Citibank Report Claims Gold Has Insignificant Intrinsic Value

Double Drivel: Citibank’s Willem Buiter recycles his own 2009 blog post and issues it as Citibank “research”

Citibank Anti-Gold Report: “Gold – A Six Thousand Year Old Bubble”

“Gold is an asset equivalent to a shiny Bitcoin.”

“Bank issued digital and paper currencies are “socially superior” to gold and Bitcoin.”

“There is no economic case for any central bank to hold gold or any commmodity”

Fractional American Gold Eagles in 1/10, 1/4 and 1/2 oz Sizes for Smaller Budgets

Citibank Weighs in on Gold As Save Our Swiss Gold Vote Draws Near

As the date for the Save our Swiss Gold vote approaches (November 30), Citibank has issued a scathing report on gold. The report is not an analysis of the price of gold but a full frontal attack on gold itself.

The report gave similar harsh treatment to Bitcoin.

In “Save our Swiss Gold – The Battle Ahead” we warned that as the date for the vote approached we would see attacks on the proposal, its supporters, the Swiss people and gold itself.

We chronicled the subsequent predicted attacks in a blog post “Save our Swiss Gold- The Battle Heats Up” and updated it to include more recent attacks by the Swiss National Bank who stepped up its opposition to the Save Our Swiss Gold referendum by calling it “dangerous”.

The other banks had been quiet about the Save Our Swiss Gold initiative vote that takes place this weekend.

Until now.

A Citibank report issued yesterday entitled “Gold- A Six Thousand Year Old Bubble Revisited” took gold and Bitcoin to task.

The Citibank Gold report labeld gold a “fiat commodity currency” and Bitcoin a “fiat virtual peer to peer currency” and argued that there is no financial or economic case for any central bank to hold either gold or Bitcoin.

The report claims that bank issued digital and paper currencies are “socially superior” to gold and Bitcoin as currencies and assets.

The Citibank anti-gold and bitcoin report contains no new criticism of gold or bitcoin (and has some rather inane and inartful ones) and was obviously timed to assist the “No” vote in the Save Our Swiss Gold battle.

A “Yes” vote on Save Our Swiss Gold could end central banking in Switzerland because it would require the Swiss National Bank to hold 20% of its reserves in gold, repatriate its country’s gold and ban further gold sales. Such a measure would restrict the Swiss National Bank from mindlessly printing Francs to debase it in order to ensure that at 1.2:1 Franc to Euro is maintained.

A crippled Swiss National Bank could create a cascade effect as other countries try to reign in their central banks. In recent weeks gold has been taking center stage with the announcement by the Netherlands that they had repatrated 122.5 tons of their gold from the N.Y. Fed, the French opposition party making a request of the French National Bank that it also repatriate its gold and keep 20% of its reserves in gold and Russia’s announcement that it had acquired 150 tons of gold in 2014.

You can read the latest world developments by clicking here.

You can read the Citibank Gold and Bitcoin report here.

I have not bothered to refute any of Citibank’s points regarding gold and bitcoin.

I’ll leave that to the comments below.