Venezuela's Gold Liquidation Accelerates; Will Be Out Of Gold In One Year

On Friday, Turkey unveiled its latest unorthodox financial surprise, when a local newspaper reported that Ankara will repatriate all of its gold held at the NY Fed. The stated reason: an attempt to circumvent the dollar. "Why do we make all loans in dollars? Let’s use another currency" said Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a speech at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Istanbul on April 16, according to Hurriyet. "I suggest that the loans should be made based on gold."

In what some saw an appeal for a gold standard by the Turkish president and a bid to sever ties with the US Dollar, Erdogan added that “with the dollar the world is always under exchange rate pressure. We should save states and nations from this exchange rate pressure. Gold has never been a tool of oppression throughout history."

While Erdogan may have had honest, and even noble, intentions (yes, one can smirk here) it is worth noting that Turkey is hardly the first country to demand its gold back from western nations, having been preceded in recent years by Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.

But the most notable, and ominous for the people of Turkey, example of gold repatriation is also the first one in the post-crisis period, when Venezuela's then-leader Hugo Chavez demanded all Venezuela gold located in offshore central banks be returned to the motherland. At the time, Chavez said he did it for the people, and since he died shortly after, there was no way to gauge what his real intentions were.

The problem is what happened later.

Conveniently, last week Russ Dallen of Caracas Capital wrote inform his clients what Venezuela has been doing over the course of the past several years regarding is repatriated, and now swiftly dwindling gold reserves.

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