Emerging World Buys $10B in Gold as West Wobbles! Central Banks Join Rush To Gold !

- The smart money has been accumulating physical gold for some time now. The sheeple are still pretty much asleep. By the time they wake up, the stampede will have started and the sheeple will once again be caught buying at exorbitant prices near the top! Gold is going to at least US$10,000/oz ! Silver US$300/oz ! The flight from fiat currencies to hard asset gold has started. Worldwide currency debasement is the order of the day!
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Emerging world buys $10 bln in gold as West wobbles
By Amanda Cooper, Reuters
* Thailand adds nearly 19 T to reserves in June -IMF
* Russia buys, Kazakhstan makes third buy of 2011
LONDON, Aug 3 (Reuters) – Central banks of emerging market countries such as Korea and Thailand have added more than $10 billion of gold to their reserves this year in a sign of waning faith in the West’s benchmark bonds and currencies like the dollar and the euro.
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International Monetary Fund data for June on Wednesday showed Thailand bought gold for the second time this year, raising its reserves by nearly 19 tonnes to over 127 tonnes, while Russia bought another 5.85 tonnes, bringing its reserves to 836.7 tonnes, the world’s eighth largest official stash of the metal.
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So far in 2011, emerging market central banks have bought nearly 180 tonnes of gold, more than double the roughly 73 tonnes purchased by central banks globally in the whole of 2010.
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The spot price of gold has risen by more than 17 percent this year to a record $1,672.65 an ounce, driven chiefly by investor concerns over the impact on the developed world’s economy of its debt burdens and sluggish growth.
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Mexico has been the largest buyer of gold in the year to date, with $5.3 billion worth of purchases, or 98 tonnes of gold, followed by Russia, which has bought 48 tonnes, worth $2.6 billion at current prices. Earlier this week, Korea confirmed it had bought 25 tonnes of gold in June and July.
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“Central banks evidently do not regard the price level as too high and are diversifying their currency reserves. This was the first purchase of gold for the Korean central bank in over ten years,” said Commerzbank metals analyst Daniel Briesemann.
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Central Banks Join Rush to Gold
by Liam Pleven, Se Young Lee and In-Soo Nam, http://wsj.com/
Central banks are ramping up their gold buying as they seek to diversify their reserves away from the dollar and other beleaguered currencies. South Korea became the latest government to disclose a big bullion purchase, saying Tuesday that it recently bought 25 metric tons – more than doubling its holdings to 39 metric tons. Mexico, Russia and Thailand have also been major buyers in 2011.
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This year, governments have almost tripled their net gold purchases, increasing their holdings by 203.5 metric tons this year, up from a 76-metric ton rise last year, according to the World Gold Council, an industry group backed by miners.
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The demand marks a major shift in central banks’ thinking about gold. Increasingly, they see bullion as protection against risks posed by declining paper currencies and global economic upheaval, and their vast resources and conservative bent make them a powerful force in the gold market.
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While gold is an asset that does not generate income, that shortcoming is less glaring among historically low interest rates. Before 2010, governments had on balance been shedding their bullion for two decades, during which gold was seen by some as a relic. According to data from GFMS Ltd., a metals consultancy, 1988 was the last year that official holdings increased.
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“We definitely have seen a sea change” in central bank attitudes toward gold, said David Greely, chief commodities strategist at Goldman Sachs Group. Central bank buying provides “longer-term support for gold prices,” he said.
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