🤔Record gold outflows from US to Hong Kong and London: Is something big coming? ~260 metric tons of physical bullion left the United States this year, “more than twice” last year’s amount, precious metals, currency and capital markets expert Kathleen Tyson told economist Michael Hudson. “Some of that has come to London, the central bank of the Netherlands took its gold out of the United States and deposited some in its own domestic vaults, and some at the Bank of England…There’s also been an increase of almost a thousand tons in Hong Kong,” Tyson explained. The analyst pointed out that Hong Kong’s new Precious Metals Clearing Corporation only opened in July, and deals strictly with large interbank trades, competing directly with the London Bullion Market Association – the largest exchange of its kind in the world. Western banking giants, from JPMorgan and Citibank to HSBC and UBS are all heavily involved. Up to now, their primary markets had been New York, London and Switzerland. “What we’re seeing now is a lot of gold movement – movement out of the United States, movement out of Switzerland, into London (LBMA’s vaults are up 1,100 tons this year), and 1,000 tons to Hong Kong.” Hong Kong’s new exchange has also built the infrastructure to attract not just commercial institutions, but central banks. “They want to re-baseline central banks into gold reserves…China wants to encourage not just itself and its citizens to buy gold, but also other central banks, and that’s beginning to happen,” Tyson said, pointing to moves by South Korea, Germany’s Bundesbank, which hasn’t bought gold since 1968, and smaller countries like Zimbabwe with its new forex and gold-back currency. More gold typically means fewer dollars and other fiat currencies in reserves, their diversification, a hedge against inflation and financial uncertainty, and a means of cushioning market prices. What are central banks’ moves saying about the state of fiat currency-based economies? 👍 Substack | Chat | @geopolitics_prime