If you believe the commodity story is a China story and that gold is at least in part a commodity story, take heart. The following from Bloomberg shows that there is still one hungry dragon out there - in spite of what we are hearing out of the U.S.. These big miners (including gold miners) are going to be sitting on a pile of money (that is growing) and will one day need a home for it!

Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- BHP Billiton Ltd., seeking to acquire rival Rio Tinto Group for $100 billion, said second-quarter iron ore output rose 9 percent to a record driven by demand from China.

Iron ore output increased to 27.75 million metric tons in the three months ended Dec. 31 from 25.4 million tons a year earlier, the Melbourne-based company said in a statement. The world's biggest mining company also set aluminum and petroleum records.