The world is moving step by step towards a de facto Gold Standard, without any meetings of G20 leaders to announce the idea or bless the project. Some readers will already have seen the GFMS Gold Survey for 2012 which reported that central banks around the world bought more bullion last year in terms of tonnage than at any time in almost half a century. They added a net 536 tonnes in 2012 as they diversified fresh reserves away from the four fiat suspects: dollar, euro, sterling, and yen. The Washington Accord, where Britain, Spain, Holland, Switzerland, and others sold a chunk of their gold each year, already seems another era – the Gordon Brown era, you might call it. That was the illusionary period when investors citeste si comenteaza …