Chinese Consumers Rush for Gold

I have a mountain of stories and interviews today… virtually all of them fall into the must read/listen category.  It seems like every paper of importance was talking about gold on the weekend.

The first story is a GATA release with the headline “Nepal will put FX reserves into gold and rig domestic market“.  The story is filed from Kathmandu, Nepal by the Xinhua News Agency in Beijing.  Their headline reads “Nepal Government Adopts New Gold Policy“.  In a strategic move, Nepal’s government has decided to bolster gold reserves to back up macroeconomic stability and manage the market after poor management of the gold trade fueled a balance-of-payments deficit posing challenges to stability for about a year.  The link is here.

Reader S.A. from Washington state sent me the following story that was posted over at stockbriefings.com last week.  The headline reads “J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Gold Storage Open“.  The precious metals storage facility, located in a free-trade zone at Singapore’s Changi international airport, is reported to accommodate transactions having physical settlement in which J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. is involved, including physical settlement of Singapore Mercantile Exchange gold futures contracts.  I guess JPMorgan knows that the future for gold looks bright if they’re making this kind of investment.  The link is here.

The following is another GATA release.  It’s headlined “Rickards sees dollar collapse prompting new gold standard at +$5,000/oz“.  Omnis Senior Managing Director Jim Rickards was interviewed for six minutes on CNBC a week ago and talked matter-of-factly about the ongoing collapse of the dollar and the likely necessity for the United States to return to a gold standard to support its currency, only this time with convertibility at anywhere from $5,000 to $11,000 per ounce.  Chris Powell’s preamble is a must read… and the interview is amust watch… and the link to both is here.

Over at Sprott Asset Management in Toronto, both of John Embry’s gold commentaries… one for August, the other for September, were both posted on the same day.  I had been watching for them for a while… and had even called his office to see when they would be put up, but Australian reader Wesley Legrand found them before I did.  The first article, which was written for Investor’s Digest of Canada, is headlined “Largest gold swap ever almost escapes notice“.  Anything that John writes is a must read… this being no exception… and the link is here.

The September essay for Investor’s Digest of Canada is headlined “Bond bubble – be wary; the downside will hurt“… and the link to that story is here.

This next item was also a GATA release, but I’m just going to steal Chris Powell’s preamble and post the link.  Rob McEwen, CEO of U.S. Gold and creator of Goldcorp, may be too soft-spoken and cautious ever to be caught wearing a tin-foil hat, but in a brief interview broadcast yesterday with TheStreet.com‘s Alix Steel, he forecast a gold price of $5,000 per ounce.  The GATA headline reads “U.S. Gold’s McEwen expects gold to reach $5,000“… and the link is here.

The Bank of Japan’s attempt to drive down the yen last week was rather underwhelming.  However, it doesn’t appear that they have given up on their effort.  Here’s a story from the Friday edition of The Wall Street Journal that’s printed in the clear in this GATA release.  That GATA headline reads “Japan Signals Determination to Rig Currency Market“… and the link is here.

Reader U.D. sent me the following story early on Sunday morning.  It ended up as a GATA release later that day.  The headline reads “Gary North: Gold audit is a red-alert threat to the regime“.  The article [posted over at lewrockwell.com] is a must read… as is Chris Powell’s preamble to the essay… and the link to both is here.

Just about everyone with their ear to the ground in the gold world has heard the surprise story that Saudi Arabia doubled its gold reserves recently.  That’s true, but they didn’t buy these extra reserves in the open market.  Here’s the story about that from this past weekend that was posted from Riyadh over at the tradearabia.com website.  The headline reads Saudi ‘did not buy new gold reserves in 2010’.  The story is only four short paragraphs.  The photo that accompanies the article is worth the trip all by itself… and the link is here.  One wonders how many other nations are misreporting their gold reserves.

It appears that rising prices are really spurring gold purchases in China.  Here’s a story that was posted over at the xinhuannet.com website on Saturday… and filed from Beijing.  The headline reads “Chinese Consumers Rush for Gold“.  There’s a video and some text… and are a must watch and a must read… and the link is here.  The video starts talking about the record high price of silver right at the end, but gets cut off at that point.

I noted when I watched the video, that they showed a rabbit made from gold.  Next year is the ‘Year of the Rabbit‘ in China… and golden ‘wascally wabbits’ are showing up everywhere.  Here’s a photo sent to me by Tokyo reader Markus Ken Moriyama.  It’s a 24-K gold bunny on display at Tanaka Kikinzoku Jewelry.  It’s 17.5 cm [7″] high and weighs 200g [6.2 troy ounces]. The price tag is 1.6M JP¥ [around US$19,000].  And for those of you who can read Japanese, the link to the story is here.

I’ll take a momentary break from gold and currency stories and bring your attention to this piece that was posted over at zerohedge.com on Sunday.  Reader U.D. was kind enough to send it to me.  The headline reads “Further Confirmation On The Irrelevance Of Stock Markets“.  One of the last few remaining non-BHC broker-dealers, has just experienced its single most disastrous drop in trading volumes, as its principal trading revenues plunged by 80% QoQ.  It will take two minutes of your time to run through this… and it’s definitely worth it… and the link is here.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard finally weighs into the gold market with this story that was posted at The Telegraph‘s website on Sunday evening.  The headline reads “Gold is the final refuge against universal currency debasement“.   We have a new world order where China and India are buying gold on every dip, where the West faces an ageing crisis, and where the sovereign states of the US, Japan, and most of Western Europe have public debt trajectories near or beyond the point of no return. Of course, gold can go higher.  This is anothermust read article… and the link is here.

Here’s a story that was sent to me on Sunday by reader Carl Lindfors.  It ended up as a GATA release shortly after I forwarded the story to Chris Powell.  The story was in the Sunday edition of the Financial Times out of London.  The headline reads “Europe’s Central Banks Halt Gold Sales“.  The story is definitely worth your time… and the link is here.

Here’s a Bloomberg story that was filed from Frankfurt yesterday.  The headline reads “Bundesbank Plans to Sell 6.5 Tons Under Gold Accord“.  “Apart from the sale of 6.5 tonnes to the Federal Finance Ministry already agreed to, the German Bundesbank won’t make use of the selling option available to it in the second year of the new Gold Agreement,” the Frankfurt- based Bundesbank said in the statement today.  The link to this very short read is here.

Here’s another Financial Times story that’s posted in the clear in this GATA release.  Chris Powell’s headline reads “A decade into gold’s ascent, the Financial Times concedes it legitimacy“.  The headline from the FT story itself reads “Gold: Value Locked In“.  It’s a must read… and the link is here.

Here’s another GATA release.  The headline reads “Fed desire for inflation spurs gold, Hathaway tells King World News“.  Chris Powell’s preamble… and the KWN blog itself are both very much worth your time… and the link to both is here.

And finally… I come to the last story… and I hate to say it, dear reader… but it’s a must read as well.  I always try to leave the best until last… and this essay certainly qualifies, as does the extensive preamble provided by Chris Powell.  Chris is the senior editor at Manchester, Connecticut’s Journal Enquirernewspaper… and anything he writes as a preamble is not only worth reading… it’s always way better than any introduction that I could dream up.  So I will use it [or steal it] at every opportunity.  This essay is entitled “Alasdair Macleod: The global politics of gold“… and as Chris says… “If you read only one thing about gold today, it should be this.”  The link is here.