Auguries—Public Enemy
April 26, 2012
By Kevin Michael Grace

Gold was up (at press time) $14.30 (+0.8%) for the week to $1,657.30, and silver was down $0.57 (-1.8%) to $31.16. GoldCore attributed gold’s rise to “concerns that the Fed could employ more QE in a further attempt to stimulate the economy… Continuing ultra-loose monetary policies and negative real interest rates continue to support gold.”

At a press conference yesterday, the Ben Bernanke declared, “If appropriate…we remain entirely prepared to take additional action.” One wonders why this would be necessary given the sunshine, lollipops and rainbows contained within Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee statement: economy expanding, unemployment down, household spending up, inflation not a threat.

Perhaps he’s got wind of the “smoking ruin” that is Europe. From Thursday’s Deutsche Bank communiqué: “Yesterday, the UK became the latest country to return to recession as GDP (-0.2% vs +0.1% expected) disappointed. Of major Western developed countries, the UK now joins Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Czech Republic and Slovenia as being in recession. By the time the data comes out next week, it’s likely to be followed by Spain, and remember German GDP was negative in 4Q and is expected to be flat in 1Q, so it’s not impossible that they will also follow.”

Read the rest of this article about gold prices and the market.