President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Honestly, this adds up.

1) Central Banks around the world have not only been net buyers of gold lately, but they have really been loading up for the last few months in particular.
2) Russia and China have been the two biggest net buyers.
3) Venezuela owes Russia a ton of money already, and this would be a way to pay them back, as well as for Maduro to buy more protection from Putin... and it allows him to subvert a line of bondholders, even though the Venezuelan debt markets are beyond dead and its creditors have to have long written off that money. It's still a way for Putin to get his, in a sort of quasi-legal way.

From Venezuela's standpoint, it is incredibly shortsighted. China is dead set on trying to move the world away from petrodollars, and Russia is totally on board with that. And with what central banks around the world have done to destroy all of the major currencies, gold reserves are going to play a role in the next major reset. It's why Russia, which has a crummy economy, has been divesting itself of US dollar denominated debt and stealthily adding gold to its reserves. As much as Venezuela has decimated itself, those gold reserves are a very hot commodity. Its likely they are going to become an even hotter commodity and could help stabilize the country from the runaway inflation if Maduro were interested in doing the right things. But he's not interested in doing the right thing and he's not a long-term thinker. He's just interested in keeping himself in power, and if he fucks his country in the process, so be it. Putin will gladly take advantage of someone like that. And bonus points if it creates a perceived threat for the US on its side of the world.