Amid the political and social uprisings in the Middle East, and union protests in the U.S., a recent speech by a pivotal U.S. policy maker received little attention, but it's one that investors should review.

In a speech before the recent G-20 meeting, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged emerging market nations to address the flood of money streaming into their markets.

Precious metals moved higher today, led by gold, which set another record high. Here are the numbers:

• December gold futures are trading at $1,328.20, per ounce, up $11.40 (as of 8:00 am EDT)
• December silver is up 23 cents to $22.27 per ounce.
• October platinum is trading at $1,681.7 per ounce, up $14.
• December Palladium is up $7.20 to $568.50 per ounce.

One disastrous international trade policy of the 1930s concerned tariffs: nations increased tariffs on imports to protect domestic industries; when applied universally, it resulted in declining export sales and trade volumes. Tariffs made the Great Depression worse.

Now, it appears, nations are on the verge of implementing another counter-productive policy -- manipulating currencies -- and if public officials are not careful, a similar downward spiral in international trade could occur.

A member of the National Bureau of Economic Research, which announced Monday that the U.S. recession ended in June 2009, told The New York Times (NYT) the U.S. economy must grow at a 2.5% rate just to keep the unemployment rate, currently 9.6%, constant.

By extension, the world's largest economy will need upwards of 2.7% U.S. GDP growth annually -- probably closer to 3% growth -- to substantially reduce unemployment.

How about getting millions of China's new middle class to contribute to that growth? Li Daokui, an economist and an adviser to the People's Bank of China, agrees, at least regarding consumption by China's consumers.

In upcoming talks with China, the United States will try for what seems like the 1,000th time to encourage China to let its currency, the yuan, appreciate quicker, even as a growing list of sponsors add their name to a U.S. House bill, The New York Times (NYT) reported, that would require the Obama administration to impose duties or other trade barriers in lieu of currency action by Beijing.

China keeps the yuan in a tight trading band, arguing that it must keep the yuan valued at a low level to protect embryonic companies and sectors.

The United States argues that the yuan's artificially-low value unnaturally draws in trade revenue via cheap exports that, under a market-value yuan, would flow to other countries.

China is developing fast and, even though it has some issues with human rights, pollution and corruption, people have been speculating that it could be the next global super power.

China has a population of 1.3 billion, which is four times the U.S. population of 308 million. Simple math dictates that if four Chinese people can match one U.S. person in productivity, China will surpass the U.S. in production.

Saturday, China signaled that it would abandon its currency peg against the U.S. dollar.

Then on Sunday, China's central bank said there would be no significant appreciation in the renminbi (the currency of the People's Republic of China) against the dollar. What's interesting is that this statement came one week before the G20 meeting on Toronto.