Peter Schiff: Emerging Nations Will Buy Up World Gold Reserves

Peter Schiff : ......the quickly developing emerging market economies are conspicuous for very small gold reserves, particularly in comparison to their much larger reserves of foreign currencies. Many of these countries have generated large amounts of U.S. dollar reserves as a result of ongoing trade surpluses. While China has more than 1,000 tons of gold, the cache only represents 2% of their enormous foreign exchange coffers. Even gold loving India has just 10%. Neither Russia, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Mexico, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, nor Brazil has more than 10% (with most having far less than 5%). Bankers and political leaders in all of these countries, particularly India and China, have lamented publicly about the very high percentage of U.S. dollars in their reserves, and have even spoken fondly about the reliability and importance of gold.

While I believe that they may indeed succumb to the temptation, such moves may not be disruptive, or even negative for gold. Large divestitures by some countries may lead to corresponding accumulations of cash rich, but gold poor, creditor nations like India, China, Russia, and Indonesia. Such transactions would likely take place through private, direct, and tightly communicated sales. As a result, they would be far less disruptive than would be the case were they to occur in relatively thinly traded public markets as many now fear.

- Peter Schiff wrote in a commentary on his firm’s website.

Peter Schiff is a well-known commentator appearing regularly on CNBC, TechTicker and FoxNews. He is often referred to as "Doctor Doom" because of his bearish outlook on the economy and the U.S. Dollar in particular. Peter was one of the first from within the professional investment field to call the housing market a bubble. Peter has written a book called "Crash Proof" and a follow-on called "The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets". He is the President of EuroPacific Capital, which is a brokerage specializing in finding dividend-yielding, value-based foreign stocks.