Auguries—Brave New World
February 9, 2012
By Kevin Michael Grace

Gold was down (at press time) $30.70 (-1.7%) for the week to $1,731.30, and silver was down
.38 (-1.1%) to $33.92. Reuters attributed gold’s decline to (surprise!) “the Euro g[iving] up early gains, with optimism over a pending bailout deal for Greece petering out.” Citigroup analyst David Wilson warned, “Strangely, if Greece doesn’t agree to austerity in the next couple of days, it might be negative for gold in terms of dollar/euro.” Strange, indeed.

Others claimed that gold fell because the US unemployment rate fell from 8.5% to 8.3%. Pat McHugh of Manulife Financial told Bloomberg, “The number was a huge improvement over expectations… The strength in the [US] economy implies that the probability of more Fed easing or another quantitative package is being diminished, and gold’s going to take it on the chin. The flight-to-safety movement doesn’t appear to be as important as a result of the stats we’ve seen today.”

Read the rest of this article.