WELCOME ALL to the KITCO KWIZZ. This pop quiz will be both testing and informative ( when you get the answer ) . I will answer the question ( according to MY information ) at NOON tommorrow ( EDT ) . Ok, ready? Here goes: What was the highest gold price per ounce ever in American ( USA ) currency?

Front: Sorry, I returned only moments ago ( engaged in domestic diddly. .. Not to be confused with domestic diddling ) and was unable to respond in a timely manner, to your earlier request. ... Please reaffirm earlier request.

Mike SHeller paid in which country

Donald ( 21:35 ) : Taking a ratio of your numbers ( rounded for simp. ) : 80 X 10 ( -12 ) /.5 X 10 ( -12 ) = 160 derivative dollars to honest greenbacks. My first thought was: Is that a disturbing ratio? Somehow I would expect it to be larger.

John Disney- You must have not seen my post that said I was on my knees
begging to know the stock you are referring to. Thanks!

Mike Sheller - What do you see in the stars with regard to South Africa?

If a call option gives one the right to buy 100 shares at a certain price then what does an index option entitle one to do? Therefore, do all index options exist only as long as there is a buyer/seller relationship since there would really be no underlying equity to exercise?

Rand...I'm not Sheller but here's a thought...it appears to me that RSA and Israel have many similar characteristics.

Isolated minorites, economically and militarily advanced over their neighbors, & racial/social disparity.

I've never been to RSA but have visited Israel. The future for Israel is IMO bleak short term but Biblically bright long term...RSA looks scary if Africa eventually goes into serious turmoil, don't ya think? My freind just got back from 4 years there and really likes it...she's going back...but says she has to be very cautious when moving about in some areas...any comments?

Watcher Hi, have a look here http://www.adtrading.com/
There are good tutorials here, have been lost here all day since that aussie linked it.
Nick, the divorce papers will blame you for subjecting Beautiful Jewel, for that is her literal name, to my absence. Great site.

All: Hey look what the gnomes of London are gonna be reading with their cornflakes and gin this morning.

Soros and Gold within a couple of s


GEORGE SOROS, the global financier, has teamed up with Blakeney Management, a British investment-management company, on a journey into Africa. The former City whiz-kid and bestselling author Miles Morland, chief executive of Blakeney, has gathered support from Soros, Scudder Stevens, the American investment bank, and British Empire Securities, writes David Parsley.
Morland is raising 13.4m to pump into African Lakes, the troubled agricultural, mining and distribution company, to get a foot in what he calls the "next big market". Morland's backers will pay off about half its 12m debt and begin to expand, attacking the business services market and slimming down its traditional operations.With the likes of Barclays Bank, Unilever and Lonrho scaling down their operations in Africa, Morland will soon be in a position to snap up what they leave behind.
Founded in 1878 by Scottish missionaries, African Lakes' key business has always been in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. Its interests are in rubber, hotels, motor distribution, computer supplies and gold mining. Its mistakes came in the mid 1980s when instability in Africa prompted management to move into car dealerships in Britain. L

http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Sunday-Times/frontpage.html?1971058osses piled up despite a recovery in the African business.

Watcher: "but says she has to be very cautious when moving aboutin some areas...". .......... Sounds very much like Deeeetroit or Dee Cee. Or any of a number of US cities.

ARRRIGHT
That's IT
This is IT
And it goes like this..
Remember the birds?
What did Miners use in mines to warn of poison gasses?
Canaries. Right.

Here is a dead canary.

make of it what you want. The reporter is a financial journalist ( or at least has the same name as ) who started out in NZ, and who actually misquoted me in 1987, though she tried not to, she's learnt a bit since then.
Copied in full out in deference to TED, for those that don't get the Sunday Financial Times delivered.


 Barclays has finally abandoned its plan to create a world-class investment bank, putting thousands of jobs at risk with the sale of BZW. Report by Kirstie Hamilton
 Hopes dashed: the style of BZW's Bill Harrison, right, offended banking traditionalists while Barclays' Martin Taylor, top left, has lost credibility Photograph: Stuart Clarke
BZW dream dies with a whimper


THE board meeting on Thursday at Barclays' Lombard Street head office that effectively signed BZW's death warrant was a quiet affair. Sir Peter Middleton, deputy chairman of Barclays and chairman of BZW, spoke hardly at all; any other comments were muted at best. In the end, the great hope for a British-owned world-class investment bank went down with a whimper rather than a roar.
It was not the first time the Barclays directors had been faced with a call to break up and sell off BZW. Martin Taylor, Barclays' chief executive, had put the idea to them in January but was rebuffed.
This time the directors saw things differently. They had watched, with a mixture of glee and horror, NatWest's management being mauled over the performance of its investment-banking offshoot, NatWest Markets. And they had read reports of a series of mergers and takeovers in the rest of the investment-banking world that left BZW looking precarious. Just a week earlier Travelers had announced plans to snap up Salomon Brothers in a $9 billion takeover.
All this, combined with the relatively poor profits BZW was struggling to amass, cut away the investment bank's chances of winning support.
Taylor's proposal was not for an outright sale of the whole business. He wanted to retain the group's debt-trading, derivatives and foreign-exchange operations under a new grouping to be called Barclays Capital Group. The power of this side of BZW had started to become apparent over recent months, and Bob Diamond, its head, was appointed to the prestigious executive committee of Barclays last month alongside Bill Harrison, BZW's chief executive.
The rest of the firm  the equities, equity capital markets and corporate-finance business  was to be sold off to the highest bidder.
In normal circumstances, a decision like that, once made, would remain secret until a buyer had been found for the equities business. Investment bankers and brokers are notoriously difficult characters to manage, and the knowledge that their owner is looking to sell could send them scurrying to headhunters to find new jobs.
In this case, Taylor says it was not feasible to organise a sale behind closed doors. "We are not selling a single entity  we are selling parts of a business. And we could not do a deal without getting into great detail about splitting up the businesses," he says.
Taylor might also have had difficulty persuading Harrison to remain at the helm of a doomed investment bank. His unexplained resignation would only have intensified the questions about Barclays' long-term commitment to BZW.
Goldman Sachs was appointed to manage the sale process  a move that prompted some black jokes at BZW about hiring foxes to mind a chicken coop.
Alan Gillespie at Goldman says the process will be managed as quickly as possible. "It is first of all defining the package of businesses to be sold and creating the financial statements for that business by separating out the overheads and cost base. That should take about three weeks. After that, when we have the financial information, the process will move along very swiftly."
All the talk of deconstructing BZW is a far cry from the energetic optimism about the future emanating from Harrison just a few months ago. He had not long moved into BZW's plush new offices at Canary Wharf, and was obviously a little uncomfortable with the opulence of his new surroundings.
Barclays executives had been taken aback at Harrison's approach when he arrived just over a year ago  one described him as a whirling dervish. But the old-style bankers were even more amazed as time went on. Harrison did not settle down; his energy level stayed at fever pitch.
He could hardly have been more different from David Band, the BZW chief executive, who died unexpectedly on a skiing holiday last year. Band, a former JP Morgan banker, was suave, Scottish and laid back. Harrison was a Brummie who never tried to disguise his accent, but his bluff manner hides a razor-sharp intellect. "He is one of the best investment bankers in the business," says Bernard Taylor, chief executive of investment banking at Robert Fleming, where Harrison used to work.
For months, Harrison had had to contend with rumours about a potential sale of the business he had arrived to lead. Four months ago, when The Sunday Times ran a story suggesting BZW would be sold if it did not produce satisfactory returns, Taylor himself went to Canary Wharf to deny it.
During his first few months, Harrison discovered that BZW was not the well-oiled machine he would have liked to inherit. Its bond-trading business in particular was not producing the returns it should have, while the huge foreign-exchange operation was still smarting at being moved over from Barclays and renamed BZW. The battle to rehabilitate the markets side of BZW was expensive and painful, and when the Barclays results came out in March, the City gasped at the cost of it all.
The move to Canary Wharf was not cheap, either. Analysts reckon that, in total, the move could have cost up to 200m. But much of the expense had been authorised before Harrison's arrival.
Taylor says he has wrestled with what to do with BZW ever since his first day as chief executive of Barclays back in November 1993. "I found it a difficult conundrum," he says.
In the end, the breaking up of the business will leave about half BZW's 7,300 staff in place. Of the rest, roughly half are back-office or support staff, while the remainder are professionals. Both groups, but particularly the back-office staff, face the prospect of widespread job cuts in the sale process. To prevent talented staff from heading for the door, BZW last week began dishing out incentive packages.
The decision to sell off a large chunk of BZW is more of a psychological quantum leap for Barclays than a financial one, says Taylor. "In a group context it is not a very big deal, although it is a conspicuous one," he says. "We are talking about revenues of 400m."
Nobody will talk about how much profit the businesses make  a sure sign they are not enormous  but Taylor is adamant that they do produce profits and not losses. It must be a close-run thing: revenues for the businesses up for sale totalled 200m for the first half of the year, a surprisingly low figure according to rivals, while costs for the whole of BZW came in at 561m for the same period.
Corporate financiers guess the businesses may fetch about 600m. But any sale price will be offset to a large extent by provisions against the cost of the lay-offs and excess property left behind. Analysts estimate the provision could reach 400m, leaving little profit from any sale.
Although the stock market became very excited in anticipation of a sale being announced, the reality  and the lack of any confirmed deal  was greeted far less enthusiastically. After a great run over the past few weeks, on Friday the shares fell 54 1/2 p to close at 16.92 1/2 .
Some analysts wonder if Barclays may be discovering its strategy rather too late. "Taylor's credibility has been holed beneath the water line," said one. "It is no good wandering along a few years behind Lloyds and trying to copy their strategy. Where is the growth going to come from in the domestic banking business?"
Retail banking faces fierce competition. New entrants such as Sainsbury, the supermarket chain, are taking out customers in some areas and niche financial players are tackling others.
In the past, Taylor has mopped up excess capital by buying back shares, a tactic that has endeared him to his shareholders but not expanded the size of his business. Although some buy-backs will continue, analysts expect Barclays will look closely at an acquisition as a means of moving forward.
In the past the bank has refused to rule out the prospect of bidding for NatWest, although banking experts are puzzled how Barclays could hope to win regulatory approval for such a move. A building society, past or present, is another possible target, along with Norwich Union, the insurer. But if he has a masterplan, Taylor is keeping it to himself.
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Sunday-Times/frontpage.html?1971058

No argument from me...I've been to the big city and I prefer the farm.

US $ 959 In 1980

Mike Sheller. Look out your window, catch a falling star

The term "PSYWAR" has not been in use since Vietnam. This psychological approach to confuse, misdirect, or enlist the aid of indigenous populations is now termed "PSYOP", an obvious acronym for Psychological Operations. I don't mean to nit-pick, but my time in the army was as an Interrogator and Arabic linguist for the 8th Psychological Operations Battalion, John F. Kennedy Center for Unconventional Warfare, Fort Bragg, North Carolina - now known as CENTCOM or Central Command. PSYOP works in conjunction with the 5th and 7th Special Forces groups to round off official US Army unconventional warfare operations. The unofficial includes such still denied groups as Delta Force, also located at Ft. Bragg, which for anyone who has been there, will correctly access the entire area as a God forsaken swamp that could be instrumental in winning any war by just threatening to put all prisoners of war there. The fear of this treatment alone would debilitate any fighting force that opposes us. My time there was more than 15 years ago and I still have nightmares of giant mosquitoes, snakes, and humidity topping 305% in temperatures upwards of 220 degrees in the shade. Were it not for a lovely Taiwanese lass who took me into her home and her arms, I never would have survived. I wonder sometimes what became of her..

Looks like a quiet day ( night ) at Kitco. Have been busy and had some catching up to do. My impression of the next few days on the gold markets is for more consolidation ( barring unknown Mid-East tensions ) which should present a good buying opportunity for gold shares/options. Anyone have any updates on the no-fly zone violations by Iran and U.S. show of force to sort-em-out?? I could see some gold buying coming out of the Mid-East if tensions escalate. A good rise in the price of oil should be good for gold--but will it last?? Northern winter coming on soon--could help kick the yellow along nicely.

Aurator--g'day mate. Am still trying to figure out your canary posting??Don't know if you were one of the ones involved in that article or if she misquoted you on an unrelated matter. You don't sound like an investment banker to me, mate ( more like a frustrated would be poet ) . All the best to your Kitco widow "Beautiful Jewel". Keep yer fingers outta them 'dykes',mate. Will get you into heaps of trouble!!

Mike Sheller-
The best I can do now is to give the highest London Fix for gold in US dollars was $850 on Jan 21, 1980. I only keep 1986 forward on my home computer. I can get the price to the penny on Monday at the office. The best I could do there would be to give the highest contract price. I know not where to acquire the cash price reached that day, which would undoubtedly be higher. Do I win, Huh? Do I? Do I? Do I? Whadda' I get? Do I get some Gold? DiddI Win???????????????????????

Bears roaring?? Another good AFR article. "The Dow Jones...appears to have topped."

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971004/market/markets2.html

Mike Sheller --highest price ever for an ounce of gold.

@$245,000 !!!! I bought a double eagle on the streets of Zamboanga in the Southern Philippines for $40.
I knew it was a phoney as heads was in very fine condition and tails was in poor!!! They had cut coins in half--hollowed 'em out as best they could-- filled 'em up with something heavy ( probably lead ) --and were selling 'em on the streets to the gringos. I knew it wasn't the real McCoy, but couldn't resist. Nine out of ten people would not pick it--as it is a great machining job!! I still prize that sucker and it has saved me tens of thousands of dollars!!! I look at it every now and then before trading--I still try not to buy too many gold shares that have been hollowed out and filled with lead!!!

Good Morning All-
Now suffering from info. overload! But I have GREAT teachers..thank you. Bart obviously censored my last post ?? [:-{

South Africa is a really wonderful country, but there is too much negativity around. My views, as a Sandtonian, may not count!?-but we have more to fear from inefficiency than crime.

JOHN DISNEY- I also want to know about your 'hot tip' -Is is Oryx?

AURATOR, NICK, DONALD, GEORGE & my other MENTORS
-Do you think bottled mineral water will turn out to be liquid gold in the long-term?
-Are Krands a better bet than the stock market ?


Do you think that bottled water

Hi Colleen. Incredible amount of info on this site, eh?? Forget about doing a Uni course. Lurk here long enough and you'll gain a lot more!!!You can also interact with gurus/teachers/traders/loonies from far and wide. Your question about buying K'rands depends on what you are buying them for. Even though they are ugly as sin--compared to Aussie Nuggets/Maple Leafs etc.--they still have an ounce of gold in 'em AND are the most recognized gold coin in your country. Definitely have a few around for "bad times" as they will buy you food/shelter/transport etc. when paper is worthless. As an investment they will track the price of gold. If you want a bit of leverage buy gold shares -- the less respectable--the greater the potential profit/loss. Depends on how risk averse you are and how quick you are on your twinkle toes!!! If you want real casino stuff--go for options/futures but without a great deal of luck and or nouce you will soon get wiped out by the pros!! Then there are gold funds etc. with a basket of gold shares--boring as hell but profitable if your timing is good. IMVHO nearly all of the above will be profitable long term---BUT if I am wrong--YOU will get burned--not ME!! If something goes down I SELL it ( except for emergency stuff ) . I think gold will be $500 in a couple of years--BUT if it is $200 I don't wanna be in the asylum with the gold certificates in my fist, babbling away about XAU's and 3--2--5's and hear the nurses whispering "You know, he won't let go of those things!! Even takes them into the shower with him!!"

Colleen, not too likely your comments censored here. Because of "the troubles" I do not know whether you posted any more info on fibonacci and the Mike Sheller look alike.
Perhaps, I can entertain you, and others with a mathematical puzzle that fibonacci got wrong....I was blessed with a mad Welsh rugby playing genius as a mathematics teacher while just 9 years old. This fine teacher taught me this un and a whole bunch of others... most of us can soleve it now, but Leonard de Pisa stuffed it up.
A pole is 20 feet tall. Each day a snail climbs up two feet, but sleeps during the night and therefore slips down one foot each night. How many days will it take the snail to reach the top of the pole ( OK RJ and then take an Erisian apple 9999, 2 tola price in US $ Today )

Having fun

How 'bout you

Well folks--I have decided to sell all of my gold/shares/options and go out fossicking for DINOSAURS. SUE--the T-Rex from South Dakota just sold for $US 7,600,000!!!!!!!! Now that's what I call "gold in them thar hills!!!" Now, if only I can find South Dakota on a map!! Must be just outside Alice Springs--heard they got dinos out there!!

Nick Alice Springs, some town,, Now if unlucky Jo can keep a clean mouth, why don't yer tell us about the Alice Springs Boat Race -- Sea Kayaks.

Nick only #9 on the posting frequency chart, huh?

Date: Sun Oct 05 1997 04:24
Nick ( @Canberra ) ID#386245:
Nick only #9 on the posting frequency chart, huh?

Aurator-
19 days, then he took a nap on the top of the pole, rolled over, and SPAT! No more pole climbing for this little fellow.

Now for the real challenge: What was his name?????

OK--Aurator.

Alice Springs today had the biggest boat race in the entire world!!!
The Henly--On--Todd river, very unfortunately has NO WATER IN IT!!!
Do you think this is going to deter Aussies from having a boat race and an apres race piss-up????!!!! No way. The race crews gallantly carried their boats around the race course today--and a few teams actually finished!!! What is remarkable about that, you say??? Well folks, there was a lot more liquid IN the racers than there was OUT of the racers!!!
The GOLDEN ( see Bart, relevant as always!! ) amber fluid was flowing most copiously in Alice Springs today!!!

Nick, actually, I like the Gastrologer's description, I call myself a funny mentalist. Years of crunching beans and left braining. Got me right, pig headed rich and almost lost it all. Trying to let my feminine side out. now, which is why i spared you a lot of gore with my two bulls posting, well that and that and a ton of sea salt ;- )
I dun tons of funny mentals. Like many others, now know I can't time the change of the tides so looking to right brain for inspiration....
Colleen
Just found out one of my cuzzies goin to work in SA, gold loans & finance.. the world is small and there aint much gold to go around. Whats this about mineral water? in a desert, give me water above gold. and thats a heresy around here, which is why i only lurk in the ugly hours. he he :- )

Thanks,Nick & Aurator..

Have to go now-thanks for tips..Aurator: I'm into [very] Ancient History and horses [x3 -start of my cavalry] and property! Maths is a foreign language to me, and stats even more so-I'd rather stick to your wonderful analogies!

No-one said anything about bottled mineral water potential? Shares or stocks [as on the shelf] . Would it have a long shelf life I wonder?

With El Nino's inexorable march, perhaps countries with drought would be

a good bet for that?

Have a great day/night.

RJ congratulations, you got the same answer as Fibonacci, no cigar

Colleen-
Forget the KR. In a couple weeks the Royal Canadian Mint is issuing a 1 oz .9999 pure gold coin called the Mounty. This coin will have the highest face value of any gold coin in the world; $310 US. Since gold is universally traded in the US dollar, your downside risk is extremely limited. The RCM will guarantee a buyback anytime within the next two years at face value. The coin may carry a few $ premium over other pure gold coins, but the safety is well worth it. If you would rather not pay the extra few bucks, buy the Maple Leaf, the Aussie Nugget, or the Austrian Vienna Philharmonic. All these coins are .9999 pure. The KR and the American Eagle are alloyed and will not be as in demand as the pure gold coins. Also, wait a bit, you will find lower prices soon.

Aurator, mate, avoid them funny-mentals with a ten foot pole. Don't matter if they got the stuff in the ground!! When they go UP on VOLUME---BUY. Don't matter why. Somebody knows SUMPTHIN, EVERY time. Then get out when the pros start sellin'. Greed isn't just good, mate, it's ESSENTIAL to keep the markets lubricated!! If everyone knew the REAL state of affairs, they'd all jump into their caves with their bazookas pointed outwards. Probably shoot the mailman and the milkman before they noticed Greenspan on the tube tellin' us everything is hunky dory!!

Nick, I had no idea the boat race was today!!

Aurator-
Wait a minute here fella'. The snail - Sid Slime was his name - climbed a net 1 inch per day for 18 days. The final day he climbs 2 inches. That equals 20 in any math I know.

Date: Sun Oct 05 1997 04:26
Nick ( @Canberra ) ID#386245:

Date: Sun Oct 05 1997 04:24
Nick ( @Canberra ) ID#386245:
Nick only #9 on the posting frequency chart, huh?

Aurator-
Hey! What do you know? You didn't even know the little guy's name! Sid was a friend of mine, and I am pretty broken up about his early demise. The best that types like you can do is make up math puzzles! He was a living breathing SNAIL! Have you no shame? Sid saved my life in WW II, took a whole German machine gun nest singled handed. Actually he had no hands, but this was a sore spot with Sid and we didn't speak of it. What about his wife and kids? Do you think they would enjoy your petty exploitation of poor Sid? We should at least take up a collection for his family. Send all donations in pure gold to rjd@pacbell.net. Bless You.

Aurator -- you are truly omniscient/omnipresent/omniauracious,mate!!
Mike Sheller might even give you a job if you put on your best suit and brush the fleece off your sleeves!!

Aurator-
Hmmmmmmmmmm..Wait a minute.Was there any sick time or vacation time involved here? That would change things a bit. But Sid was a climbaholic. I don't see him slacking off when there is a pole to be climbed. He took his pole pretty seriously. Just ask Mrs. Slime about that!

RJ--as you are a metals dealer--have you not considered the possibility that you have been starin' a grizzly in the face for so long that you have forgotten what a bull looks like???

RJ URK me stuffed up orig formula you genius, me bed......
cigar is yrsss
me precioussssssss
.

Nick-
If I'm not mistaken, a bull is the thing that has it horns buried up the poor bears ass. What does this have to do with snails? Let's get our priorities strait here..................................

RJ and Auratina--methinks you have both succumbed to the demon spirit!! What are the coffee and toast brigade gonna think when they wake up and read the night's postings???? GO GOLD!!! There, now I've fixed it for all of us!!

Rj--on a more serious note. Those danged $310 stop loss coins yur talkin' about sound like a bloody good deal to me!! How can us antipodeans buy 'em???

Once more, with as much dignity as I can muster

Sid Snail ( beloved Scout leader of 9th troop Gold Platoon ) , leaving wife ( Mrs snail ) and two kinds born of her and three of himself, 'cos you know snail are hermaphrodite, to climb a 20 foot pole
each night he climbs *three* feet ( note finagling factor RJ )
and each night he slips back *two* feet
How many days will it take him to climb to the top,
assay the Golden Erisian Apple, flog it off to Bart Kitner to Pay for aurators divorce??

For Ray - get up off your knees -.
Believe it or not a few people emailed me on this one,
and seemed interested. So I post the info.

The mine is Western areas. it sells for about 40 Rand
- or roughly $8.5.
It earned 1.29 R last quarter with gold maybe $330 or
less for the period.
It has reserves of 61 million oz vs 51 for Barrick.
Barrick earned 0.38$/share for the YEAR at a much higher
average gold price. Rand 1.29 per quarter equals 5.15 rand/year
or $1.10 per share.
Western Areas has 92 million shares vs 373 mill for
Barrick.
WA trades at 8.5 $. Barrick assume 25$.
On an eps basis WA should sell for 25* ( 1.1/0.38 ) = 72 $
rather than 8.5
On a reserves basis WA should sell for 25$ * ( 61/51 )
* ( 373/92 ) = $ 121 rather than 8.5$.
I wonder why people buy Barrick - I think its a bigger
scam than US bonds. Is it a kind of patriotism thing?.
Was it patriotic for North Americans to buy Bre-X??
Boy, patriotism can get a little expensive, hey?
I think Wes area is the best and most secure long term
gold mining play in the world.
For reference, the Mining Journal was source of all
numbers.
PS - someone inquired about ST Helena. I like it a
lot and have too much of it. I await their earnings to
see how they do at 330$ gold for the quarter. I understand
they will benefit from their association with Oryx. But
they are thinly traded.

kinds=kids in snail talk

John Disney-- Is it going UP on VOLUME, mate???

Aurator--"Beautiful Jewel" will forgive you!!

For RJ
Alors - Ma fren Syd is Dead!! Ah canNOT believe zees.
He save mah life too !! Many times - In WW II of course - Ah was at zat
boche NEST. And WWI also. And zee Franco-Prussian. Then zair was
Waterloo - and zoze sneaky prussians on zat low road. Zen zee thairty
years war. And of course zee Crusades. Ah owe Zat Man mah LIVES !

Bernatz, a true chronicler your are of our favourite escargot, Monsieur Syd Snail, Did you know it was also rumoured he was seen in the valley of the horses in the Rush to Alaska

U.S. sends carrier...

Probably posted?

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/971003/international/stories/carrier_1.html

Smoking doesn't pay!!!

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/971003/international/stories/smog_1.html

Morning all--Just caught up on my required reading here for the last 12 hours. Expecting to pick up a few nuggets from Donald before retiring. Also, I can't very well let Nick Nick and Nick overtake me in posts, now can I? Here is a very useful service. Free e mail that you can access from any computer or browser. Way cool! http://www.netaddress.com

RJ no-brainer once the question was correct ?
Auric..g'day & gnight, too many posts, me.too much noise:signal/ ( Goldspot ) .

Yasuda Trust 586 billion yen in non-performing bank loans.

http://www.nikkei.co.jp/enews/TNKS/page/asiaset.html

In an earlier post I mentioned a little known company called THINKING
TOOLS. I liked what their ideas were about solving the millenium
problems. Later, I began to watch what Wall Street was thinking. WOW! The share price was 12 1/2 when I mentioned the company. On Friday
it closed at 17 with asking at 18. The symbol is TSIM for anybody
that may want to follow it.

Earl: There are additional claims on the $483 billion in greenbacks. I only used the $80 trillion figure that the Bank for International Settlements is worried about. Lets put the $80 trillion in perspective; remembering that the figure was zero in 1987.

These figures are all in trillions and are about 3 years old. Treasury securities 3.5, Federal agencies 2.2, Municipal bonds 1.2, Mortgages 4.4, Corporate bonds 2.4, Bank loans 0.8, Consumer credit 1.0, Commercial paper 1.0, Finance Company 1.0 The total of these is 17.5 trillion. This is just the U.S. and these people are after the same $483 billion in a panic. Remember also that $233 billion of greenbacks circulate overseas and would not be available in a U.S. only panic.

Did you read the Cato Institute post? It raises the point about FDIC insurance coverage of derivatives created by U.S. banks. We are on very thin ice here; and with banking profits dependent upon the continuance of this environment they are loath to fully disclose the risk. FDIC insurance lets them keep the profits on the wins; taxpayers take the losses.

Good Morning Auric. I was doing the same and had to do some early morning research to respond to Earl. It was worth the effort. I have been bearish on the financial condition of the world for a long time. When you dig into the details to respond to a question I am amazed by how much we continue to deteriorate without an accident. If a new fad comes along like the hula-hoop and everyone says they will sell just one share of something to purchase it, the whole financial system will collapse!

http://www.msnbc.com:80/news/114691.asp

http://www.businesswire.com:80/cgi-bin/sr_headline.sh?/bw.100297/492244

Howdy Aurator, Donald--Indeed the situation is precarious. The more one delves into this, the more fragile the bubble appears. And it grows more so by the day. Best to be as prepared as you can be.

http://www.abcnews.com:80/sections/business/street/street_1003_3/index.html

KITCO KWIZZ. Maybe it's just because Donald is still asleep, but the answers to the Kitco Kwizz Kwestion have been predictably boring ( except for Nick@Canberra getting taken on the streets of Zamboanga. To repeat the kwestion: What was the highest gold price per ounce ever in American ( USA ) currency? ( in AMERICAN PAPER MONEY, not translated into Phillipine pesos, or anything else! ) And you call yourselves goldbugs! Bet Alan Greenspan knows this one. Answer at Noon TODAY. ( If I forget, someone remind me ) .

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/97/10/05/y0021_y00_1.html

DONALD: Didn't see you creeping up on me while I was posting, and scolding the class. You're awake!

Mike Sheller: I was on duty at 5:30, didn't notice your name on a recent post. ( grin thing ) I don't know the answer or know where to find it.

http://www.arabicnews.com:80/ansub/Daily/Day/971004/1997100403.html

http://www.phillynews.com:80/daily_news/97/Oct/02/local/GRAD02.htm

I posted the Hitler Youth Rally thing becauce the event is the kind of thing that might indicate a national mood swing, it could be a subtle sign of a top. People may be feeling guilt about greed and the social mindset it has created. They are clearly saying they are not satisfied with their personal lives at a time when CNBC says this is the best of all possible worlds. Just a hunch.

Just back from a TWENTY hour ISP black-out...hm....and this after Wednesday's super duper upgrade of the previous upgrade...hm....new high speed line from Halifax will now give you RELIABLE ( what's that mean I live in Cape Breton ) service ( har har har ) ...Was busy yesterday so didn't care about idotic ISP but have a related story to tell: Yesterday we went to Sydney ( home of my yocal ISP ) to see the "Enchantment Of The Seas",the largest cruise ship EVER to come to Sydney and typically the streets were full of tourists going into all the yocal gift shops ( ect ect ) and the people who run my ISP,The Gardner Gallery ( prints+paintings of Cape Breton ect ect ) ....were CLOSED as tourists streamed by their closed doors on the day the biggest cruise ship EVER came to town....DUH...The Gardner Gallery ain't ever open Saturdays ( DUH ) ...and weren't about to change their ways...just for a silly cruise ship and the possibilities of maybe even making some money...So much money has been handed to this area that the overwleming majority could give a flying-fuc$ about making a buck cause Ottawa pays their way....As I've said ( like a broklen record ) if you ever want to see the EVILS of socialism gone AMUCK come to Cape Breton...

Donald: The Promise Keepers article is indicative of the recognition by many that spiritual truths have been neglected. A "bottom" has been made in the market for spirituality. The last paragraph is significant: "Meanwhile, stop fretting about neo-Fascism. In an era of drugs, juvenile crime, broken families, busted schools, we should cheer when thousands of men meet in a green field to pursue goodness. Why knock virtue? Give 'em room to sing, pray, hug and cry. Hey, it's a Guy Thing."

http://www.rferl.org:80/nca/features/1997/09/F.RU.970929150244.html

And my guess is... US$854.00 in 1980.

Save it, incoming ....
TTFN

http://www.businesswire.com:80/cgi-bin/sr_headline.sh?/bw.100297/491568

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/97/10/01/y0004_y00_16.html

Donald, Re your concern over volatility and the Dow/Gold ratio, I was thinking it would be informative to look at the volatility of the Dow/Gold ratio itself. I have never noticed anyone putting Bolinger bands on an inter-market ratio, but I suppose it's been done. Do you have the historical data to do it easily?
Given your predilection for simplicity ( an ideal much to be desired ) the idea would be that given an historical negative correlation between gold and paper, there may be an extra kick to the predictive value of increases in volatility of their ratio.

http://www.sptimes.com:80/News2/100497/NATIONAL/Tangled_spy_mission_t.html

Billionaire assails Europe's plan for one
currency


Copyright  1997 Nando.net

THE HAGUE ( October 4, 1997 10:21 a.m. EDT http://www.nando.net ) -
Billionaire investor George Soros said Saturday that Europe's design for a
single currency was flawed -- and could even end up destroying the
European Union.

Addressing a conference on Europe in the 21st century, Soros said the
strict terms for monetary union set out in the Maastricht Treaty had forced
European governments to reduce their spending during a prolonged period
of high unemployment.

Soros, whose speech was distributed to journalists before delivery, said
this emphasis on reducing budget deficits was misplaced and had
probably prolonged economic recession.

"I want to make it clear that I support the single currency, but I am worried
because I think its design is flawed," he said.

Soros said his main concern was the absence of a mechanism for
correcting errors.

The common currency would have to be followed by a common fiscal
policy, including harmonization of taxes on savings, but this would be
extremely unpopular, he said.

"We may have therefore come to the end of the road because public
opinion is disenchanted with Europe. If that is so, the common currency
may end up destroying the European Union because its deficiencies
cannot be corrected," he said.

Date: Sun Oct 05 1997 08:51
JTF (@buried_in_derivatives) ID#57232:

Donald: You've been busy-only 4 hours sleep? I crashed early last night. Still have to go through all the web sites you posted -- the Cato one seems the best of all. My problem with Panda's reference to $vix is that we need an indicator of derivative risk for the whole world. The market that $vix represents ( COMEX, I believe ) is probably the most tightly regulated -- I don't know how derivative trading volume on COMEX compares to the world-wide regulated derivate volumes. My guess is -- forget OTC risk -- because we will never get the data!
Also -- I'm not sure $VIX is the right indicator -- but the first or second derivative of $VIX might be helpful, because it would give us an idea of how fast the derivatives market is changing.
Regardless, I think a derivatives indicator of some kind may be quite useful, because it shows how far people will go away from hard assets. Compared to stocks, this is way out in left field!!!
If we have war in the Middle East, we may not need this indicator!

On August 26, 1997, IBM issued "Notice to IBM Customers:
Declaration of Plan to Discontinue Lease, Rental, and Maintenance
Services on Selected Machines." The list of cancelled machines is 18
pages long. The cover letter ( Sept. 12 ) began: "By now, I'm sure
you've heard about the Year 2000 issue. It's real. It's significant. And
it will certainly affect your enterprise."

Earnings: Yasuda Trust hit by 70 bln yen
interim net loss
Yasuda Trust & Banking Co. posted net loss of 70 billion yen in the
half-year ended September, and expects a 70 billion loss for the year
through March, company officials said Friday. A bad-loan write down
of 200 billion yen stretching over the full year and appraisal loss from
falling stock prices combined to wipe out profit.

Yasuda Trust originally projected 4 billion yen net profit for the half
year. But the introduction in April 1998 of new rules requiring early
write-offs of nonperforming loans forced the firm to boost its write-off
from the originally planned 70 billion yen to 93 billion yen for the first six
months.

In addition, it was hit by 135 billion yen in appraised loss on its stock
portfolio, resulting in an extraordinary loss of 48 billion yen. The firm will
also omit both interim and year-end dividends, for the first time since
World War II.

Yasuda Trust was carrying 586 billion yen in nonperforming loans from
its banking side alone as of September-end.

Time for a little seakayaking ( to clear the cob-webs ) and "golden thoughts".....as this is approx. the time of year the Fin Whales come back to my little neighborhood and do their spouting-off routine...catch a wave la la la....what's the latest with the "great satan" and the Nimitz???

About 10% of JR Tokai shares unsold:
JNR Settlement
Some 146,000 of the shares offered by Central Japan Railway Co.
remain unsold three business days before JR Tokai is scheduled to list
on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and three other bourses, JNR Settlement
Corp. said Friday. Some individual investors canceled share purchases
due to depressed stock prices.

The sale brought in 485.9 billion yen in revenue. The unsold shares will
be put on sale at a later date, but are not expected to sell out until well
into next fiscal year.

Institutional investors bought all the 700,000 JR Tokai shares on offer,
but 18% of the 800,000 shares targeted at individuals went unsold,
bringing the total number of shares sold to 1.35 million. The value of the
unsold shares comes to more than 50 billion yen.

The Bank Credit Analyst -- correctly bearish on gold for years -- used to argue ( 1994-95 ) that the next gold bull would not begin until the world's central bankers declared victory in the war against inflation and began to fight the next war against deflation. I haven't read them lately, but their forecast is beginning to seem uncannily accurate. The more the mainstream worries about deflation and the costs of a strong dollar -- the better gold will fare.

I agree with Nick that the gold stocks probably will consolidate for awhile before the next upleg.

LDP calls for close collaboration with
IMF to form Asian fund
The Liberal Democratic Party's panel on financial matters discussed
Friday a plan to set up a fund to help stabilize Asian currencies. A
majority of panel members called for close collaboration with the IMF
on the Asia Fund and agreed the Japanese government should exchange
information with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
and the U.S. to speed up the process.

The Asia Fund concept emerged from a summit meeting composed of
ASEAN members whose currencies floundered in the wake of the Thai
baht's free-fall.

Some panel members noted that Japan, soon to be the second largest
contributor to the IMF, must closely coordinate policies with the
international financial institution, but did not go into specifics, such as the
size of the proposed fund.

The panel is headed by LDP lawmaker Michio Ochi.

TED: How much does your kayak weigh? How much does a decent one cost?

Donald - you haven't taken enough flack yet for your "Hitler Youth" posting concerning the "Promise Keepers" ( of which I am *not* a member ) . Do you want to talk about a group with a potential for fascist action? How about Louis Farakhand's " ( not quite ) Million ( mostly black ) Man March" in D.C. - that man OPENLY avowes racist and anti-semite positions? Or perhaps the Gay/Lesbian March? What's the matter - you don't think that the Gay/Lesbian Alliance doesn't have the potential to run re-education/death camps for heterosexuals? Or maybe the National Organization of ( some ) Women march? You don't think they have the potential to become Amazon-Nazi's and run male castration camps? You want to tally up, over human history, by race and sex, who has effected the most killing? The Sumerians? Egyptians? Mongols? Huns? Chinese? Romans? Communists? North Koreans? Cambodians? Americans? Aztecs? Mayans? Kushites?

What's the *real* issue here: the fear of Washington D.C/Liberal/Media oligarchy that has worked so damn hard for the last 40 years to castigate white males as the world's bad guys. Divide and conquer. Promise Keepers *seems* ito be a group that is not just white males, but invites males of all races to act like responsible husbands and fathers and act from a morality not synthesized in Hollywood and Boston, Mass. liberal kitchens ( "Humanism" ) . And it scares the hell out of Hollywood, Mass. liberals and Washington D.C. Imperial rulers - they can't stand even the hint that they might loose the power to control & manipulate. For a one-world empire to be created, ALL religions must be co-opted or made to seem evil. All critical, skeptical thought must be made to seem cold, heartless and unfeeling.

The only people who "care" are those enlightened, compassionate members of the liberal-power cult of Hollywood/New England/Washington D.C. Anyone else who might disagree is simply racist, sexist, anti-peace, anti-children, anti-women, anti-minority, anti-environment. You are right about one thing, Donald: the masses of dumbed-down, morally-depleted young males & females in our large cities are the perfect media for sowing a New World Order - just as the Nazi party did to the youth wreckage of the post Weimar Republic. I'd guess there will be concentration camps in America - filled with Christians, conservatives, people who own ( ed ) gold, and anyone else who dares speak against a government greedy for power. Who knows, maybe I'll share my moldy bread crust with you as we plan an escape tunnel.

Welcome to the new Kitco, crash-proof. Have recenty been aquiring shares of Vista on the Amex VGZ, by the truckload @0.50 US. As when it was granges, nobody likes vista because of hycroft. The shares should be much higher for a small to mid range producer.

Watcher -- All index options ( that I'm aware of ) settle in cash. You will not receive the stock equivalent of the index. If you choose to exercise the index option, it will be done as a cash transaction. A stock option can be exercised for cash or stock. It is interesting to note the trend of settling of commodities futures in cash as opposed to the underlying commodity. A further separation from reality?

One other difference with index options; There are two styles of options exercise. American style and European style. American style options are 'exercisable' at any time. This means that you, as the writer, may have to deliver cash or stock at any time during the contracts life. European style options are only exercisable in the two days prior to expiration of the contract. Most index options are European style contracts. Most stock options are American style contracts. Isn't this a fun game? :- )

FWIW, writers have the odds in their favor. Two out of three chance that they'll win. Buyers have the odds against them, one out of three chance that they'll win in the trade. The buyer must be correct in the direction of the move AND the time of the move. The writer has time on his side ( wasting asset for the holder ) and only has to be correct in one direction. If the writer thinks the market is going down, the writer will win if the market stays flat or goes down. If the market goes up after the option expires, the writer still wins. Hence the purchase of options, other than as a hedge, is ALWAYS a speculative play. Use gambling money, because you will probably lose.

The major problem facing the EMU caused the Bretton Woods Agreement ( Gold Standard ) to fail. Medium to long-term GOLD WILL BE the greatest single beneficiary of the EMU:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest/milhouse1006.html

The promise keepers rally is good. It is important for the lefties to realise that they are NOT a majority. It is important for people to realise that a nation that allows godlessness & abortion to reign unchecked long term will suffer terminal decline. This is as factual as Donald's 100 yr Dow/Gold Ratio charts, but add a few thousand years on top of world history of nations that suffered decline. ( often linked to fiat money/debauchery )

Comment on previously posted article: Why the big deal? If Promise Keepers want to see D.C. on a fall weekend, let 'em

1. Plenty, if you listen to nervous vibes in the Imperial City.

COMMENT: The lefties are getting threatened or guilty .

2. So what if they're mostly white Baby Boomers who won't invite women
to their prayer festival?

COMMENT: There were blacks/coloured men in the crowd who looked very happy. These men are coming together to re-evaluate their direction & leadership of their families.

3. You'd imagine a city inured to scandals of drunken, pawing politicians would welcome guys who want to swear off sinful behavior.

COMMENT: Maybe the lack of moral fibre from the US Politicians is one reason why these Christian men are standing up, to say enough is enough. If I was the liberal media, I would be getting a touch nervous.

4. But to hear apprehensive bleats of critics, this Promise Keepers
gathering is racist, sexist and homophobic -- a Hitler Youth Rally at
Nuremburg without swastikas.

COMMENT: Leftie Rule Number One. Totally accuse your enemy of what you are. Like what they are doing to Pauline Hanson in Australia.

5. They bill this event, ``Stand In the Gap,'' translated by feminists as,``Stand in Our Way.''
What drives feminists bonkers is Promise Keepers' Biblical
tub-thumping for men to be household masters as in Apostle Paul's
gospel, ``Women must submit to their husbands.''
Patricia Ireland, leader of National Organization for Women, is
especially furious over this male-in-charge slant. ``When I see Promise
Keepers, I am afraid and angry. I see a return to male repression.''
Her anxiety that praying, chanting guys will bring back the 1950s' glass
ceiling seems overwrought. Many wives sound amiably astonished that
Promise Keeper acolytes want to balance a checkbook and take out
garbage. There are even female auxiliaries ( Promise Keepettes? )

COMMENT: The Bible teachers MEN to LOVE their WIVES. THEN their wives may wish to be submissive to their husbands. Submission does NOT mean being a doormat. Equally, the husband is to be submissive to the wife, & not be unfaithful. LOVE come FIRST. Many leftie women/dykes hate the concept of submission, because their have never experienced Biblical LOVE from their partners or from their fathers. So their position is understandable, despite being wrong. Lets face it guys, the buck stops with us most of the time.

6. Founder McCartney's daughter Krystin was twice made pregnant by Colorado football players. ) Nothing wrong with his drive to
make better hubbies and daddies: ``Real heroes don't score
touchdowns but wash the dishes and read to their children.''

COMMENT: Even in the secular world, as per a recent article, many men who are having children the second time round ( in their late 40's/50's ) are saying that spending time with the kids in the very early years is of far more importance in the scheme of things. What father would not cross hot coals for his daughter? Particularly AFTER something has happened.

7. Promise Keepers is in trouble. Its yearly average crowds are fading
56,000, 50,000, 36,000 ) . The money crunch trimmed 100 staffers.
...Crusade is a soap bubble. Meanwhile, stop fretting about neo-Fascism.
In an era of drugs, juvenile crime, broken families, busted schools, we
should cheer when thousands of men meet in a green field to pursue
goodness. Why knock virtue?

COMMENT: Since I work fairly hard, I prefer to attend my spiritual events ( eg Church etc ) WITH my WIFE, rather than with a stack of blokes. having said that I do plan to attend a Men's Camp next weekend, but just to get to know some of the men from our church of 450 in Perth, in a relaxed environment. Logic says that your partner/wife is more important than your buddies. So after the basic tenets of the organisation have been achieved, it should diminish. One feature conducted is checking with your male friends about unfaithfulness & falling into temptation ( all kinds ) . I agree in principal with this, but would rather discuss these things with the wife. My private life is just that... PRIVATE.

WRAP UP: Just a few comments from someone in the "know".

SPUDMASTER: I have to agree wholeheartedly with your assessment of the reaction to the Promise Keeper movement. ( This is not an attack, by any means, on Donald ) . Spud, you said it best, so there's not much I can add except my support to your comments. It is amazing how perversely "diversity" is used when it excuses clearly anti-social aberrations. And it is amazing how ostensibly clearly defined standards are "offensive" depending on who they are coming from. If some tribal culture treats its women this way it's "diversity," but if its our neighbor its racist and immoral. I thought marriage was a matter of choice, and people are entitled to use their heads every bit as much as they use their hearts. Women deserve the men they marry, and men deserve the women. What's the problem? Nobody can take responsibility for life not living up to personal fantasy? Tough.Comparing this movement, which is indeed a reaction to the degeneration of society we are ALL responsible for, to a Hitler rally was a bit much, but indicative of the media influence that has even tainted, for a brief moment, a beloved brother Kitcoite. Let us pray for him...and for us 0 ( :- ) ) .

STEVE FROM PERTH: Ditto Bravos to your assessment as well. It is no less the future of civilization, and our children and their offspring, that is in the balance. We all try to come to the "perfect" vision imperfectly. But we must see things as they are. No amount of wishing will turn socially sanctioned fetus murder, family irresponsibility, and chronic empty debauchery into anything other than what they are: evils to the future and progress of mankind, at any time, in any age.

THE KITCO KWIZZ IS KLOSED. The question for today was: "What was the highest price per ounce of gold ever in United States paper money?" Some responses included RJ:$850 on 1/21/80, The Major:$959 in 1980, John C: $854 in 1980, Nick ( Aussie ) $895 1/21/80, jfdkls: $875, and, of course, Nick ( Canberra ) getting rooked in Zamboanga for 240 grand in Phillipine Pesos. All wrong. On May 31, 1781, a dollar of "hard money" exchanged for $400 to $1000 of US paper currency ( Continental Currency ) , taking $19,390.00 in US paper money to buy one ounce of gold. NINETEEN THOUSAND boys and girls. By the Act of August 4, 1790, Continental bills were funded at one cent on the dollar - hence the expression "Not worth a Continental." ( Actually, an ounce of gold WAS worth a "Continental," a Lincoln Continental! ) Warren & Pearson, "Prices," 1933.

An interesting bit of history for those who scoff at claims of possible two, or three thousand dollar gold early in the next century.

The Wichita Lineman:
Who has recommended Vista? What is happening now that will help move it up? What is its upside potential?

DONALD: While I am not sure about the Hitler Youth comments, I think that you may be right about the US as a nation at a "top" or "turning point". Obviously there has been far too much focus on materialism, & the Promise Keepers is a spiritual signal that the country may have had enough. With all the problems with drugs/divorce/abortion/rapings/muggings/murder etc, you cannot just lay the blame at the feet of the government. We are the government, ultimately. And we ultimately must take responsibility, together as well as individually. Maybe we feel threatened, so lets return to the home front and make the change in ourselves. Must confess, haven't heard too many complaints from the women who are married to Promise Keepers in Australia.

MIKE: Do I win the Promise Keeper's Quiz??
Seriously, tonight I just got off the phone from a female client whose male partner left her recently for a much younger woman. The guy has a very dominating mother, & lacks commitment. Now he is facing a financial settlement. I thought the guy would have problems when I met him. My female client is a lovely person. The guy has a heart problem. No love. So he wanders. Sad really. This is where Promise Keepers hits the road. It is amazing how much financial damage is done through separation & divorce. If we focus our lives being accountable to our maker, maybe we might just look after our partners a bit better also. I must thank God for my wife, & that our first child ( after many patient years ) will be due in December this year. A boy we think. Will keep you posted after the event. Question: What are you investing in that will still be around after you are gone? Your family is a good start.

Internationally acclaimed Technical Analyst has performed another insightful study destined to be called "THE Homestake Mining Prophecy." His analysis exudes incisive thinking, and is expressed with great clarity:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest/fisher1001.html

Attack in Iraq
11:46 AM ( ET ) 10/5
Gunmen Attack Baghdad U.N. Office
CAIRO, Egypt ( AP ) -- Gunmen hurled grenades and fired bullets at a U.N. office in Baghdad, destroying one vehicle and damaging three others, officials said Sunday. One attacker was injured.
The wounded gunman was taken into custody by the Iraqi army, according to a U.N. statement. The remaining three attackers fled, it said.
The Saturday night assault targeted the World Health Organization's headquarters in Baghdad, which houses an office for U.N. officials monitoring the oil-for-food program.
No one claimed responsibility. It was not clear how the captured gunman was injured.
According to preliminary reports, the four men also lobbed grenades and opened fire at the WHO building, the statement said.
Eric Falt, spokesman for the oil-for-food program, told The Associated Press in Dubai the attack came after office hours and only guards were at the building.
The roof of the carport was partially burned, Falt said. One four-wheel drive vehicle was destroyed and three others severely damaged, he said.
U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad, Denis Halliday, condemned the attack, the first ever at a U.N. building in Iraq, the statement said.
"It is the Iraqi government's responsibility to protect U.N. personnel and property against any harm and Mr. Halliday has asked for an urgent meeting at the highest levels with the Iraqi leaders in order to express his concern," said the statement.
No one claimed responsibility.
Iraq has been under U.N. sanctions banning the sale of oil, its economic mainstay, since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. But a U.N. program, put in place in December 1996, allows Iraq to sell $1 billion of crude every 90 days to buy needed food and medicine under close U.N. supervision.

Covered my gold shorts at 10:35 Fri morn. Trend direction is now questionable. If we have a failure before a weekly close above $350, I'll short it again. Weekly close above $350 means higher prices ( nuch higher ) .
SPX made and HELD the new highs as expected. I have always held that both gold and stocks would move up together during the last leg of the stock bull and the first leg of the gold bull. This may be it.$350 on a weekly close tells the tale for me.

Stocks MUST perform here, or the bull is in deep trouble. I expect a powerful surge here and now. Anything less and I'm looking for a sell signal.

RE: Promise Keepers: I did not watch any of it, but it has nothing to do with fascism. It is remarkable how well the liberal media establishment has brainwashed the public. Any mention of traditional Western values is met with immediate cries of "Nazi!". It's remarkable how men who live in constant fear that their wives/daughters will be raped and murdered by young men who never new the love and discipline of a father would object to a group advancing same. Go figure.

All: How can anyone read the Hitler Youth post and my adjacent comment and feel that I am expressing an opinion of my own? My intent was to note that economic turning points often coincide with social turning points. It seems strange that thousands who rally on the DC mall in recent years to indicate that they not satisfied with our world are in conflict with the talking heads on CNBC who say we are in the goldilocks era, not too hot, not too cold, but just right. Clearly, things are not just right for those of every possible persuasion who rally.

Of course I have an opinion on most everything; but I feel I have refrained from expressing it at Kitco. Those two posts were intended to make a socio-economic point, nothing more, nothing less. I declared no opinion on the conclusion of the author. In order to demonstrate the relationship between social and economic issues I have found some historical information that I will post in a few minutes. It is controversial and is not intended to equate the Promise Keepers to the groups who will be mentioned in the new post. So don't anyone get bent out of shape when you read it, fer crying out loud. It is history equally as valid as paying $19,000 for an ounce of gold. Good one Mike.

Hard times beget hatred

Historically, this kind of activity has spiked during periods of economic difficulty in the United
States, says Professor Kraut.

The first spike occurred in the 1830s and 1840s, fueled by the economic panic of 1837 and the
depression that followed. Many Americans blamed their woes on the Irish and German immigrants
who were coming to the US in droves. Anti-Roman Catholicism was rampant.

Similar spikes of intolerance occurred after the Civil War ( the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the
South ) ; in the economic difficulties of the early 1920s ( the reincarnation of the Klan in the North ) ;
and, of course, during the Great Depression of the 1930s ( radio commentator Father Charles
Coughlin, and others ) . Kraut counts the McCarthy era of the 1950s as another spike of
intolerance.

"Neo-Nazis and Klansmen: They feed on other people's fear, fear of losing their jobs, fear of losing
their homes," says Joanne Shaffer, assistant director of member and field services in the Texas office
of the National Victim Center.

In the past, such periods of rising intolerance have presaged progress for minority groups. The Klan
backlash against the civil-rights marches in the 1960s did not stop, and perhaps helped push
through, civil-rights legislation.

Donald: This is really weird. A group--about which I know little and pass no judgement on--gets together in D.C. to talk about LOVE for wife and family, and they are called a "HATE" group. Go figure. Gone from here.

Does the stock market resemble more of a crap game than a equity market? Many years ago I paid a some what substantual tuition to learn the game of craps. No I was not really good at it but I learned more than I paid in tuition. Any way when you find someone that is really good and the table is hot, the good cash management players ( winners ) will at some point start playing the back line. They will keep some money on the right side but the hotter the table gets the larger their bets on the back line. At some point craps is thrown. New bets, new shooter. Warren Buffet is now putting money in the bond market. He aint no dummy. He is betting the back line. Does any one know of any other savvy investors that have started investing in Bonds?

Re "grouping up" - When people go "tribal" they tend to go "postal".

how long did it take to fall? Bite me in the jabber box, if you KNOW WHERE IT IS.

Nick:- I think I'm quite cautious - so will stay away from options for now. The only query I have- If paper becomes worthless, then surely VERY SMALL coins would gain food/shelter/transport etc. Would the 1/4 oz therefore be a better bet?

RJ:- Thanks / Gold Coins.... Have a few KR's, but resources getting low after many years of putting one each 25th into the Christmas pud....Will wait for the Mounty [sort of like a knight in shining armour?] or even the Austrian one- [seem to be fated -3 Lipizzaners out of no-where]

John Disney: Thanks for Wes- area . Made 6 times cost very quickly a few years ago, and have watched them with interest ever since., Great tip.

Aurator- tell your cousin to contact me. When is he/she arriving in SA? You're the only one to even MENTION my bottled mineral water! Is no-one taking me seriously? Can't remember that classical Greek philospher's name..the one who bought the olive presses after studying the weather patterms. Made a mint. Help me out?

Mike Sheller:- What happoens when the Moon triggers that Mars/Plu con. of Friday tomorrow am at 7.38SA time?
Noel Tyl is coming out in about 10 days time for a conference- I suggested to Anita NS that she contact you. Heard from her?

Night All- MY Crown Jewel doesn't have Internet, so it's a mirror of Aurator's plight....

Nick-
No idea about premiums or terms of purchase. I should have them available by 10/15/97, but be prepared for delays, these coins did not exist August 1, 1997. They just decided on a face value and began striking coins late August. I haven't even seen the design. Who knows? It may be ugly as hell, hard to make a Mounty look all that interesting, unless they went the Duddley Dooright route. The RCM is protecting the buyback guarantee with put options. This is a very clever marketing ploy. Would the other mints follow soon?? I'll let you know when the Mountie has be released.

Aurator-
Ok, since we're still exploiting Sid 17 days. Net 1 foot per day for 17 days, last day three feet to the top. Would that he never reached the top. Reported last night that Sid rolled over and SPAT! To understand the depth of my despair at the loss of so great a snail, please read as SPLAT, as snails are wont to do whenever falling from a great height. Oh woe. As for this hermaphrodite talk, can you not let a snail rest in peace? True he did like the lingerie a bit too much, but to those whose knew and loved him, has was all snail. Snifffff


Bernatz de Ventadorm-
I always knew you and I had an unfound kinship. Like the unselfish snail he was, Sid brought together nations under the kind benevolence of his slime. No he has bridged generations. Thank you for you kind words. You are, as always, I gentleman warrior and all around fine fellow!


PS Aurator-
How do you make those cool Y's with the line through them?

Colleen, It was Thales. He did it to show that philosophers could get practical results - according to Heroditus ( I think ) .

COLLEEN: Thank you so much for the introduction. Eve did e mail me from Ms NS, but gave me an incomplete phone number. I e'd a phone where I can be reached during NY business hours ( 9-5 ) Haven't heard back, but would very much like to make contact.

Oldman: You are absolutely correct. Once this stock bull stops charging, a big drop will not be far off.

Some strategists are recommending Japanese small cap stocks according to Barron's. The Japanese OTC market now is down 80% from its peak -- much more than even gold stocks. Talk about a washed out sector. The Fidelity Japan Small Cap Fund is down 32% over the past year while their regular Japan Fund is up slightly. Again even worse than the gold funds. This kind of situation ( along with gold, of course ) has the kind of risk/reward that appeals to me.

COLLEEN: Thales! now there's a thought. I think we should all go out and buy PRINTING presses for what I see coming. I'll save the olives whole for my Martini, thank you.

Wonder if the massacre in Japan small stocks provides us with a preview of what the now booming NASDAQ will look like a few years from now?

Donald, All: Damn, I've got REAL work to do on this computer...but I keep getting sidetracked at Kitco. Or is the WORK the real sidetrack? Hmm Seriously - ( forgive this long post, but here goes ) - History is replete with instances of social groups battling other social groups over perceptions of reality. That IS history. Sometimes the battles are "legal" and sometimes the battles are with weapons. In the end, all battles are implicitly weapons based. If we do not obey the "law", "they" will come with weapons ( so that we are rendered ineffectual in opposing "them" ) and lock us away. It must be borne in mind that the premise of each contending group in this battle is the preservation of a "lifestyle," or world view. This world view is generally, among civilized, reasonably rational humans, held in order to preserve and promote the progress of the human race. Sometimes the intention is the direct subjugation of others. To the degree it is perceived that "other" groups or world views deviate from, or fall short of, the accepted plan for progress, these become deviationists, antagonists, and eventually enemies. If the deviations and discords in world views are not too severe, many varied groups with different outlooks can live side by side, and often co-mingled. People tend to seek each other out, and give creedence and respect to each other as human beings, based on the values they share. The more spiritually evolved souls among us who can find it in their hearts to address each person they meet at face value, in cosmic respect, and forgiveness of the glaring imperfections, are a leaven which allows us to give an apparent "sinner" the benefit of the doubt. But we ALL recognize there is a cutoff point at which a person, or a group of people ( as a family, an organization, a tribe, a class, a nation ) are simply poison to the generally shared view of what makes for human safety, rational living, and progress. Occasionally, it is the duty of those who recognize a threat to life, liberty, and progress to enter into conflict, even violent conflict with these negatively perceived forces. The fact that we all see "truth" through a glass darkly does not excuse us to throw up our hands and refuse to defend what few values we have learned by experience, or revelation, and hold dear. In the Old Testament, when "God" "told" the Israelites to go over that hill and take the land of those cruddy Moabites, or whomever, and wipe their society out, it was the biblical philosopher's way of saying "Man must live by either God's Law ( reason, justice, mercy, intelligence, responsibility ) or by the animal law of raw desire and debauchery. Sometimes there is a direct confrontation between the two. Sometimes the poison, if allowed to grow just a bit stronger, will kill us all. For the Israelites to have survived to unfold the experiment of a higher life, they had to eradicate the danger of destruction or taint from the degenerate tribes that surrounded them. Sometimes in human affairs that appears to be necessary. We all have our limits. Those who think they are pacificts, consider what you would do, should do, if you were accosted by thugs and vandals in your own home.

In times of stress, people react even more strongly and imperfectly to perceived threats. We are all under some sort of illusion, but we can only cling to the highest principles we have discovered in life. And we owe it to the human race, and "God's" plan ( for this universe cannot be otherwise than intelligently planned ) to act according to the highest we can understand as "right." If we make mistakes in our blindness, and we will, God forgive us. But let us see clearly where our brothers and sisters are TRYING to raise themselve up to be better, more truly progressive human beings in their fundamental values, and where people are merely insulting us with their own irrationality, inconsistency, weakness, and debauchery.

Oh No! Not Tapes Again!!! 1:54 PM ( ET ) 10/5
GOP: Tapes Back Clinton Probe Need
WASHINGTON ( AP ) -- Newly disclosed videotapes of White House coffees with political donors could force Attorney General Janet Reno to rethink her decision not to request an independent counsel to investigate President Clinton, Republicans said Sunday.
"We want them all," the head of the House panel investigating campaign finance irregularities said of the tapes.
"We didn't even know about them, and that really bothers us," said Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee. "We're going to check very thoroughly into the logs of the White House to make sure we get all of those videotapes," he said on "Fox News Sunday."
Time magazine, in its edition on newsstands Monday, revealed that the White House has begun to turn over to the Justice Department and Congress tapes of more than 100 fund-raising coffees and dinners Clinton gave in 1995 and 1996.
The report on the videotapes came just two days after Reno announced she is giving her investigators more time to look into fund-raising telephone calls Vice President Al Gore made from the White House. But she said she found no evidence that Clinton violated the law by having potential donors to coffee in the White House coffees and letting big contributors stay overnight in the executive mansion.
Such evidence is necessary to trigger a decision by the attorney general to ask a court to appoint an independent counsel to investigate criminal actions by senior government officials.
"Clearly there is now additional evidence," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
McCain, a champion of campaign finance reform legislation who has been a rare Republican supporter of the attorney general, said: "I think we are now reaching a point where her credibility is in real serious danger. ... I have never seen anything like it, and I'm not sure longtime Washington observers have since the firing of Archibald Cox."
Cos was a special counsel who lost his job during the Watergate investigation for refusing to give up his pursuit of President Nixon's White House tapes.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., proposed that the Senate Judiciary Committee stage a hearing to probe Reno's actions. "I do not think we can let stand what the attorney general is doing," he said on CNN's "Late Edition."
"We have a Democratic attorney general who is acting like a defense council for the administration, and it's pathetic," said Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, on ABC's "This Week."
The White House had no immediate comment on the tapes. Former White House counsel Jack Quinn, appearing on CBS, said he understood they were mainly "little snippets" taken at the beginning of the coffees.
"They are not complete videotapes of the entire event," he said. "There's a lot of exaggeration here, a lot of expectation that there may be something here that's just not here."
Quinn said that while that White House has been "massively in compliance" with congressional requests for documents, "it will have to explain why these were turned over in a tardy way."
Burton also said he may grant limited immunity to Democratic money-raiser John Huang so he can testify before Burton's scheduled hearings on fund-raising practices. Huang, who brought in guests to Clinton's coffees and is at the center of charges that the Democrats accepted illegal donations from abroad, sought limited immunity from prosecution so he could testify before Senate hearings. No deal could be worked out there.
"If he can give us information that would take us higher up the food chain, so to speak, and bring people to justice who may have broken the law and threatened our national security, ... then of course we would seriously consider that," Burton said.
Burton said his hearings would show clearly that Huang and another Democratic fund-raiser, Charlie Trie, were "conduits for laundering money that went to the Democratic National Committee."
Senate hearings haven't shown conclusively that the Chinese government had a plan to influence the 1996 presidential election through illegal donations, but Burton said: "We're awfully close to saying that."

 ( P-boy - He ain't tellin'!!

awa...
EB ;-0

A dish best served cold....................

Mike Sheller & Carl THALES!!- thanks for that. One of my favourite stories- maybe he didn't know maths either!! But well worth thinking about. Reading the 'Farmers Weekl;y' article on El Nino this morning made me realise how SIMILAR and connected everything is.

Mike Sheller: Have just spoken to Anita- told her to get Eve to phone you again. Her number is +027 011 447 1055 if she's suffering from SA Apathy. Anita has asked F Crooke [The Freddy Factor] if he'd come up to Jhbg for the conference, and will know if he can by tomorrow.

Should be interesting. Also suggested she get in Jammine [local economist] or similar for some heated debate.

PS to Mike- when Mo 3.37Sag/Sun 13 Lib/Asc 19 Scor..........what would you make of those whammies?

Mavis Beacon is the best. And...the colder the better ( grin-thingy )

btw...I got 19. And then I got CONFUSED. Now get out there and skate behind some lovely tail and write about it this evening.

awa...to sun and fun
EB...h my!

COLLEEN: re: Mo 3.37Sag/Sun 13 Lib/Asc 19 Scor.. this equation looks like Monday to me, or an easy going, companionable person who is hospitable, somewhat athletic, a good detective, has a wonderful fantasy life, likes the outdoors, and given to speculation and idealism :- ) ) I tend toward applying the ephemerals as aspects to corporate or instituional 'scopes ( people too, of course ) so I would have to do a search of suitable entities affected here. Might still keep an eye on Bangladesh ( Neptune ) , Australia ( Mercury ) Mongolia ( Sun ) United
Arab Emirates ( Abu Dhabi ) ( Neptune ) for that Mo conjunction with 3.37 Sag. I've been worried about all this stuff on Bangladesh's Neptune, what with their history of Monsoons and floods. I'm sure there's lots of other possibilities I've missed. Harold Percival said it best when he wrote that "astrology works best in retrospect."

Vista was recommended by Goepel Shields a while ago, thats the only house that was following it. They looked for $3-$4 a share in the near term. Vista in my fund competed with Rea Gold for the 'lame dog' award for the co that was a 50M a year in revenue, but high costs from nevada bulk tonnage pits. Vista has two mines ready to go at about $150-$180US a tonne in Boliva. I was buying Royal Oak hand over fist at $2.30 Cdn, but since it has doubbled, I have been aquiring vista. Vista also carries a very small amount of debt and sells at a steep discount to assets. I think even Ben Graham and Warren Buffet would load up on Vista is they were gold bugs.

RJ Zigackly. Syd Reaches the epitome of snaildom ( The Sir Sydney Hillary of gastropodal movement ) on day 18 of his peregrinations. He sees the golden Erisian Apple of 2 tolas ( havent had time to read what has been going on while i slept ) and sells it to Bart as down payment on forthcoming divorce proceedings for aurator...

Ill have you know that Sir Sydney Hillary-Clinton-Snail has instructed me that he has never worn silk lingerie except once skating down the boardwalk in front of some metals dealer and that photo is obviously doctored. Sir Sydney Hillary-Clinton-Snail was never in Shanghai


 thing is done on a Macintosh with Option held down with Y. dont know how to do with win-thing.

Gottogotowork bbll

;- )

Mike:
Tomorrow's Moon @ 3:37Sag would trigger Friday Mars/Plu conj. If THAT manifested on Friday per Poorboys post as military activity/ies, we should watch to see the effect on Oil/Gold, provided that it DID have any effect?

Off to bed now. Night, All

COLLEEN: The cat's out of the bag on that one ( Kitcoites will pardon the expression ) . Poorbooys hit it on the mark! All the rest is follow up to Friday's Mars/Pluto conjunction. Pleasant dreams.

John Disney- Man we sure do agree on Western Areas! I had a big, maybe too big, buy order in for W. Areas and the floor trader wanted a huge
slice of the spread, this is ADR's in the USA so I pulled the order.
My screen has been showing +$.625 on NO VOLUME all week. Sure would like to buy some but they jest don't want to sell it.
Just for reminders, Lexington Stregetic Investors Fund was the top fund in 1993 up appx. 270% and the reason was their holdings of WARSY. Then
WARSY sold their gold forward and I sold my shares. Lately they have
bought back the forward position and now my good friend Brett Kibble is
the Captain of that ship. A REAL WINNING COMBINATION!!

Tally Ho

Vista Gold is also recommended by Adrian Day. Part of the reason for the current low price is the partial dumping of 8M shares by people who
received the shares as part of a deal with another company.
Vista has a lot going for it; check the thread on Silicon Investors. I think the coming move from 1/2 to 3/4 is about as easy money as can be found.

There are three important sources of problems which
could cause recessionary slippages in the US over the
next year or two: Errors of monetary policy; heavy
household debt; and a falling dollar.
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971006/market/markets10.html

RJ and anyone else: Those little  things are found in the windows character map. This is available to you in Windows 95 and NT by choosing START, Programs, Accessories, then character map. They are also available by holding down the ALT key and pressing a numerical sequence on the number keypad. The Yen symbol  is created in the TIMES ROMAN font by holding down the ALT key and pressing 0165. Change fonts at the character set screen and get new symbols. It is possible to have more than one combination of numbers for each set.

Carl: You mean ----- there--is--no--18--minute--gap --- this time? Could it be that Clinton's desire to record all of his activities for posterity on ( video ) tape might lead to the same outcome as Nixon and his ( audio ) tape? One problem with video tape -- it's much harder to hide those missing 18 minutes than it was with audio only.

I have been following vista for a while. Atlas Mining dumped the shares to satisfy a debenture. I predicted support @.90 cdn, but was wrong. I held of buying until 0.65cdn. any further weakness is hard to see, if there is, I will add to my position at any thing below .50 Cdn. There are a signifigant number of shares in the float ( 81M ) , but the lack of debt, that was Granges strong balance sheet, means Vista can finance it's two relatively low cost mines ( 150-180US/ounce ) , with ease. People never respected Granges because of it's low grade operation. With new projects, Vista will have more on the table. I am holding until these come on stream in two years time, where I look for 3-4 dollars a share.

The USS Nimitz, sailing towards the Persian Gulf, saved
the gold market on Friday. And just in the nick of time.
After enjoying a short, sharp rally to $US336 mid week,
the gold market just couldn't hold these levels and was
collapsing back towards the crucial $US330/oz support.
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971006/invest/ivcommod.html

To Colleen, all: It is good to see posts from what I like to call "the better half" when I'm talking in reference to my wife. A more balanced type of discussion should help cut down on the discord that periodically seems to haunt this site.

Gentleman, I am happy to hear someone else follows Western Areas. I also follwed Blyvoor, Kloof and a few others. After a while I found it difficult to keep up with them. I used www.sharenet.co.za to follow them but found it inadequate. What internet sites do you use ? If you are from North America, which broker do you use for Johanessburg trades and how much do they charge you ?

Mike Sheller: I appreciated your lengthy post on competing social groups, and their different perceptions of reality, and conflicting desires. This general concept applies to the Middle East situation, and I think also to the current situation with gold. I suspect that the bear market in gold ( where the price is well below equilibrium in US dollars ) is due to an "old money" group in Europe, trying to regain power from the "new money" group which currently has most of the power in the world today. I don't have a clue who these competing groups are. It will be interesting to see if I am right that a group in England is about to offer electronic-gold currency as a ticket to entry into the EMU -- with strings attached? Did you see the JP Morgan post on the dramatic rise in the probability that England will join the EMU? If this happens, it will be interesting to see England gets special dispensation of some kind.

Amid renewed speculation of leadership tensions over the crisis, in which the value of the Malaysian ringgit has
plunged by 30 per cent, Dr Mahathir indicated for the first time that he may be prepared to stand down.
http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/971006/world/world2.html

Hey all - I don't live in an apartment anymore.
Your continued insistence that I do indicates
how moronic you are and how you cannot
incorporate updated information as it comes
in. You are still living in the time of $800 gold
and have not realized that the world has
moved on. 8 years ago, I lived in a dormitory.
Does that mean I live in a dormitory now?
3 years ago, I lived in an apartment. Does that
mean I live in an apartment now?
One night not too long ago, I slept in my car at
a rest area.. Does that mean I live in my car?
Continue to belittle me as the Dow goes back
above 8300 and gold goes to 310. It only
shows how puerile you all are.

I would have more respect for the Promise
Keepers if the prostitutes in D.C. didn't
report a full slate of them last night after
the rally.

Hey all - I don't live in an apartment anymore.
Your continued insistence that I do indicates
how moronic you are and how you cannot
incorporate updated information as it comes
in. You are still living in the time of $800 gold
and have not realized that the world has
moved on. 8 years ago, I lived in a dormitory.
Does that mean I live in a dormitory now?
3 years ago, I lived in an apartment. Does that
mean I live in an apartment now?
One night not too long ago, I slept in my car at
a rest area.. Does that mean I live in my car?
Continue to belittle me as the Dow goes back
above 8300 and gold goes to 310. It only
shows how puerile you all are.

I would have more respect for the Promise
Keepers if the prostitutes in D.C. didn't
report a full slate of them last night after
the rally.

"World renowned psychic" who has worked on many cases for the FBI has comment about market future. At the end of a TV show the other night about the use of psychics in solving crime, the lady said she had a "warning" for everyone watching. The warning was "for God's sake, please get out of the stock market now". According the the psychic, "October will bring a stock market disaster worse than the one that preceeding the Great depression" resulting in "untold suffering and misery".

The oil price surging to an eight-month high will be a focal point for investors this week, particularly as oil is now
considered a better hedge than gold to fight inflation.
http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/971006/business/business5.html

30 years ago, I lived in my mother's womb.
Does that mean I live in my mother's womb now?
20 years ago, I lived in a boarding school dormitory.
Does that mean I live in a boarding school dormitory now?
10 years ago, I had two roommates and lived in
a fraternity.
Does that mean I live in a fraternity now?
3 years ago, I had two different roommates and
lived in an apartment.
Does that mean I live in that apartment now?
1 year ago, I slept in my car one night at a rest area.
Does that mean I sleep in my car now?
Does any of this have anything to do with where
I am living now? Does any of this have anything
to do with the price of gold? I don't care if you
continue to say I live in an apartment, I don't
care if you say I live in a cardboard box in the
park. But it doesn't add anything to your argument
to continue to state something that isn't true,
like the Dow won't go back above 8300 or
gold won't go to 310. It shows you aren't
listening and you are incapable of incorporating
new information to replace outdated information.

Please publish the picture. There are no
pictures of me available from the last ten
years anywhere, so whatever you put up
on the net will be incorrect, but I'm sure
you'll have a good time celebrating your
incorrectness, as you always do.

I guess the Promise Keepers would be
more credible if the D.C. hookers hadn't
reported a full plate of them after the
rally yesterday. But then I guess you
have to sin to be forgiven. Right, Donald?

I would be interested to know your 'information' that presupposes at Dow breaking through 8300 ?. Quite simply, based on what ??

15 years ago, I was a jarhead in Fort Bragg,
and if it wouldn't have been for that Filipino
transvestive jabbering "do me" in Tagalog,
I wouldn't have lost my virginity.
8 years ago, I lived in a trailer park in Memphis,
about 10 feet off of Beale.
7 years ago, I lived on a mountain in Tibet,
dispensing advice and free condoms to
frisky goats
2 years ago, I lived on a kibbutz in Israel
Who am I?
email me at RJ@pacbell.com

Baed on the fact that I lived in an apartment in 1994.
Wichita, do you have a life? Will you promise to
shut the hell up on the day when the dow goes
back above 8260?

Mike: You have an incoming space-craft about ta land.....forgive the ramblin tenor of the missive....Am a man on the run with no time ta lurk or even read comments as din din prep-work is behind schedule and you "know" what that means....eh?.....Spicy TomaTOE ( thanks Dan Q... ) is on the menu...could you just imagine HIM in the White-House????...a joke...no??
Go gold.....and Doc Gooden....BYE!

The Wichita Lineman- I am in Louisiana, not sure is anybody wants to claim it as part of the USA. DBC has a list of SA ADR traded here
http://www.dbc.com/cgi-bin/htx.exe/dbcfiles/SOAFRAt.html?source=core/dbc

Any broker should be able to trade these shares. Western Areas is not on that DBC list but I have requested that they include it. I have a free quote screen for US ahares and it gives quotes on W. Areas. Here it is

http://auth.quicken.com/login/http,3A,2F,2Fquotes,2Equicken,2Ecom,2Fcgi,2Dbin,2Fport

Tally Ho

Ted--Man, of all the Hoosiers Bush could have picked for VP! Why not Richard Lugar, or even David Letterman. At least Letterman would have been intentionally funny. "What a terrible thing it is to lose one's mind."

``We have learned before that imprudent loans made in the heady atmosphere of good times come back to haunt you when the
good times fade,'' Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig told a gathering of the American Bankers Association here.
http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/97/10/05/y0004_y00_2.html

http://www.thestar.com/editorial/money/971005BUS04_FI-CARRIG5.html

Not all the news about the Promise Keepers is bad:

http://www.newsday.com/ap/rnmpnt1r.htm

"We do not need an uncle from elsewhere. We ourselves can unite
and live normally," Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying in
the interview, conducted earlier this week.
http://www.russiatoday.com/rtoday/news/04.html

US accused of Raising Middle East tensions

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/971005/news/stories/gulf_1.html

WASHINGTON -- A respected Russian scientist and former
adviser to President Boris Yeltsin said on Thursday Moscow
secretly developed nuclear "suitcase bombs" under KGB orders in
the 1970s specifically for terrorist purposes.
http://www.russiatoday.com/rtoday/news/06.html

A little ancient history from an area that recently has only bad news: Hezekiah's tunnnel:

http://www.jpost.com/Tourism/Article-3.html

All: What gives? Now everything is bold, and some of my posts don't work!

RBA warning to banks: pull up socks on lending
http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/971006/business/business6.html

TEHRAN -- In a meeting with Iranian Ambassador to Moscow Mehdi Safari on Tuesday, Deputy
Secretary of the Russian Security Council Yuri Deryabin stressed further promotion of Tehran-Moscow
relations. According to IRNA, Deryabin further noted that the Islamic Republic of Iran is of special
importance in Russian foreign policy. In a recent meeting with his French counterpart Jacque Chirac, the
Russian President Boris Yeltsin underlined the need to expand relations with Iran, he added. The Russian
official further stressed that Tehran-Moscow relations are based on international norms and regulations and
enjoy complete transparency. Therefore, Tehran-Moscow relations are not influenced by outside
pressures, he added. Russian military cooperation with other countries is based on three principles of
maintaining power balance, transparency and conformity with international regulations, Deryabin said
adding that such principles are also fully observed in military cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Iranian ambassador gave a full report on upward trend of Tehran-Moscow relations in political and
economic areas.

All: "Mubarak Blames Israel for Stalemate" Hosni Mubarak said Sunday that the Middle East peace process faced "great dangers" because of Israel's refusal to abide by earlier agreements with the Palestinians.

My Comment: This is bad news indeed to hear this from Mubarek ( and similar statements from Jordan's King Hussein. Now even the moderates in the middle east are becoming outspoken ) .

This was from Newsday, AP-NY 10/5/97 1036EDT -- Sorry, post did not work

All Re: My "Promise Keepers" post 17:33 -- still salvagable if you click on AP wire at the bottom of the Newsday page.

Looks like part of the problem is that some of the newsposts are protected from posting to Kitco. However, some of my difficulties, I think is at the Kitco end.

Go O's! in't this great? El Nio El bao Go gld
an't eem t gt eu f thi! Temp. is currently 85 and reez.
a gtt Love t!

now... to the subject at hand

NMrc - Your 16:22 story was a gd . For LL to read. I printed t.

Ted - H dd. I'll waft you a low-flying-burrit. I'm crackin' up...

w?
$$

.......alt157-bo........i wasn't gonna tell a'

I've made a killing in the stock market over the years. My simple stategy has been to follow the pros, namely Warren Buffet. I'm still a die hard bull but am now confused as to why Buffet would buy zero coupons of all things. Why has no one been talking about this? It seems to be very significant from this investors point of view. Can any of you gold bulls share your spin on this event? What are the repercussions of someone like Buffet persuing a course of action so out of line with his past?

I would appreciate comments.

Thank you.

The Liberal Democratic Party's panel on financial matters discussed
Friday a plan to set up a fund to help stabilize Asian currencies. A
majority of panel members called for close collaboration with the IMF
on the Asia Fund and agreed the Japanese government should exchange
information with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
and the U.S. to speed up the process.

The Asia Fund concept emerged from a summit meeting composed of
ASEAN members whose currencies floundered in the wake of the Thai
baht's free-fall.

Some panel members noted that Japan, soon to be the second largest
contributor to the IMF, must closely coordinate policies with the
international financial institution, but did not go into specifics, such as the
size of the proposed fund.

nomercy: Re - your recent posts on Russia foreign policy. Yeltsin is showing a marked anti-US shift, just as the Nimitz is heading to the Persian Gulf. Not a good sign.

TED: I would have taken Dan over Bill any day. We all make spelling errors now and then.

Die Hard: I assume your referring to the recent $2 billion worth of zero coups. Obviously he's expecting interest rates to go down.

Here is a good laugh for all Quale Fan Clubbers
http://www.xmission.com/~mwalker/DQ/#QUOTES

away


I suggest you read Buffet several biographies, Berkshire was liquidated in the late 60s in warren's response to the fund driven bull of that period, just like we are in now. He gave the money back to the original investors.

Maverick: Well, that doesn't make sense, because falling interest rates would be wildly bullish for the stock market.

The Wichita Lineman: I'm aware of what took place in the late sixties, and I have practically read everything out in print on the man throughout the years. But this is different and very uncharacteristic of Warren if he is still a long term bull.

I will accept criticism of Dan Quayle ONLY from people who have served on active duty, OR IN the National Guard. No Candy*ss civilians need apply. Having spent a nice section of my youth slogging thru rice paddies and taking mortars for the Special Forces, 196th, and 173rd Airborne Brigade, among other "clients", I think I would much rather have Mr. Quayle as my Commander in Chief than the current poser. As the bumper sticker says " Only in America, can a Vietnam veteran sleep in a carboard box on the street, while a draft-dodger sleeps in the White House." I still have twinges of pain, that must occasionally be assuaged. You'll forgive me, dear friends, of course.

Greetings my fellow gold bugs!!! I'm happy the tide is starting to turn among Kitco sentiment. Also happy to see some of our Doubting Thomases and Johnny Come Latelys are starting to see the light.

Copyright  1997 Nando.net
FRANKFURT ( October 5, 1997 08:46 a.m. EDT http://www.nando.net ) - Several
of Germany's top union leaders are calling for an end to five years of
moderate wage deals, saying worker salaries have suffered at the expense
of higher profits and explosive stock market gains.

Klaus Zwickel, leader of the powerful IG Metall union, told the Bild am
Sonntag newspaper on Sunday that it was time for an "end of moderation"
in 1998 wage deals and called for sharp increases in wages in talks to be
held this autumn.

Zwickel received support from Oskar Lafontaine and Rudolf Dressler,
leaders of the opposition Social Democratic Party ( SPD ) , who said years
of moderate wage increases that at most matched inflation had brought
little help in relieving the country's unemployment problems.

Ruling German coalition leaders denounced the union and SPD calls for
higher wages and warned that excessive pay demands would undermine
the country's fledgling economic recovery.

Economics Minister Guenter Rexrodt said calls for higher wage deals
could be "poisoning and damaging" to the jobs market, which has been
suffering from post-war record unemployment of about 4.5 million people.

"It would be a fatal signal for investors," Rexrodt said of any wage deals for
next year that were viewed as excessive.

Peter Hintze, general secretary of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's ruling
Christian Democrats ( CDU ) , said the SPD was calling for an "economic
hara kiri" and that SPD leader Lafontaine was pushing unions to make
work in Germany very expensive.

Dieter Hundt, president of the BDA German association of employers, also
called for moderate wage deals. Hundt told Focus magazine that wage
deals should be clearly below productivity gains and, in some industries,
below inflation.

But Zwickel, gaining the backing of the HBV insurance and bank workers
union and the DAG white-collar workers union, said wage deals must be
well above the current inflation rate of about two percent after years of
union acceptance of the need for moderate increases.

"Wages have not kept pace with the improvements in productivity, exports
and profits in recent years," Zwickel said. "It is time for an end of
moderation in wage deals."

Dieter Schulte, president of the DGB German Trade Union Federation, told
German television that employers had not used the moderate wage deals
to create jobs but instead to help make their companies more profitable to
the delight of shareholders.

But Schulte said wage demands in Germany should remain modest with
unemployment at continued high levels.

"I am convinced that the unions will embrace the moderate wage policy if
new jobs are created," Schulte said.

DAG leader Roland Issen, however, said wage hikes were needed to boost
the buying power of consumers in hopes of generating more private
consumption to help the economy.

Rexrodt said he believed private consumption was best served by cutting
the tax and social benefits burden on employees and cutting the difference
between gross and net pay.

Zwickel's call came amid signs of further changes within the country's
powerful union structure when Issen proposed a merger of the DAG union
with the HBV and the OeTV public workers union to create a major
services union.

The new super union would represent millions of German workers in
industries ranging from banking to transport to retail and would be grouped
under the DGB association.

Officials of unions that could join the new services union, including the
DPG postal workers union, met on Saturday in Hamburg to discuss
Issen's proposal.

By JOHN GILARDI, Reuters

Date: Sun Oct 05 1997 18:33
RLM (Again??) ID#403335:

Not sure if someone has already mentioned the inverted head and shoulders that has formed in the XAU since May. OK, OK, we've seen it before, but this time it broke out on the upside. By my estimation, it's projecting to 121 area. Let's hope it can't count, maybe it won't know it's supposed to stop there :- )

To Donald, all: Something may be wrong with the posting at Kitco-- doesn't work all the time for me.
Re: My previous post, US Dollar exchange rate volatility should be readily available ( re: New York Fed web page post ) . My previous post also has the site for Equity analytics, Ltd. which has an excellent section on volatility, including a mathematical formula for those who wish to program this for an index or a stock. Equity analytics discusses historical volatility, implied volatility, and how this relates to options. Some of you may know this already, but I am trying to learn about this to better understand the significance of the 25 trillion ( US$ ) volume in world-wide OTC derivatives trading ( BIS data, 1996 ) . This is doubling currently every two years -- obviously this cannot go on forever! Good night everyone!!

Good night everyone-- I think the bull market in oil and defense is spilling over into gold. We just need to be watchful for signs of a spreading currency/financial crisis. Thanks again to the Kitco posters - most more successful today than me!

Clinton to use line-item veto power on Monday

WASHINGTON ( Reuter ) - President Clinton Monday will use his new line-item veto powers to strike out a number of
individual spending items from a $9.2 billion military construction bill, a White House aide said Sunday.
Senior presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel told Fox News Sunday that the use of the veto power will be "extensive" on a
spending bill that historically has been used by lawmakers to finance pork barrel pet projects.
"I do think that on Monday we will have a blow to the status quo in this country. The president will use his line-item veto
authority," Emanuel said.
He did not say which items Clinton would strike from the bill, but White House officials said last week that projects totaling
about $1 billion were being reviewed.
The bill funded all of the top priority military construction requested by the Clinton administration and lawmakers attached to
it about $1 billion in pet projects.
It will be the second time Clinton has made use of the new power that allows him to veto individual spending items without
rejecting an entire bill. Clinton first used the line-item veto in August to strike out three provisions of a budget bill -- two
special interest tax breaks and an item affecting Medicaid spending in New York state.

Score one more for RJ, gold down 10.80. What's going on????

October 5, 1997

World Bank conference explores El Nino, global environment

WASHINGTON ( Reuter ) - The powerful El Nino weather phenomenon and other environmental changes threatening economies from the Americas to Asia will be the focus when hundreds of government ministers, scientists and economists gather in Washington this week at a World Bank conference.

But Serageldin added: "You may not be able to offset the economic impacts in terms of crops lost." The World Bank said its six-day conference would explore the social and economic impacts of the El Nino, and help
countries in drought-prone areas prepare.
http://canoe2.canoe.ca/ReutersNews/WEATHER-ELNINO.html

Or 0.60 cents .... grin

Everyone knows where we have been. Let's
see where we are going!

It was once said that "gold and oil can never
flow in the same direction". If the current price
of oil doesn't change soon we will no doubt
run out of gold.
This line of thinking is very real in the world
today but it is never discussed openly. You see
oil flow is the key to gold flow. It is the movement
of gold in the hidden background that has kept
oil at these low prices. Not military might, not a
strong US dollar, not political pressure, no it
was real gold. In very large amounts. Oil is the
only commodity in the world that was large enough
forgold to hide in. Noone could make the South
African / Asian connection when the question
was asked, "how could LBMA do so many
gold deals and not impact the price". That's
because oil is being partially used to pay for
gold! We are going to find out that the price
of gold, in terms of real money ( oil ) has gone
thru the roof over these last few years.
People wondered how the physical gold
market could be "cornered" when it's
currency price wasn't rising and no
shortages were showing up? The CBs
were becoming the primary suppliers by
replacing openly held gold with CB
certificates. This action has helped keep gold
flowing during a time that trading would
have locked up.
( Gold has always been funny in that way.
So many people worldwide think of it as
money, it tends to dry up as the price rises. )
Westerners should not be too upset with
the CBs actions, they are buying you time!

So why has this played out this way?
In the real world some people know that
gold is real wealth no matter what currency
price is put on it. Around the world it is
traded in huge volumes that never show up
on bank statements, govt. stats., or trading
graph paper.

The Western governments needed to keep
the price of gold down so it could flow where
they needed it to flow. The key to free up
gold was simple. The Western
public will not hold an asset that going
nowhere, at least in currency terms. ( if one
can only see value in paper currency terms
then one cannot see value at all ) The
problem for the CBs was that the third
world has kept the gold market "bought
up" by working thru South Africa!
To avoid a spiking oil price the CBs
first freed up the publics gold thru the
issuance of various types of "paper
future gold". As that selling dried up they did
the only thing they could, become primary
suppliers! And here we are today.
In the early 1990s oil went to $30++ for
reasons we all know. What isn't known
is that it's price didn't drop that much. You
see the trading medium changed. Oil went
from $30++ to $19 + X amount of gold!
Today it costs $19 + XXX amount of gold!
Yes, gold has gone up and oil has stayed the
same in most eyes.
Now all govts. don't get gold for oil,
just a few. That's all it takes. For now!
When everyone that has exchanged gold
for paper finds out it's real price, in oil terms
they will try to get it back. The great scramble
that "Big Trader" understood may be very,
very close.
Now my friends you know where we are at
and with a little thought , where we are going.

peter: whewwwww!

October 5, 1997
China urges U.S. to stop blocking its WTO bid

BEIJING ( Reuter ) - Chinese Trade Minister Wu Yi, staking out the ground ahead of a Sino-U.S. summit this month, urged Washington Sunday to stop blocking China's entry to the World Trade Organization.

"The United States, as an important signatory of the WTO, should reason things out, be conscious of the right course of action, keep its promises and play a positive role in China's entry into the WTO," Wu said.
She said the trade gap was the result of "historical inevitability," partly caused by a manufacturing shift to China from Southeast Asia and large U.S. investments in the country.

"China's trade system is open wider than at any other period of history and one side should not blame the other for being the sole cause of the existing Sino-U.S. trade imbalance," Wu said. The article highlighted the benefits to the United States of trade across the Pacific that Wu asserted had indirectly created almost half a million jobs in the country.

China's growing trade surplus with the United States is provoking a political backlash in Washington, which is stalling Beijing's efforts to join the WTO, the global trade body.
http://canoe2.canoe.ca/ReutersNews/TRADE-CHINA.html

ARSINMEX
To Mike Sheller : I enjoy your comments. If you have not, read a book
titled "Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community" by Wendell Berry. I would appreciate
your comments on same.

October 5, 1997
Consumers need to guard against 'happy news' opinion polls: observers

TORONTO ( CP ) - In case you hadn't heard, Canadians are optimistic about the future and are spending up a storm. Or so some of the big banks, who want to help finance those spending sprees, may be telling you.
Banks have been spending a lot themselves these days on polls and surveys, often trying to show this is a great time to open your wallet and dust off the credit cards.
Sometimes they commission polls. The latest, "a portrait of working
Canadians," comes out this week. Sometimes their economists interpret data for us from agencies like Statistics Canada.

The findings? More Canadians are buying or leasing cars. Or, it's a good
time to take out a mortgage and buy a house ( but hurry, before prices rise ) . Or, we're worried about investing for retirement.
But don't believe everything you read, cautions Don Sellar, ombudsman for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper. "Readers should always be skeptical of these things."

Remember that surveys and polls offer only a snapshot of a few opinions
at a single moment and shouldn't be taken seriously, added Sellar.
"Banks, institutions, lobby groups would be better advised sometimes to
put the results of this polling in advocacy ads."
It makes sense for banks to conduct polls to keep them in touch with
attitudes, says pollster John Wright, senior vice-president of Angus Reid. "I think it reflects a bank wanting to explore issues that are of interest to the Canadian public."
http://canoe2.canoe.ca/BizTicker/CANOE-wire.Banks-Polls.html

TORONTO ( CP ) - Interest rates went up last week - and are likely headed higher - so the Bank of Canada can cool the economy and stamp out inflation. Millions of Canadians are paying more for car and consumer loans, short-term mortgages and lines of credit so the inflation-fighting central bank can keep prices stable.

But wait a minute. Isn't inflation already under control? The latest increase in consumer prices - a 1.8 per cent annual rise in August - is comfortably within the range of one to three per cent set by the bank. And so-called core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy
prices, has been under two per cent for nearly two years. What gives?

But others point out the labor market is far more flexible today than at any other time in the recent past. Toronto broker Nesbitt Burns said in a recent report that deregulation, corporate restructuring, labor mobility and other factors are all pushing down on wage pressures.

"As a result, the wage response to tightening labor markets is much more
muted today than was the case in the 1970s and '80s."
http://canoe2.canoe.ca/BizTicker/CANOE-wire.Is-Inflation-Dead.html

Qatar banker says closed Bahamas bank not owned by him
5.46 p.m. EDT ( 2146 GMT ) October 5, 1997

DOHA, Qatar ( AP )  An Arab financier named as the owner of a troubled bank that has been closed down in the Bahamas had actually sold the company five months ago, the banker's son says.

Authorities in the Bahamas closed the Gulf Union Bank on Friday, saying it could no longer "satisfy statutory requirements''  an apparent reference to a money shortage.

Bahamas officials said the bank was owned by "Sheik Al-Thani'' of Qatar.

On Saturday, Sheik Salman bin Jabor bin Mohammed Al-Thani told The Associated Press that his father, Sheik Jabor bin Mohammed Al-Thani, used to own Gulf Union Bank and its sister company, First Cayman Bank, but had sold them on May 15.

Sheik Salman, who acts as a spokesman for his father, said the banks were sold to the businessman Abdus S. Qureishi of Palm Beach, Fla.

Speaking in the Qatari capital, Doha, Sheik Salman said "the management of the banks were transferred to the representative of the new owners, Assadullah Kazmi - a banker who was posted as general manager in the Cayman Islands.

"Accordingly, Sheik Al-Thani or other ex-shareholders have not been involved in the management and administration of the banks in any fashion whatsoever,'' he said.

He gave no other details.

His father is a leading shareholder in Doha Bank Limited, the second largest bank in Qatar.

October 5, 1997
Johnson suspected Castro killed Kennedy, book says

WASHINGTON ( AP ) - President Lyndon Johnson thought Cuba played
a role in the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy but worried a
retaliatory strike could lead to nuclear war, a new book said.
Johnson said publicly blaming Cuban President Fidel Castro would
generate a public outcry for an attack on Cuba or the Soviet Union that
could "check us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour."
http://canoe2.canoe.ca/WorldTicker/CANOE-wire.JFK-Castro-LBJ.html

Aussie gold shares up this morning on extremely thin volume. BEWARE!!!

The "big campers" are not putting any new weenies into the fire!!Waiting for a lead from you "Northerners"? I would not be buying right now .

Show off.......................................

Your posts from T.O. are quite interesting.There
is little doubt rhat .as Marx says,circumstances
determine consciousness.So it's probably true that since,
in our country ( Canada ) the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer there is contradictory
evidence on inflation/deflation.Go Labour ...Go Gold

I should add to my previous comment that the Sydney Exchange is closed today for a holiday--so lack of volume is not surprising. If they were real keen, however, they ( the big campers ) could just as easily trade elsewhere.

October 3, 1997
Oil futures soar amid rising tensions in the Middle East

NEW YORK ( AP ) - Crude oil futures soared Friday to an eight-month high after the U.S. administration dispatched an aircraft carrier to the
Persian Gulf following violations of an Iraqi no-fly zone.

"With this much uncertainty about what might happen over the weekend,
no one wanted to go home unprotected." Crude oil for November delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 99 cents to $22.76 US a barrel, the highest since Feb. 19. November unleaded gasoline jumped 1.56 cents to 62.99 cents a gallon; November heating oil rose 2.21 cents to 62.01 cents a gallon. Natural gas for November delivery rose 1.2 cents to $3.125 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Gold and silver futures also rose sharply on the New York Mercantile
Exchange as investors sought a safe haven for their money in the event of
military conflict. Precious metals tend to hold their value during times of military or political upheaval. The rally on that market came despite government reports showing inflation appears to remain in check, reducing the need for the metals as an inflationary hedge. December gold rose $3.40 to $336.90 US an ounce; December silver jumped 13.30 cents to $5.303 an ounce.
http://canoe2.canoe.ca/BizTicker/CANOE-wire.Commodities.html

6pak...great article on LBJ's thoughts...what a hoot! LBJ blames El Jefe!
Too funny for anybody from the north...I suppose Connelly was working
for the bearded one too...hahahaha

sometime between now and ghouls day,the north american markets
will correct. 20 to 30 % is a conservative guesstimate.
by the end of the year gold will have risen to approx $450.

What a finish! Sorry Doc...how about the game Ted? It's a game FIVE!

Oh M!!

away...for now


ALL: Anyone out there able to help in a translation please?

Man knde till fyra versioner av mlningen: frutom Sinebrychoffs
exemplar ett som gtt i arv inom Gustav Mauritz Armfelts
utomktenskapliga son general Clairfelts slkt, ett p Tid slott
i Sverige och ytterligare ett p Armfeltarnas minne i Halikko.
Man visste att mlningen hade ett samband med Gustav III:s
gunstling Gustav Mauritz Armfelt, men vem av Armfelts vackra
vninnor portrttet frestllde var lnge en omtvistad frga.
Beaktansvrda kandidater var skdespelarkollegerna, frknarna
L'Eclair och Eckerman, som de olika versionerna traditionellt
ansgs frestlla.

I think it's swedish....

Thanks ....
 
 
 ttfn

Thank you .... Very very thoughtful !

TTFN

It appears at least one of the poster/readers has learned to use certain symbols: Enseada. Castaeda, maana,cabaa and last but not least; Que pasa?

One last post to all: This was at one of Donald's sites -- Arabian Net, titled "A Monumental Memory?", by DAYA KRISHAN. Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi was a modern leader who in my opinion comes closest to the Biblical description of Christ. He was held in awe by those who knew him, including Einstein. I think it is especially relevant in these days of unrest ( in particular the Middle East ) that we take a moment from our busy activities, and appreciate what this individual has written about Ghandi. We must not assume that the desires, concerns and ideals of the eductated in the Moslem world are that different from our own. It is only by the grace of god that we in the Western world have peace, and that other parts of the world are in turmoil.

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/commen/commen.asp
--

I'm still bullish on the U.S. equities markets and bonds. I remain bullish on the crb, the xau, gold and silver. I'm bearish on the dollar.

Asian charting package - see them all.
http://www.djtelerate.com.hk/htmls/fixed/charts/IDChart_reg.html

Globex bulling strongly
SP500 +415
NDX +675

The times, they are a getting interesting! Watch them quote screens and keep that line open to your broker. It's sort of like a nice tall, frothy beer. Frothy that is. Not much in the way of economic reports till the midweek. Judging by the market oscillations on Friday, do I watch the VIX index or the TED spread? Decisions, decisions. Good night all. 

The BIG Beaver ( 19:36 ) : Buffet's prowess in the markets is legendary. No doubt. But it should be realized that because of his legend, he also becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Without regard to his ability to pick long term winners; as soon as the word is out that he has taken a large position in any stock, millions of 'camp followers' pile on as well and so insure the rectitude of his insight. ... Die Hard is but one example. .... I am not trying denigrating anyone by these comments. Merely, attempting to inject another side to your point.