金融市场有一个坏习惯，那就是证明非常符合逻辑的决策是完全错误的。以1999年时任英国财政大臣戈登•布朗(Gordon Brown)出售政府一半以上黄金储备的决定为例。货币持有者有权在央行将纸币变成黄金，这早就终止了黄金作为一种储备货币的特殊地位，也消除了政府保留黄金的一个重要原因。总的来说，列宁的著名建议——熔化所有的黄金来建造公共厕所——似乎比以前少了一点荒谬。上世纪90年代末，许多金融专家都认为，由于各国政府不再拥有持有黄金的技术理由，因此在黄金的实际价值进一步下跌之前抛售黄金似乎是最好的选择。作为对这一新观点的回应，布朗要求英格兰银行从政府的金库中卸载395吨黄金，而中央银行因缓慢出售以防止价格大幅下跌而赢得了喝彩。但就在该行倒闭后不久，大宗商品进入了9年的牛市。9月初，金价创下每盎司1900美元以上的名义新高，随后在9月晚些时候跌至每盎司1600美元。从1999年到2002年，英国的平均售价仅为275美元。如果等到上月末，英国的利润将达到210亿美元左右，是出售时35亿美元的6倍。 China and India have recently followed the opposite course to Brown’s by aggressively building reserves. The Reserve Bank of India bought 200 tons of gold from the IMF in 2009. The People’s Bank of China has increased stocks to more than 1,000 tons since 2003. Both countries have made a notional profit, as the price has kept climbing. When India bought from the IMF, the price was still only about $1,045 — allowing India to earn an extremely high return. Gold now accounts for 8.5 percent of India’s foreign currency reserves and as high as 88 percent of the reserves of Western governments that did not sell as aggressively as the U.K. under Brown. Should governments take the bet of buying gold even now, after such sharp price rises in recent years, in the expectation that it will resume its upward trajectory? Olivier Accominotti, a gold expert at the London School of Economics, says the gold market finds particular strength when interest rates are low, because this reduces the cost of holding a commodity that does not earn interest.
当经济恢复强劲增长时，各国央行将需要提高借贷成本——尤其是如果全球大宗商品价格继续上涨，使通胀保持在央行目标之上的话。