Saturday, February 15, 2014

Gold Plays an Extremely Important Role in Monetary History

If you go back about a decade and you look at the BIS, the Bank of International Settlements, that’s the bankers’ bank. They accounted in one thing and one thing only, and that was gold. That’s the only thing they accounted for, gold.

Now, if you’re talking about the central bankers’ bank, you’re talking about basically the monetary powerhouse of the entire globe. The only thing that they care about is how much gold you have in a nation state. I would certainly say that that somewhat carries merit. The problem is that we really don’t know who owns what because of all these swaps, interconnections, hypothecations, and rehypothecations.

I’m going to go off on a tangent here, but it’s on point somewhat. I’ve always thought what would be the event. No one knows. But, if it ever came to light that there is no real gold in Fort Knox, and of course there’s a lot of conjecture about that.

If somehow there was a Senate investigation or whatever, pick your idea, and it came to light internationally that “oh no! we opened up the curtain and we saw the wizard, and the wizard is naked. There’s no gold at Fort Knox. The US has no gold reserve at all.”

If that were ever to come to light I would think that the US dollar could take a huge plunge. Because the perception, maybe not the reality, maybe the reality, is that the US still has a large gold hold, around 265,000,000 ounces of fine gold.

I doubt it, but again, the market’s perception, I think, is that yeah. So, you could look at different currencies through history and basically, like it or not, gold bug or not, gold plays an extremely important part in monetary history.


- Source, David Morgan via Sprott Money: