Mid-Day Gold & Silver Market Report –8/26/2011

Fed Chairman Bernanke Punts until September

As predicted by APMEX CEO, Michael Haynes, no new information emerged from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s morning briefing from Jackson Hole. Mr. Bernanke repeated his previous view, “The Fed has a range of tools that could be used to provide additional monetary stimulus,” but he also said these were the same options already discussed this month. These options will not be taken up until the September Fed meeting. Mr. Bernanke repeated his appeals to Congress not to overlook the fragility of the recovering economy, when considering expense cutting. He also urges the White House and Congress to come up with “good proactive housing policies” in order to help speed the recovery of the housing market.

The United States remains on a recession watch, as today’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) report failed to meet economist’s lowered expectations. Economist had lowered their second quarter expectations from 1.7% growth to 1.1%, but it came in at only 1%. This report confirms that the U.S. economy has virtually stalled.

While appearing on the “Today Show” this morning, noted personal finance expert, Suze Orman made some interesting comments on gold. First, she pointed out that gold needs to be considered as a worldwide currency. Ms. Orman commented that everyone should own some gold and investors should allocate 5% -15% of their investable assets to gold. There is no reason to go wild and therefore, no more than 15%. She did say we should see gold at $2,100 next year.

Precious metal prices have maintained the gains made before the Fed Chairman morning briefing. At 12 PM (CT) the APMEX precious metal prices were:

• Gold price - $1,794.20 – up $29.00
• Silver price - $40.94 – up 8 cents
• Platinum price - $1,826.30 – up $2.90
• Palladium price -$759.00 – up $5.80