Credit Money, Gold Money
"You give me a chicken. I give you a little piece of silver. Done deal."
"Remember the golden rule," they used to say. "He who has the gold makes the rules."
"Central banks from the rest of the world (i.e., non-Western central banks) have been increasing their holdings of gold at a very rapid pace, going from 6,300 tonnes in Q1 2009 to more than 8,200 tonnes at the end of Q1 2013. At the same time, physical inventories have declined rapidly since the beginning of 2013 (or have been raided, as we argued in the May 2013 Markets at a Glance), and physical demand from large- and small-scale buyers remains solid."As we have shown in previous articles, the past decade has seen a large discrepancy between the available gold supply and sales. The conclusion we have reached is that this gold has been supplied by central banks, which have replaced their holdings of physical gold with claims on gold (paper gold)."