China and India wants to sell gold

Financial Chronical reports, India and China may press for the sale of the entire gold reserves of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to raise money for the least developed countries.
The IMF holds 103.4 million ounces (3,217 tonnes) of gold that, if sold, can fetch about $100 billion.
Both prime minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese president Hu Jintao will have to clear the proposal before the representatives of the two countries can take it up at the IMF spring meeting in June in Washington.
The G20 heads of state meeting in London earlier this month agreed to sell a part of the IMF gold to raise $6 billion for poor countries during 2009-11.

This is interesting devlopment,lets see the impact on Gold price in coming weeks.

Sir Harry the Schultz writes this in his latest mailing,"The history of reserve currencies reveals that the position of a country as a superpower (whose currency acts as a reserve currency) tends to rotate in a natural cycle of around 100 years. Will history repeat? From 1450 to 1530 it was Portuguese (80 years). From 1530 to 1640 (110 years) it was Spanish. From 1640 to 1720 (80 years) it was Dutch. From 1720 to 1815 (95 years) it was French. From 1815 to 1920 (105 years) it was British. And then the US dollar gradually dominated the scene until 2009 of a period of 89 years.

The United States dollar is the most widely-held reserve currency in the world today. Throughout the last decade, an average of two thirds of the total allocated foreign exchange reserves of countries have been in U.S. dollars. For this reason, the U.S. dollar is said to have “reserve-currency status”, making it somewhat easier for the United States to run higher trade deficits with greatly postponed economic impact.

On stock market front ,Citigroup swung to a $1.59 billion first-quarter profit from a $5 billion loss a year earlier. Loss Per Share of $0.18 , valueline was expecting loss on .90 in 1Q. I consider it to be very good performance but most of the earning coming from trading relating activity, for credit card loss in coming months picture is still gloomy. Net credit losses are $7.2b.Tier 1 capital ratio was approximately 11.8% versus 7.7% in the first quarter 2008.





Market looking tired. The Dow was up over 50 today but sold off at the close.

Have a nice weekend.