Gold Is “Universally Acceptable” and Why China Is Buying – Greenspan
Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed, had an article entitled “Golden Rule – Why Beijing Is Buying” published in Foreign Policy, the journal of the influential Council on Foreign Relations in which he extols the virtues of gold as “universally acceptable.”
Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of the United States from 1987 to 2006, and a key architect in the global financial crisis, points out that if the world’s largest gold consumer, China, used a portion of its massive $4 trillion foreign exchange reserves to buy enough gold bullion it could displace the U.S. as the world’s largest holder of gold bullion. The U.S. holdings are believed to be just over 8,500 tonnes with an estimated value of just $328 billion as of spring 2014.
Greenspan points out how gold is the ultimate form of money in the world and is “universally acceptable”.
He concedes that “a return to the gold standard in any form is not on anybody’s horizon” right now but points out that if sovereign governments have financial crises, their fiat currencies may not be accepted as payment.
He highlights that bullion holds special properties that no currency can claim, except maybe silver. The fiat currencies and moving exchange rates that make up our monetary system of today are backed by the tax raising abilities of government’s of sovereign nations. However, gold bullion for over 2000 years has been an “unquestioned acceptance as payment”, writes Greenspan.
“No questions are raised when gold or direct claims to gold are offered in payment of an obligation; it was the only form of payment, for example
, that exporters to Germany would accept as World War II was drawing to a close.”
“Today, the acceptance of fiat money — currency not backed by an asset of intrinsic value — rests on the credit guarantee of sovereign nations endowed with effective taxing power, a guarantee that in crisis conditions has not always matched the universal acceptability of gold.”
“If the dollar or any other fiat currency were universally acceptable at all times, central banks would see no need to hold any gold. The fact that they do indicates that such currencies are not a universal substitute. Of the 30 advanced countries that report to the International Monetary Fund, only four hold no gold as part of their reserve balances. Indeed, at market prices, the gold held by the central banks of developed economies was worth $762 billion as of December 31, 2013, comprising 10.3 percent of their overall reserve balances. (The IMF held an additional $117 billion.) “
“If, in the words of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, gold were a “barbarous relic,” central banks around the world would not have so much of an asset whose rate of return, including storage costs, is negative.”
In the article, he also suggests that China will find it hard to compete with the U.S. in the long term as China is an authoritarian, one party state and does not have free markets.
This comparison is questionable given that many are concerned that the U.S. markets are no longer free. Markets see daily interventions and manipulations and are increasingly influenced by corporate and banking monopolies including the Federal Reserve itself and its continuing massive intervention in financial markets and the monetary system.
There are also concerns that the U.S. is jettisoning many of the civil liberties, civil rights and freedoms that the Founding Fathers fought for and achieved and the emerging surveillance state has the hallmarks of a potentially authoritarian one or two party, corporate state.
The article shows that senior monetary officials and policy makers continue to see gold as an important part of our modern financial and monetary system and as an important strategic assset. Influential global policy makers do not see gold as a “barbarous relic” as many of Keynes ardent disciples of today, including Paul Krugman, would have people believe.
While he says that gold is important and the Chinese are right to accumulate it, he appears be warning the Chinese government that accumulating too much gold might lead to a very strong yuan on international markets which could lead to defl
ation and a recession in China’s export dependent economy.
The Council on Foreign Relations may be concerned about the ramifications of China accumulating larger gold reserves than those that the U.S. has and the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) giving the yuan some form of gold backing. This would pose serious challenges to the dollar as global reserve currency and thus to U.S. hegemony.
Greenspan has on a few occasions warned that the U.S. needs to be careful not to debase the dollar and engage in fiat money ‘extremis.’ If that happens fiat dollars would no longer be accepted on global markets with attendant difficult financial and economic consequences.
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