One may recall the oil price increase between 2006 and 2008, its fall in the later half of 2008, and subsequent rise in 2008-09. Again this provides a fascinating study to estimate the power and reach of these speculators at the global level.

It may be noted that the US financial sector has begun to turn its attention from currency and stock markets to commodity markets. According to The Economist, an estimated US$ 260 billion was invested into the commodity market in 2008 - up nearly 20 times the volume in 2003. There was a global upsurge in the prices of commodities coinciding with a weak dollar and the new speculative interest of the US financial sector in the commodities market.

The recent bailout package being approved in the US Congress needs to be viewed in the context of the spurt in the accumulation of forex reserves of China by about $500 billion in the last six months to about $2 trillion in aggregate.

This gargantuan build-up of forex reserves by China has strangely received very little attention of economists, policy analysts, currency traders and, of course, geo-strategists around the world.

Why is China engaged in this exercise? What could be its implications on the on going global financial crisis? Could China trip the bailout package announced by the US last week? Crucially what are the implications for the existing global order?

Political observers in the seventies and eighties repeatedly predicted the fall of the Soviet empire. Stating that communism was an artificial construct and suffered from significant internal contradictions, scholars went on to analyse why Communism would never succeed.

Yet when the Communist regimes collapsed the world over, it took even those very experts by surprise.