Indian monsoon & 12.5% interest gold loans

I have a short post up on the corporate blog on the current state of the Indian monsoon, which matters because poor agrarian Indian farmers are purported to buy over 60% of Indian gold. If monsoon rains are good they buy gold, if not they sell some to buy next year’s crop.

While writing this article came up which is mildly negative for Indian gold demand (as it is only talking 80 tonnes) as it seems the jewellery industry is going to be further crimped by a new rule limiting their gold deposit schemes (ie people lend gold to jewellers to fund their business) to 25% of their assets. The really interesting thing is that the new law also prevents the jewellers from paying more than 12.5 per cent annual returns on those gold loans! Talk about using gold as money. I suppose they have to pay those rates due to the risk of them running off with the gold or going bankrupt.

Just wait to Wall Street finds out about these yields - beats current junk bond rates. With investors desperate for yields in ZIRP environment will we see Wall Street selling Indian Jeweller bonds at 10% (yep 10%, where do you think those bankers bonus come from)?