The sale of one-ounce versions of the American Eagle coins struck 1.493 million in 2009, the highest number since 1999, according to U.S. Mint. The biggest gold dealer in Dubai reports a sales surge by 20% in the first three months of the year.

“Demand has increased in every segment.”

Tarek El Mdaka

U.S. Mint revealed Thursday how many gold American Eagle coins they produced last year.The biggest gold dealer in Dubai reports a sales surge by 20% in Q1. However, experts still disagree on how good an investment gold really is.

The sale struck 1.493 million one-ounce versions of the coin in 2009, the highest number since 1999, the statistics show.

About 110,000 half-ounce gold coins were made last year, along with the same number of quarter-ounce pieces.

Some 270,000 tenth-ounce American Eagles were created.

The U.S. Mint also report that it made 200,000 24-carat gold American Buffalo coins last year, a lot more than in 2007 and 2008 – however, significantly less than in 2006.

Sales of the 2010 edition of the American Buffalo gold coin began Thursday April 29th.

The 2009 version of the piece – which features designs put together by James Earle Fraser for the US five-cent coin in 1913 – were sold out just six weeks after being put on sale in October last year.

A 20% Increase In Q1

The biggest gold dealer in Dubai reports a sales surge by 20 per cent in the first three months of the year.

Speaking to Emirates Business, Kaloti Jewellery Group managing director Tarek El Mdaka said the increase in sales could be attributed to steady rises in demand for bullion from both jewelers and banks.

He added that the introduction of the Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange was also been welcome and had helped the organization to boost its business.

The firm sells more than 400 tonnes of the precious metal every year.

“Dubai has followed the international trend in gold sales. Demand has increased in every segment,” Mr El Mdaka commented.

This week, the seventh annual Dubai City of Gold Conference take place in the emirate.

Speakers will include representatives of the London Bullion Market Association, Dubai Gold & Jewelery Group, Standard Bank and Deutsche Bank, among other organizations.

“The Hottest Investments On The Planet”

Those who are looking to put their money into an asset class that can act as a hedge against falling currencies would be wise to invest in gold, according to Greg McCoach, editor of Wealth Daily.

“Gold will become one of the hottest investments on the planet,” he says.

He also makes a point of that those who put their money into the precious metal before the economic crisis will be sleeping well at night, knowing that their savings are not evaporating before their eyes.

Mr McCoach predicts the price of gold to “rise dramatically” against global currencies, which will take the yellow metal to an all-time high.

Gold acts as a traditional hedge for investors against the risk of inflation.

At the moment, those who have put their money into the asset class seem to do well as worldwide uncertainty about the financial markets grows.

But things could also change rapidly these days.

“A general strengthening of the USD could break the back of the recent speculative element in gold. Although we are long term bullish on gold (believing it will reach $1500 within five years), this trade seems to have become too easy and too widespread to pay out in the shorter term. A serious correction towards the $870 level could shake out the speculative community while keeping the metal in a longer term uptrend,” strategists at Saxo Bank wrote in their 2010 analysis.

Source: World Gold Council

Related by the Econotwist:

The Great Golden Lie

Saxo Bank’s “Outrageous Predictions 2010″

Q3 Gold Demand Down 34%

Paul Tudor Jones: “Time For Gold”

”The Master of Money”

(Disclosure: Gov.Mint.com is a part of the high5finance‘ affiliate program)

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The “Black Swan”-author Nassim Nicolas Taleb have published a list of his favorite books on his home page. It’s an interesting collection, and every one is well worth reading. Check out the list.

“I am often asked by journalists for a list of my favorite books – I don’t know what “favorite” means for a journalist.”

Nassim Nicolas Taleb

“I am often asked by journalists for a list of my favorite books – I don’t know what “favorite” means for a journalist. I treat books as friends; you miss them when you don’t see them for a while,” professor Taleb writes in a new post.

“As with friendship; you do not judge friends, you do not mix business and friendship. I even physically separate literature from more functional books (different libraries). I feel I am corrupting literature by having scientific or the philistinic “nonfiction” in the same area.”

“Perhaps the best test of one’s appreciation for a novel is whether one craves it at times, enough to reread it,” Mr. Taleb suggest.

“Rereading a novel is far more enjoyable than reading it for the first time. Many I have read more than twice, some (like Il deserto dei tartari, un taxi mauve, Paulina 1881), more than five times.”

“Up to the age of 25, you read wholesale & in a mercenary way, to “acquire” a possession, to build a “literary culture” and do not tend to re-read except when necessary.”

“After 25, you lose your hang-up and start re-reading –and it is precisely what you re-read that reveals your literary soul – what you like,” Taleb concludes.

Here’s Nassim Taleb’s Favorite Books:

(Written after 1900)

* Dino Buzzati Il deserto dei tartari ( As a child, I viewed the world into two types of people: those who read the deserto and were therefore marked by it, and the rest. Francois Mitterand, who was not my cup of tea, seduced me when on the literary panel Apostrophes he went on and on passionately talking about the book –“j’ai été marqué par ce livre”, he said, his eyes gleaming).

* Albert Cohen Belle du seigneur (A Proust, but with a Levantine soul and personal manners, and aggressively heterosexual. )

* Valdimir Nabokov Marenshka, his (first?) novel, when he was an exile in Berlin, before he became complicated. I reread & reread the final scene.

* Patrick Modiano Villa triste (“Je m’attachais à elle comme un noyé”).

* Graham Greene The End of the Affair

* Michel Déon Un taxi mauve (I’ve read it six times; people tell me he is a médiocre writer –I don’t know what médiocre means)

* Graham Greene The Burnt-Out Case

* Louis-Ferdinand Céline Voyage au bout de la nuit

* Marcel Proust A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (The second book)

* Marcel Proust Albertine disparue (Proust is more limpid towards the middle/end)

* Pierre-Jean Jouve Paulina 1881 (I never understood why I keep reading it)

* Julian Barnes Flaubert’s Parrot

* Thomas Mann Death in Venice

* Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain

* Andre Breton Najda

* Alessandro Barrico, Seta

* W. Somerset Maugham The Razor’s Edge

* George Orwell Keep the Aspidistra Flying

* Marguerite Yourcenar, Mémoires d’Hadrien ( Animula, vagula, blandula / hospes comesque corporis / quæ nunc abibis in loca / pallidula, rigida, nudula / nec, ut soles, dabic jocos” ).

* André Malraux La condition humaine

* Robert Graves I Claudius

* André Maurois Climats

* Maurice Barrès La colline inspirée . Barrès is the finest French prose, emotional, unhindered with intellectualism, grand, ambitious, incantatory, uninhibited. In a way like Malraux, but without the show-off, he does not try to impress you as much. [There is nothing wrong for a writer to show-off; when he has charm…]

* Dino Buzzati Un amore, the story (no doubt autobiographical) of a refined and cultured man who falls in love (beyond the point of relinquishing his dignity) with a dancer & occasional prostitute. [I recently discovered that Buzzati actually married her & that she is still alive in Milan]

* Alain-Fournier Le grand maulnes

* Lawrence Durell Justine

* Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises

* Anita Brookner Hotel du Lac

* Gregor von Rezzori Memoirs of an Antisemite

* Lawrence Durell Cléa

* John Steinbeck Tortilla Flat

* Italo Svevo Una vita

* Jorje Luis Borges, Ficciones

* Elsa Morante La storia

* Nina Berberova The Tattered Cloak & other stories

* Amin Maalouf Léon l’africain (“ils etaient amis en silence”)