the imf has decided to sell its gold.. it has 400 odd tonnes of it..
it seems a lot.. but its only about 13 billion dollars worth and in the days of stimulus packages and wars costing amounts where the zeros are falling off the page it is a mere bagatelle.. or .. maybe not.
they reckon it will be auctioned off in bulk to some central bank. the russians are supposed to be buying gold or in the 'market' for it.. as are the chinese. everyone knows.
critics indicate that imf stands for imperialist mother feckers. (we are certainly not too polite to mention it.) wiki has a different idea ...signatories agree to its rules, one of which is not to base their currency on gold. like the rest of the bretton woods agreement critics say its time for the imf to go.
i’m not the only one who wonders who calls the shots at the imf. if any institution has image problems it is this one.. it kinda gives an impression of being just another wall st bank with special drawing rights.. the special right to draw blood out of even the most impoverished country..
some people who know what they are talking about see the imf and world bank as ultimately responsible for many of the more heinous crimes of late -- such as the Rwandan genocide.
but that is not really today’s topic. just an indication of what kind of beast we are talking about.
so. who is gonna buy the imf gold? the usa has reportedly got some gold stashed at fort knox as well as in new york, where it is said to store the gold of certain other central banks.. I guess the u.s. federal reserve is responsible for it.. um.. how much they have is probably a very closely guarded secret. much more closely kept than the physical au (gold=aurum in latin). if my guess is right..
what we are talking about isn’t billions of dollars worth of gold..coz it is ‘money ‘ that has been out of circulation. i.e. no velocity… velocity ‘V’ is a fundamental variant in economic equations… (fishers law (MV=PQ)) (we can discuss the movie 'V' another day.)
what is the function of gold??.. is it money or not? ?
certain bugs talk about the gold standard.. and a return to it.. but then why is the imf selling its gold ? ???? mmm
there will only be a gold standard if there is a collapse of confidence in fiat currency. nothing else is keeping it from happening other than the rule of the imf as far as I understand. of course government doesn’t want it.. it will totally remove their power to create money (inflation). it will basically pop their bubbles and keep them popped.
this question needs very clear thinking.
at the moment the us dollar is strengthening as no-one has confidence in anyone else’s fiat currency. but just how much confidence can anyone have in the greenback? how long will it last?
the euro is too shaky. ren ming bi.. you cant be serious! . not for a long time.. .
experts would know just what problems there would be to overcome if a gold standard were introduced today. ( I am not one). last time there was one, the floor in the London exchange collapsed from the sheer weight of it.. but…what’s wrong with a gold standard? say us$1 = 1/6000 oz or something like that.. they would have to be careful not to make the mistake that Churchill made when England went back on it after ww1. keynes was right. Churchill was wrong. he overvalued the pound and it was savaged in the market exactly as Keynes predicted it would be. some illuminates say it should be closer to 1oz =us$30,000. whatever happens, changes are afoot.
i read somewhere that a mans life is worth an ounce of gold. if it wasn’t outlawed and gold had real velocity then its not likely to stay at under us$1000…. hehehe. just thinking about it puts fiat currency in its place. no wonder keynes liked it.
I got a feeling that in a free market, there would be more bidders than the chinese and russians. but I doubt that we will see the imf gold on ebay.. my guess is that the fed will quietly acquire it or by its cartel members at an undisclosed rate.... I doubt that there is any return to the gold standard on the books atm but the dollar will soon be due for revaluing. probably not till after obama’s second term starts. …wait see.
have a nice weekend.
tejas fu.
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