GOLD PRICE NEWS - Breaking above $1,140 per ounce, the gold price is trading at its best level since January 20. The price of gold has now rallied 9%, or $95, off the $1,044 per ounce low hit in early February. After sliding precipitously over the past three months, the euro is stabilizing near the top end of its three-week trading range. The British pound, which had declined versus the U.S. dollar for six consecutive days, is higher in tandem with the stronger euro. Weakness in the U.S. dollar is driving the gold price heading into today’s open and the buying is feeding through to gold mining stocks, which are moving up in pre-market trading.

Today’s weakness in the U.S. dollar versus both the euro and the pound comes on the heels of Greece’s announcement that another series of budget cuts are being implemented. Greece has been working to outline a plan to stem the country’s fiscal crisis and gain the confidence of its current bondholders as well as the global investment community that it is counting on to purchase roughly $50 billion euros worth of debt securities over the balance of 2010.

Greek bond yields moves lower as Prime Minister Papandreou outlined the $4.8 billion euros ($6.5 billion) of budget cuts. The plan includes reducing salaries of civil servants, increasing the sales tax to 21% from 19%, and raising taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, as well as other items.

As the U.S. dollar rally has stalled and the gold price has risen, the shares of gold mining stocks have seen increasing fund flows. The Market Vectors Gold Mining ETF (GDX) has risen 11.7% off its closing print on the last day of January. Buoyed by a stronger gold price as well as by strong fourth quarter earnings reports, notably from Newmont Mining (NEM), the gold mining stocks - as measured by the GDX - have begun to recover from their 28.7% correction off their early December highs.

One of the most widely-held gold stocks is Canadian-based Goldcorp (GG), which is currently presenting at the BMO gold mining conference in Hollywood, Florida. Chief Executive Officer, Chuck Jeannes, stated yesterday that he believes the construction permits for the company’s recently acquired El Morro copper-gold project in Chile could be granted as early as this year.

Goldcorp acquired 70% of this world class asset from Xstrata under a deal brokered by New Gold (NGD), who held a right of first refusal on the massive copper-gold deposit - which contains 6.7 million ounces of gold and 5.7 billion pounds of copper. Jeannes also noted that Goldcorp will produce 2.6 million ounces of gold in 2010 and intends to ramp production up to 3.8 million gold ounces by 2014.