Commodity Online – Gold prices had an excellent run last week, led by the extensive fall in the US dollar and strong rally in the equity markets. The rise in crude oil prices also resulted in lifting bullion.

The US currency showcased the biggest decline in a month against euro last week as US data showed that the world’s largest economy contracted lesser than forecasts, which hinted that the recession is fading and gave rise to investor demand in riskier counters such as commodities and equities.

The outlook is bright – the most active benchmark contract at the Comex has pulled off a strong recovery, ending at $953.70 near the resistance at $960, a break and close of which will take prices towards new highs of $966.70/oz and $970.40/oz, state traders.

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Tags: bullion, comex, commodities, commodity, crude oil prices, decline, economy, gold prices, investor-demand, new-highs, oz, rally, recession, resistance, us currency

Bloomberg- When Blackstone Group LP, the world’s biggest buyout firm, was pursuing the takeover of the Weather Channel cable network earlier this month with General Electric Co. and Bain Capital LLC, Wall Street balked at providing financing.

So the New York-based company turned to GSO Capital Partners LP, the hedge-fund manager it acquired in March, to pull off the largest U.S. leveraged buyout this year.

Blackstone can’t wait for banks, stuck with almost $100 billion of debt from earlier LBOs, to start lending again. Instead, it’s pushing deeper into deal financing with GSO. The strategy may hurt the hedge-fund unit’s returns — some approaching 40 percent — if slowing economies lead companies taken private by Blackstone to default on their debt.

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Tags: bain-capital-llc, bullion, capital-partners-lp, channel-cable, frm, general-electric-co, gso-capital-partners, gso-capital-partners-lp, investment-firm, journalism, lbos, remorse, steve-moyer, tci-group, tennenbaum-capital-partners, weather-channel