A spectacular if frustrating week for the gold bugs. But they’re still confident. Gold finished up $52.60 or 3.5% above the pre-Good Friday close the previous week, using Friday’s CME floor-session June contract close, at $1,556.40. And it ran as much as $12 higher in the aftermarket, reportedly on heavy volume.
It's no secret that speculators are driving up fuel prices. The surprise? It's the Fed's fault, writes Ed Wallace
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke may keep reinvesting maturing debt into Treasuries to maintain record stimulus even after making good on a pledge to complete $600 billion in bond purchases by the end of June.
The chickens of quantitative easing — and the devaluation of the dollar that it is causing — are coming home to roost. Bloomberg reported on March 4 that commodities have reached a two-year high, while cocoa has reached a 32-year high.
By Jeff Berwick
Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke and other government officials always talk about the importance of "confidence" to the economy. But that is because they are confidence men (aka. conmen) playing a confidence game (congame).
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke heads to Capitol Hill on Wednesday with yet another charge to fend off—that the central bank's loose monetary policies are ignoring a looming inflation risk.
For a Federal Reserve chairman who is worried about politics interfering with monetary policy, Ben Bernanke is taking on some awfully heated political topics.
[[wysiwyg_imageupload:1432:]]By Michael Pento
There can be little doubt that Fed Chairman Benjamin Bernanke has been a very, very good friend to gold investors. However, some of those who have benefited from his largesse now fear that the recent selloff in gold indicates an imminent end to Bernanke's monetary high-wire act. Most assume that a cessation of the Fed's stimulative efforts, if it were to occur, would spell the end of gold's bull run. But a closer reading of Bernanke's economic philosophy and the Fed's own recent history, shows that once central banker begins a strenuous routine starts, it is very hard, if not impossible, for them to dismount.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sketched a more optimistic view of the economy Friday but said the Fed's $600 billion bond-buying program is needed because unemployment will likely stay elevated for up to five more years.
There are growing signs that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is cracking the whip and wants to pull other Fed officials into line when it comes to how they communicate with investors and the financial markets.
