Gold is actually used for stuff other than hoarding and jewellery. Its used in every smartphone, memory card, motherboard etc. It is also turned into gold leaf and used in craft, religion, and even in cooking. Hundreds of tonnes are used every year, most of it being eventually recycled. Its a uniquely useful metal and its annoying how many people think its just for decoration.
Also the BRICS currency reserve bank is not a conspiracy theory, it already exists with an apparent capitalisation of $100Billion (which is in part chinese gold). Any currency exchange system includes a percentage of gold as a buffer (as does the US) but that is completely different to having a gold backed currency which no governments advocate. Old standard was 20% gold 80% currency, so do the math = ~600 tonnes gold required
So yes the chinese have been buying up gold to fund their own bank, just like they've been selling off US bonds to buy rubles, rupees, rand and raels. Its not because their economy is collapsing, its a three part plan to bypass the US dollar's reserve currency status as all these countries have had banking sanctions impact their trade and are sick of the US/Europe calling all the shots.
Part one is the currency reserve so all their trades will be settled in their own currencies. (DONE)
Part two is the formation of their own infrastructure development bank to compete with the world bank/imf. (DONE)
Part three is their own currency transfer service to replace/compete with SWIFT.
Despite BRICS having been working on this for nearly a decade it gets very little media coverage in the west, and obviously they haven't gone blabbing to the world "hey we're going to set up our own global banking system to end your monopoly control of world finance". Hence the reason they kept their gold stockpiling a state secret until they completed their main purchase and it was time to start the bank. Its not going to have much impact on the price of gold either way unless it results in a long term decline of the US dollar and Americans start hoarding again.
sammy said:
Also, has anyone here actually purchased 'Chinese Silver Jewellery' in the past few years? It's mostly tin with a .925 Sterling Silver Stamp on it. I don't trust their jewellers and I don't trust their 'official numbers' either.
Yeah, theres an el cheapo tin alloy called 'tibetan silver' - some sellers like to leave out the tibetan part, but then theres also a cheapo european alloy called 'german silver' and some dodgy Euro sellers only mention the german part in the fine print. Anywhere you go theres always the occasional shyster.