Hammer, My guess is "when" will most likely occurr if the Fed does another quantitative easing, should the U.S. economy weaken further and the dollar tanks. Or, at a time when China has enough Gold to peg it to their currency. How much they have now is unclear. But Rickards thinks they'll need to declare that they've got at least as much as the U.S. "claims" it has (8,000 tons) before they make their move to a gold backed yuan. The Swiss wouldn't allow the Euro to devalue its currency. I'm guessing China might do the same when/if the dollar weakens.