De-dollarization / petro-gold Multipolar ▲ (gold)

Gromen: the system is migrating toward oil priced in yuan and settled in gold ("petro-gold") via China's offshore yuan clearing banks at every gold hub; China has yuan swap lines with ~185 countries, so US dollar swap lines are a much-weakened weapon (snubbed UAE just calls Beijing). The UAE leaving OPEC fits — a cartel is only needed when you sell oil for paper. Structurally very bullish gold. Schectman (Jun 24): the non-Western plumbing is going live — CIPS + mBridge rails, and immediate-delivery physical-metal contracts launching in Dubai, Singapore (1kg gold / 1,000oz silver), Hong Kong and Shanghai across the Belt-and-Road — "arteries of the new system," all accumulating gold and settling trade imbalances in gold, reintegrating gold into the monetary system; sovereigns (France, Germany, India et al) are repatriating their bars from the New York Fed / Bank of England. Polomny (Jul 10): the geopolitical frame — the Hormuz "Suez moment" (the US Navy strategically defeated by drone/missile asymmetry) accelerates a tri-polar world: the US dominating the Americas (Cuba next on the agenda, South America turning center-right), China Asia, and a Eurasia bloc as Eastern Europe pulls toward Russia (Putin's Vladivostok-as-future-capital speech) — with under-owned opportunity in Central Asia (Uzbekistan "finally blooming") and central banks accumulating gold as the neutral reserve across the blocs. Jikh (Jul 15, via Gromen/FFTT): the neutral-reserve-asset convergence — Bessent's Jun-23 WSJ op-ed ("Hamilton inspires Trump's economic statecraft") commits the US to Hamiltonian re-industrialization, and Gromen reads it as the US quietly joining what China asked for in 2009: Zhou Xiaochuan's "Reform the International Monetary System" revived Keynes's bancor (a neutral settlement asset that penalizes surpluses AND deficits — rejected at Bretton Woods when the US ran the surplus); Zoellick (2010) and Rogoff (2016) made the same case, and Jamieson Greer restated it at Davos 2026. Only gold has done that job — and US non-monetary gold exports (to China) are rising at the fastest rate in the data's history, which Gromen predicted the Hamiltonian turn would require. Gromen (MacroVoices #542, Jul 23): the pieces keep converging — CIPS yuan-payment volumes hit an all-time record in May (~14T yuan, ~$2T), gold has been the #1 US export in 8 of the last 10 months (beating pharma, jet engines and oil), and the Hamiltonian pivot (high tariffs + a neutral reserve asset that floats in all currencies, i.e. gold settlement) is now on the record from Bessent (NY speech + op-ed), Greer (Davos + NYT), Vance and Trump ("1870–1913, tax foreigners to pay for our people") — the US converging on what China has openly wanted since 2009: gold replacing the Treasury as neutral reserve asset, the yuan internationalized for oil & gas, settled in gold. The longer the war runs, the more the world "makes other arrangements — and there's only one other arrangement." Strategic North Star intact; "tactically, they're just messing it up as they go" (the Iran war a disaster for executing it). 2026-AUG-08 — John Polomny (AIA Weekly): foreign central banks keep swapping Treasuries for gold; he revives the late-'70s label "certificates of confiscation" and notes US banks hold ~$2T of Treasuries at par that would leave them insolvent marked to market. China's logic stated plainly: stop buying, let holdings run off, buy gold and build the oil SPR past a billion barrels — "why would I want to support my enemy and support their debt market?" 2026-AUG-14 — Rick Rule: on the Shanghai Gold Exchange — "any interference by a government in markets is a bad thing. But I do like the fact that the Chinese are building an alternative system for trading gold, taking control of the gold trade out of COMEX and out of the LBMA at least partially." The LBMA fix "is an anachronism that really benefits nobody except perhaps the member banks"; COMEX "could use a competitor." Condition: unimpeded foreign access, or Shanghai can't compete internationally. 2026-AUG-30 — Nomi Prins: ~1,000 t/yr of central-bank gold buying for four straight years, "moving reserves away from the dollar and paper they no longer fully trust, in an effort to de-dollarize and, more broadly, de-fiatize their own payment systems and trade agreements"; the PBoC added for a 21st straight month in July, its biggest purchase since 2023. 2026-AUG-20 — the one-month fix, and the option already on the books. Gold is now "a bigger share of FX reserves than dollars are, than treasuries are — that's just a fact," which is why it sold off during the war: a working reserve gets sold when it rains, and crucially "they didn't need Bessent's permission to sell gold, like US allies need reportedly permission to sell treasuries." China took the other side all the way down (10 → 12 → 14 → 19 → 26 tons a month) and central-bank buying returned to record highs in calendar Q2. Asked what he'd do with the Treasury: (1) the ESF bids gold aggressively; (2) announce all China trade deficits settle in gold; (3) instruct Warsh to revalue the gold certificates — Fed Financial Accounting Manual for Federal Reserve Banks, §2.10, held at $42.22 and revaluable "at the Treasury Secretary's sole discretion"; 261m oz × ~$4,000 ≈ $1trn each, so $20,000 gold books ≈$5trn straight into the TGA ("the MMT platinum coin trick except it's actually on the books"); (4) buy back everything past ~five years for cash; (5) Clarity Act, stablecoin T-bills at 60bp. Cost: 10–15% inflation for a couple of years, the midterms, and "Treasury holders get killed" — banks and boomers. Counter-intuitively it lowers long yields: "gold at a high enough rate doesn't destroy the Treasury market. It collateralizes it" (Judy Shelton's groundwork; 2–3% long rates), the live example being the yuan collapsing against gold while Chinese yields fell. The durable version pegs gold to oil, never to a currency — 500–1,000 barrels an ounce by US–China–Arab agreement ($60 oil ⇒ $30,000 gold), which ends exorbitant privilege and caps Chinese mercantilism at once. And it is stated policy in embryo: Hamiltonian economics — neutral reserve asset, high tariffs, self-sufficiency — from Bessent's New York Economic Club speech plus a same-day WSJ op-ed ("Trump's economic statecraft is based on Hamiltonian economics"), Jamieson Greer at Davos citing Keynes's Bretton Woods neutral-reserve-asset proposal, and Vance in 2023. "They're all on board. They're doing it. But we're still in this bargaining of, well, what do we do with the bond market? Simple. Kill it." Gromen (Monetary Matters, 2026-AUG-20) 2026-AUG-28 — Doomberg (the neutrality audit): "what makes the holding of US treasuries attractive… is its neutrality and its liquidity," and each use of the dollar system as a weapon means "the gun barrel gets a little warm." If a P5 co-victor of World War II can have its reserves frozen, "what is to stop Secretary Bessent from freezing your reserves?" — Brazil, South Korea, South Africa, New Zealand, now even Canada. "The pristine collateral that it once was is a hot potato," precisely as the US must place "$2 trillion worth of on the run paper every year." (Doomberg — What the Finance, 2026-AUG-28) 2026-SEP-01 (Stöferle/Incrementum): de-treasurization comes before de-dollarization — central banks buy fewer Treasuries every year and gold has overtaken them by dollar value, but he is explicitly not a dollar-collapse maximalist: "the importance of the US dollar has decreased but it hasn't really collapsed yet," and the US plays sticks-and-carrots (access to its capital and credit markets) well. 2022 was the regime break: the gold/real-yield correlation snapped the moment the G7 immobilized $350bn of Russian reserves — "if this credit card is stolen you desperately need a plan B," and the plan B must be liquid, globally accepted, neutral, un-inflatable and tight-spread, which is why nobody bought euros, yen or francs. Central-bank buying is "the German tourist reserving his sunbed with towels" — buying an entrance ticket to the table (US 8,000 t, euro system 12,000+ t, IMF 3,000+ t; China, India, Turkey, the Arab region catching up; China alone bought 40+ t in June; the World Gold Council survey found no central banker planning to sell). On Bessent's "economic D-Day" secondary sanctions against Iran: they won't work — Iran has lived with sanctions 40+ years and each round only tightens the Russia–China–India bloc. The world splitting into "team USA" and "team China/Russia/Iran" is precisely what creates demand for a neutral settlement asset between the blocks — gold is the biggest profiteer, not the yuan. 2026-SEP-04 — Fraser Jenkins grants the incentive but denies the capability: BRICS nations "have an incentive to try and de-dollarize. Now I think they can't actually de-dollarize. China can't make its currency convertible for all kinds of reasons." The channel that does work is the metal, not the currency — BRICS/China official gold buying is the sole source of the uplift in his gold return assumption (from ~0.6% to ~1% real per annum). Dissent on central-bank buying - Jeffrey Christian (CPM, 2026-SEP-12): the World Gold Council had to walk back its Q2 central-bank data and, he says, 2022-2025 data is skewed "to the wrong side." Russia's central bank, with FX (incl. yuan) reserves frozen, uses gold as its cash buffer: a seller in 12 of the last 15 months, more than 2M oz in Jan-May 2026, bought ~1.1-1.2M oz in June after oil and gas sanctions relaxed, sold again in July; expected to stay a net seller. 2026-SEP-14 — Nicolas Colin & Marieke Flament (Currency of Power, Hidden Forces) dissent on timing: the reserve role is the last thing an empire loses. On the sterling precedent (Marko Papic), Britain was overtaken economically in the late 19th century, yet sterling stayed the reserve currency through WWI, the 1931 gold exit and WWII, so the dollar 'is here to stay for a few more decades.' Flament separates reserve currency from trade currency: China may shift trade invoicing, but 'the Hong Kong dollar is the dollar' (fixed peg), and de-dollarization headlines are 'going to take way way longer.' Prins (2026-SEP-16): foreign holders are down to ~32% of the Treasury market from more than 40% a decade ago, while central banks have bought gold over Treasuries at record levels (289t in Q2, and a 5,719t cumulative path since 2020 per the WGC forecast). "The central banks stepping away from U.S. debt are the same ones buying the most gold." Summers (2026-SEP-16): the 2022 seizure of $300B of Russian reserves showed the dollar system is weaponized. Central banks accelerated gold buying, and sanctioned states routed through gold and crypto. The Treasury now names both as sanctionable, which he reads as official recognition that gold functions as money in international trade. Kovacevic (2026-AUG-27): gold's driver "in one word" is de-dollarization. Japan and Saudi Arabia kept their dollars as Treasuries; if they stop there is no new buyer, while US interest costs rose from ~$200B/yr (2000–08) to ~$400B (COVID) to ~$1T now — "all roads point to gold." Giustra (2026-SEP-15): seizing Russia's reserves pushed the BRICS, led by China, to build a gold-backed mirror of the dollar system. His theory: mBridge settles trade in local currencies, surplus yuan is swapped for physical gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange, and China is opening vaults in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Riyadh, Switzerland and Kuala Lumpur. China likely holds far more than the disclosed 2,300t — Goldman says maybe 10×; he wouldn't be surprised by 10,000–20,000t. 2026-SEP-17 Ammar Al-Joundi (Agnico Eagle CEO): the Bank of Canada will probably buy gold again. It would be foolish to hold 100% of reserves in US dollars when the 100-year auto deal is being thrown out the window, and gold is fungible and not easily restricted by one guy. Gold is moving heavily towards becoming a currency again, helped by Russia's invasion of Ukraine (Russia was out of SWIFT within 24 hours).