The Financial Times has seen a U.S. diplomatic cable from WikiLeaks that states that Iran has bought significant amounts of gold. The word is that Tehran holds 300 tons of gold, up from 169 tons in 1996.

Gold, oil and the U.S. dollar: The oil-rich Middle East sells oil throughout the world. Oil is priced in dollars. The U.S. dollar is the reserve currency for oil. That means that Mideast countries are loaded with U.S. dollars.

Barclays (NYSE:BCS) become the most recent bank to raise billions of dollars, bring in $8.8 billion from investors including the sovereign funds in Qatar and Singapore.

"Through our capital raising ... we strengthen our capital base and give ourselves additional resources to pursue our strategy of growth through earnings diversification," Barclays Chief Executive John Varley said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

That is a nice way to say the bank was running out of money.

The news says more about the future than it does the past. A bank as large as Barclays would not raise such a large sum if it believed the credit crisis was largely over. The firm clearly expects more fall-out from mortgage-related paper and LBO loans. Why else dilute the shareholders?

At least the fact that large funds will still put money into banks is good news.

If the tea leaves from the bank's actions are correct, the opinion among many Wall Street analysts that the financial crisis will extend into next year is right.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Reuters reports that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is in the middle of oil country -- Qatar -- talking about how a strong dollar is in the U.S. interest. With the dollar down 72% since January 2001, it would be nice if Paulson would use his power to strengthen the dollar.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have enough power or chooses not to use it. The power to influence the strength of the dollar resides in the Oval Office. With a $410 billion budget deficit, $9.4 trillion in government borrowing, and interest rates that have dropped from 5.25% to 2% since August, it's not a big surprise that the dollar is so weak.

And since oil is denominated in those ever-weaker dollars, the price of gasoline tops $4 a gallon -- a big "surprise" to the Oval Office occupant. Nevertheless, this is great news for Qatar and its neighboring countries. Our leaders are protecting the interests of those Middle Eastern countries -- both through military policies and economic ones -- while talking about a strong dollar.

Those countries have outsourced their military defense to the U.S. And the rest of us are paying the price.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

Despite an announcement early last week that EMI Group PLC had entered negotiations with the European private equity firm Terra Firma about a buyout, reports now indicate the Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG) and several other potential buyers intend to make bids for the British music company. According to Forbes.com, the offer from Terra Firma is five pence higher than the most recent bid from Warner, which was 260 pence in February. A year ago, Warner offered EMI a bid of 320 pence per share, which was rejected. Terra Firma is also still seeing competition from other private equity firms, like New York-based Cerberus Capital Management.

Reportedly the deal with Terra Firma is being considered heavily because it carries the least regulatory difficulties from the European Commission concerning the creation of a monopoly. Since 2000, the repeated negotiations between EMI and Warner have hit a roadblock because of those fears. Last week's announcement also carried the indication that the Terra Firma bid was more "attractive" in the eyes of the Commission. In addition to Warner's new bidding intentions, former EMI CEO Jim Fifield also made an announcement he intends to bid 278 pence a share for his former company, with backing from the Qatari royal family and Geneva-based private equity firm Corvus Capital, even though they announced no further interest last Wednesday.

EMI has been struggling all year, despite growth since their announcement to ditch Digital Rights Management technology, with lower profits than 2006. On Friday, the stock closed at 275.75 pence, up more since the Terra Firma announcement (but only 3 pence below Fifield's apparent bid). Today it has continued that rise, with figures as high as 277 reported. Warner Music has also enjoyed a slight growth since last week. The stock closed on Thursday at 16.38, and rose to 16.48 on Friday. If the company hopes to make a serious and challenging bid to counter the already agreed upon Terra Firma bid, Warner will have to up the ante significantly.