China is hoarding the world's gold

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to World News@lemmy.world – 164 points –
China is hoarding the world's gold
newsweek.com
93

That’s why I put all my savings into real shitty drawings of cartoon apes who look like they smoke weed. China can take your gold but they can never modify the blockchain record that proves I’m a fuckwit.

I will not vote this above 69 because it’s perfect until someone does

The article title says china is hoarding the worlds gold, yet the us owns the most by a very large margin...

Not to mention the large amounts of other countries gold that we hold and decide to keep permanently whenever a country makes us upset. We’ve stolen so many countries reserves, after FORCING many of them to store their reserves in the US.

Do you have sources for this?

In August the Taliban seized control and the former government collapsed, leaving behind just over $7bn in central bank assets deposited in the US Federal Reserve bank in New York. As Afghanistan’s top officials, including the president and central bank governor, fled the country, the Fed froze the account as it was unclear who was legally authorised to access the funds.

Source on freezing foreign gold held in U.S. Reserve. I misspoke as to them seizing it, I haven’t been able to find anything to confirm that, I must have misremembered, sorry.

And another thing, it also says China PRODUCES the most gold. Okay so they produce the most and hold what, less than 30% what the US Fed holds? Ridiculous headline and article. Seems as if they've had every opportunity to amass more or equal to the other leaders and are only just now increasing holdings over the past 9 months.

2 more...

Newsweek is hoarding the world's stupid.

False - there's an unlimited supply of stupid.

Can you imagine a reality where "stupid" was a finite resource? People would literally fight over "stupid" in order to be the stupidest on Earth. Which by our standards is pretty stupid by itself, regardless how it is approached.

There's a Elon joke there, but I haven't had my morning coffee yet.

Doesn't the US literally have the vast majority of the world's original gold reserves from the bretton woods agreement before Nixon abolished the gold standard?

possession /= property. During Bretton-woods everyone deposited their gold in the US.

The US own around 8.1k tonnes, EU member states 11.7k, Switzerland another 1000.

Germany has the 2nd largest reserves by country (after the US), 3300 tons, and has been bringing gold physically home, completely emptying Paris' vault, moving 500t from New York to Frankfurt, London stayed about stable.

You now might be asking yourself "how the fuck do they transport 500t gold across the Atlantic" and the answer is: Nobody knows. The Bundesbank isn't saying a thing short of that the gold went to Switzerland to be analysed and re-melted. It's not much volume-wise though, about 9m^3^. My best bet is submarine to Germany's north coast, then an inconspicuous train to Switzerland (it's not like German subs can't operate in shallow water but the Rhine, nope).

Could have also used a transport barge, they're apparently the most efficient means of shipping materials over long distances, granted this is primarily over river conditions.

From the article:

Its gold reserves are estimated to be 2,113 tonnes as of July—the fifth largest behind the Federal Reserve's 8,133

so... actually the federal reserve is hoarding the world's gold

When the Federal reserve did it, I bet it wasn't called hoarding.

it was called patriotism! the founding fathers would have wanted us to horde gold.

Collect gold. Not hoard. Haven't you been listening?

China is hoarding the world's gold

the fifth largest behind the Federal Reserve's

Guess who they learned from?

So? We don't use it for money anymore.

Gold is used in a lot of other things than money and jewelry. For example, a sizable portion of the world's supply is used in electronics like cellphones and computers.

Oh no a country is investing in their own industrial capacity, what devious monsters!

Yeah, like, I'm generally pretty anti-CCP, but this is a non-issue, really.

China is also the land of dragons. Coincidence?

These were the exact words my trump loving batshit Christian mother in law spews every time she opens her mouth

I'd like you to tell me a better way for Xi to swim around in a giant moneybin like Scrooge McDuck.

This is actually, literally, propaganda. Almost fun to read because of how obvious it is.

I’m glad you recognize that, now apply it to western media. There is a huge global protest today. And hardly a whisper from American media.

global protest website only mentions American cities

Never change, America

That’s the big one on Washington. I don’t think they are coordinated other than the date. There’s one in London.

2 more...
2 more...

On the books

Do people realize communism is moneyless, because from the comments I’m not sure they realize the goals of socialism?

If you think Xi isn't hoarding wealth for himself and his cronies you're delusional.

Source? Why would he? He doesn’t need to, he’s President for life. What’s he gonna buy? Graceland?

"Wealth" doesn't necessarily mean "money". I'm sure he can get money if and when he needs it.

My point is that regardless of what pay he collects on paper, he is extremely wealthy and he exerts control over the distribution of significant wealth within the PRC. Xi is about as communist as Putin is.

4 more...
4 more...

The world's gold you say? Seems to me that once someone owns it the gold is no longer the property of "the world."

Does gold still have the same value it used to? When it was first used people put value on “oooh, shiny rock, it must be precious”, but now is it really that valuable? It sounds like they’re hoarding it because they think it’s useful as a currency, but if things got bad would other countries care about it?

Gold is agreed upon as a store of value. There's always someone willing to buy it. You're right that its intrinsic value as a material is lower than the actual price but people's belief in gold is the same as their belief in a fiat currency.

The difference is that gold is a physical asset, so that no matter what the rate of inflation or the fluctuation of the market price if you have a tonne of gold you will always have that tonne.

Also it is not administered by a central bank with a political agenda.

Lastly gold is rare and finite. Eventually there will be no more gold to be mined.

I think the fact that it's very chemically stable is likely a factor as well so it can be stored for effectively an infinite amount of time & it won't degrade/react, it'll still be gold.

Historically, the value of gold was tied to its "incorruptibility". It is associated with purity and permanence.

Oh, look! An asteroid made almost entirely out of gold! T'would be a shame if someone were to mine it...

Just back a transit van up to it, hack a lump off with a pneumatic drill, sling it in the back, we'll be back by teatime.

The price of gold fluctuates though. And it could potentially devalue significantly if a new source is discovered or a new method of mining or extracting it (such as filtering it from seawater) is developed.

So yes, if you have a tonne of gold, you will always have that tonne, but it could lose, say, 20% of its value quickly.

It could indeed and has done so in the past. But the thing about it is that the price always recovers because people believe it will always be valuable. It's the belief that endures and because people will always pay for what they believe to be valuable the value of gold as a currency endures. Also the retail value of gold remains high as the single largest application is jewellery Source page So there's a conflation of the value of the labour that goes into making jewellery, adding value and in some cases the value of the piece will take that gold permanently out of circulation for use as currency e.g. the Mask of Agamemnon

Until we can successfully mine asteroids, and then all precious metals will have nigh infinite supplies. I suspect we’re not too many decades away from that.

It tends to go up in value during chaotic times as people use it to insulate their savings from the economy when they are expecting regular currencies or economies to crash.

About 10% of gold usage is in technology. This has been steady for many years. Jewelry and Investments can trade off. But yeah, basically its just mostly values because its a rare shiny rock.

If things got bad they'd have the advantage as gold is a much more trustworthy investment than unbacked currencies

Yup there's a reason why the US holding them in Fort Knox

Its value has kept increasing over time.

And it will likely keep doing so, as while in the past gold reserves only dropped when gold was lost (like ye old Spanish ship going down in the Ocean) against its natural increase of continued mining, these days, gold is also used in quite a lot of applications where it becomes impractical to recover after being discarded.

And this removal of gold reserves will only keep increasing with the increase of its uses in technology.

So, yeah, its value is almost assured to stay very solid and monopolizing the worlds gold also gives you a degree of control over technology markets.

Markets where the west has typically kept China behind the curve.

It gives them leverage, economical and technological.

There’s a grizzled old prospector reading this and getting VERY pissed rn

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Despite China being the largest producer of gold in the world, its central bank has been at the forefront of a surge in purchases of the precious metal on the international market as it seeks to reduce its reliance on the dollar.

While the full extent of China's holdings and purchases are opaque to international observers, experts say the increase in interest in gold is part of a broader move away from dollar-based assets that has been taking place for a while, at a time of financial and geopolitical volatility.

Rather than seeking to influence the U.S. economy, they say, China's gold rush could be an attempt to shore up its fiscal position with a stable and highly saleable asset as bond markets suffer and its relations with Western nations sour.

Since the spy balloon incident, questions have been raised of land purchases near U.S. Air Force bases, while it has been accused of stealing American agricultural technology and intellectual property.

In order to combat post-pandemic inflation, many central banks have raised interest rates, which have in turn affected government bond yields that drive down the return on such investments.

"Contrary to widespread perception, if China buys fewer U.S. assets, this will not hurt the U.S.," Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, told Newsweek.


The original article contains 1,027 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

China lives rent free in Americans heads. Maybe stop blaming China and work on yourself America.

Can we still blame China for committing genocide against the Uyghurs?

Is that what the article is about?

Did you mean stop blaming China for hoarding gold but still blame China for other things?

You seem to think I’m defending China. I am not. But the fear mongering from the media is a nuisance. It serves to worry you. Ignore it.

So you’re saying that if America stops watching the news and instead focuses on itself, China will stop committing genocide? Shit I wish we knew this sooner.

That’s not what I said. The media wants you to worry about China so they can manipulate public opinion. Worrying about what’s happening in China serves to distract you from the problems you have agency to control in America. There’s a reason they don’t tell you about the war in Yemen. Because it doesn’t serve capital’s interests. China is a threat to capital’s interests, so they want you to be scared of them.