Look at these numbers: 21, 35 and 1,000. What kind of vital statistics would you say these were? The amount of calories you need to deny yourself to get back into shape? The number needed on your point card to earn the cash back you covet at your local supermarket?

Neither is, of course, the answer. All three figures represent the same thing, in fact. They are the price of an ounce of gold as calculated in U.S. dollars. The difference is in the timing. In the 1920s, $21 would buy you an ounce of gold. That was the official rate at which the U.S. Federal Reserve would trade gold with anyone who wished to make the transaction. From the mid 1930s to 1971, that official dollar-for-gold conversion rate was fixed at $35 per ounce.

Those fixed conversion rates were called the dollar's gold parity. Now the dollar no longer has a gold parity. The price of gold, just like any other commodity, is determined by the markets. And earlier this year, there was a point at which the market price for gold soared to $1,000 per ounce.