Chicoms have us (US) by the short ones!

China holds sway over US$

Diane Francis, Financial Post

"The U. S. should be afraid, very afraid. China is questioning the dollar's status as a reserve currency and, at US$1,000 an ounce, gold has become the world's de facto currency." -- John Ing, Maison Placements in Canada

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It is a chilling statement from an expert on both gold and China. But he is speaking the truth: In a G2 world (the United States and China), he who is the piper calls the tune, and China holds a US$2-trillion mortgage on the United States and is not happy. This country, along with others that lend money to the United States, such as Saudi Arabia, will determine the value of the U. S. dollar and gold. And they have spoken. They are not buying more U. S. treasuries and are buying gold as a new asset class. [This means that the Omaba administration, which is spending two dollars for every ONE dollar of tax revenue, has only one recourse to cover the gap: RUNNING THE PRINTING PRESSES!] China announced that it was doing so quietly, and recent reports are that the Saudis and others have been buying bullion and hocked gold jewelery from around the world.

The only way is up for gold prices because the United States, which backstops the International Monetary Fund, the world's lender of last resort, has had to become its own lender of last resort.

Washington has cranked up the printing presses in an unprecedented way, replicating the behaviour of its spendthrift corporations and consumers. This year's budget is US$3.5-trillion, bigger than any in history.

And as Ing points out, the "bi" in this bipolar global economy is China. Beijing has not only started to hoard gold but has continued to talk up a new reserve currency concept to replace the U. S. dollar. The only reason the Chinese and others don't dump U. S. dollars is because it would be like shooting themselves in the foot.

Inflation, on top of excessive money supply dilution, will (unless mitigated by growth or stoppage) reduce the dollar's value. Ing estimates that the printing of money to bail out banks, autos and the U. S. economy will create a catch-up in gold bullion prices: "Gold should be US$9,000 an ounce to cover the [current and projected] U. S. monetary base," he says.

China has become the world's fifth-biggest gold hoarder, in addition to being the world's biggest gold producer (through its government-owned mining companies). I also suspect that China is behind the political sabotage in Mongolia, to its north, which has for five years prevented Ivanhoe Mines of Vancouver from producing gold and copper from its massive discovery.

Clearly, China also has been dis-investing from the U. S. dollar by getting slowly into hard assets (stock, commodities or ore bodies), which I have written about. This concerns Washington, which is why Hilary Clinton, U. S. Secretary of State, made her first state "house call" in Beijing to make nice with America's first mortgagor.

At that time, and publicly, too, China warned the United States about its dollar woes, while suggesting a basket of currencies to replace its pre-eminence. These scary pronouncements were followed by an announcement in Washington a few weeks ago that there would be a massive U. S. Treasury buyback of U. S. bonds. Put another way, the Chinese and others aren't buying anymore so the surpluses are being mopped up by putting more on the taxpayer tab.

It is an irreversible trend that China and others will continue to disinvest and diversify out of U. S. dollars, and that inflation will further impair the U. S. dollar's value. That's because the U. S. monetary/economic rescue is simply Washington's version of the excesses and over-leveraging that led to the need for a rescue in the first place.