Banking on gold in Vietnam

Allison Truitt

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2021, vol. 14, issue 4, 403-415

Abstract: Today central bankers regard gold as an asset but not as money. Does this distinction still hold in a period of financial globalization? This question has taken on great urgency since the 2008 global financial crisis when assets have become more liquid and transferable. In this essay, I examine a series of monetary policies in Vietnam that culminated in commercial banks mobilizing privately held gold, an experimental monetary design I call ‘banking on gold.’ The run-up in the price of gold (2006–2011) made this design ultimately unsustainable. While banking on gold is particular to monetary ecologies in Vietnam, a late socialist country with low rates of banking, this case study illuminates the role of commercial banks in drawing on household assets to create money.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2021.1879210

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