Yesterday was another exciting day on Wall Street. The Dow rose 131 points…and gold shot up $25 to a new record, $1043.

Investors must be pondering the future.

What will the future look like? No one knows. But investors thought they saw things they liked.

For one thing, there was the Federal Reserve governor from New York, who told the world that there was no risk of a rate hike anytime soon. Bill Dudley knows which way the wind is blowing. He said the Fed would hold money policy loose “indefinitely.”

Indefinitely is otherwise known as “as long as it takes.”

But as long as it takes for what? Ah…as long as it takes until the economy appears strong again.

How long will that be? Ah…maybe longer than anyone realizes.

Yesterday, we were calculating how long it would take to get the jobless number back down to ’90s levels…that is, around 5%. There are now about 131 …

Yesterday was another exciting day on Wall Street. The Dow rose 131 points…and gold shot up $25 to a new record, $1043.

Investors must be pondering the future.

What will the future look like? No one knows. But investors thought they saw things they liked.

For one thing, there was the Federal Reserve governor from New York, who told the world that there was no risk of a rate hike anytime soon. Bill Dudley knows which way the wind is blowing. He said the Fed would hold money policy loose “indefinitely.”

Indefinitely is otherwise known as “as long as it takes.”

But as long as it takes for what? Ah…as long as it takes until the economy appears strong again.

How long will that be? Ah…maybe longer than anyone realizes.

Yesterday, we were calculating how long it would take to get the jobless number back down to ’90s levels…that is, around 5%. There are now about 131

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Yesterday, Brazilian miner, Vale S.A. (VALE), announced the resumption of its work in many of its idled mines. The mines were closed when the company experienced a considerable decrease in demand from Japanese and European steelmakers due to the economic crisis. The economic downturn led the company to reduce its production by as much as 30%. However, based on the belief that the market conditions will be more reasonable in the coming months, VALE is reopening certain operations. Even though the overall economic environment remains quite challenging, it seems that demand for metals has already reached the bottom, particularly in Asia, and is beginning to reverse. The company restarted its Agua Limpa iron ore mine, which is expected to produce 5.4 million tons of iron ore by the end of 2009. This is 17% above its 4.6 million tons of production in December 2008. During ...

China is Investing Billions in Renewable Energy One firm has already built China’s largest wind turbine manufacturing factory. And it’s working with the Chinese Science Academy to develop new wind, solar, and geothermal technologies… for which it will own 70% of the rights. But this company’s business reaches far beyond the Chinese border, with operations in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe. It’s first quarter net income increased by 294% over a year ago. Click here for the full report.

A $15 billion deal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) involving Australia, China and global-oil heavyweight Exxon-Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) has prompted many investors to worry that China may be using its global-markets muscle to “paper over” cracks in the global economy.

In reality, however, this mega-deal is a harbinger of what’s to come, and highlights the road that global investors must travel in their journey …

Chinese regulators rejected Coca-Cola Co.’s (KO) $2.3 billion bid for China Huiyuan Juice Group Ltd., China’s largest juice company.

The move surprised many analysts, as it will make it easier for Western countries to prevent Chinese companies from acquiring overseas targets and discourage other large corporations from pursuing mergers in China.

China’s Ministry of Commerce blocked the deal saying the biggest takeover of a Chinese company failed to meet the country’s anti-monopoly law and would be “negative for competition.”

“If the acquisition of Huiyuan went into effect, Coca-Cola is very likely to take a dominating position in the domestic market and the consumers may have to accept the high price fixed by the company as they don’t have more choices,” the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.

Huiyuan Juice is a household name in China, and controls 42% of the country’s pure-fruit-juice market. Coca-Cola controls 54%

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Red Alert: Gold Backwardation!!!

– Posted Friday, 5 December 2008

Antal E. Fekete

Gold Standard University Live

December 2, 2008, was a landmark in the saga of the collapsing international monetary system, yet it did not deserve to be reported in the press: gold went to backwardation for the first time ever in history. The facts are as follows: on December 2nd, at the Comex in New York, December gold futures (last delivery: December 31) were quoted at 1.98% discount to spot, while February gold futures (last delivery: February 27, 2009) were quoted at 0.14% discount to spot. (All percentages annualized.) The condition got worse on December 3rd, when the corresponding figures were 2% and 0.29%. This means that the gold basis has turned negative, and the condition of backwardation persisted for at least 48 hours. I am writing this in the wee hours of December 4th, when trading of gold futures has not

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The last two weeks have been the most shocking in my time reporting on global financial markets. I started working for Reuters as a financial markets reporter back in 1992 in Wellington. In the following 14 years I  covered markets, companies and economics in Wellington, Canberra, Sydney, London and Singapore. I was up to my elbows in massive bank takeovers, market booms, dotcom busts and the aftermath of 9/11 when I worked in London for Reuters and FTMarketWatch from early 1999 to mid 2003. I had thought that was as wild as you could get. In Singapore I edited coverage of the SARS crisis throughout Asia and amazing rise of China’s economy and companies. I couldn’t imagine much bigger events or more amazing changes on markets. How wrong I was. These last two weeks make all those things look like mere blips and flurries. Could anyone have imagined two weeks ago that;

The US Treasury and ...