According to Mineweb, approval of the IMF gold sale by the US House of Reps occurred over 2 weeks ago with the Senate approving it a couple of days later.

I posted such back on 6/19 with my comment that "This is really sneaky, burying the IMF gold-sale bit inside a bill for funding in Iraq and Afghanistan. Legislators have learned that voting the bill down because they're against the gold piece will get them hung out to dry, since they will be accused of voting against the Iraq/Afghanistan effort when re-election time rolls around. I hate it when they pull this stuff. They probably knew it wouldn't stand on its own and had to resort to dirty politics, imo, to finess the naysayers."

Gartman's article is a poorly and hastily written piece of garbage, imo, and is more reflective of where he's coming from than good reporting. Below is another take on the renewal of the Central Bank Gold Agreement by the central banks which is the exact opposite of what Gartman says. As if he didn't know. It's a couple of paragraphs from a much larger article on the IMF proposed gold sales on the Mineweb site.

"In their April Fortis Bank metals monthly, the London based VM Group commented that "There are some good arguments against a CBGA renewal. The original 1999 Agreement arose from a structural weakness in the gold market. Back then, a class of investors (the Central Banks) believed they were massively overweight in gold and wanted to sell; the Central Banks decided to collaborate on a selling programme in order to ensure that they drip-fed gold onto a market that was already very weak. Those conditions are arguably no longer relevant.

"If there is no renewal of the CBGA, that would send a tremendously bullish signal to the gold price, at a time today when there are many more actors on the buy-side (such as private investors) and an obviously slowing interest to sell.

"This would boost gold's status as a reserve asset, giving holders greater flexibility in how they bought and sold it. It would also encourage other Central Banks with large forex reserves but little gold (such as China) to buy. After all who wants to buy something for which they need an Agreement in order to re-sell?"

http://www.mineweb.co.za/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page72068?oid=85171&sn=Detail