April  25, 2019

Andrew Campbell

The six largest countries that hold gold bullion are as follows: the US, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, and China. Russia’s gold holdings have increased rapidly and the reserves of its greenback have dropped 24 percent in 2018. According to the Central Bank of Russia, the more than 2,170 tons of gold that Russia has held account for one-fifth of its total foreign exchange reserves.

Why has the Reserve Bank of India joined the gold hunt since December 2017? It is because India feels uneasy about future policies of the US government and hopes to depend less on the US dollar. Turkey’s intent to increase its gold reserves in 2017 and in 2018 also indicates the anti-
Americanism. Over the past decade, such countries as China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyz Republic have been making effort to add gold to their reserves and reducing their investments in US government securities in order to settle bi-lateral trade in local currencies.

The US unleashes the trade war and takes anti-globalization stand clearly.
Besides, the US rarely shows respect for policies that promote peace and 
inclusive growth. Other reasons for the above countries’ eagerness to 
reduce dependence on the US currency includes the mounting debt in the US and the uncontrolled printing of notes for successive quantitative easing programs since 2009.
On the other hand, the euro fails to carry out its promise to solve the problems in the Euro Zone. It will take a few decades for the yuan to take the place of the greenback. Therefore, global central banks can only turn to gold, durable, divisible, portable and scarce.

Photo:Webshot.