Gold jumped to a record above $1,200 an ounce in New York as the slumping dollar spurred investor demand for an inflation hedge. Silver rose to a 16-month high.
Gold climbed as the U.S. Dollar Index fell after China's manufacturing grew at the fastest pace in five years. The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 commodities rose to a five- week high, led by silver, cocoa and energy. Morgan Stanley and BlackRock Advisors LLC increased their gold assets in the third quarter, U.S. filings show.
"There's investment demand for gold from everywhere," said Frank Lesh, a trader at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago. "The dollar has pushed gold to new highs. Gold is in an uptrend and there's no sign whatsoever that the trend will stop."
- Bloomberg
Real-estate investment superstar Sam Zell says the Obama administration needs to change its economic policy.
"I do believe that the current administration is insensitive to the risks of the scale of debt being created," Zell, chairman of Equity International, told CNBC.
"If there isn't any radical change in this current administration's direction, it's very hard to imagine that we're not going to be confronted with inflationary pressures going forward."
The Congressional Budget Office forecast that government debt will total 61 percent of GDP next year.
Zell says economic weakness may prevent inflation from rising much for the next year or two. "But if you continue to raise the debt levels, if you continue the levels of deficit spending that's going on, it's just mathematically impossible for us not to have inflation."
- Newsmax