Interesting GATA post on Zero Hedge with link to Rickards reprint on the mechanics. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018...nsive-guide-paper-manipulation-james-rickards The PDF copy of Rickards' "Paper Manipulation" subchapter is posted at GATA's internet site here: http://www.gata.org/files/NewCaseForGoldExcerpt.pdf
Don't know about paper manipulation, but it's true that PRCs are buying up a lot of gold. They anticipate inflation coming.
China is buying truck loads of pure bullion and selling boatloads of coins, jewllery and electronics containing gold.
I don't know whether I understand China's stance on gold. I know China and a few other countries were trying to break away from trading in USD and somehow gold was tied to that but the ongoing instability in the commodities sector shows that a full recovery for China is still a little way off.
I think Jim Rickards has a pretty clear view of it all, and his conjecture that Russia and China are building Gold reserves in order to become larger players when the reserve currency swings across to either the IMF currency, whatever it is, or something that looks like a very large black swan is the best guess currently.
THanks Julie, I looked up the IMF currency and found this in Wikiedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency Interesting to see the advantage that the US gets (100 billion per year) in intrest rates due to it being the dominant trade currency. No wonder China, Russia et al would like to erode that.
100 billion is peanuts though to world economy. Note it’s not all against Russia and China, ie the 100 billion is total of all trades and not all trades involve China or Russia.
True, if the 2017 World GDP was US$79.87 trillion in nominal terms then 0.1 trillion does seem like a tiny amount. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)