Gold & Silver Rise with Stocks, Dollar Slips as Bernanke Denies Fed Monetization

From Chris Mullen at GoldSeek.com...

Gold saw modest gains in Asia on Wednesday, and rose almost $10 an ounce in London to reach $1161.54 by 09:00 ET, before it fell back off to almost unchanged by late morning in New York.

The Gold Price then stormed back to $1160.67 in the next hour of trade and ended with a gain of 0.6% on the day.

The Gold Price in Euros remained at about €848 an ounce.

Silver Prices rose 30 cents to $18.49 by the New York opening, before paring gains midmorning but still ending with a gain of 1.2%.

Platinum gained $11.50 to $1722.50, and copper rose to about $3.61.

Gold Mining and silver equities rose roughly 1% by late morning and stayed at about that level for the rest of trade.

Oil rose about 2% after the Energy Information Administration reported that US crude stockpile inventories fell 2.2 million barrels last week – the first drop in eleven weeks - while gasoline inventories fell 1.1 million barrels and distillates rose 1.1 million barrels.

The US Dollar index and Treasuries fell after better than expected earnings reports sent the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P roughly 1% higher by the end of trade.

New data showed Consumer Prices rising less quickly than analysts forecasts in March, while Retail Sales were stronger than forecast.

In response to a question before the joint economic committee, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said the central bank would not print money to pay US Treasury debt, because many obligations are either short-term or indexed for inflation. Monetization "wouldn't have a substantial effect, even if...there were a willingness to do that, which of course, there is not," he said.

The Fed's latest Beige Book of analysis meantime noted that the "Economic recovery is spreading to most parts of the country. Merchants are seeing better sales and factories are boosting production, but many companies are still wary of ramping up hiring."

Thursday at 08:30am ET brings Initial US Jobless Claims for last week, expected at 440,000. The Empire Manufacturing Index for April is expected at 24.00.

Then at 09:00 ET comes the long-term TIC investment flow data for Jan., forecast to show $38.9 billion entering US capital. Capacity Utilization for March follows at 09:15, expected at 73.3% with Industrial Production forecast to show 0.7% growth.

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