5 SEPTEMBER 1998, page 24

Call Up The Reserves

THE LOSERS in all this are the central banks themselves. Almost a quarter of the world's stocks of gold are still held in their vaults. As proprietors of money-printing......

Private Enterprise

MONOPOLIES, as we ought to have learned, are bad news for their customers. Gold is the competitor. Gold is a store of value and a medium of exchange, which are the two classic......

Promises, Promises

YOU WILL find one in your pocket, prob- ably signed by a Mr Kentfield. On behalf of the Governors of the Bank of England, he promises to pay you £5. When the century began, a £5......

City And Suburban

A nice solid ingot or a politician's IOU? Everyone's rice-patch needs gold CHRISTOPHER FILDES I t's the two-rouble question. Which would you rather have? An IOU from Boris......

Buy And Bury

NOT LONG AGO a reader in Suffolk asked me where he could buy an ingot to bury in his rice-patch. I referred him to Credit Suisse's London office but warned him that he would......

Monopoly Money

ONE AFTER another, governments have stopped trying to keep up with gold. Mr Kentfield's predecessor retired hurt in 1931. France's last gold-backed bonds, the rentes Pinay, were......