Here is my improved version of the test... With proxy detection and text result output.

Conficker Tester

Gold isn't a speculative commodity, it is paper money that is the speculative commodity. Gold is money and has been for thousands of years. Gold is not the liability of anyone else (eg Central Banks). Paper money in many countries in the past has become worthless. Gold has never become worthless. Also I wouldn't say that the value of Gold has gone up, but the value of paper money has gone down.

To give another example... the raw material cost goes up to 1.10 but the price for the finished goods stays the same... the same problem occurs. Therefore inflation and deflation cause problems for producers when they lack pricing power (which much of china probably does).

Since you haven't heard anyone attribute the current financial crisis to monetary inflation, do some reading on the Austrian School of Economics and Austrian Business Cycle Theory.

I live in Australia and have always wondered about the security of cheques because of the place your bank account number on the cheque as well as a incrementing cheque number. The first thing I would do is make the cheque number pseudo random, so that someone who was able to get an image of a cheque wouldn't be able to create another valid cheque, just by increasing the cheque number. Even the account number could be a random number... which points to a record at the bank which determines which account the money has to come from. I think these changes could probably be implemented individually by a bank as well...ie. it wouldn't need other banks to know what is going on.