CitiGroup Economist: Gold in 6,000 Year Bubble, Fort Knox Should Be Emptied

‘It’s shiny Bitcoin, right?’

"Gold Is A 6,000 Year Old Bubble" - Citi's Dutch Strategist Throws Up All Over Gold, Days After Dutch Gold Repatriation (ZeroHedge)

Citigroup may have been unable to prevent the Netherlands from repatriating some 122 tons of "a fiat commodity currency with insignificant intrinsic value", or in the words of Ben Bernanke, "tradition", but it sure won't stop that erudite expert on the timing of Greece's exit from the Eurozone, Willem Buiter, from doing all in his power to throw up all over the "fiat currency" known as gold. So with Buiter no longer predicting with certainly just which month in 2010, 2011, 2012 Grexit will take place, here are his bullet points that make readers scratch their heads in wonder:

  • Gold is a fiat commodity currency (with insignificant intrinsic value).
  • Bitcoin is a fiat virtual peer-to-peer currency (without intrinsic value).
  • Gold and Bitcoin are costly to produce and store.
  • Gold as an asset is equivalent to shiny Bitcoin.
  • Central bank fiat paper currency and fiat electronic currency are socially superior to gold and Bitcoin as currencies and assets.
  • There is no economic or financial case for a central bank to hold any single commodity, even if this commodity had intrinsic value.
  • Forbidding a central bank from ever selling any gold it owns reduces the value of those gold holdings to zero

Scratching... because some may ask if gold is indeed such a worthless insignificant "fiat currency" (don't ask), then why just two months ago, did Citibank rush to be "reclassified as a spot Market Making Member of the London Bullion Market Association with effect from today, 25th September, 2014... In order to qualify as a LBMA Market Maker, a company must offer two-way quotations in both gold and silver to the other Market Makers throughout the London business day." Could it be that gold actually has some value to Citi, if nothing else than pocketing commissions from traders, now that the bank's rigging of everything from Libor, to FX to, drumroll, gold, is no longer possible?

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