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Maybe it's because
the Russian government
has known about the Western gold price suppression scheme since learning about it from GATA in 2004:
http://www.gata.org/node/4235
Maybe it's because
the Chinese government knows all about it too:
http://www.gata.org/node/10380
http://www.gata.org/node/10416
Maybe it's because
practically everybody in
the gold market knows
about it except those who get
their news and commentary
only from the Western financial media.
Chris Powell
* * *
Why Is Putin
Stockpiling Gold?
Commentary: Russia
is bulking up its gold reserve
By Brett Arends
MarketWatch.com
Wednesday, September
5,2012
I can't imagine it means anything cheerful that Vladimir Putin, the Russian czar, is stockpiling gold as fast as he can
get his hands on it.
According to the World Gold Council,
Russia has more than doubled its gold reserves in the past five years. Putin has taken advantage of the financial crisis to build the world's fifth-biggest gold pile in a handful
of years, and is buying about half a billion
dollars' worth every month.
It emerged last month that financial gurus George Soros and John Paulson had also increased
their bullion exposure, but it's Putin that's really caught my eye.
No one else in the world plays global
power politics as ruthlessly
as Russia's chilling strongman, the man who effectively stole a Super Bowl ring from Bob Kraft, the owner of
the New England Patriots,
when they met in Russia some years
ago.
Putin’s moves may
matter to your finances, because there are two ways to look at gold.
On
the one hand, it's an investment
that by most modern
standards seems to make
no sense. It generates no
cash flow and serves no practical
purpose. Warren Buffett
has pointed out that we dig it
out of one hole in the ground
only to stick it in another, and anyone watching this from Mars would be very confused.
You can forget claims that it's "real"
money. There's no such thing. Money is just an accounting device, a way of keeping track of how much each of us produces and consumes. Gold is
a shiny and somewhat tacky looking metal that is
malleable, durable, and heavy.
A recent research paper by Duke University's
Campbell Harvey and co-author Claude Erb raised serious
questions about most of the arguments in favor of gold as an investment.
But there's another way to look at gold: As the most liquid reserve
in times of turmoil, or worse.
The big story of our era is not that
the Spanish government is broke, nor
is it that
Paul Ryan apparently feels
the need to embellish his running record. It's that the United States, which
has dominated the world's
economy for several lifetimes, is in relative decline.
As was first reported here in April of last year, according to International Monetary
Fund calculations, the
United States is on track
to lose its status as the world's biggest economy -- when measured in real, purchasing-power terms -- to
China by 2017.
We will
soon be the first people
in two hundred years to live in a world not dominated
by either Pax Americana or Pax Britannica.
This sort of changing of the guard
has never been peaceful.
The declines of the Spanish,
French, and British empires were all accompanied by conflict. The decline of British hegemony was a leading
cause of the First and Second World Wars.
What will
happen as the U.S. loses its pre-eminence?
Maybe this
will turn out better than similar
episodes in the past. Maybe the Chinese will embrace an open society
and the rule of law. If you believe that,
there is probably no reason to hold any gold.
On the other hand, we may be about to enter a much more turbulent and dangerous
era of power politics and
international competition.
Not long ago, world gold reserves were mainly in the hands of the
U.S. and the Europeans, which
accumulated their
holdings during their
centuries at the top. The U.S. has 75 percent of its currency reserves in gold. Many other First World powers have
comparable proportions.
Read the rest of the
article here
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-is-putin...ld-2012-09-0...
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