Tag Archives: Gold

Gold buying like this functions as ‘off balance sheet deficit spending’. It’s off balance sheet as the payments by the CB don’t count as fiscal expenditures as they are accounted for as CB asset. And it’s functionally state deficit spending as the purchases add income in the form of net financial assets to the non government sectors: China’s on a bullion-buying spree. The world’s second-largest economy expanded its gold reserves for the fourth straight month, adding to optimism that...

Just four days after president Trump signed an executive order last Thursday enabling new sanctions on Venezuela’s gold sector, in a bid to disrupt trade with Turkey which U.S. officials believe is undermining efforts to cripple Venezuela's economy and force Maduro and members of his government out of office, Maduro is now seeking to repatriate about $550 million in gold bars from the Bank of England over fears it could be caught up in international sanctions on the country. US economic...

The world’s central banks have acquired a record amount of gold in the third quarter of 2018 since 2015. The biggest buyer was Russia’s Central Bank, according to the World Gold Council (WGC) report. Over the past three months, global gold purchases totaled more than 148,000 tonnes, up 22% year-on-year, reports the World Gold Council. The leaders in purchases were Russia (99.2 tonnes of gold) and Turkey (18.5 tonnes).Russia’s central bank gold reserves surpassed 2,000 tonnes for the first...

What if U.S. retail prices were not denominated in U.S. dollars, but instead were denominated in gold or Bitcoin? Paying for a loaf of bread with gold wouldn’t be very practical, as you’d need a very small speck of the precious metal. But one can imagine a system of gold substitutes, such as notes giving you ownership of a fraction of an ounce of gold, thereby overcoming the small-change problem. With Bitcoin, it’d be much easier, as a virtual currency can be divided any way you want. Now,...

This just in. Read.Putin talks about a big new fiscal expansion, which will be "paid for" with spending cuts and new taxes even though he has unlimited spending power in ruble.And we now find out Russia's been stupidly buying gold for years. Why??This is a total waste of financial and real resources and an even stupider subsidy to the mining industry.Then there's this...Russia's empty threats about retaliation against U.S. strikes on Syria. "We'll shoot down the missiles and target launch...

For over a century now, the world has lacked a genuinely international means of payment. This is partly due to decisions made at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, when the US dollar was adopted as the principal international settlement currency, rather than John Maynard Keynes's suggestion of an independent global currency that he called "bancor". Although the Bretton Woods gold-backed structure ended in 1971, the US dollar became ever more dominant. In 2008, the dollar's global reach...

China is the world's largest gold importer, producer, processor, as well as consuming nation. In 2016, the country produced 453.49 tons of gold, ranking the first for 10 years consecutively. China's gold consumption reached 975.38 tons in 2016, the first on the list for four continuous years.... ECNS China Gold keeps positive on global gold industryCGTN

This is part 2 of my response to George Selgin’s post here:George Selgin, “‘Lord Keynes’ contra White on the Beginnings of Coinage,” Alt-M Ideas for an Alternative Monetary Future, August 30, 2017.Selgin refers to various new data from the past 20 years or so, and much of the new evidence was presented at a conference called “White Gold: Revealing the World’s Earliest Coins,” held from 25–26th June, 2012 (International Congress at Israel Museum, Jerusalem).Wartenberg (2017), for instance,...

A new study shows that the form of shadow "money" used in US prisons is changing. For many years it has been cigarettes (tobacco), and to a lesser extent stamps and envelopes. But now it seems the popularity of these in the prison black economy is declining - in favour of food. Specifically, Ramen noodles, a high-calorie, substantial foodstuff.Without examining the reasons for this change, it would be easy to assume that this is a matter of relative scarcity. Perhaps Ramen noodles are...

It's weird. Whenever I say that floating exchange rates can't absorb all shocks and that balance of payments crises can happen even in fiat currency systems, I am accused of gold standard thinking. Gold standard? Me? Perish the thought. I am the world's biggest fan of fiat currencies. And of floating exchange rates, too. But that doesn't mean I regard them as a panacea.Firstly, about gold standards. Under a strict gold standard, the quantity of money circulating in the economy is...