Slog sources have confirmed that Arab royal houses are about to invest an enormous amount in China’s flotation of the People’s Rural Bank. This is going to make it a very Rich People’s bank, as the amount being bandied around as Qatar/Kuwaiti investment by the BBCNews website is $3.6billion. Other sources suggest that’s an exaggeration – but others we trust more say that a huge proportion of the money – perhaps nearer $5 billion – is being handled directly and indirectly for the Saudi royal family.

A whole phalanx of megarich tycoons and other wealthy sovereign funds are onside for the investment. But it’s the Saudis who are the most interesting investors, given that they have just mysteriously revised their metal wealth up by 100%.

The flotation will of course be an enormous success, but one is left once again wondering what on earth good any of this is doing for the world economy as a whole. I ponder such things having heard today of the vast amount of gold now concentrated in a few senior hands – hands which are quite obviously putting it towards geopolitical rather than economic ends….if one can ever separate the two.

There was a time not too many years ago when the overwhelming majority of the world’s gold was either underground in South Africa, or in the vaults of central banks in Europe and the USA. Including its wholly unaudited ‘deep reserves’ in Fort Knox, the last of those sources owned well over half.

That is clearly no longer the case: South Africa’s former Hard Left ANC Governor is liaising closely with China on mining the latter’s own supplies – in return for a massive investment in SA – and today’s news means there can now be little serious doubt about vast American sales to both the Saudis and China ‘off-piste’ via Fort Knox. (Either that or, quite frankly, those auditing the gold in circulation can’t count – which strikes me as highly unlikely).

While the Slog and its mother site nby can feel justly vindicated by this turn of events, every human being on the planet should now take a hard look at what’s been going on here.

At best, there has been a global set of deals mutually efficient to a tiny ruling elite – but swindling literally millions of hard-pressed investors out the safe haven to which they have always turned when that elite inevitably cocks up, yet again.

At worst, the US has been selling the family heirlooms to prop up its currency (which is doomed to lose the Numero Uno position eventually anyway), entirely dysfunctional anti-democratic Islamic states have been hoarding gold (the more easily to finance terrorism discreetly), and a regime with the worst human rights record of any developed nation has been ensuring that – if any power-plays in the future were to severely damage Western currencies – it and it alone would have the lion’s share.

All this strikes me as about as sensible as handing the Bomb to Hitler. We have already seen how the Saudis use power to corrupt Western suppliers and then pervert the course of justice. What on earth would make anyone think the Beijing regime would be any different?

By clinging on to its position as owner of the global lead currency, the US may well yet end up bankrupting the rest of us living outside the Middle East and China. And by insisting that Beijing float the Yuan, they may only hasten the flight of gold to that country – thus shooting themselves in the foot.

Sometimes you know, economic pollution is every bit as disastrous as fossil fuel pollution.