Central Bank Gold Agreement: Dead at 20

"Any sales cap [which was what the CBGA agreed] became redundant when Western selling ended amid the global financial crisis in 2009. So too did any pretence of wanting to defend Western currency values or needing reserve assets to do so, replaced by bail-outs, QE money creation and near-zero to negative interest rates."Together, this has revived a strongly symbolic role for gold among the public (shown by grass-roots campaigns to 'Bring home our gold!'). It has also seen a surge in emerging-market nations buying gold to hedge those Western reserve currencies under attack from their own issuers."
"Hedged by borrowing and selling well over one year's full output, global mine production set a run of new records even as prices kept falling. But central banks as a group had lent out half as much again, giving speculators perhaps 1,500 tonnes to play with."


