Courtesy of Project Mayhem at Zero Hedge

US mint suspends production of gold eagles, gold once again hits all-time highs, Tungsten comes back in fashion, Council on Foreign Relations propaganda rag asserts total dollar collapse “well before 2030″.

The Council on Foreign Relations propaganda rag Foreign Affairs latest issue states:

At the same time, inreasing U.S. demands on foreign investors would probably become unsustainable and produce a severe drop in the value of the dollar well before 2030, possibly bringing on a hard landing.

-Foreign Affairs, Volume 88, No. 6, November / December 2009, p22.

In another case of “color me unsurprised” the US mint has suspended the production of gold and silver eagles citing “depleted inventories of the metals”. As can be seen by our wonderful colored chart, sales have skyrocketed indicating public non-confidence in the US dollar. Or better yet, public non-confidence in hallucinated ETF computer-pixels.

For those wishing to look beneath the surface, this is simply another confirmation of supply tightness in the gold market. Though officially the US mint has run out of blanks, it would make more sense that the Western oligarchs have simply decided is enough is enough and do not wish to further feed the fire of gold price appreciation until 2010.Perhaps it is simply not ‘that time’ yet, which would make sense considering the leaked information out of Bilderberg 2009 that the world is not yet ripe for the much-anticipated global currency crisis. But it’s coming. We even have idiots on CNBC proclaiming global currency destruction , remember? Something has to give and the easiest failure will be in the multi-trillion FOREX markets.

But good luck getting your gold coins at spot. Or silver coins for that matter, (which as we all know are poised for explosive gains sometime in the next five years). In the meantime, we have the brewing scandal in the LBMA ‘good delivery’ markets, which may or may not be related the the suspension in production of gold and silver eagles. For those not aware, there is a possible scandal in the “highly liquid” international gold market, after gold bars were discovered in Hong Kong which were actually technically advanced fakes with tungsten metal inside. This is possible because tungsten has almost identical mass as gold. With the addition of transition metal alloys, such fakes can be indistinguishible from the real deal except with drilling the bars and conducting assays.

Of course, the various funds around the world will be quick to assure you that you have not been duped, because it IS after all the LBMA market, and such a market could never have possibly been contaminated with fake bars. Something is to be said for this since retail customers have not complained, and you’d expect jewelery manufacturers to be pissed if they were delivered tungsten , no?  But the international fraudsters in the banking system are both clever and arrogant. It is certainly possible there is systemic fraud confined to the ETFs where generally the “bars” stay in the vault, rarely delivered, and the paper claims are what trade. Perhaps this gradual erosion of confidence is part of the reason gold and silver coin sales are skyrocketing.

Regardless of the tungsten scandal, entities such as BullionVault are definitely more trustworthy than JP Morgan’s hallucinated gold ETF, but there are a few questions. Trust is only as good as the weakest counterparty in the chain. Through published correspondence by Bullionvault clients, we know ZERO assays of gold bars were conducting during last years’ fund audit. That is, no bars were drilled. Bars were precisely weighed — but as we all know now, tungsten metal alloys can be constructed to milligram tolarances which would be undetectable without assay. Hopefully these technically advanced gold bar fakes were confined to China.

As for the mint suspension of coins, the move may backfire and drive prices up even further, perhaps even with Butler’s premium appearing in gold and silver eagles, at least temporarily. Of course, with the US government’s repeated suspension of gold and silver coin production, we know they are no longer meeting their obligations to the public under the law. Shocking, I know.

As for gold, it is quietly meandering around the end-of-year target ($1200)  I  issued approx 3 months ago.

Soon enough this will all blow sky-high…

Skip to about the 7:45 mark to hear Rick Santelli say, “Central banks have to be petrified about gold going to $2,000! Didn’t Larry Summers write a paper saying that central banks have to keep a lid on the price of gold for obvious reasons?”

It keeps getting more and more interesting with nary a hint of the gold price faltering.

Gold now at $1,185. What happens when the DXY hits 70 in a few days?

And the diagonal, soon to be vertical channel

Gold is on a tear this morning, just breaking $1,182.

The dollar is losing serious ground against the Euro during early AM trading. Check out the Euro/Dollar spike in the second chart below.

Vincent Fernando of Money Game

RBC has calculated that gold-related shares are currently pricing in a long-term gold price of $940, according to a chart highlighted by FTAlphaville.

While such excel-model calculations always need to be taken with a grain of salt, by RBC’s numbers Barrick Gold (ABX) appears as relatively under-valued. It would be interesting to see by what model RBC arrives at these valuations. Barrick, for example, doesn’t only produce gold.

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Zero Hedge

Early spot gold action indicates something is afoot in the gold market. Hitting an absolute record of $1,164 mere minutes ago, the momentum chasing algo funds are now in the picture, set to do to gold what they have been doing to the S&P futures and the SPY day after day for months now: if little volume will cause a move, look for the momentum chasers to crawl out of the woodwork. Yet the key factor determining today’s gold price: Comex gold option expiration later today. Over the past several weeks, speculators have accumulated a 3 million ounce option position with a $1,200 strike. With gold flying on the tiniest gust of speculative mania, the possibility that we may see a 1,200 handle on gold seems less and less improbable.

I didn’t believe it either until I saw the proof with my own eyes… Click here for the full report Genius chess player with a certified I.Q. of 157 unveils his ’sneaky’ (and 100% legal) trading system which can… … secure net profits up to $1250 … not in days or weeks … but just 59 minutes or less Click here for the full report

Recent third quarter data from the World Gold Council showed that while gold supply fell 5%, demand (inclusive of investors) fell a much larger 34%.

Yet despite this negative disparity between supply and demand change, gold prices rose during the period.

Hard Assets Investor: Year-over-year demand has dropped in each of gold’s three market segments: for investments, off 46 percent; for jewelry, down 30 percent; and for industrial use, off 11 percent.

Gold prices, however, have risen universally. In key markets such as India and Turkey, gold prices spiked 15 percent and 33 percent, respectively. In dollar terms, gold rose 12 percent year-over-year, while euro prices rose 11 percent.

The bull market may have put gold out of reach for many consumers. That may account for some of the renewed interest in “the poor man’s gold”—silver.

Read more here.

The gold market continues to steam roll ahead as it gets closer to our $1,300 target zone.

As we have stated before, gold is in a fully fledged bull market and sharp pullbacks are to be expected. This is not to say the bull market is over; it is more to say that pullbacks should be looked upon as opportunities to add to or initiate new positions. Click on the chart to view the video

The message the market is sending to Bernanke is melting up with each passing day.