Gold, the SDR and BRICS!
- Gold, the SDR and BRICS!
by Alasdair Macleod, http://www.goldmoney.com/
Last Monday there was a meeting in Washington hosted by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) to discuss the future relationship, if any, of gold with the Special Drawing Rights1 (SDR).
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Also on the agenda was the inclusion of the Chinese renminbi, which seems certain to be included in the SDR basket in this year’s revision, assuming that the United States doesn’t try to block it.
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This is not the first time the subject has come up. OMFIF’s chairman, Lord Desai wrote a paper about it after the last Washington meeting on gold and the SDR exactly four years ago. The inclusion of the renminbi in the SDR was rejected in 2010 because of inadequate liquidity and is due to be reconsidered this year.
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Desai pointed out in his paper that there are difficulties when it comes to including gold, because (and I think this is what he was trying to say) none of the SDR’s paper constituents are convertible into gold, but gold’s inclusion in the SDR would make them convertible through the back door. However, Desai seemed keen to re-examine the case for gold.
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It should be pointed out that if gold is included in SDRs the arrangement cannot be long-lasting so long as the major central banks insist on printing money as an economic cure-all. However, China’s position with respect to gold and her own currency could be a different matter.
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The Chinese government has almost certainly accumulated large amounts of gold yet to be included in her reserves, and she has also encouraged her own citizens to own gold as well. We can therefore be certain that China sees a monetary role for gold while at the same time she is pushing for the renminbi to be included in the SDR basket. There is no doubt, if you read the IMF papers from the last SDR review in 2010 that the renminbi does now fulfil the criteria for inclusion today. So the question then is will the advanced nations, which dominate the IMF’s membership, permit the renminbi’s inclusion, and will the US, which has dragged its heels on giving China and the other BRICS nations a greater shareholding in the IMF, relent and permit these reforms, which were accepted by the other members back in 2010?
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The Americans’ blocking of reform signals her desire to preserve the dollar’s hegemony; but given she lost out spectacularly over the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, IMF reform could become the next serious threat to the dollar’s dominance. And if America does not back down over the IMF and the SDR, she will have no fall-back position; China on the other hand still has some aces up her sleeve.
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