In this presentation, Jeffrey Christian of CPM Group provides a historical explanation of how central banks have bought, sold, managed, and reported gold holdings over the past seventy-five years. He explains how gold moved through official reserves and has gone through several distinct periods or phases since 1950.

Jeff discusses the accumulation of gold by industrialized countries prior to 1971, the large-scale demonetization and gold sales that followed the end of the gold window, and the shift toward greater transparency in central bank policy overall and specifically toward gold beginning in the 1980s and 1990s. He also explains the origins of the European Central Bank Gold Agreement, the reasons behind the gold auctions by the Bank of England and Swiss National Bank, and why many popular claims about secret or unreported central bank gold buying are misleading.

Courtesy of the CPM Group