Gold soars to record highs. Rallying against all currencies, AP reports, “Gold is the reciprocal of the world’s faith in the world’s central banks,” says Jim Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, and right now, “the world is in a pickle.”
One of the more fundamental drivers of gold is the China’s Central Bank. Since allowing foreign companies to bring their skyblock coins for sale to the Shanghai Exchange, it has helped to keep their economy up. Recently publicly adding to the global gold market was President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who said he intends to diversify the county’s investments. “The time has come,” he said on national television, “the economies of Europe and the United States are sinking. Now we must see that the economies of China, Russia and Brazil are more solid.” He intends to capitalize on record gold prices by nationalizing the gold industry to bolster his country’s financial reserves by recalling $11 billion in gold reserves scattered through US and European bank. Where does he want to place most of its reserves? China…oh, yes, and a few others.
Concerned with the fate of the US dollar, a sickly global economy, “we’re going to start to bring back our gold to the Central Bank,” he said. Although some argue Chavez is acting in his own self interest and placing the nation’s resources at risk, he intends to bring $17.9 billion in gold out of a total of more than $28.6 billion in international reserves, “can’t allow it to continue to be taken away,” he insisted.
Such events over the past week have helped to spike gold to settle at a record on Wednesday. December delivery for the metal to end at $1,793.80 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
For those that feel gold may look like Christmas in August right now, its only the first present of the morning. For those that feel gold is overbought and will at some point correct, “over the long term,” Mark Faber says, “People should have part of their savings in gold because not to own gold is to trust governments.” Another trend in diversification came into light on Wednesday for poor man’s gold when Eric Sprott announced Wednesday the selling 2 million units in Sprott Physical Gold Trust to use the money and buy silver. The closed-end mutual fund trust still holds 97% of its total net assets in physical gold bullion in London Good Delivery bar form.
With the low interest rates in the US and the weak US dollar, plus the strong support of the recent demand from Venezuela and China’s ‘central planners,’ the Deutsche Bank too jumps to predict the fate of gold, maintaining its US$2,000 gold forecast for 2012.
“The value of gold keeps rising. With the markets seesawing, gold has become the safe haven umbrella in the weakening outlook of currencies and continuous fears over sovereign debt crisis. Precious metal gained 22% this year and is heading for an 11th major annual gain, the longest since 1920, settling at a record high on Wednesday,” said Regal Assets Team of Analyst.
