Another country is betting on physical gold. Switzerland's pension fund has boosted its investments in bullion, switching from the paper-backed securities in US dollars.
“The Swiss government Pension System decided to change from paper gold in the amount of 700 million CHF into physical gold and store it in Switzerland. The 700 million only stands for 2 percent of the total assets, but it is quite a surprise that they do this,” Claudio Grass, an independent precious metals advisor and Mises Ambassador told RT.com.
According to Grass, it is a strong signal that people should take seriously, since a pension fund is an investment vehicle that has a long-term strategy.
“Physical gold is the best way to hedge as well as to accumulate wealth over decades. If you would have purchased for $100,000 gold in mid 70ties the holding without doing anything would be worth more than $2 million,” the analyst said. Another factor why the pension fund demanded physical gold was that they understand that paper gold just represents a claim on gold in a highly paper-leveraged gold market, Grass explained.
“It makes common sense under the actual circumstances to assure it is stored in the home country, Switzerland, instead of London or the US, which reminds me of the central bank repatriation,” the analyst added.
Grass adds that countries are noting the geopolitical shift from West to East and that is why they are buying more real gold instead of the US dollar-based papers.
“The last geopolitical shift that started with WWI and ended with WWII, put the US in a dominant position and it owned and stored 70 percent of the gold reserves of the free world. This is also one of the main reasons why the US won the Empire over from the Brits. Now we can witness another geopolitical power shift, with the rise of the East,” he said.
The global debt burden continues to grow, while more than 65 percent of all monetary reserves on this planet are in US dollars, Grass notes. “Holding physical gold is definitely the best hedge against all sorts of fiat money risks, but from a central bank perspective it is definitely the best hedge against a weakening dollar that is on its way to reaching its intrinsic value which is zero,” he said.
For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section