Two newsbits

Mining.com - 2012 preliminary world gold production. China boosted their output by about 40 tons, making up pretty much the entire year-over-year difference. To put it in perspective, 40 tons is a little more than Oyu Tolgoi, or 2.5 B2Golds. And their central bank buys it all anyway.

Bonddad - on France. Their economy was sputtering through January. We'll have to see if Merkel wants anything done about this, or if she wants to head into another election with her country being dragged down by the rest of the Eurozone.