01/28/10 Stockholm, Sweden – You may be familiar with the fact that the Chinese government has encouraged its private citizens to store a portion of their personal savings in gold, a topic we’ve covered here. It’s a different approach from the US government which vastly prefers to promote IRAs, 401(k)s and the like, over cash-to-gold conversions. Ironically, as an American, the opposite pitch from Cash4Gold is practically inescapable.
Apparently, the Chinese have gone even further than I suspected in implementing conveniently located, affordable, and effortless conversions to gold.
This information has been gleaned from a finely written piece at Jesse’s Café Américain, on China ten year ago and today.
From the post:
“I extracted paper cash from atm network and exchanged same for little one troy ounce monetary gold wafer at airport sub-branch of bank of china. The staff were courteous, and the sub-branch manager spent 5 minutes with me to explain the way to buy and sell back gold.
“Each wafer is individually numbered, and registered.
“China is progressing fast in its re-engagement with gold. Wonderful. It is interesting that gold seems to be everywhere now at the China retail level, legally bought, kept, sold back, and all tax free, at transparent pricing, in alignment with gold reform that was two decades in planning, implementation, and rollout.”
This ability to move money in and out of both currency and gold is impressive, and I’m looking forward to becoming more familiar with the concept. If you have additional details please don’t hesitate to post them below.
Rocky Vega
Rocky Vega is publisher of Agora Financial International, where he advances the growth of Agora Financial publishing enterprises outside of the US. Previously, he was publisher of The Daily Reckoning, and founding publisher of both UrbanTurf and RFID Update -- which he ran from Brazil, Chile, and Puerto Rico -- as well as associate publisher of FierceFinance. Rocky has an honors MS from the Stockholm School of Economics and an honors BA from Harvard University, where he served on the board of directors for Let’s Go Publications, Harvard Student Agencies, and The Harvard Advocate.
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One thing I would note, when I have bought gold from the banks it hasn’t been tax-free as mentioned in your quote.
There is a 17% sales tax on top, as with most products in China. Maybe the above buyer just assumed there was a `17% premium.