One of the stories that accompanied the fall of silver was the destruction of industrial demand for silver. China was routinly sited as one of the major factors. The claim was that China is falling apart with lack of exports to the "industrialized west". Well....

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

"China's banks are now the strongest anywhere. In fact, non-performing loans, or NPLs, fell by $102 billion in 2008 to $83 billion ... just 2.45% of the total loans outstanding. That's amongst the lowest NPL ratios of any country.

Moreover, Chinese banks' total assets jumped 18.6% in 2008 to $9.1 TRILLION. In other words, its bank assets are equal to almost the entire GDP of the U.S.

And despite all the gloomy talk on China,

There Are Plenty of Signs of
The Economy's Resilience ...

• Consumer spending during the Lunar New Year holiday, which ended last week, rose 13.8% over last year.
  
  
• Grocery store sales were up a whopping 23% during the week-long New Year holiday. And ...
  
  
• Sales of household electric appliances jumped 17.8%.
  
  
• For all of 2008, retail sales rose a very healthy 21.6%, versus 16.8% in 2007.
  
  
• Despite a slowdown in exports, China's industrial output grew 12.9% for all of 2008, while ...
  
  
• Fixed asset investment surged 25.5%, up from 24.8% in 2007.
  
  
• Despite the slump in the stock market and lower capital gain revenues, overall tax revenues contributed to a 19.5% surge in China's fiscal revenues in 2008. Proof positive that China's economy remains robust.
  
  And that's not all ...

• Despite what all the doomsayers are claiming, China's economy created 11.13 million new jobs in 2008!

I suspect that's going to be a drop in the bucket compared to the job creation we will see in the years ahead as $600 billion gets invested largely in rural infrastructure."