Extracted from "Gold fever hits Shanghai" Xinhuanet, 7 December 2005

"Trading in gold investment products reached a feverish pitch in Shanghai as the price of the yellow metal yesterday shot to an 18-year high. It reached US$16.15 per gram, up around 1 per cent from the price on Monday. There were many who believed the price would rise even further, traders said. Trading was hectic, helping to push the price even higher."

[Ed: This is happening in all foreign exchanges, not just Shanghai. In the last few years, astronomical amounts of money have been going into hedge funds and also zig-zagging about in the foreign exhange markets. Literally, hundreds of time more money changes hands every day than is ever needed for ordinary transactions in the retail market places of the world or by way of trade settlements between countries. My impression is that even foreign exchange or hedge funds are now longer capacious enough and that a surplus is now drifting into buying gold. And this surplus may turn into a flood. It was understable that banknotes began to be used instead of gold about 150 years ago because there was insufficient metal to make enough small change in the pocket as Western economies grew apace. But it was throwing out the baby with the bathwater for countries to start printing their own banknotes without reference to underlying value and for politicians to trash the reputation of gold. I think we may now be seeeing the beginning of a world-wide devaluation of artificial national currencies. If so, it will probably start with the most overvalued currency of them all -- the American dollar.]