I have been a believer for some years that the balance of financial power in the world has been shifting from the weak to the strong. When I say weak, I mean central banks and western politicians. When I say strong, I mean private individuals that have decided that enough debt is enough, and want to own something real and tangible with their money. And China.
This story on cnn adds further weight to my theory. It seems that vaults with the specific purpose of holding gold bullion for private individuals are now back in demand.
I can’t say that I blame them either. With politicians and central bankers putting the va-va-voom into fiat currency, we could all be bankrupted soon enough. Even such super financial minds as George Soros seem to think that it will be almost impossible to preserve wealth in the coming years. Of course, he might be the wrong person to ask. What does George Soros know about wealth preservation??? All he knows how to do is to grow wealth at a furious rate of return – that isn’t preservation!
But still, jokes aside, it seems that lots of people seem to be agreeing with the basic premise. Or as Gordon Gekko says as he starts a speech in the new Wall Street movie as part of a book promotion tour, “You are all basically fucked”.
It seems pretty plausable, but lets hope not.