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IMF turns into gold trader

You know that the rally in Gold has reached bubble proportions when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announces that they are selling a huge chunk of their gold reserves. The sale of a 12.5% share of their gold position is a big supply that is going to be coming onto the market, and could potentially pressure gold prices.

According to the Marketwatch report: " In a statement on Monday, Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the IMF had made "difficult but necessary choices" to close an income shortfall and make the agency more efficient through a "new and sustainable income and expenditure framework."

The sale could generate over $13b. I knew that the IMF was a bloated bureaucracy that had all kinds of debt, but they need to sell $13b? Ouch.

Continue reading IMF turns into gold trader

Bernanke's bright idea: $1 million federal mortgage insurance

Anyone who has sat through a U.S. Congressional hearing -- present company included -- will tell you that the hearings are often 99% exasperation and 1% illumination.

Hours of each session can go by without hearing anything voters/readers really need to know about. Still, every once in a while, up pops something imaginative, sometimes even involving a topic that wasn't intended to be the focus of the hearing.

Such an event occurred Thursday during U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony before the U.S. Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

Bernanke, responding to a question from U.S. Senator and Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-New York) on the federal government's $417,000 insurance cap on mortgages, suggested that Congress could consider allowing Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), under a temporary plan, to buy mortgages up to $1 million from banks and mortgage companies, pay the U.S. Government a fee for having the federal government guarantee them, then turn them into securities to be sold as investments.

Continue reading Bernanke's bright idea: $1 million federal mortgage insurance

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Last updated: November 24, 2009: 08:24 AM

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