Terry,
Here's my take on the arguments presented in those articles.
100% of official sector gold is indeed held for monetary/investment purposes, one which the official sector is trying to get out of. These investments were made in the past decades where gold was presumed to have investment qualities. They hardly reflect the present.
75% of private sector gold has a similar story. As you know, India is by far the largest private sector consumer of gold in the world. There are historical reasons for that, related to inheritance laws in the Hindu Civil Code where women didn't have inheritance rights and hence were given large dowries in gold (long scrapped legally, but not quite socially), lack of banking facilities in rural India (some 70% of the country) making gold the means of saving, tariffs which led to a underground market in gold and last, but not the least, and rampant inflation in the Indian Rupee (so much so that the USD went from parity to 44 INR in 35 years). All these, now, are changing as Indian is slowly making the move from a developing country to a developed one. With that, gold prices and demand are dropping in India. Gold investors should closely monitor the changing socio-economic situation in India, IMHO.
Finally, I have seen bears laughing at complacent bulls as they complain about manipulation when the equities market drops. Now I see that the same argument is being made in reverse. :-)
I hope that you and others will take the previous paragraph as good-humored taunting and not venomous, as my intent is not to offend.
-BGR. |
