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Gold Tops $1,600, Surges to Record in Longest Rally in 31 Years on Debt

Gold Tops $1,600, Surges to Record in Longest Rally in 31 Years on Debt

Gold capped on the longest rally in 31 years at $1,607.90. This demand for gold has been boosted by debt concern in Europe as well as financial troubles here in the US. Deficit talks are getting closer to the deadline causing more stress to the financial market.

By Pham-Duy Nguyen and Nicholas Larkin
Jul 18, 2011 11:18 AM MT
BLOOMBERG

Gold rose to a record $1,607.90 an ounce, capping the longest rally in 31 years, as debt concerns in Europe and the U.S. boosted demand for the metal as a haven.

President Barack Obama is pressing congressional leaders for a multitrillion-dollar agreement in talks on cutting the deficit. A default would cause more panic than the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008, Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary, told CNN in an interview broadcast yesterday. The euro fell as European leaders plan to meet again on the debt crisis.

“There’s just a lack of confidence in government and currency,” Frank Lesh, a trader at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago, said in a telephone interview. “There’s a flight-to- safety into gold. When Europe fixes their house and the U.S. fixes our house, maybe then there’ll be in a correction in gold.”

Gold futures for August delivery rose $12.30, or 0.8 percent, to settle at $1,602.40 at 1:37 p.m. on the Comex in New York. The metal was up for the 10th straight session, the longest rally since January 1980, when the price climbed to $873, a record at the time.

UBS AG said in a report that its Zurich sales desk on July 15 had the biggest gold-coin demand in a year. The metal denominated in euros and pounds jumped to records after European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet reiterated his opposition to any restructuring of Greek debt.

‘Fearful’ on Euro

“Europeans primarily are fearful about the future of their currency and are exiting positions there for Swiss francs and gold,” Dennis Gartman, an economist, said in his Suffolk, Virginia-based Gartman Letter. “Were we a German lawyer, or doctor, or small business owners, we’d be buying gold.”

Gold has doubled since early December 2008 as the Federal Reserve kept interest rates at a record low and governments spent trillions of dollars to prop up the economy after the most-severe global recession since World War II.

The Treasury Department has warned the U.S. debt ceiling must be lifted by Aug. 2 to avoid default. Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service may downgrade the government’s credit rating if Congress doesn’t act.

Silver futures for September delivery rose $1.271, or 3.3 percent, to $40.342 an ounce, the highest settlement since May 3. The price jumped 9.6 percent in the previous three sessions. On April 25, the price reached $49.845, a 31-year high.

Palladium futures for September delivery rose $13.95, or 1.8 percent, to $794.60 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Platinum futures for October delivery rose $19.90, or 1.1 percent, to $1,775.40 an ounce.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nicholas Larkin in London at nlarkin1@bloomberg.net; Pham-Duy Nguyen in Seattle at pnguyen@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net.

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