China's recent move to devalue the yuan has sent shock waves through the global financial markets and has convinced most observers that a new front in the global currency wars has begun.

While many economists and market watchers have failed to notice, we have entered a new chapter in the short and checkered history of central banking.

The inability for governments to pay back debt spells economic disaster.

Even investors who typically eschew precious metals have been hard-pressed to ignore the platinum industry this year.

The LIBOR scandal broke almost two years ago, and the banks found responsible for manipulating that key index are still dealing with lawsuits. Meanwhile, allegations of gold market manipulation have been simmering for over a decade and grew into an inferno after the spot price dropped dramatically last spring.

If gold shot up too quickly, these banks may have reasoned, it could trigger a panic flight from fiat currencies.

Before Bear Stearns and Lehman collapsed, the market for physical gold was limited to a relatively small group of investors who understood the havoc inflation was wreaking on our savings and the US markets.

It's impossible to know precisely how much dark gold exists around the world, but we do know that it is enough to render "official" gold holdings insignificant.

The same forces that are stabilizing stocks and suppressing gold are also the fundamental reasons long-term investors have been buying gold since the turn of the new millennium. The so-called recovery we're now experiencing is just a lull in a storm that hasn't yet abated.

Having replaced savings with debt on both the national and individual levels, I think it's well past time for Westerners to take a few lessons from our creditors in the East.

The real message behind Bernanke's excuse for putting off tapering is that there is never going to be a taper.

"Silver may rise much faster in order to realign with its historical price ratio to gold."