Gold Futures Decline Most Since 1980 on Plan to Avert Crisis
By Marianne Stigset – Bloomberg
Gold futures in New York fell the most in almost 28 years as central banks eased investor concern by pumping cash into global credit markets and U.S. officials said they were developing a plan to stop banks from failing.Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke proposed moving troubled assets from the balance sheets of American financial companies into a new institution.
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The End of Central Bank Gold Selling?
By: Julian_DW_Phillips – Market Oracle
We are close to the end of the fourth year out of the five years of the second Central Bank Gold Agreement in which a ‘ceiling’ was placed on the sales of gold by the signatories to this agreement of 500 tonnes a year. This piece looks at the prospects for sales by these signatories in the final year of the agreement and the prospects of a third agreement, which would govern sales of gold in the ‘open’ market.
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Gold slides as U.S. asset plan cheers investors
By Jan Harvey – The Guardian UK
Gold slipped nearly 3 percent in Europe on Friday after the U.S. government announced it is considering a plan to deal with risky bank assets, which boosted the dollar and equities and restored risk appetite. Gold’s move reflected losses among other precious metals, with platinum falling more than 3 percent to a 2-1/2 year low and palladium shedding 4 percent. Silver was the only climber.
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Gold is Still the Refuge of Choice for Savvy Investors
By Bill Bonner – Daily Reckoning
Wednesday, the earth shook. It was an important day. The Dow dropped another 450 points. But what really moved yesterday was an inert metal – gold. The gold market rumbled and shot hot prices into the air. Alert investors knew what the shaking was all about. Our modern financial Vesuvius is beginning to boil…
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Comex Raises Margin Rates on Gold Contracts by 47%, Silver 20%
By Stuart Wallace – Bloomberg
The Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange raised margin payments on gold and silver futures by as much as 47 percent after price swings accelerated.
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Gold-Oil Ratio Could Signal U.S. Recession
by Ashraf Laidi – Seeking Alpha
Over the past 8 weeks, we alerted clients that the gold/oil ratio would continue to recover from its July record lows as oil begins to underperform gold. The latter would recover as the dollar drops on deteriorating macroeconomic fundamentals and further erosion in financial markets, thus, triggering re-emerging expectations of Fed cuts.
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Stock Market Cheers Fiscal Insanity
by Mike Shedlock – Safe Haven
The biggest stock market rallies occur in bear markets. Today we witnessed one of the biggest bear market rallies in history on Plans To Shore Up Banks. U.S. stocks rallied the most in six years on prospects the government will formulate a “permanent” plan to shore up financial markets, while regulators and pension funds took steps to curb bets against banks and brokerages.
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Skeptical about US bail-out plans: opportunity to buy gold
By: Peter J. Cooper – Goldseek
Wall Street has been rallied by news that Messrs Paulson and Bernanke plan to spend a weekend together to get the financial markets all sorted out. Can it really be that simple? Surely we are just going to see more of the nationalization and money injections of the past week, but dressed up as a plan. Bottom line: this is all going to be inflationary and extremely good for precious metal prices.
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