Reuters - The world economy is recovering moderately but still faces challenges such as the need for medium-term fiscal consolidation, the IMF's First Managing Director, John Lipsky, said on Sunday.

Reuters - Wall Street closed a stellar week on Friday after recent economic data, including a stronger-than-expected labor market report, bolstered optimism that the economy would not fall back into recession.

Reuters - The U.S. government is likely to take a loss on General Motors Co in the first offering of the automaker's stock, six people familiar with preparations for the landmark IPO said.

Reuters - Chinese officials have ordered state companies to meet investment bankers to explore ways to block BHP Billiton's $39 billion bid for Potash Corp, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.

AP - Summer is rarely a hot sales season for Campbell Soup Co., and this year's sweltering June and July made that even more true, but the company said Friday that cost-cutting and strong drink sales helped its net income climb.

AFP - European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet called Saturday for Europe to hold a united position on refomin the International Monetary Fund.

AFP - Brazil's Petrobras unveiled one of the world's biggest share offerings Friday, a sale of up to 64 billion dollars in new stock to finance oil exploration aimed at turning Brazil into a leading oil exporter of the 21st century.

Kinross Gold [TSX: K] (NYSE: KGC) and Red Back Mining (RBIFF.PK) [TSX: RBI] have both rejected shareholder advisory business Institutional Shareholder Services' (ISS) negative recommendation of the two gold mining companies' potential merger.

In early August, Kinross announced that it would acquire the remaining shares of Red Back that it did not already own, in a US$7.1 billion deal, or C$30.50 per Red Back share.

Goldcorp (NYSE:GG) [TSX:G], the world`s second largest gold producer by market capitalization, has announced that it will acquire Australian mining business Andean Resources (ANDPF.PK) [TSX and ASX: AND], a company whose main asset is its Cerro Negro gold project in Santa Cruz, Argentina, in a C$3.6 billion share and cash deal, beating an earlier $3.2 billion offer by Eldorado Gold Corp.

Both companies are vying for Andean`s Cerro Negro gold project, which is an advanced-stage, high-grade vein system, comprising 215 square kilometers. It currently has indicated resources of 2.54 million ounces of gold and 23.56 million ounces of silver, while inferred resources total 523,000 ounces of gold and 3.12 million ounces of silver.

I’ve done a number of interviews on gold recently and the number one question I get most from reporters is—can gold prices go higher?

My answer is yes.

By Luke Burgess

Due to a sharp decrease in foreign exchange reserves following the Indo-China War in 1962, the government of India enacted the Gold Control Act.

The case for metals remains not that of outright inflation but that of central banks' prolonged liquidity drives. Currencies will gain/fall versus one another, but fresh asset purchases will maintain gold and silver ahead.

Rising metals remained the consistent play over the past 2 months, supporting my near-term gold outlook for $1270/oz and $1,330 by Q4. Meanwhile, Silver finally breaks the $19.80 ceiling to attain its highest level since March 2008. Unlike gold, silver has yet break its 2008 record high of $21.35/oz. Players are gauging this level with high interest. Each time gold's rise hits the headlines, it steals the limelight from its cheaper cousin, silver. But as the charts show below, silver has not only followed closely on the rallies, but usually outperformed gold during the general advances in metals, as shown via the falling Gold/Silver ratio.

Did you see the bids for Andean Resources (ANDPF.PK, TSX:AND) announced yesterday and today, almost within minutes of each other? First Eldorado Gold (EGO, TSX:ELD), which had been circling and watching its prey for over a year comes out with an announcement of a merger proposal valuing Andean at $3.2 billion. The offer was a whopping 62% premium to Andean’s closing price of $4.79 Cdn. Then in the early morning hours, Gold Corp (GG, TSX:G) announces a buyout of $3.4 Billion USD, that had the approval of Andean’s board. What is going on here? The frantic nature of these proposed deals make it seem like there is a dire rush to buy emerging gold properties

Buy or Die

August and the summer are now over and investors and savers are now focusing on the autumnal months ahead. Stocks internationally had their worst August performance since 2001 and the ISEQ fell 7.2% in the month. Mounting concerns about the health of the economic recovery in Ireland, the US and internationally saw investors move into government bonds and gold. Some respite came due to the falling price of oil - oil was down 8.9%, its first monthly decline since May.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the month 4.3% lower, while the S&P 500 was down 4.7%. The weak performance of equity markets was mirrored across the world's major financial centres, with the Nikkei 225 down 7.5% and Germany's Dax down 5.8%. Mining stocks on the FTSE helped it to only fall 0.6% in the month. With the S&P 500 index down 5.9% for the year and September being historically the worst month for stocks, traders are bracing for a continued downward bias.

by Brad Zigler

Real-time Monetary Inflation (last 12 months): -2.1%

This week, gold turned in another mixed performance against the world's reserve currencies. In addition to its appreciation against the U.S. dollar, bullion gained 0.3 percent against the yen and 0.6 percent vs. sterling. Gold gave up 0.5 percent to the euro and 0.9 percent to the Swiss franc.

Several times a week, Seeking Alpha's Jason Aycock asks money managers about their single highest-conviction position - what they would own (or short) if they could choose just one stock or ETF.

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Analyst Kevin Grewal is founder, editor and publisher of ETF Tutor, and editor at SmartStops.net and the ETF Institute. Previously, he worked as an analyst at a small hedge fund.

Which single asset class are you most bullish (or bearish) about in the coming year? What ETF position would you choose to best capture that?

Every day New York-based investment gurus Jeff Mosseri and Doug Loud make key decisions for their high net-worth clients. Many of those decisions involve strategically positioning investors in small- and micro-cap gold and silver plays. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, you will learn some of the names of those plays and how they use Mosseri and Loud as hedges against a failing economy.

The Gold Report: Today, we're talking with Jeff Mosseri, president of New York-based Greystone Asset Management and a director of Axiom Capital, as well as Doug Loud, who is the executive director of both companies. How do you go about making your clients money?

It’s that time of year again, folks. Welcome to September.

For all the commentary about gold entering its period of seasonal strength, within the realm of silver much of the attention has been focused on whether the white metal can break $20 on a sustained basis. While much of the recent media attention has been focused on gold setting new all-time highs, silver is nearing a showdown with the key $20 psychological and technical level. This echoes the debate that was taking place at this time last year regarding gold’s ability to break $1000.

So much for a lackluster summer and the summer doldrums as gold prices increased by around $100/oz in August 2010, to close at $1251.20/oz . As the chart shows, August has been a great month for gold prices setting the stage for a ‘Fall’ rally which we expect to be dramatically to the upside. The technical indicators are now in the overbought zone and we would normally expect gold to take a breather, however, these indicators have been known to stay high for prolonged periods of time.

By Christian DeHaemer

It's time to stop the whining on housing, jobs, and banks. If you don't like the current state of affairs in Washington and the politicians' cozy relationship with Wall Street — then vote the bums out. If you don't like the way the fiscal picture has shaped up — then stop believing the banksters and find a better place to invest.

By Brad Zigler

The past few weeks have been bullish for gold, in its bullion form and as an embed in mining stock prices. We've touched on the differential volatility of bullion and mining stocks before, most recently in "Appraising Gold Miners' Equity Risk." In that piece, we compared the performance and volatility of the Market Vector Gold Miners ETF (GDX) and its components to bullion proxied by the SPDR Gold Shares Trust (GLD).

By Brad Zigler

In my refrigerator, a jar of something called "sandwich spread" has been lurking for weeks. I honestly don't know how it got there, but I suspect one of my Canadian friends who's been invited over for our backyard barbecues may have brought his favorite along and then forgot to export it from our premises.

Tuesday, Bloomberg revealed the results of its gold price survey. Bloomberg surveyed 29 analysts about expected gold price highs in 2011. The median of the survey was $1,500.

In parallel, Bloomberg also compiled 17 forecasts for next year's average gold price, the median estimate being $1,247.50.