Good news, finally, for owners of gold necklaces, bracelets, watches et al as the commodity staged its highest one-day rally in the last 15 years following an announcement by a group of European central banks that they would limit gold sales from their official reserves.
The limit has been set at 400 tonnes per annum over the next five years which is a good deal less than people had originally expected. Included in the agreement were the Bank of England and Swiss National Bank, both of whom spooked markets by offloading gold reserves earlier this year and knocking prices to 20-year lows of just under $255 (€244) an ounce. Gold opened the week at $269.80. Shares in gold mining companies have raced ahead too - the Australian Gold index was up by over 17 per cent.
It's bad news, of course, for the man in my life who was assuming that low prices would translate into inexpensive Christmas presents, or indeed, a switch out of jewellery and into something that would make me more useful around the home, like a new mop and bucket or a year's supply of furniture polish. You win some, you lose some!
Another winner at the moment is sterling. Following the Monetary Policy Committee's somewhat unexpected rate hike a couple of weeks ago, the currency continues its inexorable rise, particularly as momentum swings towards retaining the interest rate status quo in Europe. Despite howls of protests from manufacturers, lots of commentators are suggesting that they're going to do it again which has meant short-term flows bringing the currency to its best levels against the euro. Right now, a euro will get you less than 64p sterling, which is not exactly how many people had expected things to turn out.
Last year, I remember, most of us felt that flows would be the other way and that sterling would decline in value. It wasn't so much that people thought the euro would be particularly strong, it was simply that British monetary policy didn't inspire a lot of confidence and sterling seemed, at the time, to be at particularly high levels anyway and due for a bit of retracement. However, the current bout of strength has left corporate Britain in a bit of a quandary. Although the economy is picking up, British exports are becoming even more expensive and business is caught in the nutcracker of possibly higher rates and a higher currency to contend with. Meanwhile, the market continues to think sterling provides at least short-term value and Britons can't see why anyone would want to give up such a wonderful currency to be part of a European ideal.
I had my own run-in with sterling a few days ago - although not in a trading environment. While in Scotland at the weekend we wandered into a crowded pub and ordered some drinks. We handed over £20 (€31.52) but only got back change of a tenner. When we pointed out the error the bar staff were apologetic, but told us that we'd have to come back in the morning because they couldn't confirm what we'd said until they totalled the tills at the end of the evening.
I mentioned that, since we'd just arrived that day and since the sterling we'd handed over was part of a batch we'd bought at the current stifling exchange rate, we could actually give them the serial number of the note. The canny Scots were having none of this. Lots of notes were passed in an evening, they told me.
They couldn't definitely tell if the one I said I'd given them was really the one I'd handed over. I pointed out that this note was a British note, not a Scottish one. The barman told me that they got loads of "damned British notes".
We only had a small window of opportunity the following day to retrieve the money but it had become a matter of principle with me by then and so, the following morning, we made our way back to the bar and asked had they checked. After brief consultation, the tenner was handed over with smiles and apologies for the inconvenience.
The bar had been recommended to us by the taxi driver who brought us in from the airport. It had been recommended to one of my colleagues by a different taxi driver. It's called the Rutland and it shows how tightly the Scots can run an economy if they want! No wonder their banks are leading the world takeover charge . . .
The traffic to and from Dublin Airport was horrendous. I know that talking about traffic is as boring as talking about house prices but it's usually rush hour traffic we're complaining about. This was far from rush hour and it was still bumper-to-bumper stuff. And last Friday evening it took an age to get from Terenure to Clontarf because of log-jam traffic in the city centre. That was around midnight and, to be fair, it was caused by roadworks. I support the idea of non-rush hour roadworks, but I'm stunned to realise that they can cause traffic jams at midnight.
There's a lot of talk around the lunch tables of yet more taxes on motorists, especially on people who drive to work. It's a kind of stick without the carrot approach - make it more and more expensive so that you're eventually forced out of the car. They have a slightly different approach in the US. At least the Fed, that bastion of nirvana economic management, has a different approach.
The Fed pays its employees an allowance of $21 dollars per month to use public transport. I've always found that if you give someone an allowance to do something, they hate not using it! The mind boggles, all the same, at the idea of Alan Greenspan wandering around the subway while he thinks over his next Humphrey Hawkins testimony.
I suppose the Central Bank could take the idea on board. There is, of course, a rather spacious car-park beneath Dame Street which I'm sure they wouldn't want to go to waste. But they could use it for storing Exchange Control files. Or their files on Cayman Island banks. Or offshore accounts
