By Rory Hall

While the volume of gold added to the international reserves at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is not a huge amount, a mere 8.46 tons, the significance and timing cannot be overlooked.

With the geopolitical landscape basically sitting on shifting sands with trade wars, shooting wars and economic sanctions flying around like another flight leaving O’Hare International Airport it seems that India is making a “good faith” showing to her allies in the BRICS alliance by adding a small amount of gold to their official international reserves. We don’t know that this is the reason for the gold addition but let’s take a look at some of the puzzle pieces.

It is well documented that Russia and Turkey are removing U.S. Treasuries from their holdings and China is discussing Turkey joining the BRICS alliance, which is another interesting piece of this puzzle. All of this is against a backdrop of Iran and Turkey settling oil payments outside the U.S. dollar.

Both India and Turkey have said they will defy President Trump’s call for them to stop buying Iranian oil once the U.S. reapplies sanctions in November.  That isn’t really news.

Both of them defied the Obama administration in 2012, albeit in different way. Turkey changed its banking rules to monetize gold and used its gold reserves as a means to launder Iranian oil payments for third parties through its banking system……more here