In a world awash with money-printing, a currency backed by gold would have great credibility. And China – with designs on the yuan becoming the world’s reserve currency – has a lot more gold than anyone else. But how much?
There’s a lot of talk about backing the yuan with gold in this article, but with China’s massive trade surpluses on a world defining scale, they don’t need Gold to turn the Yuan into an international currency. China also owns so many US dollars they were even able to issue dollar bonds at virtually the same rates as the US recently.
I think it is far more likely that in the future, we will not be switching back to the gold standard. I think there will be attempts at creating commodity money in general, but these will largely fail.
There’s a lot of talk about backing the yuan with gold in this article, but with China’s massive trade surpluses on a world defining scale, they don’t need Gold to turn the Yuan into an international currency. China also owns so many US dollars they were even able to issue dollar bonds at virtually the same rates as the US recently.
I think it is far more likely that in the future, we will not be switching back to the gold standard. I think there will be attempts at creating commodity money in general, but these will largely fail.
I don’t see gold standard coming back either, but I do think commodities will play a role in backing dollar alternatives.