Alasdair Macleod on BRICS (China's Plan B)

Anyone who's got debt is in trouble.  Anyone who hasn't has counterparties who have debt and they're in trouble.  It also means that the valuation of credit is going to suffer hugely.  If you look at the collateral side of things, collateral for the whole system is basically property and financial assets.  And if they go down in value, commercial banks are going to go out of business, they're going to have nonperforming loans as the euphemism is.

Our Chinese friends are looking at this.  Now they do have a Plan B.  We don't.  Our Plan A stopped at getting rid of gold back in 1971.  But the Chinese have a Plan B.  They have been accumulating, off balance sheet as it were, hidden in various national accounts like the youth wing of the Communist Party, the PLA and so on and so forth.  I reckon that by 2002, when they set up Shanghai Gold Exchange and allowed people - ordinary Chinese people - to buy gold, that they'd already accumulated some 20,000 tonnes.  Remember, there's a big bear market, which allowed them to do that.  From 1983, when the legislation in appointing the People's Bank of China to manage the government's monopoly on this - and not only that, they became invested in becoming the largest gold miners in the world - Russia didn't do this until fairly recently.  But they've now accelerated.  My sources tell me that there are two other funds - call them sovereign wealth funds if you like - that hold precious metals, and the Russians have probably got in the region of 12,000 tonnes.

Their Plan B is quite simple and that is to cut themselves off from all the risks in the West.  What they are doing is quite simple: They are building a trans-Asia industrial revolution based on communications, silk roads, electrification, bringing in the energy providers.  These people aren't woke.  They know what they're doing and they are after developing their economies and improving the conditions for all their population...

It's about 60% of the world's population and 30% of GDP are tied up in Asia, BRICS, Shanghai Corporation Organization and those who have applied to join BRICS.  This is a global anti-Western assembly of nations escaping from the problems we have created for ourselves.

~ Alasdair Macleod, "Ready for the Gold Roller Coaster?," Gold Forum Europe, April 9, 2024

Alasdair Macleod on China's saving culture

It is a savings ratio of 45% which is at the root of China’s power.  The lack of savings in America and its western alliance is their Achilles heel.

~ Alasdair Macleod, "The benefits of a saving culture," Goldmoney, January 5, 2023

Alasdair Macleod on sound money

I support sound money for two very good reasons.  Firstly, it is a basic human right to choose to save, without our savings being debased by the tax of monetary inflation.  Those who are worst affected by this inflation tax are not the rich, they benefit; but the poor and the barely well-off, which is why monetary inflation undermines society and why the right to sound money should be respected.  If government gives itself a monopoly over money, it has a duty to protect the property rights vested in it.  Secondly, it is a basic right for us to own our own money rather than have it owned by the banks.  For them to take our money and expand credit on the back of it debases it.  It is an abuse of an individual’s property rights and a banking licence is a government licence to do so.  If anyone else was to do this, they would be guilty of fraud.  Banks should be custodians of our money, and it should not appear in their balance sheets as their property. 

Sound money guarantees a stable yet progressive economy where people are truly equal. It allows people to save properly for their retirement so that they will not become a burden on the state. It leads to democracy voting for small governments. It encourages peaceful trade and discourages war. It is the only path, after this mess, that leads us to long-lasting and peaceful prosperity. We really need everyone to understand this for the sake of our future.

~ Alasdair Macleod, speech given to the Committee for Monetary Research and Education in New York,  October 20, 2011

(as quoted by Tim Price in "Chauffer Knowledge and the Crack-up Boom," December 5, 2022)