Gold Spot Price Open: $1,302
Gold Spot Price Close: $1,297
Change in Gold Spot Price: -$5
Silver Spot Price Open: $21.92
Silver Spot Price Close: $21.91
Change in Silver Spot Price: -$0.01
Gold and silver remained mostly stagnant on Thursday as investors were showing an increased appetite for risk. When all was said and done, gold lost about 5 dollars while silver lost only about a penny or so.
On Thursday, many Republicans from the House were seen making some preliminary moves in an effort to raise the debt ceiling before the fast approaching October 17th “deadline.” Additionally, President Obama sat down with House of Representatives GOP leaders to discuss the possibility of raising the debt ceiling. Though today was positive in that we are finally seeing some effort put forth to resolve the debt issue, With that being said, however, the debt ceiling issue is far from being figured out.
Some US economic data was finally released on Thursday, and though the weekly jobless claims report showed a rise in claims, the data cannot be blindly accepted as it does not include complete data from all 50 states. With the partial government shutdown still moving along it is no surprise that this economic report was more or less unreliable.
Ironically enough, the G-20 finance ministers and central bankers meeting kicked off in Washington DC today and it is no surprise that the main topic of discussion was the United States’ budget debacle. The meeting’s members alluded to the fact that overall world economy will begin to suffer if a budget is not reached soon. We have been witnessing growing investor anxiety over the past week or so, though we have fortunately not seen any real panic yet.
It continues to amaze the US general population that their lawmakers are so divided on an issue that they have had a very long time to prepare for. This partial shutdown is now in its 10th day, which means that over 800,000 government employees are still left without work. This is not only infuriating for the currently laid off government employees, it is wholly embarrassing for every American citizen as they see, day in and day out, a group of people clearly incapable of doing what they were elected to do.
