IMF Completes 403.3 Tonne Gold Sales Program

I'm going to start off the 'critical reads' section the same as I did yesterday... with a couple of graphs. The first one is the "Three-Year CRB Chart" courtesy of Australian reader Wesley Legrand. It's obvious that the CRB is still a long way away from its 2008 highs. Once again, no words of explanation are necessary.

Also from 'the land down under' is this graph from Nick Laird over at sharelynx.com. I've titled it "8 Metals From 2010". This is another graph that doesn't need any embellishment.

Today's first item is a GATA release of a Wall Street Journal story that was posted shortly after midnight. The headline from The Wall Street Journal reads "Trader Holds $3 Billion of Copper in London"... and Chris Powell's headline reads "Commodity market concentration starts to worry even Wall Street Journal"... and the link to this very interesting story that's well worth your time, is here.

GoldMoney founder, Free Gold Money Report editor, and GATA consultant James Turk writes that Britain may beat the United States to hyperinflation. Turk's commentary is headlined "Serious Problems Ahead for the British Pound". It's a short read, with a terrific graph that's worth the trip all by itself... and the link is here.

James also has a short blog posted over at King World News. That piece is headlined "Writing on the Wall -- Hyperinflation Is Very Near". James tells Eric that hyperinflation is near as governments continuing monetizing their debt... and debt holders begin to doubt the value of their assets. The link is here.

Well, it's a 'Hat Trick' for James in this column. Here's an audio interview with James that was done by Dr. Dave Janda of "Operation Freedom" over the last weekend. James covers a tremendous amount of ground in this interview... and the link to the mp3 file is here.

And here's "Part 2 of the Interview With Jim Rickards". Eric King sent me the link a few minutes after midnight. I ran "Part 1" in this column yesterday, so here's the rest... and it will take about 10 minutes of your time. The link is here.

My last five stories are all gold or silver related. The first is posted over at the South African website capetimes.co.za and is courtesy of reader 'David in California'. The headline reads "De Beers and Anglo hunt offshore gold". One has to wonder why De Beers is suddenly interested in gold exploration... and offshore gold exploration to boot. The link to the story is here.

Here's a gold story that was sure a surprise to me when I saw it posted as a GATA release yesterday. It was a Reuters piece headlined "IMF completes 403.3 tonne gold sales program". I wonder who got the last 100 tonnes or so, because, as the story states... "the IMF has not yet provided details of sales in November or December." I'll certainly be interested in who got the rest of the IMF gold tranche that they had for sale. And they're certainly being quiet as church mice about all this, as normally they shout gold sales from the rooftops. One has to wonder what's going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. The link to this very short must read story is here.

Here's a GATA release headlined "Built back into monetary system, gold may stay up, Davies tells CNBC Europe". The roughly 8-minute video interview is imbedded in the GATA release... and the link to that is here.

Here's another gold-related story that I found out about through a GATA release. This is an AP offering that was filed early yesterday morning from Hanoi... and the headline reads "Vietnamese seek safety in gold as currency wobbles". Vietnamese are scurrying to buy gold and U.S. dollars as inflation soars... and the country's credit rating gets cut. This article is anabsolute must read... and the link is here.

Lastly today, is this Ted Butler offering.

Since the historic CFTC meeting on December 16th about position limits, silver analyst Ted Butler has written two articles to his paid subscribers. Normally, I would swipe a couple of paragraphs from each of these and pass them along. But, as I told Ted, it would have been impossible to do either of these articles justice in my column, without stealing huge swaths from both... which I was not prepared to do... even with full accreditation.

Fortunately for us, Ted decided to publish the first of these articles in the clear... and this one is posted over at the investmentrarities.com website... and is headlined "A Show Stopper". This is definitely another must read... and you'll probably have to run through it a couple of times to do it justice, as there's a lot of information to digest. The link is here.