China & Buying Gold – Why?
QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I believe you said at the WEC in 2017 that central banks will diversify and increase their gold reserves going into the currency crisis coming in 2021. China has continued to increase its gold reserves. You would please update on that development.
Thank you
PK
ANSWER: Central banks are in a very difficult position. The ECB has really put the entire world at risk. Draghi is now realizing that negative interest rates have seriously harmed the European economy and led to a major growing liquidity crisis in European banking. The euro is regarded as a time bomb for it is neither a national currency nor a stable unit of account. The failure to have consolidated the debts from the outset has simply left the euro vulnerable to separatist movements and sheer chaos.
This is what has been behind the strength in the dollar. Central banks outside Europe have been caught in this dollar vortex. They have been selling dollars and buying gold in an effort to stem the advance of the dollar. China also has a debt problem with many provinces and companies who borrowed in dollars. Here in 2019, there is $1.2 trillion in Chinese dollar borrowings that must be rolled over. There is a rising concern that this year there could be a major threat of a dollar funding crunch. The total debt issued in US dollars outside the USA approached $12 trillion at the end of 2018. That is about 50% of the US national debt. The forex risk is huge, no less the interest rate risk on top of that. The more crises we see in Europe, the greater the pressure on the dollar to rise regardless of the Fed trying to stop capital inflows by delaying raising rates.
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