Iraq made its first major moves in years to increase its gold reserves in the past few months, joining in concert with central banks from emerging markets and non-emerging markets the world over. Iraq’s central bank is merely doing what banks do: purchase gold bullion to hedge volatile fiat currencies. 2010 saw central banks become public net buyers of precious metals for the first time in twenty years.
Of course, Iraq’s increase in holdings could be misinterpreted as a sovereign nation making the decision to, for themselves, hedge against global volatility. But, likely, intelligence operations having infiltrated the mechanisms of Iraqi government are pushing to ensure the accumulation of such metals so as to take them off the open market.
From August to October 2012, Iraq’s gold holdings quadrupled to 31.07 tonnes, according to the International Monetary Fund’s monthly statistics report. This marks the first change to the bank’s reserves in many years, as the country added 23.9 tonnes in August, for a total of 29.7 tonnes. Then, 2.3 tonnes were added in September to 32.09, only to be cut by 1.02 tonnes in October to 31.07 tonnes. November’s data is as yet unavailable.
”It was interesting that Iraq bought gold,” a Sydney-based trader said on Friday. ”Gold bulls will cheer the news as more central bank buying will support gold prices in the future, but the market currently is a little distracted by other things, namely the US ‘fiscal cliff’ talks.”
Further, Brazil increased its gold holdings for a third straight month in November, raising its reserves by almost a third to 67.199 tonnes. Russia added 2.86 tonnes raising its gold reserves to 937.2 tonnes.
That Iraq has boosted its gold holdings can be a sure sign that the US won its War in Iraq, thanks to Barack Obama who cleaned it up on the heels of George W. Bush. Without these two characters, there is no way that, today, Iraq would be accumulating gold on behalf of its western masters.
