Auguries - March 8, 2013
A Coin In The Hand
Kevin Michael Grace
Gold was down (at press time) $0.40 (-) for the week to $1,575.30, and silver was up $0.36 (+1.3%) to $28.96. Ole Hansen of Saxo Bank told Reuters, “The fact that the strongest economic data in a while failed to trigger a break below the recent low [has given] the [gold] market a bit of confidence.”
The economic data referred to above is Friday’s release of the US unemployment rate for January, which fell from 7.9% to 7.7%. A closer look at the data tends to vitiate its strength. Mike Shedlock reports, “The economy added a whopping 446,000 part-time jobs. Thus, the economy shed 276,000 full-time jobs. Those part-time jobs were supposedly ‘on purpose.’” And what counts as “part-time,” according to the Bureau of Labor statistics? “At least one hour” paid employment in the week of its survey.
Furthermore, “Those not in the labour force rose by 296,000, and the labour force itself fell by 130,000. Those factors, coupled with the massive rise in part-time employment, explain the 0.2% drop in the unemployment rate.”
Read the rest of this article about gold prices here. |
