How China Becomes the World Reserve Currency (And the Gold War Ends With Gold Surpassing $5,000)

As more talk of currency wars continues it would be easy to believe all currencies will devalue together as Western nations continue to print and other countries such as China essentially tie the value of their currency to the dollar. But as Stephen Leeb points out at KWN its certainly possible that China's accumulation of physical gold is in preparation for a type of Bretton Woods gold standard. I've pointed out previously here, here, here, here and here that China seems to be moving as part of a long term plan to eliminate dollar transactions in favor of their own currency and accumulating gold for the eventual internationalizing of the Yuan/Remnimbi and take the US dollar's place as the new world's reserve currency.



KWN:

 This is a stunning interview because it lays out how the bulls will win the gold war, and how China will force that victory.

Stephen comments below:

 “The flow of power and gold is going from West to East.  China may have accumulated a staggering 1,500 tons of gold last year alone.  China’s growth is now picking up steam as well.  What is really stunning is how much the yuan has increased in terms of international transactions.”

“The usage of the yuan in international transactions has been increasing at an unbelievable 170% per year.  That’s how fast the yuan has been increasing in terms of international transactions.  So goes the gold, so goes the power, and you can see it in the prominence the yuan is gaining.

The Chinese definitely have a plan here and that is to get control of gold....

“We are headed for another Bretton Woods.  It is unsustainable for currencies to continue to lose their purchasing power while median incomes, especially in the US, continue to go down in the West.

At a certain point the Chinese will say, ‘It’s time to have another equivalent of Bretton Woods.’  That will challenge the BIS, and quite possibly lead to some sort of gold standard.  What Bretton Woods did was reestablish the gold standard as the Second World War was coming to an end.

Countries had gone off of the gold standard during the Great Depression and subsequent war, and nations wanted a new monetary standard.  At that time the US had 20,000 tons of gold.  So the US set up Bretton Woods and established the gold standard and the dominance of the US dollar globally. 

The gold standard worked pretty well until the US got out of control in the late 1960s and early 1970s with all of the spending.  The kind of unbridled prosperity the US experienced after Bretton Woods was amazing.  From the end of World War II to the early 1970s, those really were the ‘Golden Days’ for the US economy.

I could prove to you that purchasing power and well being were higher in the early 1970s as we were going off of the gold standard than they are today.  Since the US was taken off of the gold standard, inflation has been dramatically understated in this country.  As a result, growth has been overstated and standards of living have been overstated.

My point here is that it is hard to make an argument against some form of a gold standard.  I think that’s where we are headed.  The reality is that the US was able to impose a gold standard on Britain and the rest of the world because they had all of the gold.

The reality of a ‘Second Bretton Woods’ would be China will play the part of the United States, and the United States is probably going to end up playing the part of Britain.  That’s not good.  It doesn’t mean our economy and everything are going to crash, but it will cement a ‘New World Order.’  And the new king of that world order is likely to be China.

By the time China has 10,000 or 12,000 tons of gold, whatever the number is, they are going to have a lot more gold than we will have, and this will take place within the next 2, 3, or 4 years.  There is very little doubt about that.  The US has already gone from 20,000 tons, to supposedly 8,000 tons, but it’s probably a lot less than 8,000 tons.  There is enough documentation that proves this conclusively.  Why does it take 7 years to ship 300 tons of gold to Germany?  Go figure that one out if the US has so much gold on hand.

So that is where we are headed -- to another gold standard.  It is now a question of when it will happen, not if it will happen.”

Leeb also added:  “Sentiment is about as negative as it has ever been towards the mining shares.  Ignore it.  If you own the smaller, quality mining companies, those will see 10, 20, 30-fold gains as the price of gold is re-priced in coming years.  Just buy them and put them away and be ready to cash out of them in the next 2 or 3 years.”

 It was Bretton Woods and America's primacy after World War II that made the US dollar the world's reserve currency. Its the reason that commodities around the world, including oil, are priced in US dollars today. Its what has allowed US interest rates to be lower than what it otherwise would have been. Its also what has allowed us to run permanent trade deficits year after year. The result is that we manufacture and create very little in the US to export around the world while importing massive amounts of goods produced in China and other countries. When that privilege comes to an end it will mean a huge transformation in the US. We will no longer be able to buy cheap imported goods without exporting an equal amount US manufactured goods. Americans will be much much poorer as both commodities, like oil, and electronics from Asia will be much more expensive.

Eventually, this may be to the benefit of the US as we will be forced to evolve into a much more sustainable economy. We will be forced to develop our own energy rather than import it and manufacture more of our own goods. But the transition will be extremely painful and for a minimum of ten years the US will be forced to live with a much lower standard of living.