On the grounds of his past successful financial forecasts, Phillip Manduca has established himself as a currency analyst who is "doubly welcome" on Bloomberg. This double welcome with which recent utterances of Manduca have been greeted is not a chance expression of civility by Bloomberg.

They were a well thought-out mass media promotion of a successful forecaster, whose rising reputation of competence is a relief when an infinite number of cartoons are appearing in the world's press, lampooning economic and political leaders for economic failures.

The formula for a successful resolution of the world economic blizzard has by no means been spelled out yet.

The world economic situation is bad, but it is not bad for any fundamental economic reason. The pace of science-based industry has by no means been halted.

One has only to notice the ever-increasing power of the mobile phone in one's hand to realise that the world economy is down but not out. It is perhaps down more than the 10 per cent of the 1970s, but it will soon find its feet again.

It will be powered by a new explosion of productivity and prosperity, of which there are already unmistakable signs in the new special interest mass tourism lapping our shores in the shape of the cruise liner boom.

So let not the investor despair. This is not the 1930s, when Hitler was seeking to distract the attention of his people from a world economic depression. Nor is Malta today that of the 1930s, when the island was being prepared for the greatest siege of its history, with a consequent political polarisation.

Today's Malta is a "democracy which works", as an international economic consultant described it recently to me.

It has this very week established an economic breakthrough in the financing of the Midi project.

Anyone can see that this country's internationally-oriented real estate deserves to have a portion of its wealth poured into it.

It will be a long time, certainly years and not months, before Wall Street and the City of London emerge from the crisis into which they have carelessly walked.

It has been caused by a decline in banking ethics and - what has proved to be worse - for reasons yet to be discovered, a completely supine regulatory regime. The Wall Street press in the shape of its greatest mouthpiece, The Institutional Investor, knew about Bernard Madoff's nefarious activities.

The Wall Street Journal has published two thundering articles by Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman.

His conclusion is: "Most of all, the vast riches being earned or maybe that should be 'earned' in our bloated financial industry undermined our sense of reality and degraded our judgment."

The world stock markets are due for a year of perplexing volatility making them completely unsuitable for anybody with a weak economic education. Volatility, however, gives great opportunities to the money trader.

Banks like Barclays and miners like Kasakmyns present great opportunities. Gold is a currency and Phillip Manduca is proving this once and over again.

He seems to have gambled his entire professional reputation on gold, reaching the $2,000 threshold by the end of 2010.

He is well worth listening to. His words are illuminated by a previous outstandingly successful record.

The high gold price seems, for the time being, to have reached a plateau, but Manduca of Titan Investments sees a price of gold at $1,000 a troy ounce as a distinct possibility in the near future. He said so a few days ago.

China is now moving part of its massive dollar reserves from the dollar into the euro and gold.

Madoff can be said to have harmed Wall Street, but he has certainly helped the prospects of a booming gold price. The money the Fed is pumping into the economy is proving insufficient to reignite it.

Similar conditions plague the UK and the EU. Only an expansion in the money supply can, as in the 1930s, save the world. This well-known fact can only ensure a confirmation of Manduca's forecasts.

Mr Azzopardi Vella, economic consultant with DBR Investments Ltd, has promoted the Malta Development Fund and advised S & P.

johnazzopardivella@hotmail.com