daily News article suggests.

For those who believe in directed (conspiratorial) history, such a scenario is certainly believable. The global elites seem to be creating economic chaos in anticipation that they shall then be able to introduce a world currency – possibly one based on a bundle of currency and informally backed by gold.

This will not happen all at once, but will happen over time. If the euro fails, this will surely be an elite setback, but that does not mean the enterprise itself will be halted. The elites that want to run the world – and are willing to produce any amount of agony to get their way – don’t give up easily.

The globalist currency may be run by the elite-controlled International Monetary Fund and could built out of the current Special Drawing Rights (SDR) “super currency” that the IMF has been attempting to implement around the world.

The China Daily article provides us with astonishing confirmation of what may be the IMF’s role. China Daily is widely seen as a private mouthpiece of Chinese government policy.

Reading between the lines, the two articles provide further evidence that China’s top leaders – actually those secretly behind the public’s leaders – are on board with the globalist plans of Western elites.

This has been speculated about before because the paradigm that Western elites use is to ally with the people at the very top of a society. Often hostilities are commenced against such countries.

The idea is always to control the topmost leaders while positioning the opposing country as a threat in order to consolidate further domestic control.

In China, it’s been speculated that some specific dynastic families are involved in controlling that great country – and work with Western banking families such as the Rothschilds.

An alternative to this perspective is that of a three-headed shadow control that includes elements of the communist leadership (Mao was supposedly a “Soviet agent” – and the top Soviets in turn were allied with the West), the Hong Kong Tycoons (later entrants) and the Triads mafias.

This makes sense if one believes that the power players in Mainland China fled to Hong Kong during Mao’s reign and allied themselves with the Triads for purposes of developing political and criminal muscle.

Once China’s mismanagement had reached a critical level – after the failure of the Great Leap Forward – the stage was set for elite re-penetration of that vast state.

When one looks at China today, one sees a kind of Western parallel – but one that is even more extreme. The Chinese economic model is based on corrosive and inflationary central banking that has no doubt allowed elite interests to corral huge amounts of Chinese economic and industrial resources.

China is probably near the end of this particular cycle of monetary activity, with hundreds of empty skyscrapers and dozens of empty cities dotting the landscape. The ChiComs no doubt expect an implosion.

No, there will likely be no “soft landing.”  This is providing the ChiComs with a further incentive to cooperate with Western elites to create a new monetary system built out of the old, collapsing one.

The China Daily article “Reform the Monetary System” provides us with an astonishingly detailed plan for how the new world currency is to come about.

Here are some of the points:

•The IMF should build multiple reserve currencies including SDR and supervise their issuance and cross-border capital flows.

•The G20 should set up a permanent secretariat within the International Monetary Fund to improve its policymaking and implementation capabilities.

•A diversified international monetary system should consist of multiple currencies, such as the Special Drawing Rights, the US dollar, the euro and the renminbi.

• A good way to start the reforms would be to encourage the use of Special Drawing Rights for a broader range of activities and to start reducing the weight of the US dollar in the reserve currency system.

The article explains that, “such reforms would mean granting the IMF the ability to conduct open market operations as the world’s central bank.”

Understand History To Understand The Current Markets

Bob Chapman
International Forecaster
August 20, 2011

The Fed has been behind all the failings of the markets, Europe now a disaster waiting to happen, about leveraged speculation and counterparty risk, now we have an escalating debt crisis, the perpetual creation of money is the theft of the value of labor due to the inflation that is caused.

Every professional has their own method of analyzing markets, finance and economies, and some do well coming up with the direction of social and political issues as well. The other 97% miss one-half to two-thirds of the time. That is not very good and one asks why? The answer is simple they really haven’t studied history as well as they should have.

Some believe that the crisis in Europe is the heart of today’s problems. It certainly is a strong integral part, but not the primary causation. The 3-year old finance bubble was created by the Federal Reserve, which began the situation starting in 1993. We saw the dotcom boom, which they could have stopped in its tracks. All they had to do is raise margin requirements from 50% to 60% temporarily. After that collapse in mid-March 2000, they decided rather than purge the systems, as they as well should have done in 1990-92, they created another bubble in real estate. They have been trying to recover from that bubble and other layover problems since we’d say 2000.

Yes you can blame Europe for its part, but the blame lies with the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the banks and personages, who control those entities. Those in England, Europe and in the US, who control business, finance and economics from behind the scenes, have played the parts they have in order to bring about world government. If you can perceive and accept that from an historical perspective, they you can understand what is really going on.

European banks are struggling with their fundings and credit is drying up. This is what happened in 2008. As a result Europe is a disaster waiting to happen. Europe is finally realizing this is all about debt. The socialists want it go away, just disappear but it does not happen that way. Debt and credit default swaps will in the end rule the day.

Few reflect back to 12 years ago when the Maastricht Treaty was being approved. The cornerstone was public debt that was not supposed to be more than 3% of GP. That did not last long. Then Italy and Greece, with the help of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan helped these two basket cases qualify for the euro and euro zone by Mickey Mousing their balance sheets. We saw one interest rate fits all and we knew the euro was doomed before it got started. The condition of the euro zone and Europe is certainly terrible, but so are US debt problems. Policy decisions are bad, but not any worse than they are in the US.

We see pundits trying to separate sovereign debt from bank debt. They are one in the same, because the banks control the governments, and tell them what to do. Europe particularly France, was very upset last week when SoGen was rumored to be insolvent. The answer from those accused was rubbish. SoGen has a history of one of the most criminal banks in the world, so what is new. Just more criminality. SopGen and France are under pressure because they own loads of PIIG debt and are being asked to supply more funds to bail out their neighbors, a role they cannot fulfill without going under themselves. The situation France is in is three times worse what it was in 2008. Everyone expects France and Germany to bail out the bankrupts and that cannot happen. Neither the banks nor the governments can continue to do what they have been doing and at the same time control their financial systems and economies. Now you can understand why CDS credit default swaps trade above 180, when they traded at 80 in 2008. We feel that if the six countries in trouble are not allowed to default it will take the other nations under as well. There is much at stake here. Not only the insolvency but also the breakup of the euro zone and the euro and the dream of using them as a template for a new world order.

In addition it is very significant CDS for Brazil jumped from 35 to 152 as did Mexico, which is an indirect result of what is going on in Europe, UK and the mortgage bond market and by cutting back 30% on loans to small and medium sized businesses. Although they are very leveraged in their other operations, such trading and global leveraged speculation include great counterparty risk. This time exposure is somewhat different but the exposure in the theatre could be just as bad risk wise as it was in 2008. Generally speaking they are not long gold and silver bullion and shares, they are for the most part short. The venue that could be very dangerous is derivatives. The way these major banks and countries have become interconnected the danger always persists and once a fallout begins it could bring down all major banks and countries. Don’t let that fact escape you. They dodged the bullet in 2008, but they might not the next time. The carry trade is as large as it has ever been and the cost of borrowing is close to zero, again, encouraging taking on too much risk.

This past two weeks currency markets have seen large swings, especially in second and third tier countries. No one knows the size of carry trades affecting these countries. We have seen a number of countries quickly give up almost all of their dollar gains of the past several months and the Swiss and Japanese have spent billions of dollars trying to push down the value of their currencies, but to no avail. The euro and the dollar have stayed about the same, but we see the euro weaker due to ongoing financial problems, which contrary to conventional wisdom have not been solved. Throughout Europe not only has money been lent at very low rates, but also much of it is uncollectible. This broken European bubble will deflate for some time to some. It will affect all other sovereign debt negatively as well. These are the borrowers of part of that $16.1 trillion that was lent by the Fed over the last few years, which has never been paid back. European banks are buried in debt and the politicians, whom they own, will do their best to protect them. Unfortunately, there is no painless solution. The contagion is underway and the latest meeting to solve these problems was a failure. The latest European version of the issuance of quantitative easing to buy Italian and Spanish bonds will prove to be futile, just another attempt with taxpayer funds to bail out the banks. This possible “Black hole of Calcutta” at this point puts Europe in a worse position compared to the US, which is no piece of cake, and probably won’t far any better in the future. The working out of US problems will just take longer. As each day passes and in spite of the disinformation, confidence in Europe and the US falters and rightly so. The US has no periphery to support essentially Europe does and that is in favor of the US, but ultimately US problems are far more overwhelming.

The recent commitment of the Fed for zero interest rates for the next two years showed great weakness and will in time come back to haunt them. This was another reward for Wall Street speculators and another moldy bone thrown to the nations savers and elderly. There is no question Wall Street and banking, which own the Fed are desperate, to make such a commitment. The decision for QE 3 was made 15-months ago when we predicted it. We could see it coming and we know the decisions of the last 11 years and the pressure being exerted on the Fed will ultimately bring about its demise, and its days of looting the American public will be over. What the Fed and the ECB have done in greed and for their dream of world government is over. We are closing in on payback time, as desperate measures become more noticeable and a solution remains out of their reach. They will pay for what they have done to us.

Even though we expect at least a few more years of unrestrained leveraged speculation, it will then come to an end. It has become a crucial factor for monetary policy championed by both Sir Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke. Wall Street and baking love it, because their positions allow them to create inside information, which allows them to make money consistently with little or no risk. We also have the SEC and the CFTC perpetually looking the other way aiding and abetting their criminal behavior. If you add in that there are no limits to what they can do you essentially have an ongoing free for all. This is unrestrained finance via a policy of zero interest rates. This gives Wall Street and banking a license to steal.

All this has caused a bubble and that bubble is in the process of bursting, a product of fiscal and monetary stimulus. That is not only in the US, UK and Europe, but worldwide As a result confidence in the global system is being lost. De-leveraging of bullish bets in markets of bonds and stocks is underway. Ironically these speculators are short gold and silver and the shares. Short covering is in process with some even switching to the long side in the gold and silver bullion and share markets. How any economist could believe that leveraged speculation reduces risk is beyond us. Fortunately the other shoe has dropped and such theory has been disproved.

The result of all this is that we have an escalating debt crisis worldwide and now the experts in and out of government do not have any solutions as to how to rectify the situation. The sovereign debt crisis has been underway since the early 1970s. This experience shows you how long bad things can last. Before this is over trillions of dollars will be defaulted upon. The days of overwhelming stimulus to gain traction in the economy or economies is in the process of being ineffective. We like to call it the law of diminishing returns. The $2.3 to $2.5 trillion we project that the Fed will have to create in the coming fiscal year will at best produce GDP growth of zero. The minute the Fed and Congress stop feeding the system we will be looking at negative growth of 5%. We are headed toward crunch time and there is no avoiding it. Uncertainty and instability are America’s and the world’s next challenge. Currencies are going to react widely. Gold and silver will fly along with the gold and silver shares as a result of debt and falling economies accompanied by inflation. The big problem will not only be de-leveraging, but also the opaque derivative markets and the Exchange Traded Funds, many of which are leveraged. Yes, it will be a very rough ride, so you had best get ready for it. We never had a recovery and the trappings of growth are quickly falling away. Extending the time line for all these problems is coming to an end, but it probably will not be abrupt. There will be all kinds of terrible events, but it looks like the elitists are going to play this out over an extended time frame before they attempt to pull the plug. That means these problems could be extended out five or even ten more years on a degenerating basis. That also means we will continue to have limited wars for financial gain and distraction. The strategy has been and will continue to be to keep creating money and credit and allow inflow to reduce the size of the debt. These comments regarding debt quoting Bernanke and throwing money from helicopters and Greenspan’s admission that the US cannot be downgraded, because it can always print money are flippant and very unprofessional. What they have both done rather than allow the US government to default is to perpetually create money and credit to paper over the economy’s failure. This process increases inflation that quietly steals the value of purchasing power like a thief in the night. Both men can be classified as thieves for having done to the American people and others by stealing the fruits of their labor. This trick used by money masters and politicians for centuries is little understood by the public and most cannot understand how it works and the ultimate ramifications. These characters and others create additional debt, which is followed by other nation’s central banks, which has created a race to the bottom and eventually all nations cannot pay their debts and default. Eventually in order to prevent a collapse in the financial system a meeting is held such as was held at the Smithsonian talks in the early 1970s, or the Plaza Accord in 1985 and the Louvre Accord in 1987. All currencies are revalued and devalued and there is multilateral debt settlement. We believe that is how all this will come about.

Evidentially a deal has been made from behind the scenes to relieve the Fed of having to produce $850 billion in stimulus and that task has been delegated to Mr. Obama. The President, while calling for budget cuts, is calling for $850 billion for stimulus 3. Observing recent actions by Congress some idiotic excuse will be made up and like magic stimulus 3 will appear. We also suggest that the President will use the London rioting as a cause for such stimulus. Remember never let a crisis go to waste. It is sure to be sold in the behalf of preservation of order. We do not believe the powers behind government will get the desired results.

Admittedly, Ben Bernanke inherited a can of worms from Sir Alan Greenspan. Ben has been able to accumulate $3 trillion worth of an assortment of Treasuries, Agencies and CDS, and MBS’s, also known as toxic waste, over the past few years. Those moves decidedly have been negative for the rating of US government debt. The rating really should have been lowered five years ago during the Greenspan years and perhaps even sooner than that. Due to massive increases since 2006 by the Fed we now already are in a bubble.

The 12 person congressional debt commission, we like to refer to as the Obama Enabling Act, patterned after Adolph Hitler’s legislation of 1933, which allowed him to become dictator of Germany, supposedly will produce moderate spending cuts. Knowing that Standard and Poor’s has warned this “Star Chamber” proceeding, which bypasses Congress, that there are not substantial cuts in Social Security and Medicare, that S&P will again lower the US debt rating. Everyone seems to overlook that fact. That means that if there is not large Social Security and Medicare cuts and an increase in taxes, S&P will strike again, and the bond market will burst, and Mr. Bernanke’s house of cards will collapse. As we explained previously the debt extension could have been passed in 15 minutes, but it wasn’t because the powers behind government the Council on Foreign Relations, wanted to chop up SS and Medicare, and to put this panel in place. All is never what it seems to be.

Manipulated Markets Make a Come Back

Does it make sense that during the deepest depression since 1929, the U.S. Stock Market comes back up from a 6oo+ point decline? Only a manipulated system where speculators have complete control could recover from a rout that showed how little confidence investors have in the market today.

by Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
August 9, 2011

While countries are in dire straits to make payments on mostly illegally acquired debts and the price of oil continues to fall; while little to nothing is produced or manufactured in the industrialized world and no ingenuity makes it big anywhere in the world; while the most important currencies continue to tumble and other financial markets turn more sour; while unemployment continues to grow from the low 20′s and more people make use of food stamps and unemployment benefits; while more jobs are exported to third world nations that support slave work for their populations and inflation is only tamed by artificial manipulation of the currencies; while numerous people look to gold and silver as their salvation, surprisingly the stock market came back from the pantheon and surged to recover from the slide seen just a few hours ago.

There is very little that can't be done when someone or something controls fiat currencies, rating agencies, and financial markets.

But not only did the stocks came back strong; they had the largest gains in more than two years. Along with this “come back” the U.S. dollar got weaker and the Swiss franc rose the most since 1971. Even the very same Standard & Poor Index managed to recover almost 5 percent, the most significant gains since 2009. In the meantime, the origin of the financial disaster, the privately owned banks headed by the Federal Reserve announced their intent to print more worthless money into the economy as a way to “boost” confidence. Even though QE1 and QE2 failed to provide any confidence, or for that matter failed to provide anything positive, the FED believes it is appropriate to bring up QE3. With this, the FED shows its interest to purchase more government bonds, which will consolidate its position as the largest holder of U.S. government debt.

“The Fed is clearly setting up a situation that could offer them the potential to do something significant, if necessary,” Bruce McCain, who helps oversee $22 billion as chief investment strategist at the private-banking unit of KeyCorp in Cleveland, said in a telephone interview. “That could be viewed as a positive,” added McCain. “People are starting to realize that what we’ve had in the market was an overreaction.” Really? Positive? How so?

Artificial Surge after the Decline

How can a stock market come back from a 600+ point decline in just a few hours if one considers that the cause of such loss -the downgrade of the U.S. debt rating- has not been dealt with? It simply boggles the mind, doesn’t it? The United States credit rating was lowered from AAA to AA+ by Standard & Poors, a rating agency that is paid by the banks to evaluate financial products and which is in part responsible for the current financial catastrophe. Together with Moody’s, S&P was created the by the banking system to carry out “independent” evaluations of financial products as well as credit confidence on institutions, state and local governments and of course whole nations.

According to Bloomberg, Stocks came back from a loss of $ 1 trillion after S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating last Friday evening. The results of the downgrade were not felt until Monday, when the Markets opened all over the world. The S&P index sank about 11 percent and the stock market lost 648 points or more than 6 percent. But just 24 hours later, everything was different. “The MSCI All-Country World Index rose 2.1 percent for its biggest gain of the year”, says Bloomberg. “The index started the U.S. session valued at about 12.1 times profits, down from 21 in 1995..The MSCI Emerging Markets Index pared today’s drop to 2.2 percent after tumbling as much as 4.4 percent.”

Stocks Rally? What Rally?

In the Stock Market, the Dow Jones climbed almost 430 or 4 percent, failing to completely recover from the recent loss. The stocks experienced the 1oth more significant gain in its history. Can you believe it? In the middle of a Depression, the stocks rally the much?

Meanwhile, in the S&P, shares got to the front of the line due to the numerically significant gains. In total, they accumulated some 8.2 percent all together. This is the biggest rally since May 2009, which meant a complete recovery from Monday’s low. Bank of America Corp., which is now being sued by AIG for fraud, managed to gain 17 percent while other players like Hartford Financial Services got back 16 percent.

Of course the main stream media is giving all credit to the Federal Reserve, due to its announcement that it intends to “boost” the economy by injecting worthless cash into it. The FED’s head, Ben Bernanke and his aides came out to try to calm the demise a bit, although not everyone at the FED agreed with the move to bring along a new quantitative easing move. Three members from the policy committee dissented and instead called for maintaining interest rates low for a longer period of time.

As the docu-film “The Inside Job” impeccably exposes, there is very little that can’t be done when someone or something has the power to create money out of thin air, create rating agencies, control those agencies to give AAA ratings to whatever they choose and electronically manipulate the financial stock and bond markets whenever it’s convenient in order to perpetuate the fraudulent debt-based system the world has worked under since 1913.

False Policy Changes

The best way to perpetuate the above cited financial system is to have the available tool continuously reinforce the falsehood of the Central Bank sponsored plans. So, Moody’s has come out to praise the FED’s move to maintain the interest rates at a quarter of a percent in order to bolster the downturn. It’s a  ”major policy change,” said Augustine Faucher, director of macroeconomics at Moody’s. “By providing a more explicit time line for raising rates, the Fed is telling markets it is concerned about recent economic weakness and the potential for a near-term contraction, and is dedicated to spurring stronger economic growth,” Faucher added.

Just as this statement by Faucher is baseless, so is the belief that because the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency, it can stand more beating than any other one. In fact, one of the reasons why the U.S. has not been downgraded further is that its currency is still consider valuable. Ironically, the dollar has lost 98 percent of its value since it became the subject of manipulation by the bankers. Moody’s has stated that the U.S. dollar can support larger levels of debt than other currencies. How do they figure that with a currency that is so devalued. They can’t figure it out. They just make it up.

The one world reserve currency scheme is only beneficial to those who control it, because the rest of the nations need to do business while devaluing their own. In sound economics, the value of paper money is based on a country’s production or manufacturing, therefore, the U.S. dollar can no longer be such reserve currency. U.S. manufacturing has eroded so badly, that it has cost the jobs of some 18 million people in the last few years.

If the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, why are there other currencies that have better exchange rates than the dollar itself? I am no economic expert, but if the Swiss Frank rates higher than the dollar in currency exchange markets, shouldn’t the Frank be the reserve currency? Or even better, shouldn’t a commodity like gold be the reserve currency given its capacity to withstand recessions, depressions and financial market manipulations? It should. The reason why gold is not the reserve currency or at least the commodity over which a paper money currency is supported is that bankers cannot monopolize it, “hug” it or manipulate it.

High Market but Low Results: The World Economy in Shambles

While the banks try to extend the suffering period for the middle and low classes, countries in Europe are scrambling for a life boat to jump on. Although France and Germany are said to be negotiating an agreement to buy Spain’s and Italy’s debt in order to avoid a deeper economic collapse, some sources claim that the rescuers believe the Italian debt is too large to save. Both Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel began to hear opposition voices that are calling for a different position from the German and French governments. The reason for this is that an eventual bailout of Italy and Spain could cost the rescuers their AAA rating. This is seen as a possible trigger to drag the world’s economy further into the precipice.

Although U.S. markets artificially revived themselves on Tuesday, other countries were not as lucky. In Italy, the bond market saw a loss of 11 percent on its 10 year note. Just as the FED has done in the United States, the European Central Bank kept Italy and Spain afloat through the purchase of their bonds for a second day in a row. That was not enough to save the Spanish 10 year notes, as they collapsed eight basis points to 5.08 percent on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, oil prices hit some of the lowest levels for the year by getting down to $79.30 a barrel. Conversely, gold prices soared and added 4.1 percent to get to a record price of $1,782.50 an ounce.

Emerging World buys $10 billion in gold as West wobbles

By Amanda Cooper
Reuters
August 3, 2011

Central banks of emerging market countries such as Korea and Thailand have added more than $10 billion (6 billion pounds) of gold to their reserves this year in a sign of waning faith in the West’s benchmark bonds and currencies like the dollar and the euro.

International Monetary Fund data for June Wednesday showed Thailand bought gold for the second time this year, raising its reserves by nearly 19 tonnes to over 127 tonnes, while Russia bought another 5.85 tonnes, bringing its reserves to 836.7 tonnes, the world’s eighth largest official stash of the metal.

So far in 2011, emerging market central banks have bought nearly 180 tonnes of gold, more than double the roughly 73 tonnes purchased by central banks globally in the whole of 2010.

The spot price of gold has risen by more than 17 percent this year to a record $1,672.65 an ounce, driven chiefly by investor concerns over the impact on the developed world’s economy of its debt burdens and sluggish growth.

Mexico has been the largest buyer of gold in the year to date, with $5.3 billion worth of purchases, or 98 tonnes of gold, followed by Russia, which has bought 48 tonnes, worth $2.6 billion at current prices.

Earlier this week, Korea confirmed it had bought 25 tonnes of gold in June and July.

“Central banks evidently do not regard the price level as too high and are diversifying their currency reserves. This was the first purchase of gold for the Korean central bank in over ten years,” said Commerzbank metals analyst Daniel Briesemann.

“Gold’s high-altitude flight still appears to be supported by many factors and an end to the boom soon is not in sight.”

In the euro zone, smaller economies such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland have already sought emergency funding, while concern is mounting over the finances of some of the region’s larger members such as Spain and Italy, driving the euro to record lows against the safe-haven Swiss franc.

The United States averted an unprecedented debt default on Tuesday after lawmakers reached an eleventh-hour deal to raise the country’s borrowing limit, although severe doubts remain about the economic outlook, stripping 6 percent off the value of the dollar this year.

DEBT MISERY

The U.S. economy is also likely to lose its top-notch credit rating as ratings agencies are increasingly discomfited by the weight of the twin trade and budget deficits and the country’s patchy growth.

A downgrade will almost certainly push up yields on U.S. Treasury notes as their value falls, which could prove unwelcome to the major investors in U.S. debt such as the Chinese government, which holds nearly $900 billion in Treasuries.

The trend among central banks, particularly those with large foreign exchange holdings, to diversify some of their portfolios into gold from currencies has been well established over the last couple of years.

“The market generally expects central banks with growing reserves and small gold holdings to buy gold,” said Jesper Dannesboe, senior commodity strategist at Societe Generale.”

“So I don’t think that is particular surprising, but it does support the bullish story (for gold),” he said.

Central banks are expected to remain net buyers of gold this year and the most likely buyers will be those with the biggest reserves and relatively small bullion holdings, such as China.

The Chinese central bank is the sixth largest official owner of gold, yet its holdings account for just 1.6 percent of its $2.5 trillion total reserves.

The IMF data showed Russia, Kazakhstan, Greece, Ukraine and Tajikistan also added to their reserves two months ago and feature among some of the bigger bullion buyers this year.

Kazakhstan’s reserves rose for the third time this year, by 3.11 tonnes in June to 70.434 tonnes, Taijikistan’s reserves rose 0.04 tonnes to 3.036 tonnes and Greece and Ukraine added 0.03 tonnes each, bringing their official holdings of gold to 111.506 tonnes and 27.744 tonnes, respectively.

Russia has added to its gold reserves every month for the past five years, according to the IMF’s data.

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