with over 50 trillion US dollars(50,000,000,000,000) floating around in USA credit markets i thought about this question whilst shopping at office works for some A4 paper for my printer. i can buy 500 A4 sheets for about $10 dollars which means each sheet costs about 2 cents. when u think how much it costs to print a $US 1000 bill and what it is printed on u can see why central banks around the world are selling there dollars to buy some physical assetts such as gold and silver. if i was a foreign country with billions of US dollars sitting in a bank vault and the US fed was printing these bills to pay for everything in the US , running massive deficits , unemployment out of control then why would i hold this paper. central banks will be net buyers of gold for a long time to come and we are witnessing the death of the US dollar. gold prices have a long way to run yet