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Comex gold futures have rebounded from lower price levels seen earlier in the trading session Monday, as the Standard & Poors ratings agency has just downgraded the U.S. debt outlook to negative. The Triple A debt rating was maintained by S&P, but the outlook downgrade by the agency hit the U.S. stock market hard and also prompted a sell off in U.S. Treasuries. Meantime, the U.S. dollar index backed down from its session high on the negative U.S.debt outlook. The S&P downgrade of the U.S. prompted fresh safe-haven buying interest in the precious metals markets, as both gold and silver...

Gold prices are trading higher and hit a fresh all-time record high of $1,480.50 an ounce overnight, basis the active Comex June futures contract. Meantime, May Comex silver futures notched a fresh 31-year high of $42.715 an ounce overnight. Inflation concerns and some fresh safe-haven investment demand are working to push the precious metals still higher. Comex June gold last traded up $6.90 an ounce at $1,479.30. Spot gold last traded up $1.70 at $1,478.00.

-Comex gold futures prices on Tuesday scored a fresh all-time record high of $1,452.00 an ounce, basis June futures, as of this writing. June gold last traded up $16.20 an ounce at $1,449.30. Gold rallied modestly in the wake of a weaker-than-expected U.S. ISM non-manufacturing index report that did put downside price pressure on the U.S. dollar index. That initial push higher in prices triggered buy stops, which are pre-placed orders to buy when a certain price level is hit. The buy stops pushed prices quickly higher and to a new all-time high. Now, the gold market bulls have...

If a picture says a thousand words, then the image below speaks volumes against accusations of a bloated asset bubble in gold. I'm sure you've seen the invariably confident claims that gold must represent a bubble, backed by deeply unscientific litmus tests. It must be a bubble, because "my mother recently asked me if she should buy some." (Psst! Hey, Mom ... Yes!) Others may feel compelled to sound the panic alarm because -- gasp! -- commercials have appeared on television to sell the yellow metal. Of course, those anecdotal arguments against gold exposure have proven incorrect time and time...

Gold prices settled at a new record high yesterday, as unrest in North Africa and the Middle East pushed the safe haven currency to $1,435/oz. ... Gold’s all time record nominal high yesterday was barely reported in most of the mainstream business and financial press today - slightly more online but there was little or no coverage in print. This is an indication that gold and silver remain far from the “bubbles” that some have suggested. Speculative manias and bubbles are characterised by mass participation and widespread enthusiasm and “irrational exuberance” by all sectors of society including the media and...

Program aimed at stopping the flow of weapons from the US to Mexico may have allegedly had the opposite effect Keeping American weapons from getting into the hands of Mexican gangs is the goal of a program called "Project Gunrunner." But critics say it's doing exactly the opposite. CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports on what she found. December 14, 2010. The place: a dangerous smuggling route in Arizona not far from the border. A special tactical border squad was on patrol when gunfire broke out and agent Brian Terry was killed. Kent, Brian's brother, said "he was my...

This chat thread is to divert an off-topic issue from the Ashley Turton car fire death news thread.

I know there are moral issues, and I don't mind if some wish to debate the moral question of whether the bank took the risk of a downturn, or the buyer did. Or if my taxes are bailing out banks that are giving benefits to other borrowers. The real question is a cold financial or legal one. We are maybe $500k upside down, but love our house (custom built for us), don't want to risk losing it, and can easily afford the payments, and have never been late (and have stellar credit). Is there a sensible strategy for getting some...

In the wake of the foiled Christmas Day bombing, officials responsible for airport security in the United States and abroad are considering implementing new, more thorough screening methods for detecting weapons and explosives. One possibility under consideration would be the increased use of full-body "backscatter" X-ray scans. The health risks to any individual passenger from a backscatter X-ray are minuscule. As reported recently in the New York Times, a single backscatter X-ray delivers no more than one one-hundredth of the radiation associated with a dental X-ray, itself extremely low. Nonetheless, when aggregated over billions of passengers, even tiny numbers can...

“I invest in anything that Bernanke can’t destroy, including gold, canned beans, bottled water and flashlight batteries," David Stockman tells Jennifer DePaul of the Fiscal Times. Stockman rose to fame as a Hayek quoting Congressman who became Ronald Reagan's budget director. His conversations with journalist William Greider created a firestorm because Stockman was deeply critical of the Reagan administration's supply-side budget practices. These days he's working on a book about the financial crisis. I can't find anything to argue with in his assessment of our current troubles: We are not in a conventional business cycle recovery, so stimulus is futile...

Comex gold prices are trading solidly higher and hit another new all-time record high of $1,330.00 an ounce in December futures as of this writing Tuesday morning. More weakness in the U.S. dollar and generally stronger commodity futures prices Tuesday morning are supporting buying interest in the yellow metal. December Comex gold last traded up $11.60 an ounce at $1,328.40. Spot gold was last quoted up $12.30 at $1,327.75. The U.S. dollar index hit another fresh 8.5-month low Tuesday as the Euro currency strengthened following some upbeat manufacturing data coming out of the European Union. Many investors believe a fresh...

Until prices hit $2,000 an ounce, the gold market is still "some way" from displaying the characteristics of a bubble, according to major bank research note. In its commodities quarterly report released Tuesday, Deutsche Bank said while "market concerns are focusing on the magnitude and duration of the gold price rally," values would need to move above $1,455 to be considered extreme in real terms. They said the accommodations the Federal Reserve may make to prop up the U.S. economy could mean more quantitative easing by the next Federal Open Market Committee meeting in November. Combine this with seasonal weakness...

Vladimir Putin jumped to the rescue of Russian carmakers this summer, lashing out at metallurgical companies for a sharp rebound in metals prices and the harm it did to carmakers’ balance sheets. Now it seems price hikes have hit yet another victim: the Russian kopeck. Russia’s Central Bank is urging the Duma to cut production of Russia’s smallest coin, and its big sister the 5-kopeck coin as the cost of producing the coins continues to balloon against their actual monetary value. The cost of producing a kopeck is now 45 times higher than the value of the coin itself, which...

Gold prices broke $1,300 an ounce Friday as a weak dollar and momentum buying pushed gold past the psychologically important price level. Gold for December delivery was rising $4.10 to $1,300.40 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The gold price Friday has traded as high as $1,301.30 and as low as $1,290.60. The U.S. dollar index was losing 0.54% to $79.68 while the euro rallied 0.81% to $1.34 vs. the dollar. The spot gold price Friday was adding $5.50, according to Kitco's gold index. Gold prices broke $1,300 as a stronger euro pushed the...

(snip) Schonberger: Sans fiscal stimulus and the Feds' intervention -- quantitative easing -- do you think we would even have GDP [gross domestic product] growth? Schiff: We don't have economic growth. GDP is going up, but that's not a sign of any economic growth. All we're measuring is what we're consuming. But we are paying for it by going into debt. As a nation, we're in worse shape because of the GDP growth. The real economy is shrinking. All we're doing is borrowing money from economies that are growing, like China, and we're spending their money. But that's going to...

In hidden vaults across the country, the US government is building a stockpile of $1 coins. The hoard has topped $1.1bn - imagine a stack of coins reaching almost seven times higher than the International Space Station - and the piles have grown so large the US Federal Reserve is running out of storage space. Americans won't use the coins, preferring $1 notes. But the US keeps minting them anyway, and the Fed estimates it already has enough $1 coins to last the next 10 years. And at the current rate, the inventory will grow to $2bn (£1.3bn) by 2016,...

A Toluca Lake woman was recently kicked off a Delta Airlines flight after reporting that she thought she had smelled alcohol on the captain's breath. Cynthia Angel said the incident occurred on July 19 as she was trying to travel home to Southern California from Georgia. She had just spent two weeks visiting her son, an actor, who was shooting a movie near Atlanta. Angel, 51, said the trouble occurred after she and three other passengers had a brief conversation with one of the pilots of Delta Airlines Flight 2355. She learned later that the pilot was actually the captain...

Failblog is a site with funny postings that are voted on by viewers to determine which are displayed. But this one from a few hours ago is not at all funny, and is politically hostile to a Republican Congressional candidate from Michigan. Probably Bad News: Priorities Fail The lefties are adding votes by the minute, but Freepers can knock it off the display, and defeat this obvious dirty tricks effort by local supporters of the Democrat opponent. To vote, click on the above link, and click on the first (left) thumb.

A blizzard of paperwork could be about to hit numismatics. Passage by Congress of the national health care legislation has had an unintended consequence to the nation’s coin collectors, vest-pocket dealers who buy and sell coins, and larger dealers who are frequent buyers of coins that collectors periodically liquidate as they trade up their collections for better coins, or simply sell to take a small profit or loss. What has happened is that effective Jan. 1, 2012, the whole system of giving and receiving Internal Revenue Service 1099 forms will be turned on its head and all persons (including corporations)...