Gold is NOT an investment. It is a hedge. Investments generate a return.
SpyNavy
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Fraud in gold sales: Yup. china is where all the fake gold bars and coins come from. One of our local coin dealers got burned for 40,000$ when he bought a handful of supposed gold ingots. Good looking pieces. Nice numbers and proofs. Even passed the wipe test. But they were gold over lead. The only give-away was the bar thickness which the dealer forgot to check. These things had been sold for, as I recall, about 40 bucks apiece. But the dealer bought them at spot which had been about 2,500$ at the time.
My question was: with what currency is China buying gold? You said that they were running out of money... if the money supply is collapsing, it seems odd that they would spend so much to buy gold at the expense of supporting their currency and their populace.
Also, obviously such heavy buying of gold would be a hedge, not an investment, in the possible face of a world-wide recession/depression.
It does seem to be a conundrum. 🤷♂️ I am probably over my head - not having ever had to sustain my country's currency.