Perhaps good manners encouraged the organisers to skip too many references to China’s great opponent for global supremacy, or perhaps there was a feeling that everything that could be said about the US was said at the PDAC conference in Canada a few weeks ago.

Whatever the reason, the mining world is missing one of the great economic events of the past 100 years. It is an event that will dictate future demand for many of the minerals and metals being discussed at Hong Kong Mines and Money. It is the return of the US as the world’s low-cost manufacturer.

More on why the world is being turned upside down later, though here is a clue (it’s all about the cost of energy).

In the meantime, it’s also worth suggesting delegates to Mines and Money carefully consider the Wednesday discussion on markets and mining finance because, like the return of the US, there are big events in the world of money that are affecting mining.

However, unlike the good news to be found in the US economic revival, there is a mountain of bad news in what’s happening to the banking world and its willingness to fund future mining projects, or to trade in commodities.

Tough banking rules designed to prevent a repeat of the 2008 global financial crisis, a disaster caused by banks taking too many risks, are drying up the availability of finance for mining.

A glimpse of what is happening to mining finance can be seen in the reluctance of banks over the past few years to even talk to developers unless the proposed mine is going to be super-low cost, which probably means it doesn’t need bank funding at all because the equity markets should provide all the capital required.

A second factor at work in the banking world is the Basel 111 rules that dictate the quality of a bank’s loan book and its capital adequacy. Those rules eliminate most forms of mining and commodity funding.

A third factor is the Volcker Rule, which is being finalised by US law-makers, but which essentially means a bank cannot trade using its own capital. This change is eliminating banks from the commodities market, and killing bank appetite for mining. This situation is best illustrated by the Swiss bank UBS closing its commodities-trading desk for all metals, except gold and silver.

Last week, as Mines and Money delegates started their journeys to Hong Kong, the decline of bank participation in commodities funding was highlighted in a study by a London-based research firm Coalition.

According to Reuters, the Coalition analysis found commodity revenue by leading banks crashed last year to its lowest on record with the three top US banks, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley reporting double digit declines in commodity trading.

In the case of Goldman, the top player in the commodity trading space, there was a 60% year-on-year decline.

While the data applies to trading in metals and agricultural products what it means is that the world’s big banks are being forced to abandon decades of knowledge and employees skilled in understanding and funding the mining sector.

Fading banks are a topic that ought to be high on the agenda in Hong Kong, and perhaps it will get an airing in the Wednesday discussions about mining finance though it seems likely China will continue to dominate events to the exclusion of what’s happening in the world’s most important economy, the US.

For Dryblower to even say that the US is the world’s most important economy risks annoying the China cheer squad, but that is really what’s happening today as cheap energy from the US oil and gas revolution gathers pace and the cost of operating everything from factories to railways falls away.

Big manufacturers, such as Dow Chemicals, are already relocating their plants away from Europe and China back the US to catch the wave of surplus oil and gas flowing from the vast beds of petroleum-rich shales being tapped across North America.

It is energy, and an ultra-tough treatment of job seekers who have limited access to unemployment benefits that is pushing down the cost of doing business in the US ensuring that it is on track to reclaim its role as the world’s economic leader.

The return of the US is happening as the world’s view of China fades under a cloud of smog, ruthless government, and a stunningly unequal distribution of wealth which is the country’s Achilles Heel.