Global Investing

Given the ubiquity of BRICs and PIGS, it seems everyone else in the financial and business world is attempting to conjure up catchy acronyms to group economies with similar traits. All with varying degrees of success.

HSBC chief Michael Geogehan has been championing ‘CIVETS‘ to describe Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa as the next tier of developing economies poised for spectacular growth.

Evoking the skunk-like animal blamed for the spread of the deadly SARS outbreak in Asia is not exactly auspicious but then it will probably be less offensive than the porcine moniker for Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. The collective term — with permutations such as PIIGGS to include Ireland and Great Britain among the list of debt-ridden countries — has been denounced by politicians in Portugal and Spain.

In less troubled times, of course, these economies were often dubbed ‘Club Med’, with all its associations of sun-saturated holidays by the sea.

No such allusive qualities exist in PriceWaterhouseCoopers‘ ‘E-7′. The consultancy’s term for fast-growing emerging economies China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey could well be the name of a face-cream or some other chemical compound.

Central banks in debt-strapped countries have a golden opportunity ahead of them, if you will excuse the pun, to help their countries' finances by selling their yellow metal holdings.

At least, that is the message that Royal Bank of Scotland's commodities chief Nick Moore has been giving in recent presentations -- and he thinks it might happen.   The gist is that gold is now at a record price but banks have not come close to  meeting their sales allowance for the year.

Under the Central Bank Gold Agreement there is a quota of 400 tonnes that can be sold by central banks within a 12 month period and with only about three months to go in the latest period less than 39 tonnes has been sold.  At today's price that remaining 361 tonnes is worth some $14 billion.