When Money Mattered

This week all the news services carried a story about the Dutch central bank shipping many, many tons of gold from the Mad King-led United States to the custody of cooler heads (well, cooling, we hope, after that very hot summer) in London. On the same day, the FT ran a story by Banu Baweja at UBS Investment Bank about how lots of people keep wanting to buy gold. Prices have eased a bit lately, but there is still plenty of demand, which they reckon will keep going. The Mad King and his only-slightly-less-mad Court are part of it, making the American finance products people generally use to try to balance out risk from other activity a bit suss. But also, when the world cancelled foreign exchange reserves held by that other mad king in Russia, the UBS folk reckon people have started getting a bit suss on all money. “Reserve and asset managers globally were left confronting a simple question: if $630bn held in Treasuries, Bunds, gilts and other bonds coule become inaccessible overnight,…