read it for fundamental savy.last line says its +ve for gold...the only statement i understood
From 1980 right through to 1999, the gold market had the possibility of enormous central bank gold sales hanging over the gold market. Central banks did nothing to remove this impression but led the market to believe that it was likely. Their purpose was to ensure gold did not challenge the paper money markets.
In 1971, President Nixon had cut the link between gold and money but removed the ability of U.S. dollar holders to change their dollars into gold. This left the dollar and all other currencies without any backing except the promise from central banks to change paper dollars into paper dollars. This would not have worked nearly so well had the U.S. not had the power to ensure that the oil market was bound to use only U.S. dollars as payment for oil. This entrenched the dollar as the global world currency for the world ran on oil.
The process was assisted by the policy of central banks leasing gold to gold mining companies. They then sold it to the gold market as far forward as they could to maximize the proceeds in a falling market. This accelerated the supply of gold to the market and saturated it.
Will this happen again? No, there is not a chance of this happening now, as the last 18 months of systemic failures in the credit markets has cast doubts upon the monetary system to weather the storms it faces. Gold, on the other hand, has a very long history of weathering such storms.
While central banks did sell gold, the quantities were not large enough to diminish its role as an important reserve asset, a point emphasized in the 1999 “Washington Agreement” wherein European central banks agreed to limit their sales to 400 tonnes a year for five years. This reassured the gold market that it would be threatened no more by unlimited sales from central banks as the Japanese and U.S. central banks gave their tacit support to the agreement. The next generations of money managers have never thought of gold as money and still don’t to this day.
From 1980 until 1999, gold fell slowly from $850 down to $275, sidelining as money. Once central banks promised to limit sales, the gold price turned around and has steadily risen since then until now. But from now on, will we see vast amounts of central bank gold swamp the market or will they see the value of gold in their reserves and keep a firm grip on it?
A second central bank gold selling agreement was made for the next five years in 2004, called the “Central Bank Gold Agreement”. We have now begun the final year of that agreement.
Of course they have the right under the agreement to announce more sales in the future, or to announce their sales after the event. However, the agreement had as a prime objective to keep central bank sales transparent, so as not to alarm the market. While they still don’t want gold to compete with paper money, they want gold to be an effective reserve asset. They have kept to this over the last 9 years [except for Belgium and Spain]. A closer look at what’s left to sell presents a remarkable picture, one that has not been factored into the gold price, yet.
If all the announced sales were made the final year of the Agreement, the market would see sales of 320 tonnes from the signatories, nearly 200 tonnes lower than the ‘ceiling’ of 500 tonnes permitted under the Agreement. But so far, the sales have been taking place at the rate of 2.5 tonnes a week. At that rate, Central Bank selling of gold will only reach 130 tonnes in this, the final year of the Central Bank Gold Agreement. But let’s look even closer at who are the likely and unlikely sellers despite the announcements they made.
Austria stopped selling in the third year of the Agreement, so their residue of 52.6 tonnes of announced sales is unlikely to come to the market.
Portugal stopped selling in the third year of the agreement, so the residue of their announced sales of 100.3 tonnes is unlikely to come to the market.
Switzerland has stated it will no longer be a seller having completed its sales.
Without a further announcement, the E.C.B. has completed its sales of 235 tonnes.
Germany has stated it is not a seller of gold [appreciating that it is a counter to the swings in the dollar] in this agreement.
Spain and Belgium never made any announcements as to what they would sell, but we note that they sold none in the last year [4th] of the agreement.
The Central Bank of Italy has said it has no plans to sell gold, but the Finance Ministry of Italy is now debating the matter.
We think this is political rhetoric at the moment and do not expect any sales to be forthcoming.
This leaves Sweden still to sell 13 tonnes of its announced sales.
This leaves The Netherlands 9 tonnes still to sell.
Finally, France had 121.1 tonnes still to sell at the beginning of this final year of the Agreement.
So the total of active sellers among the signatories is only 143.1 tonnes of which 25 tonnes has been reported as sold since the 26th of September 2008. This is in line with the present selling rate of the gold. The market expected to see 500 tonnes this year, up until the 26th of September 2009, so expect it to be disappointed to the extent of 350 tonnes.
It is very clear now that Central Bank gold sales, excepting any further announcements of sales, will not be a significant factor in the gold market until the 26th of September 2009.
The only other possible source of gold sales will be the 400 tonnes the I.M.F. wants to sell. But this can only happen if the U.S. Congress agrees to the sale. Since it was discussed earlier this year, there has been only silence on the matter. If it were given the OK, the way of selling could take many forms including auctions and an outright sale to selected buyers [as happened in previous I.M.F. sales], which would not affect the gold price, except that the buyer could well be another Asian central bank who could take it all. This would be positive for the gold market.