Morning Gold & Silver Market Report – 3/15/2012

Ryan Schwimmer

3/15/2012 8:21:00 AM

U.S. JOBLESS CLAIMS DIP; EU TAXPAYERS TAKE HIT  

U.S. stock futures rose after the weekly report on jobless claims was released. Although last week’s claims number was revised slightly upward, the drop this week of 14,000 matches a four-year low. Also, core wholesale prices in the U.S. climbed by just 0.2 percent. This key inflation indicator was up 3.3 percent over the past year, which is actually the smallest 12-month change in nearly two years. The positive economic reports pushed precious metals prices slightly lower.

Syria continues to be supported by Iran and continues to wreak havoc on its citizens in trying to quell any Arab Spring-like event. However, other nations including Italy and Saudi Arabia continue to remove their ambassadors from the country. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continues to stage pro-Assad rallies. Syrian media play up the situation as getting better, while the U.N. Security Council continues to report horror stories. One man that made his way to Turkey, who wanted to remain anonymous, said, “The (Syrian) soldiers are taking the women and children and lining them up in front of them as a human shield. They are setting shops and homes on fire.”

In an interesting tidbit, it was revealed that European taxpayers ended up carrying the bulk of the burden from Greece’s debt restructuring, thanks to careful planning that delayed the restructuring and allowed banks to dump most of their exposure to Greek debt. When Greece received its first bailout from the International Monetary Fund in 2010, eurozone banks held about $68 billion of the country’s debt, and about $51 billion of that would have been lost had Greece defaulted. Over the next 15 months, however, banks suddenly carried much less than half of their original load of Greek debt. Raoul Ruparel of Open Europe said, “That is a horrible deal for the EU taxpayer. The longer we wait for these restructurings, the worse the deal gets for the public. There’s an ongoing risk transfer from the banks to the taxpayers.”

At 8:16 a.m. (CDT), the APMEX precious metals spot prices were:

• Gold - $1,645.90 – Up $2.00.
• Silver - $32.26 – Up $0.05.
• Platinum - $1,680.40 – Up $4.10.
• Palladium - $696.00 – Down $1.40.