New book ‘102 Things to Do with a Hole in the Ground‘ spotlights global reclamation projects
Stories of reinvented coal mining regions, regenerated communities and rebuilt ecosystems are told in a new book published this month.
The Motley Fool reports in a December 2009 interview, with gold around $1,150 per ounce, the Bank of Korea’s Lee Eung Baek said to Bloomberg: “There’s an illusion in gold. We follow the big trend. Gold isn’t the trend. Gold offers little value.” Since then, the metal has appreciated over 40% against the dollar, and Mr. Lee is no longer responsible for reserve management at the Bank of Korea
Alex Dumortier of The Motley Fool writes meanwhile, the central bank’s new head of reserve management is singing a different tune, as the bank announced yesterday its first gold purchase since the Asian crisis of 1997 and 1998.
At 25 tonnes (rough worth: $1.3 billion), the purchase isn’t huge for a central bank — hedge fund Paulson & Co.’s position in the SPDR Gold Shares ETF at the end of March was over three times that size. However, it’s indicative of a phenomenon that I highlighted 13 months ago, when I wrote that, “we may be witnessing an important shift in the way central bankers perceive gold, which could become a powerful and long-lasting trend.”.
In 2009, the “official sector” (banks, sovereign wealth funds, and other government investment vehicles) became a net buyer of gold in for the first time in two decades. Among the buyers that year were Russia, India, and China (the largest manager of foreign exchange reserves in the world). In 2010, European central banks all but halted gold sales, while their counterparts in the emerging markets continued buying the yellow metal.
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Comments
Parab
It’s the beginning of a worldwide shift away from the US green back, back to the gold standard.