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Spot The Gold One Out
It is no secret that even as the price of Russia's primary export, oil, has been sliding in what is now a confirmed attempt by the West and Saudis to crush its grip over Syria, and in the process make Gazprom irrelevant as a critical supplier of gas to Europe, Russia has not wavered in its determination to slowly (at first) but surely diversify its dollar assets into the one currency western central banks hate the most: gold.
Just how much gold does Russia hold relative to all other key gold-holding central banks? The chart below, based on data courtesy of Santiago Capital which shows the total percentage of the monetary base backed by gold reserve and gives the answer in quite a rather fashion.
And while Russia's relative gold holdings, relative to its fiat exposure, are truly impressive, the real question we, and anyone esle should have about the chart above, is where does the red question mark representing China's gold as a % of its monetary base, currently lie. Yes, we know what China's gold was in early 2009 when the PBOC gave its last official update to the IMF, but to assume this has not changed in 6 years is ludicrous, especially since as Zero Hedge first showed back in 2011, citing a Wikileaked report of what China's Foreign Exchanges Administration reported on the topic of China's rising gold holdings. From the source:
"China increases its gold reserves in order to kill two birds with one stone"
"The China Radio International sponsored newspaper World News Journal (Shijie Xinwenbao)(04/28): "According to China's National Foreign Exchanges Administration China 's gold reserves have recently increased. Currently, the majority of its gold reserves have been located in the U.S. and European countries. The U.S. and Europe have always suppressed the rising price of gold. They intend to weaken gold's function as an international reserve currency. They don't want to see other countries turning to gold reserves instead of the U.S. dollar or Euro. Therefore, suppressing the price of gold is very beneficial for the U.S. in maintaining the U.S. dollar's role as the international reserve currency. China's increased gold reserves will thus act as a model and lead other countries towards reserving more gold. Large gold reserves are also beneficial in promoting the internationalization of the RMB."
So don't be surprised if and when China provides its next long overdue gold holdings report, if the Chinese dot is located above Russia's.
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Putin is the golden beaver
this chart is fake about g8
What is the X axis?
edit: NM, I just saw that it was a fairly even distribution in alphabetical order with the EU countries lumped together.
I thought it was the aggregate amount of gold?
THEY MUST be stopped......
.heheheheheh.......go ahead and try and stop us........Your pal Vlad
Is Canada The Big Sissey In The GOLD Club ???
Ironic given how much they produce......
how much of the gold perviously held by the West has been sold off at bargain basement prices to perpetuate the charade? Paging Great Britain....
This would make perfect sense for China...
which is why it will never, ever happen. China's oligarchs are - if nothing else - experienced and efficient thieves.
'State asset' is a transitory label for anything of value on it's way to corrupt politicians' overseas bank accounts. The incentive for using state money to buy state gold vs. stealing state money DOES NOT exist. I'm not suggesting they are outright stealing Chinese gold reserves, but insist there is very little left-over money to expand those gold reserves after Chinese oligarchs get their cut. That's what they do and they're damn good at it.
I hate to agree with this but I think it absolutely 100 percent true.
EVERYBODY IS STEALING THE GOLD.
Still...at least the Russians offer a return on their "ruble."
That's still better than the rest of "Western Civilization" (sic).
For the rest of us its "dollar/yen."
Moneychangers...do they come any other way?
Gold holdings? I wish I could trust what is being reported. I don't, regardless of who is reporting.
So when China announces a gold backed currency, it will officially change its name to... Superchina?
Really? Wait til they figure out the Yuan and Ruble are already 100% gold backed.
Or, "Ace in the hole" will be the phrase of the century...
I think this gal is the Polish golden beaver:
http://www.kitco.com/news/2015-02-04/She-Running-For-Poland-Presidential...
stateside
Says the media is focusing more on her good looks than brains.
Damn good thing we focus on brains and get folks like Obungole and Kerry
Wow, so according to the MSM women can definitely run for elected office just as long as they're not pretty? Gee that's nasty, cat claws out, MEOW!
Vote for Paris
So why didn't Hellen Thomas run?
Hmmmm, cucumbers....
Mine's bigger... Vegetables can be very sensual....
She is really pretty, But it won't be enough to counterbalance Angela Merkel.
You can never have enough links to Angela Merkel dancing in a bikini.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2yjhau66lM
That's just wrong
Is or has? Is it a rumor, or are there pictures?
Looks like the blonde from ABBA.
I am surprised the UK has anything left for good. I thought Gordon Brown sold everything at the lowest possible price to GS.
Good point UK gold does not make sense.
interested to see where the Vatican and the City of London fall on that chart.
and India
Plenty of gold in India, but in citizen hands. I'm not sure that the Indian state holds that much phys. Much of what the state has is probably unicorn gold with the Fed or the BIS.
china should be well above that mark, hell they bought more in the last two years then the US has iin total, the non bull shit amount that is.
Come on, I'm sure China has bought more than (gold - rehypothecated gold) = -2000 tons?
crown the new king, plez will somebody make a black swan move to get this shit show moving along to it obvious ending...
I Call, China
Cramer-worth comedy headline at Kitco:
When Commodities Find Bottom, Gold Will Shine Through – Triland Metals -
near the top of their front page
Article written by Sarah Benali who is easier to look at than Mr. Jim Crammer https://twitter.com/SdBenali .
Canada seems well positioned.
On purpose. Canada is just a vassal state of the US, when vulnerable, gets reamed.
We keep our gold in powder form, buried deep in the artic. It's safer that way you hoser.
or did they sell to china for $'s
obviously this is why the phony price of Gold and Silver have been going down lately..
lately as in 7 years....
DEATH TO THE MONEYCHANGERS.
and im still stacking mother fuckers.
Germany, France, and Italy calculations are not correct as we know Germany has had difficulty getting its gold back. Maybe present this chart with actual gold in possession by each country and then we'll have a much clearer picture. Is this graph informative, yes but only represents part of the story. Let's see it with actual physical control holdings and go from there.
Thank God mine was only rehypothecated 4 times.
'the percentage of monetary base backed by gold reserves' is a concept of the gold (and gold exchange) standard, it is not relevant today.
The emerging concept is the ability of a Central Bank to defend it's currency in the Forex market. The ECB has set the stage. They have 10,800 tons (in total, all EMU countries) and it is marked to market. Should the dollar collapse they would have the gold to prevent their currency from following as the gold price (in dollar terms) would sky rocket as the dollar fell.
The Fed unfortunately has no physical gold of their own and cannot do the same. If the POG rises the Euro looks better and better while the dollar looks worse and worserer.
But isn't the fact that the US FED has no gold a trivial one since the US FED and the US Government are both acting in the best interests of the Bankster elite?
Could that not be solved with the swipe of a pen?
The real issue is how much of the US Gold is unencumbered?
RTTB
at present you are correct, gold is not relevant unless a country sells it and uses it to buy their own currency.
We are, I believe, about to change the way the currency system functions. We will have to have a new dollar for the USA to have a currency that functions in such a syste.
If/when these things hapen gold will become much more important. For now it is just another asset on a CB's balance sheet.
The real issue is how much of the US Gold is unencumbered?
A more basic question is how much of it is REALLY gold (and not tungsten cored placeholders)? That could be the biggest fraud of all time... the gold is gone and the rehypothecated stuff isn't real......
which is more powerful gold or a missle?
"which is more powerful gold or a missle?"
Solid gold missles or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
China using it's CB powers to gain physical while the others are still trying to keep unicorns flying.
John Stewart: Gold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVUtpUdY3Uo
That song was about Lindsay Buckingham making a mint recording music in a nearby studio......
This chart is pointless. The Y axis should be some unit of mass (t, kg or troy ounces), not dollars.
"So don't be very surprised if and when China provides its next long overdue gold holdings report if the Chinese dot is located not only to the right of Russia but also above it."
Why would China's dot move to the right? What is the scale from left to right? Looks like alphabetical order to me. Is China going to change the name of it's country when it announces is latest gold holdings?
+1 lulz, maybe china is going to marry russia, and become chrussia or rhina.
x-Axis (left to right) is logically total tonnage. But a strong fear of both logic and mathematics seems to be the basis for our Common Core education.
They're going to move down the alphabet.
It'll start with 'X' like the Xinhua news agency...
NWO is broke bitchez
The Chinese will not make a 'move' until it is near certain that they will benefit (Greatly) from it. The 'benefits' being on many levels across multiple geopolitical platforms. Do things quietly and maintain 'harmony'...
One of the last gasps of the US will be the amount of gold held doesn't matter, it is who do you trust?
That's kind of a tough question to answer (honestly) with a gun to your head.
Gold is the money of free peoples. Neither China nor Russia are free societies. Don't take me wrong, today, there are no free societies anywhere in this world, but since the point being made here is about Russia, I bring the attention to Russia. As long as that country is ruled by a tyrant and he needs to fund the military, any hopes of establishing gold backed money AND 100% fractional reserve banking is just that: Hope!
Say huh?
Hey, Confusedido, your premise is wrong.
GOLD IS MONEY. (Repeat a bunch of times till it sinks in). Political freedom has nothing to do with it.
Hope this gives you some clarity.
better worry about your own country
Who cares about gold, it's non productive asset, sitting in a safe doing nothing. We're no longer on the gold standard, get over it.
Only people with functioning braincells care about gold, which explains your post.
At least it isn't being charged negative interest rates sitting in your account at the bank.
You'd better hurry up and sell yours, then! Oh, wait, I forgot--you don't have any...
Bloomberg now a conspiracy theorist?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-02-05/germany-s-gold-repatri...
stateside
Whoever came up with this chart doesn't have a clue. If and when we reach a (crisis) stage where gold holdings become relevant, percentage of monetary base will be irrelevant. All that will matter is tonnes of gold in possession. For comparison across countries, per capita might be useful. Per unit of base money - not so much.
Except the US monetary base is way bigger than people think. You can't confine the measurement to money within the US banking system, as the M series does.
Glad to be a Canadian about now and not have to worry about all of these Gold issues ummm OH CRAP
Indeed. With mega tonnes in the ground instead
of in a vault, Canada is virtually "untouchable"...
;)
Gold is just a paper weight. We needed room to store reams of paper for our hyperinflation, so we took the gold out with the trash. - Ukraine
I think our 1st grader could have made a chart easier to decipher than this particular one.
But if the price of gold was allowed to shoot up wouldn't it be too expensive for them to trade their dollars for it?
Also - gold sitting unchanged beats Euros held at a negative interest rate.
Agreed on both counts; but that's why every other country in the world has been playing along with the price suppression of precious metals. While the US and London has been doing their best to maintain the value of their currencies with respect to gold by continually shorting the derivatives markets, this has ironically created a firesale for the rest of the world, who have been intensely engaged in stocking up as quickly as possible without driving up the price, before the inevitable collapse and conflagration of unbacked, debt-laden fiat currencies.
Meh. Obama can simply issue an executive order forcing those countries to stop thinking of money as gold.
Didn't the BRICS nations get that memo in 2008?
Didn't the Bank of England put out a statement a few years back that some of it's gold remaining may not be of London good delivery standard. Of course some may be 99%. Sounded like an arse covering statement to me.
In my opinion even the custodial holding have gone from the BOE, probably in the hours following the queens pr visit.
Perhaps adding the "monetary base" changes the calculation, but the Wikipedia chart of gold reserves and as % of forex reserves (as of 1/15 and per World Gold Council) shows a vastly different result. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve.
With too big to fail you can't ignore the credit being built on top of monetary base. People treat it as money. It is like saying you have this whole inverted pyramid and you say the tip is 15% of the next layer of stones. That does not seem dramatic untill you realize the money equivalents stacked on top.
As of Sept. 2014, the central banks of Europe collectively claimed ownership of 30,500 metric tonnes of gold. I believe there are many here who will understand the implications of that in the face of a currency collapse of either the euro OR the dollar...
google: "The Fourth Central Bank Gold Agreement"
When the BRIICS have their BRIICS Bank fully operational, one of its members will act as the Golden Swan trigger event, that will knock the USD off its Reserve throne.
Just as the EU has a pool of gold (to back the EU), so too do the BRIICS & Friends (Turkey, Argentina, Venezuela...).
And just a a corporate Earnings Statement has a number of key ratios to look at, so too does a country's Balance Sheet and Gold holdings. Its gold holdings are important in terms of Total Tonnage, relative to its GDP and its Money Supply.
Its Per Capita gold holdings are a subset of the Gold/GDP ratio, as speaks to the wealth distribution in the country, i.e. the average wealth. It might be a useful socio-political indicator, but has little or nothing to do with a country's gold backing its currency.
The Gold-to-GDP ratio is more telling than to its Money Supply-to-Gold: the former is a Quick Ratio indicator of their wealth held in Gold. The latter ratio is an indicator of how far out of whack its fiat/paper obligations are, relative to hard reality (call it the 'Squid-Index').
Just thinking out loud here, but what happens to gold if currencies do collapse and it's value skyrockets? There is obviously still gold in the ground and if it's worth enough, more will be extracted. For example, there are countless tons of gold in situ on federal lands in AK. If it got to the point where we needed it, we could always just go get it.......?..........
The bear is strong.
can someone tell me how a graph of gold reserves priced in $ in meaningfull due to exchange rates (ruble vs $$ and $$ vs gold price).
just plot the # of oz. in the bank. I doubt that is increasing/decreasing up and down. (just up in the case of russia)