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Gold Hits 25-Year High MoneyNews
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According to Forbes, after 19 years at the helm of the Fed, Greenspan has agreed to become an honorary adviser to Britain's Treasury. Greenspan will also serve as a consultant to his former opposite number in the money game, Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom's chancellor of the Exchequer, which is the United Kingdom's Treasury Department. Brown was delighted by the news, calling Greenspan's willingness to team up with him "good news for us." Brown said Greenspan will be a valuable ally in areas relating to global economic change.
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Best of all, Brown – and the U.K. population – will get Greenspan's advice for free, as he has agreed to be an unpaid adviser. The two should hit it off well, having formed a trans-Atlantic mutual admiration society. Forbes recalled that Brown has called Greenspan "the world's greatest economic leader of our generation" and Greenspan once said that Gordon Brown is "without peer amongst the world's economic policymakers."
Also of note, Greenspan is now Sir Alan, having received an honorary knighthood – a distinction he shares with fellow Americans, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
2. Gold Hits 25-Year High on Iran Fears Gold hit its highest level in a quarter-century in London Thursday. The spike occurred "as gains in crude-oil prices increased speculation that inflation will accelerate, eroding the value of assets such as stocks and bonds," according to Bloomberg News. Last year investors bought up gold to hedge against the inflationary threats resulting record oil prices. As a result, the precious metal jumped 18%. This recent spike comes just before the United Nations considers "referring Iran's nuclear program to the Security Council, which may impose sanctions on OPEC's second-largest exporter," says Bloomberg. The UN claimed Wednesday that it had discovered evidence suggesting that Iran plans to build nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, experts expect gold prices to remain buoyant as rising oil prices threaten inflation. "Gold for immediate delivery rose as much as $3.85, or 0.7%, to $573.20 an ounce, the highest since January 1981," said the article.
Ross Norman, an analyst at England's Saffron Walden, says the ensuing geopolitical tension and rising oil prices resulting from the tensions with Iran are doubly helpful for gold. He adds that gold may shoot as high as $580 by week's end.
3. Microsoft Stung by European Antitrust Laws Microsoft has launched an attack on the European Commission over its antitrust ruling against the software giant, accusing the regulator of violating Microsoft's right to defend itself. Microsoft faces the threat of financial penalties of up to $2.4 million a day after the Commission charged the company in December with failing to comply with its 2004 antitrust ruling, the Financial Times reports. The Commission accused Microsoft of "abusing its near-monopoly in the PC operating system," and has given the company only until February 15 to comply with demands that it provide information on code that would allow competitors' products to communicate smoothly with servers running Microsoft operating systems. But Microsoft, in a strongly worded letter to the Commission, says it has not been given access to many of the documents the charges are based on. According to Microsoft, it has been given access to only 29 out of 100 relevant documents, and 25 of them were part of the correspondence between the Commission and Microsoft itself, according to the Financial Times. One Microsoft attorney wrote: "The absence of access is seriously prejudicing Microsoft's rights of defense."
A Commission spokesman said access to documents was still under discussion with Microsoft.
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