Last week, I delivered a speech on the origin of paper money. Here's the complete written copy.

What I'm showing you is money. More precisely, paper money. The paper, which this money is printed on, has no intrinsic value by itself. The 20 dollars value is declared and enforced by the government. Here in my hand is another form of money. This silver maple leaf coin has a declared value of only 5 dollars. But its market value right now is 37 dollars.

Money, as the medium of exchange, has two main functions. One, it is a unit of account for value. Two, it is a store of value. Precious metals, like gold and silver, have been used as money for thousands of years exactly because they fit these two functions very well. How does paper money perform? Not so well. As a unit of value, paper money devalues too much and too fast due to government over printing. Can you imagine the length of a metric meter getting shorter and shorter? If this should not happen to a unit of length, why do we allow it to happen to a unit of value? As a store of value, paper money is worth nothing by itself. Its value is declared by the government. But unlike gold and silver, governments come and go. When a government is in deep trouble, so too will be its paper money.

If paper money is so fraud, why are we using it today? To answer this question, let's go back in history. Let's revisit ancient China where paper money was first invented.

I read an interesting article today at King World News. In this article, Jim Rickards claims that China is the sucker at the global gold poker table. I kind of agree with him. While middle east nations are busy selling oil for gold. China are selling their goods for worthless paper. They are stuck with 3 trillion dollars of paper. Nowhere else to go, not enough gold, don’t know what to do and they are completely vulnerable to the United States.

My Dad's computer has broken down today. He could not start it up! The WinXP always reboots during the start up process. Sometimes it reboots before the log on screen. At other times it reboots right after he enters the password. Seems like it's been infected by a virus!

I told him I will install the latest Ubuntu 11 for him tomorrow. I plan to install it over the old Red Hat partition. This way, he may still retrieve the documents on WinXP drives.

Financial trading and military history are two of my favorite hobbies. Now this is a historical moment in the silver market. This is the battle of Kursk, or the battle of Bulge, or empire strikes back. Or the last struggle before nirvana. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange raised margin requirements on silver futures four times in two weeks, 84 percent increase since April 25! The greedy fat cats are carrying out an counter-attack to save the big banks who are hugely shorting the silver. Looks like they are making progress. The game is completely rigged. Most small traders have to sell to meet the much higher margin requirements. Other traders unload all their holdings because of the stops were being hit by this sudden and fast drop.

One of my co-workers got stopped out of all his positions. A friend of my another co-worker, a fund manager in China, killed himself jumping off from a high building.

For me, I've been waiting for this moment for quite a while. I have quite a bit of cash sitting on the side line since the beginning of the year. I missed the run up. God is treating me well. Now I'm given the opportunity to add some more.

Osama Bin Laden is dead, just like that. What a joke! 10 years of so-called war on terror. Trillions dollars wasted on a guy who seems to be weak as water. What kind of enemy is this, so easy to get rid of? To me, this guy seems to be just another pawn. He can be taken out at any time. He lived as long as his masters wished. Now he's dead, this fake war is over. The real game between masters can start.

Why now? the Islamic democratic revolution has gone viral in the middle east. Some world powers may not like the direction this movement is heading. A democratic, powerful middle east may not be a good thing. A dead Bin Laden can re-set the direction for this movement.

Not sure if China is behind this. China and Pakistan are real friends. US and Pakistan? No, not really. How can Bin Laden live so close to the heart of Pakistan for so long without being discovered? Either China is involved, or China is really lucky. China benefits the most from this fake war on terror. In the past 10 years, US badly misused his limited resources, heavily in debt, fighting this phantom enemy. On the other hand, China gets stronger day after day, financially and militarily, almost unnoticed. Now all of a sudden, China is number 2 world power economically, and China will soon have her own aircraft carriers and stealth fighters.

There will be a war between China and US. Maybe the war has already started, in the financial markets.