The blistering rally in gold augurs ill for the power of the dollar

Central banks are shifting away from the greenback
各国央行正在放弃美元

2024年10月24日 05:39 上午

NOT LONG ago gold seemed to have lost its lustre. In the decades after President Richard Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971, the yellow metal fell out of favour with central banks, which hoarded their reserves in dollars instead. In the 1980s and 1990s investors and households grew weary of its miserly returns. Goldbugs were dismissed as eccentric doom-mongers. Gold was alluring when forged into a shiny bauble and useful in specialist manufacturing, but it was hardly a serious financial asset.

不久前，黄金似乎失去了光泽。1971 年理查德·尼克松 (Richard Nixon) 总统放弃金本位后的几十年里，这种黄色金属不再受到各国央行的青睐，而是以美元囤积储备。在 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代，投资者和家庭对其吝啬的回报感到厌倦。金甲虫被斥为古怪的末日贩子。当黄金被锻造成闪亮的小玩意并在专业制造中发挥作用时，它是很诱人的，但它并不是一种重要的金融资产。

How it glitters now. Its price has soared· by a third since the end of 2023, reaching an all-time high of almost $2,750 per troy ounce. The rush has been fuelled by war, inflation and fiscal profligacy around the world, which have drawn in family offices and Costco shoppers.

现在它多么闪闪发光。自 2023 年底以来，其价格已飙升三分之一，达到每金衡盎司近 2,750 美元的历史新高。世界各地的战争、通货膨胀和财政挥霍加剧了这种热潮，吸引了家族办公室和 Costco 购物者。

Yet perhaps no buyers have been as voracious as the world’s central banks, which have hoovered up hundreds of tonnes of the stuff over the past two years. Gold now makes up 11% of their reserves, up from 6% in 2008. This shift brings with it important consequences for America’s dominance of the global financial system. Even as the dollar remains unchallenged as the world’s reserve currency, its power is diminishing.

然而，也许没有哪个买家像世界各国央行那样贪婪，在过去两年里，它们已经吸纳了数百吨的东西。黄金目前占其储备的 11%，高于 2008 年的 6%。这一转变对美国在全球金融体系中的主导地位产生了重要影响。尽管美元作为世界储备货币的地位仍然不受挑战，但其力量正在减弱。

For some central banks, the interest in gold reflects anxiety about the state of the world. Others have a narrower concern: that their reliance on the dollar, always uncomfortable and annoying, has become dangerous. Buying has been enthusiastic in China, India and Turkey, and it began to ratchet up in the spring of 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, and America and its allies sought to cripple Russia financially, using sanctions. These included freezing some $280bn in state assets held overseas, and kicking Russian banks off SWIFT, an interbank messaging service crucial for making cross-border payments. Visa and Mastercard, American firms which process debit- and credit-card transactions in almost every country in the world, pulled out of Russia, too.

对于一些央行来说，对黄金的兴趣反映了对世界状况的焦虑。其他人则有一个更狭隘的担忧：他们对美元的依赖，总是令人不舒服和烦人，已经变得危险。中国、印度和土耳其的购买热情高涨，并在 2022 年春季俄罗斯入侵乌克兰、美国及其盟国试图通过制裁从经济上削弱俄罗斯之后开始升温。其中包括冻结海外持有的约 2800 亿美元国有资产，以及将俄罗斯银行踢出 SWIFT（一项对跨境支付至关重要的银行间信息服务）。维萨卡和万事达卡这两家在世界上几乎每个国家处理借记卡和信用卡交易的美国公司也退出了俄罗斯。

Hence the search for sanctions-proof alternatives to the dollar. Some central banks are buying physical bars of gold and attempting to ship them to vaults at home, suggesting that they want to protect themselves from economic warfare. Countries worried about America’s power are also trying to trade in their own currencies. According to the Federal Reserve, the share of Chinese goods trade invoiced in the yuan has shot up to a quarter, from a tenth in 2020.

因此，人们开始寻找不受制裁的美元替代品。一些央行正在购买实物金条，并试图将其运往国内金库，这表明它们希望保护自己免受经济战的影响。担心美国实力的国家也在尝试以本国货币进行贸易。据美联储称，以人民币计价的中国商品贸易份额已从 2020 年的十分之一飙升至四分之一。

Officials in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—which met this week at a BRICS summit in Kazan, on the Volga—are working towards a new set of cross-border payment rails· that would circumvent the dollar-based correspondent-banking system which dominates today. A few years ago the idea that central banks might be able to issue tokens and use these to settle cross-border transactions quickly and cheaply would have been a pipe-dream. But the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bank for central banks, has been developing such a system and it is ready to enter operation. The BIS payments mechanism was not designed for the BRICS, but it could serve as a template for a new system.

巴西、俄罗斯、印度、中国和南非的官员本周在伏尔加河畔的喀山举行的金砖国家峰会上举行了会议，他们正在努力制定一套新的跨境支付轨道·，该轨道将绕过以美元为基础的往来银行——今天占主导地位的银行体系。几年前，中央银行可能能够发行代币并使用这些代币来快速、廉价地结算跨境交易的想法还只是一个白日梦。但国际清算银行（BIS）——央行的央行——一直在开发这样的系统，并准备投入运行。国际清算银行的支付机制并不是为金砖国家设计的，但它可以作为新系统的模板。

What does all this mean for the mighty greenback? Ever since China emerged as an economic force, worries have swirled that the dollar would be displaced as a reserve currency, much as it itself supplanted sterling a century ago. But you need only look at central bankers’ actions over the past few years to see that there is no reserve currency of second resort. Central banks worried about sanctions are turning to gold, not the yuan. Rather than devising a whole new payments system, the BRICS could have simply agreed to use one of their currencies for trade between them. They have not done so. Chinese manufacturers may be invoicing in yuan, but bilateral trade between Brazil and India is not going to be settled via Beijing.

这对强势的美元意味着什么？自从中国成为一个经济力量以来，人们一直担心美元将取代储备货币的地位，就像一个世纪前美元本身取代英镑一样。但只要看看过去几年央行行长的行动，就会发现不存在第二手段的储备货币。担心制裁的央行正在转向黄金，而不是人民币。金砖国家可以简单地同意使用其中一种货币进行相互之间的贸易，而不是设计一个全新的支付系统。他们还没有这样做。中国制造商可能会以人民币计价，但巴西和印度之间的双边贸易不会通过北京结算。

The dollar will therefore not be dislodged as the world’s reserve currency. The technology might be ready, but to scale up new cross-border payment rails requires a degree of co-operation and trust between the BRICS that may not yet exist. Even if it did, many of the dollar’s privileges—greater purchasing power, lower yields—would remain.

因此，美元的世界储备货币地位不会被取代。该技术可能已经准备就绪，但要扩大新的跨境支付轨道，需要金砖国家之间一定程度的合作和信任，而这可能尚不存在。即使确实如此，美元的许多特权——更高的购买力、更低的收益率——仍将保留。

Nevertheless, the power that has been conferred on the dollar by its reserve-currency status is diminishing. Central-bank reserves held in physical gold are out of Uncle Sam’s reach. As more countries settle more of their transactions without passing through the American banking system, sanctions will become less effective. ■

然而，美元的储备货币地位所赋予的力量正在减弱。央行持有的实物黄金储备超出了山姆大叔的能力范围。随着越来越多的国家在不通过美国银行系统的情况下结算更多交易，制裁的效果将会减弱。■