Employers announced 50,462 layoffs last month

The number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms surged in August to their highest in half a year, with industrial goods manufacturers the hardest hit, a report on Thursday showed.

Employers announced 50,462 layoffs last month, up 33.8 percent from 37,701 in July, according to the report from consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

The August job cuts were up 57 percent from the same time a year ago. For 2013 so far, employers have announced 347,095 job losses, close to the 352,185 that were seen in the first eight months of last year.

Industrial goods manufacturers saw the biggest layoffs, cutting 22,162 employees, the largest total for the sector since January 2009.

"Heavy job cuts in the industrial goods sector are never a good thing, as they can be indicative of widening cracks in the economy's foundation," said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

"However, the August surge in industrial goods job cuts was driven largely by falling global demand for mining equipment," he said. Read more >>

"Gold Set To Rally" - Goldman Expects Gold To Promptly Rise To $1,480

As we are experiencing a furious regime change, the sellside positional updates are coming fast and furious. The latest major recommendation change comes again from Goldman which has just reiterated its belief gold will reach its 3 month target of $1,480 shortly. Of course, after a Cramer recommendation to buy the metal, this is the only call for a higher gold price that should be of great concern to everyone. From Goldman: "We expect gold prices to rally toward our 3-month price target of $1480/toz, and continue to recommend a long gold trade. More...

Super-rich investors buy gold by ton

The world's wealthiest people have responded to economic worries by buying gold by the bar -- and sometimes by the ton -- and by moving assets out of the financial system, bankers catering to the very rich said on Monday.

Fears of a double-dip downturn have boosted the appetite for physical bullion as well as for mining company shares and exchange-traded funds, UBS executive Josef Stadler told the Reuters Global Private Banking Summit.

"They don't only buy ETFs or futures; they buy physical gold," said Stadler, who runs the Swiss bank's services for clients with assets of at least $50 million to invest. More...

Spot Gold Surges

Image via WikipediaGold is rapidly approaching its all time high intraday high (and someone please inform Dennis Gartman that Gold in euro terms is close to its record again), as spot has surged $12 in a few minutes and is now near $1,260 (record intraday was $1,265 set back in June). In addition to the CHF and the JPY, gold is once again the safety trade. This comes hot on the heels of the recent report issued by UniCredit SpA’s Jochen Hitzfeld, the most accurate gold forecaster tracked by Bloomberg in the last three quarters, in which the analyst raised his estimate for the metal’s average price next year by 12 percent to $1,400 an ounce, and for 2012 to $1,600. More...