The excerpt is below, or you can use this link and scroll down approximately 1/3 of the page. It starts right after a short fable (story) about a politician and a Genie . . . (Imagine that!)

. . . . . . . Given time and maybe a glass of wine instead of coffee, I might have been able to come up with a better story… but the general theme seems about right.

Namely, that now that the world’s governments are in possession of the magical power to create money from nothing, do you think they’ll relinquish it voluntarily? Not hardly. Quite the opposite, they can be expected to do “whatever it takes,” to use the motto of our times, to maintain this extraordinary power.

But there is a fly in the ointment, and that fly is made of gold.

Here’s a true story just in from Kevin Brekke, our Switzerland-based editor…

“Some very interesting news came my way. Friends of mine just returned from Vietnam; they are native born and spent a month with family. They were quite surprised to find that U.S. dollars were not widely accepted by local merchants. But the big shocker was that the local merchants pegged their prices to the gold price! Every day the exchange rate of the Dong against the price of gold was recalculated. The prices of merchandise would rise or fall with the gold price. The merchant class in Vietnam has essentially put itself on the gold standard. Now if we can just get Paulson and Bernanke on a junket to Hanoi...”

If the import of that story didn?t strike you upside the head like a 2? x 4?, read it again. Individual merchants are now setting their own exchange rates, and using gold as the anchor.

This is an idea that could very well catch on . . . . . .