gld inventory under 790 tons, page-101

"Let's just watch this space and see if China crashes before the USA or the USA crashes before China does.:

Hercules,

You have not yet been able to purge your nationalistic fever out of the equation. This is not a competition between nations, but an argument about how the world is suppose to work, or does work, under capitalism at a time of a very fast international integration and the role that gold may play in it. Under this system the economic laws that apply to Japan do also apply to China and the US. Unavoidably now and then we will cross into politics both at the country and international levels.

IMO,if the PBOC has been recently speeding up its purchases of gold then that seems to be linked to fears that right wing America could be mad enough to introduce in connivance with the Europeans a gold standard of some short, in which case the Chinese would be caught with their paints down, so to speak.

Since gold is bought with dollars the purchase of gold by the PBOC does only alter the composition of their reserves (a credit to the dollar account followed by a debit in the same amount to the gold account), a pure book keeping operation.

Under this scenario, the idea that gold purchases soaks up savings otherwise likely to go into property or debt, thus curtailing property bubbles and debt bubbles is nonsense.