The Federal Reserve late Tuesday gave a passing mark to many US financial institutions in a round of stress tests designed to guage the survivability of firms in the wake of another credit crisis.

Certainly, the inflationary threat remains far enough away for Bernanke to ignore for the time being. US unemployment is still uncomfortably high at 9.7% and capacity utilisation is below 75%

The Fed’s somewhat surprising move to lift its discount rate 0.25% last week spurred some concern that the more important Fed Funds rate could also soon move north.

Gold prices on the Comex continued to slide Friday, with the yellow metal trading down for the seventh consecutive session, the commodity’s most protracted series of losses since early 2009. The most active market, gold for June delivery, dropped as low as $1357.60 per ounce in intraday trading, from an open of $1385.20, shedding almost two per cent.

The World Gold Council says in its most recent report that a global spike in gold jewelry buying over the first three months of the year was insufficient to compensate for sizable net outflows from gold exchange traded funds in the same period.

A stronger dollar has sent the price of gold crashing, as the yellow metal sheds more than $30 per ounce in morning trade Wednesday to hit a three week low.

Supplies of platinum are to remain in deficit this year according to global specialty chemicals company Johnson Matthey PLC in its annual market review published Monday. The review reported gross demand for platinum as having fallen 0.6 per cent to 8.045 million ounces in 2012, while supply fell 13 per cent to 5.64 million ounces.  The report attributed the shortness of supply to the mining strikes that last year beset South Africa – the country that accounts for about 80 per cent of the global supply of the metal -- and resulted in the lowest levels of platinum production since 2001.

Figures out Monday have shown just how feverishly Indians bought up bargain priced gold in April and the uptick in interest in the yellow metal was so pronounced, it has resulted in a major escalation in the level of the country’s current account deficit.