Agree about the currency effect. Being a European living in Canada I notice the drop in my purchasing power each time I go back and visit family. You sometimes get surprising results when plotting prices of gold or also real estate in Swiss Franc(or Euro now) versus in US $.
Gold to me hold some security versus the drop in any currency due to printing of more money(dilution). It take efforts and energy in extracting more gold so the expansion of the gold inventory is pretty slow versus the growth in money supply.
Since Euro zone and Asia are much bigger gold purchasers than US, the price of gold in those currencies is probably more important than that in US$
