Andrew Torgan
CNN Financial News Producer

Gold continues to push higher into record territory amid concerns about a weak U.S. dollar, inflation and technical-based buying by large investment funds.

The December contract for gold rose $4.70 to settle at a fresh all-time high of $1,044.40 an ounce today. Earlier in the session, it traded as high as $1,048.20, topping Tuesday's intraday mark by $3 an ounce.

Gold, which is up 17% so far this year, has been supported recently by concerns about the dollar and bets that inflation will rise over the long term as the economy recovers and stimulus measures will have to be reversed.

Analysts expect the rally to continue and say gold could push past $1,050 this week and top $1,100 in the near future.

Sources: Administration considering safety net measures

Amid nervousness about states' economies and a growing unemployment rate, the Obama Administration is considering a series of measures aimed at putting many Americans back to work before the 2010 midterm elections, sources close to the process told CNN.

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Gene Bloch
Managing Editor
CNN New York

We kick off this morning with one of those “green shoots” in the economy: better than expected retail sales; they surged 2.7 percent in August, as the Cash for Clunkers program provided a lift to auto sales. But even without auto sales and auto parts in the mix, retail sales rose a respectable 1.1 percent.

On the less positive side, wholesale inflation as measured by the Producer Price Index surged 1.7 percent last month. Most of that increase however was due to a surge in energy prices. If you strip out food & energy costs, the PPI’s “core rate” edged up just 0.2 percent.

President Obama is talking about the economy today as he addresses GM workers at a GM plant in Ohio; he then travels to Pittsburgh to address an AFL-CIO convention, before making his way to a fundraiser for Sen. Arlen Specter in Philly. Fed Chief Ben Bernanke today is out talking economy as well, going farther than before in saying the recession is “very likely over.” Of course, we know that only the National Bureau of Economic Research can conclude when recessions begin and end. And it doesn’t happen until after the fact.

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David Gewirtz | BIO
AC360° Contributor
Editor-in-Chief, ZATZ Publishing

I've been thinking a lot about Chrysler and GM lately. This isn't quite as ripped-from-the-headlines as it might sound, because I often think of cars. I'm what you might call a "car guy".

Car guys fall into all sorts of sub-categories, but mine is the one where the middle-aged guy who really couldn't fix a car to save his life finds himself dreaming of building a hotrod. Yes, I'm over 40 and I like things that loudly go vroooooom.

One thing us car guys like to do is plan the future for all of our favorite car companies. It's kind of like we used to do when we were little boys in school, drawing pictures of cars with crayons, adding an air scoop in the front, and maybe some flames coming out of the exhaust.

Except, most of us mid-life car guys have given up the crayons and either taken up the online forum or hold court around a Weber grill - and the closest we ever really get to flame jobs is cooking the oh-so-well-done burger that Dad always likes.

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Jack Gray
AC360° Producer/Writer

There’s nothing like a hot ride. And my first car was nothing like a hot ride. A 1987 Chevrolet Celebrity station wagon. Baby blue with a generous array of leathery rust spots, it was the vehicular love child of an obese Smurf and Dog the Bounty Hunter.

The car was a gift from my grandfather, for whom it had served the dual purpose of smoking lounge and elderly chick magnet. As with most things – especially his changeover from a black toupee to a white one – my grandfather had impeccable timing, giving me the car at the height of my high school insecurity. Because nothing makes a 16-year-old more self-confident than a battered station wagon manufactured in the previous decade.

That said, I’ve never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth, or toupee. So I accepted the car just as I had accepted puberty, with profuse gratitude and quiet shame. And to my surprise, even though I would have preferred something red and Italian, The Celeb – as my friends and I called it – would come to serve me well. It was clean, the engine started on cold mornings and the brakes – unless I needed to stop – worked great.

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Justine Redman and Joe Johns
AC360º Producer and Correspondent

Grilled at a Senate hearing Wednesday, the President of Chrysler couldn't answer a question about whether 15 Chrysler employees stand to get $20 million in bonuses.  Keeping them honest, we want to know the answer too. Please send us your confidential tips to AC360KTH@CNN.com

Here is an excerpt from a Senate committee hearing yesterday on GM and Chrysler plans to close dealerships, and how to protect dealers and consumers:

SENATOR MCCASKILL: This is a difficult question, Mr. Press, but I looked and I have - we've gotten some information that came to us back channel about the DIP budget, and this is the debtor in possession budget in the bankruptcy. And it talks about the budget for the old company. And what troubles me in there, there's an acknowledgement that there may be up to 15 employees of old Chrysler working on this bankruptcy and there is a pool in this budget of up to $20 million for bonuses.

I can't imagine what kind of kick in the gut that would be if we were to learn in the next two weeks that some of the old Chrysler folks - which are getting paid their salaries, which they should, you guys are doing hard work.

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Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
CEO, Green For All

Yesterday morning, an icon of American industry announced its failure – and 21,000 American workers woke up without jobs.

General Motors filed for bankruptcy and will shut down nine U.S. plants.

At a time when the United States economy is already hemorrhaging jobs, the failure of an established industry giant leaves us to confront hard questions – What went wrong? And what is the future of American industry?

What went wrong?

GM doubly undermined the U.S. economy – killing jobs for American workers by taking manufacturing overseas and running the company into the ground by failing to remain competitive with foreign auto companies.

The company repeatedly rejected improving the environmental and safety standards of its vehicles and shipped thousands of American jobs overseas. Meanwhile, Japanese and German cars improved their gas mileage and safety – and foreign auto industries took off.

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Andrew Torgan
CNN Financial News Producer

Financial giant’s American Express, J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley have all announced plans to issue common stock in the hopes of quickly paying back taxpayer bailout money.

J.P. Morgan and American Express disclosed plans late Monday to sell $5 billion and $500 million worth of stock respectively. Morgan Stanley followed that up this morning with its own plans for a $2.2 billion offering.

J.P. Morgan was one of the first major banks to get government money when it accepted $25 billion from the Treasury Department's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program back in October.

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A look at GM's plants and manufacturing employees, as well as suppliers and retirees, in the United States and around the world.

Chris Isidore
CNNMoney.com senior writer

General Motors filed for bankruptcy protection early Monday, a move once viewed as unthinkable that became inevitable after years of losses and market share declines capped by a dramatic plunge in sales in recent months.

The bankruptcy is likely to lead to major changes and job cuts at the battered automaker. But President Obama and GM CEO Fritz Henderson both promised that a more viable GM will emerge from bankruptcy.

In the end, even $19.4 billion in federal help wasn't enough to keep the nation's largest automaker out of bankruptcy. The government will pour another $30 billion into GM to fund operations during its reorganization.

Taxpayers will end up with a 60% stake in GM, with the union, its creditors and federal and provincial governments in Canada owning the remainder of the company.

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David E. Sanger
The New York Times

It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.

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