US Congress posts

Feed

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

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA-89.2312,801.23
NASDAQ-23.352,903.88
S&P 500-9.311,342.64

Last updated: February 11, 2012: 07:31 PM

Hot Stocks

General Electric

18.875-0.255(-1.33)

Alcoa

10.29-0.35(-3.29)

Apple Inc

493.42+0.25(+0.05)

Google Inc 'A'

605.91-5.55(-0.91)

Bank of America

8.07-0.11(-1.34)

Wal-Mart Stores

61.90-0.06(-0.10)

Exxon Mobil Corp

83.80-1.08(-1.27)

Ford

12.44-0.25(-1.97)

Citigroup

32.925-0.735(-2.18)

IBM

192.42-0.71(-0.37)

Yahoo

16.14+0.14(+0.88)

Starbucks

48.82-0.38(-0.77)

Microsoft

30.495-0.275(-0.89)

Home Depot

45.33+0.06(+0.13)

DailyFinance Headlines

AOL Business News

BioHealth Investor Headlines

Sponsored Links

My Portfolios

Track your stocks here!

Find out why more people track their portfolios on AOL Money & Finance then anywhere else.

BloggingStocks Partners

More from AOL Money & Finance

Page Loaded in 1329006702424 ms.