As with many of us, I regularly see headlines about surging prices. Most of those come out of the US.

The latest ones today are about the price of oil (now over US$94) and the price of gold (just hit US$800).

For those of us that don't live in the US, let's get a small dose of reality. These commodities are not going up in the real world. What is happening is that the US$ is going down in value.

Every time I see that gold bullion is being promoted as the next big thing to invest in, I now check the US dollar price per ounce against the Forex conversion into Australian dollars, and guess what? Virtually no change. In Aussie dollars gold bullion cost pretty much the same as it did last Christmas.

What has changed quite materially is the value of the greenback. It is sliding pretty quickly.

And what is a worry for the world economy is that the Chinese renmimbi is in lock step with the greenback - as are many of the currencies of the gulf states where the oil is coming from. So who gets to win in this game? Not me sitting in Australia.

Clearly if you are in the US and you put your money into gold bullion and the dollar keeps on sliding you will ensure that your holdings probably maintain or increase value. If you are in the gulf states and selling oil at ever increasing price per barrel in US dollars and then convert it back into the local currency which is locked to the dollar, you are going to get a lot more bang for your buck - which you could then move back into the US to buy, say Google shares, which are now in stratospheric territory... Same goes for China.

We are in the middle of World War III and its a currency war this time. And the greenback is about to be slaughtered. The big worry with that is that at some point some fundamentalist idiot with an itchy trigger finger may decide that they don't want to be a footnote on a page of history that says that the US lost at world politics and may decide that mutually assured destruction, the everyone loses option, is the one that plays best.

This is a truly frightening scenario.

It behooves us all, therefore, to ensure that we use our voices. Robert Kennedy said in a speech he gave at the University of Cape Town in the late 60's the following - it holds true today as it did then:

"We must recognise the full human equality of all our people- before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous - although it is; not because the laws of God and man command it - although they do command it; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do."