The remarkable rise in the price of silver A stronger euro and a weaker dollar have worked wonders for the once-thought-dead gold bull market and silver turned in its most impressive weekly performance in almost three months as the world continues to marvel at the surging demand for precious metals in China, a trend that could accelerate as policy makers there shift from fighting inflation to spurring growth. 
< For the week, spot gold rose 1.7 percent, from $1,639.70 an ounce to $1,667.00, as silver surged over the $30 an ounce mark, rising 8.2 percent from $29.77 an ounce to $32.20. Gold is now up 6.4 percent for the year, but down 13.3 percent from its high last summer, while the silver price is up 15.6 percent in 2012 but remains 34.9 percent below its early-2011 peak. The late-2011 surge in Chinese gold imports discussed here last week made its way into a featured Wall Street Journal story on Wednesday in what was a very favorable take on the subject. I’ve always considered the Wall Street Journal to be the most even-handed mainstream financial media outlet when it comes to gold as an investment and the positive closing comments indicate to me a growing acceptance of this theme: Still, Andrey Kryuchenkov, a commodity analyst at VTB Capital, said he is “reluctant” to write off higher import volumes and anecdotal evidence of more buying by consumers as just a seasonal phenomenon.The turnaround in gold prices “wouldn’t be justified without some real fundamental backing, and every year China gets more important in that picture,” Mr. Kryuchenkov said. While Chinese buying may fade in the period ahead, recall that it was the November import data reported about ten days ago that spurred all the recent talk about soaring demand in China – imports for December, in preparation for the lunar New Year on January 23rd, will be reported in about three weeks and they could be even more impressive than the November data. With the Middle Kingdom becoming such an important force in the gold market, sometimes it’s hard to believe that owning gold there was illegal as recently as 2001. Clearly, talk of sharply higher demand from China has helped push the gold price higher and, as shown below, the recent advance is now ahead of the pace of the 2006 correction that I’ve been comparing it to for a month or so. 
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http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/11369022-the-remarkable-rise-in-the-price-of-silver
