Former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan published a mighty interesting article in Foreign Affairs last week. He said that China could be thinking of increasing its gold stocks in a big way. Perhaps, Greenspan implied, the Chinese even have a thought of making their currency, the RMB, convertible in gold.

The episodic article went on to discuss how strange it is that the big fiat-country countries, from the United States on, maintain their multi-hundred-billion-dollar gold stocks. They never want to sell, for all the trashing of gold-as-money from the wonks, economists, and serious statesmen.