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Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Central banks see further gold accumulation, de-dollarization: WGC survey

 Central banks around the world continue to hold favourable expectations for gold, with most looking to add to their reserves over the coming months and even years, an annual survey by the World Gold Council (WGC) showed.

Central banks have been aggressively buying gold, accumulating over 1,000 tonnes in each of the past three years versus an average of 400-500 tonnes in the preceding decade.

These purchases coincided with a blistering gold rally during that period, which saw prices nearly doubling from around $1,800/oz. to the current $3,400 level. This year alone, gold has gained more than 26% and set multiple records, including a new high of $3,500 in mid-April.

Driving the acceleration in central bank purchases and soaring gold prices was an unstable geopolitical landscape — beginning with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — that clouded the overall economic outlook.

Geopolitics a recurring theme

The new WGC survey sheds light on central banks’ decision-making process during turbulent times.

The 2025 edition of the Central Bank Gold Reserves (CBGR) survey drew a total of 73 respondents, the most since the Council began the survey eight years ago. The survey also saw a record-high number of respondents who actively manage their gold reserves at 44%.

Credit: World Gold Council

According to the survey results, central banks continue to view economic and geopolitical uncertainty as a key factor influencing their decision to accumulate gold, just behind interest rate levels and inflation concerns. Also high on the banks’ list of considerations are tariffs and unexpected shocks.

Most of the respondents cited the precious metal’s performance during times of crisis, alongside its role as a store of value, as the main reasons for adding more gold, the survey showed.

“Gold’s performance during times of crisis, portfolio diversification and inflation hedging are some key themes driving plans to accumulate more gold over the coming year,” the WGC stated.

More gold buying ahead

With that in mind, an overwhelming number of central banks (95%) said they see official gold reserves continuing to rise over the next 12 months, compared to 81% the last survey. Importantly, nearly half (43%) of them now believe their own gold reserves will also increase over the same period, more than any in previous surveys.

Over a longer horizon, about three-quarters of the banks (76%) expect their gold holdings to be higher in five years, an increase from 69% seen last year.

At the same time, about the same number of banks (73%) are prepared to see moderate or significantly lower US dollar holdings within their global reserves.

In terms of vaulting locations, the Bank of England remains the most popular amongst respondents (64%).

Credit: World Gold Council

“The trends uncovered in our survey suggest that central banks continue to recognize the benefits of an allocation to gold, and indicate that their demand for gold will likely remain healthy for the foreseeable future,” the Council said.

https://www.mining.com/central-banks-see-further-gold-accumulation-de-dollarization-wgc-survey/

Iron Ore Prices Tumble To 9-Month Low, Citi & Goldman Ratchet Down Price Target

 Iron ore, widely seen as a real-time barometer of China's economic pulse, is flashing fresh warning signs. Prices slid for a fourth straight session in Singapore, dropping below $93 a ton and hitting their lowest level in nine months.

China, the world's largest consumer of iron ore, imports more than 70% of globally traded volumes. That gives iron ore prices an outsized role as a proxy for Chinese economic momentum, and the latest trade data suggests the world's second-largest economy is still struggling to gain momentumremaining mired in deflation.

At the start of the week, figures from China showed that nationwide steel output in May declined on a daily basis compared to April. Output was down about 7% from a year ago, marking the weakest May since 2018.

"Steel demand in China is likely to remain weak over the coming months over the upcoming seasonal lull," Citigroup analysts wrote in a note, slashing iron ore forecasts.

They noted that China's property market weakness has yet to show a meaningful turnaround while manufacturing continues to face headwinds. As a result, their three-month price forecast was lowered to $90 a ton from $100, and the six-to-twelve-month target was revised down to $85 from $90.

In a separate note, Goldman analyst James McGeoch provided a gloomy outlook for iron ore by ratcheting down price targets...

Not taking a lot of lead, notable that China has been a very very quiet tape, waiting, watching….. clearly Iron ore at $93.00 stands out, when I talk to trading they suggest the most convincing trade is further curve flattening out on back of mounted physical selling pressure in front months and continuous consumer hedging in the back end of the curve, Both miners and phys traders are selling tonnes aggressively, yes there is a flat price call that you can play the $90-95 range, however it's a downward sloping trend. Recall start o year we kind of liked this $100-110 range (china infra seen as supportive and property policy creating a trough), that became $95-105, which became $90-100 (as infra in particular didn't see the post winter pickup we expected) and its now $90-95 range.

McGeoch pointed to sliding steel prices in China. 

China's steel exports remain elevated. 

The key takeaway is that China's subdued iron ore market reflects the broader economic downturn, with persistent weakness in the property sector and no meaningful signs of recovery.

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/iron-ore-prices-tumble-9-month-low-citi-ratchets-downs-price-target

Kraft Heinz Will No Longer Launch Products In US With Artificial Colors

 by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Kraft Heinz said on Tuesday that it will not launch any new products with artificial colors in the United States and will remove the additives from its existing product portfolio by the end of 2027.

The company added that, by net sales, nearly 90 percent of its U.S. products are already free of food, drug, and cosmetic (FD&C) colors.

For the remaining products, the company will remove colors “not critical to the consumer experience,” replace them with natural alternatives, or create new colors and shades when alternatives are not available.

The company’s June 17 announcement follows a call by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), along with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to phase out all petroleum-based synthetic dyes from the nation’s food supply.

“For too long, some food producers have been feeding Americans petroleum-based chemicals without their knowledge or consent,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an April 22 statement.

Kennedy said that the “poisonous compounds” offered no nutritional benefits and adversely impacted children’s health and development. He said the department was working with the industry to get rid of the “toxic dyes” from the food supply.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said that the agency asked food companies to substitute artificial colors with “natural ingredients for American children as they already do in Europe and Canada,” citing an epidemic of childhood diabetes, obesity, depression, and ADHD.

In Tuesday’s statement, Heinz said the company had used FD&C colors since it had a “longstanding history of approval” from the FDA.

Kraft Heinz North America President Pedro Navio said that most of his company’s products use natural or no colors.

“In fact, we removed artificial colors, preservatives, and flavors from our beloved Kraft Mac & Cheese back in 2016,” Navio said. “Our iconic Heinz Tomato Ketchup has never had artificial dyes – the red color comes simply from the world’s best tomatoes. Above all, we are focused on providing nutritious, affordable, and great-tasting food for Americans and this is a privilege we don’t take lightly.”

Companies, including cereal manufacturer WK Kellogg, meatpacker Tyson Foods, and Walmart’s Sam’s Club, have announced plans to remove artificial food dyes from their product lines following the HHS announcement.

Dye Ban Opposition

The Consumer Brands Association, which represents manufacturers, said food colors have been widely used in the supply chain because they were deemed safe.

“The ingredients used in America’s food supply have been rigorously studied following an objective science and risk-based evaluation process and have been demonstrated to be safe,” the association said in an April 22 statement in response to the HHS decision to ban food dyes. “As we increase the use of alternative ingredients, food and beverage companies will not sacrifice science or the safety of our products.”

The association also asked the HHS and FDA to develop a coordinated set of rules when setting food regulations.

“A state patchwork of differing laws creates confusion for consumers, limits access to everyday goods, deters innovation, and increases costs at the grocery store,” it said.

The International Association of Color Manufacturers (IACM), representing the interests of the color additives industry, said in a statement that “despite common misconceptions, synthetic (FD&C) colors are approved and continue to be used worldwide, including in Europe.”

The IACM’s website lists Fast Green No. 3 as approved for use in the United States but not authorized for food use in the European Union or the UK.

FD&C Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5, Yellow No. 6, Quinoline Yellow, Azorubine (Carmoisine), and Ponceau 4R (Cochineal Red A) are listed as being subject to a warning on European labels.

Proposing reformulation within 2026 “ignores scientific evidence and underestimates the complexity of food production. This process is neither simple nor immediate, and the resulting supply disruptions will limit access to familiar, affordable grocery items. IACM and its members remain committed to science-based dialogue on color additives,” the IACM said.

According to the HHS, authorization for two synthetic food colorings—Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B—will be revoked within the coming months.

Six dyes—FD&C Green No. 3, FD&C Red No. 40, FD&C Yellow No. 5, FD&C Yellow No. 6, FD&C Blue No. 1, and FD&C Blue No. 2—will be eliminated from the food supply by the end of next year. FD&C Red No. 3 will also be removed.

Four new natural color additives will be authorized soon, and the agency has partnered with the National Institutes of Health to conduct comprehensive research on how food additives impact children’s health and development.

Health officials said the administration had not yet made a formal deal with corporations on food dyes.

“There are a lot of tools at our disposal,” Makary said. “Let’s start in a friendly way.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/food/kraft-heinz-will-no-longer-launch-products-us-artificial-colors

A Father Must Have a Code

 


At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we had a little “Golden Age” of television when manly shows with manly characters briefly flourished.  SopranosBand of BrothersThe WireThe ShieldDeadwoodRomeGeneration KillJustifiedBoardwalk EmpireBreaking Bad, and the first season of True Detective broke the network mold and told dark, gritty stories in ways that had never been shown on a television screen.

I found myself in a gathering with a Sopranos writer once, and someone asked him why the show was so successful.  Without hesitating, he answered that HBO had given the writers wide latitude in creating something new.   Like a brass section playing jazz, those guys just let their creative talents flow.  That’s why a lot of these shows have more in common with great literature than with the primetime hits of previous decades.  As cable television experimented with original programming for the first time, many of the companies just let the writers write.  The result was that some of the most memorable male characters in television appeared.

Some very manly movies came out in theaters during this period, too.  As audiences applauded the new “Golden Age” of television, studios looked to emulate that success on the big screen.  There Will Be BloodThe Departed, and No Country for Old Men are three that come to mind, but there were many manly films at the turn of the century.  There was a fleeting push in Hollywood to green-light projects that read as if they had come from the typewriters of novelists such as Elmore Leonard and Cormac McCarthy.  The content that came out in the aughts included some meaty masterpieces that are far better than anything out today.

When Obama entered the White House, the era of masculine television gradually ended.  Popular shows that featured male-driven storylines were flipped on their heads.  Mad Men started as a 1960s tale about hard-drinking men in the often misogynistic world of New York City advertising; it ended with all the women in charge and the men in various stages of collapse.  Black Sails began as a brutal story about early-eighteenth-century pirates set decades before Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island; eventually, the violent and feared Captain Flint is revealed to be a heartbroken man mourning the loss of his gay lover, and several of the lowly Bahamian prostitutes wind up managing the islands’ business.  Most of the shows during the last decade consistently show men as feminine, broken, and weak.

That doesn’t seem like a coincidence.  Just as Obama, Eric Holder, and their Democrat friends have been desperate to control what Americans publicly express and debate on social media platforms, they couldn’t have been happy with some of Hollywood’s manly-man content that arrived at the beginning of the century. 

The shows mentioned above do not portray men more positively than they exist in real life.  They are not meant to exclusively showcase manly character and virtue in their various forms.  They tell the stories of some bad dudes who do some bad things.  But they do depict men behaving in authentically masculine ways.  As Matthew McConaughey’s character says in True Detective, “The world needs bad men.  We keep the other bad men from the door.”  

That is one message the Democrat Party and their Marxist-globalist allies around the world don’t want men hearing.  It’s the old “Sheepdog” philosophy that warriors embrace by directing their capacity for violence toward the hero’s path.  It’s the creed that motivates a man to intervene when he sees a stranger being victimized.  Healthy societies produce masculine men who are not afraid to put themselves in danger, so that others might live.  Unhealthy societies demoralize and castrate men, until no heroes exist at all.

Ask yourself if the global “elites” who have been constructing a technocratic surveillance state around citizens for decades want heroes in this world.  Do they want men who are unafraid to tell government officials when they have abused their powers?  Or do they want men who drop to one knee and do what bureaucratic tyrants say?  Do they want fearless men who will fight for their freedoms?  Or do they want fearful men who blindly obey?  Do they want men who will protect their families at all costs — even if doing so means they must sacrifice themselves?  Or do the global “elites” in this world prefer men who walk away from their families without giving the matter a second thought?  

You know the answers.  When it comes to the exercise of government power, real men are a constant threat.  If they refuse to cover their faces with cheap paper masks, then COVID mandates fail.  If they refuse to let boys beat up their daughters in competitive sports, then “transgender” delusions are relegated to the psych ward.  If they refuse to allow government welfare programs to play “daddy” to their families, then Marxist Democrats can’t turn children against their parents.  If they refuse to bow down to the strictures of “political correctness,” then critical thinking skills are passed from one generation to the next.  If they refuse to embrace moral relativity as a worldview, then they remind all those who meet them that honor and virtue are real.  If they refuse to hand over their weapons just because leftists find self-defense “scary,” then they remain stubborn sheepdogs guarding the flock.  Tyrants don’t like real men because real men have a code that includes this promise: Not on my watch.

There’s a memorable scene in the first season of The Wire when flawed but earnest homicide detective William “Bunk” Moreland is interviewing a dangerous man named Omar Little.  Omar makes a living robbing drug dealers on the streets of Baltimore.  He’s a modern-day highwayman who targets other criminals and avoids civilians.  When “Bunk” asks Omar why he’s willing to testify against a killer from his neighborhood, Omar tells him that he’s done plenty of bad things but never hurt anyone who didn’t have it coming.  Peering back at him, Bunk nods in agreement and acknowledges, “A man must have a code.”  “Oh, no doubt,” Omar replies, as both police detective and criminal realize that they have much in common.

If I had to speculate why all the manly shows at the beginning of this century disappeared, I would guess that the political left — who have long maintained a monopoly over news, music, and entertainment — began to regret producing series that reminded men that they must have a code.  In those gritty dramas, there are probably more bad men than good men.  But almost all of them live by some code that defines who they are.  That code doesn’t come from the government or some contingent of “woke” culture police.  It comes from deep inside the men who operate as individuals with purpose.  They are not merely shaped in this world; they are characters who shape their world.  

What word do we use to describe a person with the ability to effect his own will?  We call that person “powerful.”  A farmer who clears and cultivates the land exerts power over it.  A husband and father who protects his family is a powerful man.  A person whose virtuous character is recognized by others is a powerful member of the community.  And when a man’s will is intentionally directed to advance God’s will here on Earth, His power provides that man with immeasurable strength.  

Can you see why manly men are a problem for Big Government?  When they follow a code — especially one imbued with the purpose of God Almighty — government power is small by comparison.  And when fathers teach their children to live by that same code, tyrants never stand a chance.  We don’t need television shows to remember that.  We need only pray, teach, and act.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/06/a_father_must_have_a_code.html

Ever-expanding modern vaccination era may be ending

 by Alex Berenson

In the beginning was the smallpox vaccine.

In the late 1700s, an English physician named Edward Jenner realized milkmaids infected with cowpox rarely fell prey to smallpox, a devastating virus. Jenner began deliberately giving people cowpox and found they too became immune to smallpox.

Over the next two centuries, humanity beat back bacterial and viral diseases. The British epidemiologist John Snow realized cholera was spread by sewage. The German scientist Robert Koch and French physician Louis Pasteur invented germ theory. The British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. The American physician D.A. Henderson finished Jenner’s work with a global effort to eradicate smallpox.

It is vital not to understate the role vaccines played in this victory over disease, suffering, and death. But it’s vital not to overstate it, too.

The greatest gains against infectious disease came before most modern vaccines were developed. They came from simple and relatively inexpensive improvements in nutrition and public sanitation.

For example, check out American deaths from typhoid fever, a nasty bacterial illness that killed about one-third of the Civil War soldiers it infected, in the first half of the 20th century:

A great success for vaccination? Nope.

The typhoid vaccine is only marginally effective and not even recommended for Americans. As the chart above shows, the great innovation in defeating typhoid came when municipal water systems began adding chlorine to treatment plants. Chlorine kills typhoid, cholera, and other waterborne bacteria and viruses cheaply and effectively.

Of course, not every infectious disease is waterborne. Viruses and bacteria have evolved to use every conceivable method of transmission, from air to blood to touch to intermediate hosts like mosquitoes.

Still, whatever the mechanism of transmission, nearly all infectious diseases have followed the trend of typhoid. For example, deaths from measles in the United States plunged decades before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, as the Centers for Disease Control itself noted in 1968:

(Please note this chart ends BEFORE 1963. In other words, the entire mortality decrease occurred before any measles vaccine existed.)

The reason is simple.

Along with improvements in sanitation, we have had massive improvements in nutrition in the last century. People are healthier and have much better access to vitamin- and calorie-rich food. Americans in particular have such easy access to high-calorie diets that our biggest problem now is obesity. Famine essentially does not exist.

The care and treatment of sick people has progressed too, thanks to antibiotics and antivirals. The most notable advance of all on this front is the most recent. When the human immunodeficiency virus arrived around 1980, it was among the most deadly antigens humans had ever seen, killing nearly everyone it infected.

But bench scientists, physicians, and drug companies attacked it. And they won, devising a successful antiviral regimen in less than two decades. They did so with medicines, not a vaccine. HIV has proven remarkably resistant to vaccines.

In other words, even if physicians did not have a single vaccine to give patients, infectious diseases would be far less deadly in the United States and other developed countries than they were a century ago. They would be less deadly in other countries too; lower birth rates and better farming techniques mean that in all but the poorest countries, kids have become notably healthier.

None of this means vaccines are poisons.

Or that they cause autism. Or that we shouldn’t vaccinate kids against measles or other infectious diseases that pose a small though real risk to them, particularly with old-style inactivated-virus vaccines.

The mechanisms of action of those vaccines are well understood, and they have been given to billions of children worldwide for decades, with a very low risk of dangerous side effects. (I know, many of you will argue point to the rise in autism in the United States in the last 30 years as a counterexample. But much if not most of that increase is likely due to the reclassification of mental retardation and other developmental delays as autism, and much of the rest may well come from advancing parental age.)

What it does mean is that the discussion on vaccines has somehow become fetishized.

Epidemiologists, public health bureaucrats, and the media have somehow grown accustomed to promoting vaccines as miracles, our only line of defense from the epidemics of the Middle Ages. In fact, at least in developed countries, they are the fourth and least important bulwark, behind sanitation, nutrition, and medical care.

(The world without vaccines! At least according to Dr. Peter Hotez. Who has a vaccine to sell you.)

The public health love for vaccines is understandable.

On the sanitation side, the work is done, at least in the United States. And sanitation is both cheap and dirty, outside and beneath medicine. Nobody makes movies about heroic garbage workers or sewage treatment engineers.

Then there’s nutrition. But again, the gains from avoiding famine have been made, and medicine has played little role in those. Encouraging people to lose weight and take better care of themselves is important, but it will do little to save people from infectious disease (Covid’s habit of taking down the morbidly obese notwithstanding). And it’s hard.

Vaccines are easy. A simple jab or two in the arm for everyone. No need to get on a treadmill or eat vegetables. Vaccines are a way for public health bureaucrats — whether or not they have MDs — to feel like they too are heroic, life-saving front-line physicians.

And vaccines fit the left’s conception of itself, I’m from the government and I’m here to help. No accident that so many the first Covid vaccine sites were giant municipally run operations in convention halls.

Never underestimate the power of a good story: a story of cheap, effective, government-provided, readily available cures for deadly infectious diseases.

But in the last 39 years, drug companies, public health experts, and journalists have stretched the truth of that story beyond recognition. And they are angry that anyone, much less someone in a position to stand up to them, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is now calling out what they’ve done.

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-ever-expanding-modern-vaccination