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Gold is unique among commodities in that the annual production is not consumed in the conventional sense, other than ~15% that is used in industry. Instead, gold is and has been used as jewelry, money, and to store wealth for thousands of years.

The following are the reasons that the price of gold will rise in the immediate future as demand increases and supplies diminish . . . .

Gold will climb as much as 14 percent this year and average $1,753 an ounce after posting its longest winning streak in at least nine decades, a London Bullion Market Association poll of traders and analysts showed . . . .

International banks received a new year fillip when regulators announced that the first ever global liquidity standards would be less onerous than expected and not be fully enforced until 2019, four years later than expected.

Aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2008 bank collapses, the “liquidity coverage ratio” (LCR) announced on Sunday marks the first time that global regulators have sought to require individual banks to hold enough cash and easy-to-sell assets to allow them to survive a short-term market crisis. . . .

A good detective always looks for a motive when beginning an investigation. And so, when Nick Colas discovered that the number of $100 bills printed last year suddenly spiked, the chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group decided to figure out what was going on . . . .

Brazil boosted gold reserves for a third month in November to double the country’s holdings since August as central banks from Russia to Belarus and South Korea add the metal to diversify their assets . . . .

(FORBES) - Gold has divided the analyst community through this volatile 2012, with some, like Goldman Sachs, calling for the end of its decade-long rally, while others expect it to average $2,000 an ounce by the end of next year.  There’s one thesis that has built consensus, though: gold is set to rally in the first half of the year as a result of the Fed’s latest round of quantitative easing, possibly to fresh all-time highs . . . .

China’s role in the global silver market has dramatically changed over the past decade. Once a small player in the global market, China today is the world’s leading market for both physical investment and paper trading of silver futures and other similar products, and is the second largest silver fabricator today. Chinese demand for the white metal is expected to achieve further strong growth in the years ahead, according to a report by Thomson Reuters GFMS released today by the Silver Institute . . . .

* Lawmakers want taxpayer stake in mining boom

* No royalties paid or records kept under current rules

* Reform could mean billions in new revenue

Revising a 19th-century U.S. law that governs the mining of gold and other precious metals could add billions of dollars to federal coffers at a time of tight budgets, according to some Democratic lawmakers . . . .

Gold, copper, silver, platinum and palladium will outperform other commodities next year on easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve and supply constraints, according to Bank of America Corp. . . . .

Fool’s gold? CFTC says 12 firms sell phantom metals.

The CFTC is cracking down on firms playing up demand for metals during these uncertain economic times.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced Wednesday, it filed a civil injunctive enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida against 12 firms and their executives for fraudulently marketing illegal, off exchange retail commodity contracts . . . .