Wall Street Journal - Investment Watch - 05 Feb 2013 - clik 1 - clik 2
"Guerra cambial se agrava, vira guerra comercial, aí sistema se desestabiliza, entra em colapso".
Jim Rickards.
As developed countries like Japan and the U.S. try to kick-start their sluggish economies with ultralow interest rates and binges of money-printing, they are putting downward pressure on their currencies. The loose monetary policies are primarily aimed at stimulating domestic demand. But their effects spill over into the currency world. James Rickards, a veteran financier and author of “Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis,” predicts the former. “People ask me who’s winning. I say nobody,” he told me. “I expect the international monetary system to destabilize and collapse. There will be so much money-printing by so many central banks that people’s confidence in paper money will wane, and inflation will rise sharply.”
Perhaps the entire international community is thinking back to the ’60s, because Germany isn’t the only country maneuvering away from the dollar today. The Netherlands and Azerbaijan are also discussing repatriating their foreign gold holdings. And every month, we hear about central banks increasing gold reserves. The latest are Russia and Kazakhstan, but in the last year, countries from Brazil to Turkey have been adding to their gold holdings in order to diversify away from fiat currency reserves. And don’t forget China. Once the biggest purchaser of US bonds, it is now a net seller of Treasuries, while simultaneously gobbling up gold. Some sources even claim that China has unofficially surpassed Germany as the second largest holder of gold in the world.