Skip to main content

Canada's Gold Reserves: Zero

This morning the Bank of Canada and the Federal Ministry of Finance confirmed that over the past 5 years, Canada had been selling off its gold reserves.  As of close last night, Canada's total gold reserves stood at zero.

For the Gold Bugs this is entirely incomprehensible, for them, gold is money (its not).  It is a store of value, but so is copper and zinc.  There is no particular reason for a government to hold gold as reserves, since its meaningless -- Nixon removed the gold standard, whereby gold was sold at US$35/oz.

Personally, I think that gold is a terrible store of value -- take a gold coin out of its protective envelope and watch its value plummet.  One of my closest friend worked in a Swiss private bank for many years.  Having purchased gold bars on behalf of clients they were disappointed to find several "counterfeit" bars in their vaults.  Moral of the story; don't buy African gold!  

Canada has decided to '86 its gold reserves because it no longer saw a reason to hold on to this asset class (plus Canada is one of the world's ten largest source of gold), and that they may well hold on to other assets instead (more liquid and cheaper to store).  Canada has never made a big fuss about its gold reserves.  During the war most Britain's gold was stored in Canada (in vaults below the Sunlife building in Montreal), but the reality is that gold is a lot of trouble.  It is expensive to store and to "use".  Canada has decided that the private sector saw more value to Canada's gold they they did, and so now its gone.

For the Gold Bugs it has to be a major disappointment.  The government without making a fuss got out of the gold hoarding business.  You just have to read the comments on Zero Hedge to see the craziness; Canada's been selling gold for 5 years... and the decision was taken by the Minister of Finance -- a Conservative and the policy was supported by the new minister -- a liberal.  Comments as to "who had the authority" and "what did they do with the money" and "is Canada in a criss", make for amusing reading.

Anyway, Canada's gold is gone

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Donald Trump‘s bad bargain

 The entire of 2023 and 2024 when Donald Trump was running for the White House, his mantra was no war, that the Ukraine conflict would be resolved in a day, and that he would do everything not to involve America and war. How the world has changed! He finds himself facing three conflicts; Ukraine, still going on almost 5 months after he became president. Gaza, an unspeakable crime against humanity, is obviously going to go all the way to its bitter end. And finally, Israel’s attack against Iran. It’s important to note, that Benjamin Netanyahu first indicated at the United nation that the Iranian were 3 to 5 years away from having the nuclear bomb. He made that statement in 1995. Therefore, no one is surprised that he uses the same two lines every so often. It’s entirely possible, that 30 years after he first announced it, that Iran has finally developed the bomb. It’s also remarkable that Iran, local power has been destroyed, from Yemen, to Syria, via Lebanon and Gaza to small exten...
Post a Comment
Read more

TACO again, but worst!

 Donald Trump got the rare earth metals that he had thrown away on April 2, liberation day as he called it. What did the Chinese get in exchange? The whole deal, is on the wrap right now. But let’s be clear. It’s the Chinese that have the upper hand.Some of the materials made by the Chinese, are simply unavailable anywhere else. suspicions are that the Chinese got the high-end chips that they lost under Biden. Tariffs will probably return to the level of April 1, and in the end Donald and his friends got nothing for it. It gets worse, Chinese exports to United States are down 40%. The Chinese have found new markets, I probably never gonna buy American grain again. Once again, Donald Trump proved he’s a great negotiator. He got absolutely nothing for his Showmanship. He told the world, that everyone would come and kiss his ass, instead they’re laughing At him. There’s no joke about Donald Trump, a 25 and inherited a huge fortune and proceeded to make it a small one. Bottom line, the...
Post a Comment
Read more