Are we having FUN yet?

aurozippy

All: I will assume ANOTHER and D.A. independently came to this conclusion. Regardless, it makes sense. If a significant fraction of gold loans from central banks to the gold mining firms go sour, the CB's may not collect on their gold loans. This is a strong incentive to end the downward plunge of the gold price very soon.

The only economic force more powerful than this, I think, would be a world-wide currency crisis --

Of course, gold mining will be cheaper very soon in any country that has devalued significantly relative to the dollar, and the gold price has effectively gone up, not down.

Yup, that is what we are having...

All: What if the LBMA mirrors the Comex, and the gold trading markets run out of gold? For a period of time, many central banks who have "loaned" gold will not know if their contracts will be honored. The weaker Central banks will either go under, or will need further support during this period from the stronger CB's.

However, I doubt that the stronger CB's will want to sell gold, or even loan more good gold after the "bad" loaned by the weaker central banks. It is possible, as ANOTHER alludes, that a financial crisis will occur when the gold trading/loans from central banks is halted temporarily.

What is critical is whether the "powers that be" can handle a "gold liquidity" crisis, and prevent a world-wide financial meltdown.

I wonder, was there a "gold liquidity crisis" when that Rothschilds bank in Austria failed in 1932 ( or 1933? ) .

South Korea Seoul Composite ^KS11 12:13AM 415.31 -20.42 -4.69%
Japan Nikkei 225 ^N225 12:13AM 16229.37 -195.11 -1.19%

I cant resist sticking my oar into the political pond

IMHO we are need to do two fairly simple things to reclaim our government:

A. We must eliminate that entity known as the professional politician ( he/she who, upon graduating from law school, immediately runs for office or works on the staff of a senator/congressman and never looks back.

The Beltway IS Life as far as these people know. Senators/Congressmen-women need to be pharmiscits, engineers, doctors, programmers--real people doing real work in the real world

B. We must keep them at home. With modern technology and transportation, there is NO reason on earth why they need to spend most of the year in DC, holding meaningless hearings, chairing innumberable ( literally ) committees and sub-committees. They stay in their district, close to the folks who put them in office; they carry on with their real jobs and serve their constituents and their country at some sacrifice to themselves and their lives....

That is a fair description of the kind of men that went to Philadelphia all those years ago.

Missinglink@23:37, Enumerate the downside? Look around, I think we're
in it! ( or the end of the beginning of it )

Aurator: You always sign on when my eyes are drooping! You may want to scroll back and see what ANOTHER said. I don't know if he/she had read D.A.'s earlier posts about how the gold mining co' would default on their gold loans from the CB's if prices went any lower.

Here's a South Africann ElNino warning post that has links for your part of the world as well -- just in case you have not seen it:

http://www.fao.org/News/1997/971109-e.htm

There is no NZ specific site, but there is one for Australia at the bottom.

Thought you might also like to know that the ElNino's affect North America as well -- it tends to come later. The 1930/31 ElNino may well have been the trigger of the infamous dustbowl period in the US midwest from about 1932-1937. I have no proof of this, but I am scrutizing historical data very carefully.

Date: Mon Dec 08 1997 00:17
SDRer__A

I'll second that. BUT I just can't how we could get them to give up the good life in the beltway and come back and JUST be our neighbors and live on normal incomes ( no special perks ) .

Love to see it though.

Maylasia up 14.44% -so far- tonight.

Here is the wording from BISs annual report:
"The unit of account of the Bank is the gold franc, which is equivalent to US$ 1.941 Article 4 of the Banks Statutes defines the gold franc ( abbreviated to GF ) as representing 0.290 322 58...grammes of FINE gold. Items representing claims on gold are translated into gold francs on the basis of their FINE weight. Items denominated in US dollars are translated into gold francs on the basis of a GOLD PRICE of US$ 208. 

This report is 1996 and BIS charts show gold fluctuating around 400.
Which brings up another point: BIS was around 18K a share, considered reasonable because they had all that GOLD per share...has THEIR stock
gone down. Might be interesting to grab a quote and see?

I like JTF's "Goodnight from up/over" So I'll say
it too...nite.

Carl

Thanks for your earlier Camdessus post. A short while ago I searched for Camdessus in http://www.inference.com/ifind/index.html
most interesting, following his trail. You might find it so too.

auratorarchologist

Cup~ = Cop~

Gov. employees make up an obscene 33% of the workforce I read recently ( compared to 20% for mfg., e.g. ) And we the taxpayers are bankrolling their very lucrative and early retirements. Adding the gov. workers to other lovers of big government in this country, reductions in the size of government are very unlikely, in my opinion. I wonder if the Founding Fathers had average 50% tax loads in mind?

If too much money chases too few goods....You betcha!

tolerant1: Glad to see I'm in such good company on my recommendation of Yourdon's book. If you have a moment, could you share your personal views on the subject of Y2K and what affect you think it will have on the PM's.

All: Does anyone here follow Gary North's daily Y2K updates at http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/latest_.cfm. This is a great place to help you get past any denial you may have on the severity of this problem. He adds his comments to Y2K articles from all over the world. The links to the original articles are also provided.

fundaMETAList

For Oris - Thank you again for the vodka - recipies.

Actually I am familiar with the pickle caper ( hehe ) .

My first father-in-law did this - followed by a belt

of vodka. He would continue usually until driven to his

knees. He wound up shooting himself with his service

revolver poor bugger. He was also a champion golfer

and a top pool player.

Following that brief memorial, My own forecast -

Contrary to most kitconians, I have never made a real

forecast. I think it brings bad luck.

However, since I am so deeply in your debt, I am now

forced to do so. Here goes - I think we MAY hold at 280,

but probably not ( the force of the bear momentum is so

great ) .

In case of a 280 breech, we will then hold at about 265.

I say about 265 because I base this number on the

price of platinum - IE we will hold at 0.69 time the

price of platinum. Example 383 *.69 = 264.25.

For reference 0.69 * platinum was a prior major low.

This forecast is always subject to change on a moments

notice and depends somewhat upon how many vodka recipes

I may have been testing at the time.

I imagine this forecast will be questioned by some.

But I believe it will come to pass. You see, certain

unnameable space travellers have get it right, I get

my info from the fifth dimension and technicolor dreams.

And can you think of a better source? - it beats the

Marine Handbook.

I have heard these comments made many times before on this forum.

The powers that be have worked very hard to invalidate or alter the red flags that signal inflation. Being able to print unlimited supplies of paper money is the key issue. The central bankers won this right at Bretton Woods over 50 years ago.

Just last year the government announced that they were re-defining the CPI ( Consumer Price Index ) Stated reason? It inaccurately made it appear that inflation was worse than it really was.

Keep in mind that obvious signs of inflation are a banker's worst nightmare. Why? Because it exposes their true actions which is to inflate world currencies so that socialist spending policies can be implemented without political fallout.

How do they do this? By removing all INDICATORS of inflation. What are the main indicators of inflation? GOLD, silver, foreign exchange rates.

The issue of foreign exchange rates has long ago been settled. You used to be able to tell when a particular was being inflated because it would become devalued in relation to other currencies. Not any more.

This is what G-7 ( Now G-10 ) is all about. If one of the major currencies drops below a pre-defined level the other major banks buy that currency until it rises to it's pre-defined level as determinedby G-10.

There has been much speculation about why the central banks would want to suppress the price of gold. The reason is rather obvious. Gold is a primary INDICATOR of inflation.

Gold threatens to pull the pants down on the central bankers. They MUST suppress it's price. The issue that is often overlooked on this site are the dozen or so other indicators of inflation that are also being manipulated or falsified.

If gold suddenly expodes upwards in price it will be irrefutable proof that our leaders and economic advisors have been lying all along. This is a system built on lies. Upon those lies are toothpicks made of lies and upon those lies are beautiful pictures of everyone getting something for nothing.

Gold is merely one lie in a long list of lies. The paradigm of lies must be maintained because if the masses ever learned the ugly truth we would have anarchy.

Don't take my word for it. Take a look at the major indicators of inflation. The official statistics and proclamations about inflation, no more deficit, etc. are all doo doo.

After the last run-up in gold the bankers got very smart. They learned a lot from that fiasco. They realized that if they removed the INDICATORS of inflation and agreed to inflate at the same rate inflation would disappear from the minds of the masses.

This is what ANOTHER has been trying to tell us. Without anything to compare the US dollar to that is not being inflated at the same rate, inflation is hidden from Joe consumer.

The countries that don't tow the inflation line and try to build a strong currency get punished by the G-10. How could it be any other way? If one currency suddenly became stronger than all other currencies, what would stop the world from buying that currency? This would cause weaker economies to crash as investment dollars sought out stronger economies and currencies.

Bankers hate gold because it IS STABLE. It CANNOT be inflated along with everything else. There has never been any instability in the price of gold. The instability is in the currency that seeks to purchase it.

We say gold goes up or down. Does it really? Or is it just the currency?
Gold never goes anywhere. It is either in the ground or in someones pocket. The Central banks must create the illusion of more gold than there really is to compensate for the massive buildup of paper wealth.

Do we really have that much more gold than we had 20 years ago? I doubt it. The growth in above ground supply is dwarfed by the growth of paper currencies.

You must learn to think GEOMETRICALLY.....

A Japan quake in the capitol city would cause trillions of dollars damage and massive loss of life..............

LA & Miami disasters are minor compared to what is expected if Tokyo were hit by a 7.5 quake...........

All bets would be off..... Japan would repatriate all capitol overnight in order to rebuild the city.

It may slightly stimulate Japans economy but at what cost.

You seem to forget Japan has had what amounts to negative real interest rates and it has not helped the economy.

The giant sucking sound of capitol rushing back to Japan would cause all world markets to suffer a liquidity crisis...money would not be available to purchase anything...goods and services would be sold for pence on the pound............ and the world would tumble into depression as all nations would become focused upon their domestic problems and not on international crisis.

I'm uncertain as to what, if any, intrinsic value there is of gold versus paper: you can't eat either of them, or wear them ( well, outside of some rare clubs and having a horrible sense of style ) or do anything else with them except trade them for something else. Doesn't inflation of any one thing simply mean a relative deflation of all other commodities, and vice versa?

So what if there are central bankers or arabs, or any other supposed elite or cadre of power wielding individuals, that attempt to lord it over the masses; I'm not certain that the masses are going to buy more gold or paper because of any centralized bankers plan--good luck, but the bankers seemingly always loose their gambits on currencies and fiscal policies with monotonous regularity...in fact it seems a good bet to always fade what the central bankers are touting. Even Greenspan can't span any price for longer than his words echo around the trading room floor.

Back to the point, does gold have real intrinsic value--it's just like paper--we store most of it or trade it. I don't go shopping for it anymore than I do for money. If I own it, I want to know what it's worth--in dollars!--not barrels of oil or bushels of wheat. And we aint going to go back anytime soon to valuing barrels of oil and bushels of wheat in terms of ounces of gold. At least I hope not...

So, fear and greed in mind numbing numbers of individuals exhibiting their own secular behaviors of buy and sell lead markets and dissemble them in due time. Why doesn't enough people seem to want to own gold right now at these prices? Should we care? The fact alone without the "why" is enough to make money by until the fact changes; and, if it changes decidedly so, that fact will be enough by which to make money again.

My hat is off to you...

Bullseye......Doesn't it make people wonder why the US government liars always come out with revised figures months after the fact...Everyone seems to forget that the index was completely "reworked" to hide any hint of inflation.

Schultz what do you think of the Nipponese time bomb ticking away ....and the BOJ own agenda?

Wonder when the yuan will takeover for the exhausted yen?

BREAKING STORIES:

Mixed Signals in 4pc Aussie export slump

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/news/news6.html

Malaysia makes drastic policy changes

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/world/world1.html

Fourth largest Korean ship builder collapses

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/world/world2.html

Gold plunge keeps ratings agency S&P busy revising

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/invest/invest5.html

Gold crash may hit $US250/oz

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets9.html

Silver tests ratio's mettle

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets10.html

Two Views of Asian Fallout & Dog of the Week

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets3.html

Central banks and official funds are questioning the

appropriateness of gold as an asset class.

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets6.html

Markets suspicious of Japanese intentions

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets8.html

Korean steel hits US & European production

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets11.html

'True Cost' of Middle East Oil Exceeds $100 Per Barrel,

U.S. Desert Storm Military Leader Says;

Ethanol Cleans Air In Brazil

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/971205/dc_fuels_for_future_1.html

When the world began to melt

http://www.euromoney.com/contents/publications/euromoney/em.97/em.97.12/em.97.12.1.html

Why the IMF is wrong

http://www.euromoney.com/contents/publications/euromoney/em.97/em.97.12/em.97.12.15.html

IN REVIEW:

IMF medicine makes you sick, say critics

http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/971206/world/world6.html

S.Korea media knock U.S., Japan on IMF bailout

http://biz.yahoo.com/upi/97/12/04/international_news/koreaimfm_2.html

IMF has the tigers by the tail - or does it?

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971206/perspective/perspective4.html

Trouble brewing in Indonesia?

http://www.brw.com.au/brw33.htm#Trouble

Is Deflation making a comeback? Nightly Business Report

http://www.quote.com/news/recent/nbr/nbr1204.html#STORY4

Shock death of a futures fund

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971206/smart/smart4.html

Killer bird flu could fly around the world in 24 hours

http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/971206/world/world8.html

MOSSAD SPY SCANDAL: Israel, Syria "came to the brink of war"

http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/971206/world/world9.html

Iraq crisis not over

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/971204/news/stories/iraq_7.html

The changing nature of economic crises

HIGHLY INTERESTING SPEECH by Australian

Reserve Bank Governor Ian Macfarlane

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971205/verbatim/verbatim1.html

The good, the bad and the ugly banks of Asia

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971204/world/world4.html

BOOKMARK Steves News Page:

( Courtesy of Colin Seymour )

http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~netking/blizard.htm

You are the type of person that bankers count on..IMHO

Do you think the US will import any deflation from asia?

Afterall why pay $120 for $100 of goods or services when at todays fire sale prices they can be had in asia for $40 ?

SDRer: Ur 00:17 - Couldn't agree with you more re your way to save the good ole U. S. of A. The professional politicians ( mostly lawyers - sorry Tort ) are a sad mess. Tom Jefferson, where are you when we need you? INGOTWETRUST!

PI U there? Inevitable imho that SE ASIAN deflation will be imported around the world. In NZ we shall see it very quickly in our "deregulated" open-slather market place. Our industrial base has been decimated by cheap asian imports....
You want to see a free-market debauchery? Beware Canada, do not sell your national assets as we have in NZ. Do not sell your telecom, your Government-backed trustee banks, your railways, your airlines, your gas and oil explorers, your electricity-generators, these have all been sold in NZ to clear our IMF debts, sold at a penny in the pound.dang it makes me .....wanna ///...

ooops gettin maudlin

are we having fun yet?

maudlinauradirgaurator

Have just read the last 24 hours posts. What a fine bunch of gentlemen and ladies?? you are. The quality on this site would put many news services to shame. The internet gives us more freedom ( of ideas ) than at any time in human history. You can ( and do!! ) say whatever you like about your political and financial masters--what a blessing--the essence of freedom--the free and unfettered flow of information ( platitude,platitude,etc. ) . My hat is off to all of you.

DJ -- accolades for the best post of the day--Dec 07/17:16. This IMHO better explains the fall in the gold price than all of the other theories posted on this site. GREAT post, mate.

Donald--your Dec 07/17:43 for the gloomiest post of the day. Kind of like saying the Titanic has sunk, so why are people floating around on deck chairs discussing the weather??? Did you get my e-mail about sovereigns, mate. My e-mail is acting up.

My commiserations to any Californians out there over your weather. We KNOW about weather down under. Saw the floods on the news. I do have one question, however. What is RAIN??? Caught a line of ants sneaking into the house today. Not after food!!! They were gathered around water drops in the kitchen sink. Poor buggers!! I know how they feel. I nuked 'em anyway ( heartless bastard!! ) . Hey, nobody said this world was fair!! Go buy some gold shares and see how "fair" this world really is.

Ted--whater you puttin in them brownies, mate?? Does this help at the Sydney casino?? I think of you every time you say you're heading off to Sydney. Wish we were on the same continent. I'd join you and give that new Sydney ( the real Sydney ) casino a thrashing!! Couldn't be any worse than buying gold shares--and probably a damned site more profitable!!

? OH M--golf washed out, mate. You might have to spend more time at the old "grind"--if'n you get my drift. Let us know when you actually go LONG gold. I respect your opinion!!

Bart--my aplogies for all of the above. Ain't wasting bandwidth this time of day, mate. I'm the only one in the world still awake!!

You all know of course that when gold starts going UUUUUPPPPPPPP-- the whole bunch of you are going to be totally unbearable. I wonder if I could copyright the phrase "I told you so"? Dang if I wouldn't make squillions!!

G'day colleen.

Nick@C Bunch of arxe!

G'day Maud. Two in the world still awake. Predict the price of you-know-what for me, mate. Three months, one year, five years. Are you game?? Oh, and make it a bit more exciting than kissing your sister.

Nick@C

As to predictin, there's only two safe bets with predictin, for those in the predictin business, that is to predict much and often, in the hope that a few of them come off.. or you can predict once, and hide it away, so if it comes off you can crow, and if it don't noone knows.

I done gone done the latter

As to the sages@pagesdotkitco why, i agree. I have spent many hours astonished by the education it has been my privelege to be involved in.


btw education

ex ducere


to lead out. to educate, to extrude, to learn by learning, to discover by leading out that which was not known. Pretty good stuff really,

Bart. Take a bow.

I wasn't gonna mention the cricket, mate. BUT since you so kindly brought it up--how'd you like that last over. Aussie bacon saved again. You'da thought 260 was enough. Time for some bowling lessons, mate.

More seriously. Why are Aussie gold miners selling forward in such vast quantities? It is a matter of survival. They are BUYING TIME!!! Aussie gold price is holding up well. They are getting enough $$$ to keep their noses out of the water ( many with a couple of straws up their nostrils!! ) . Hope they can get the stuff out of the ground to pay em back. I'd hate to have to buy on the market once the shorts hit the fan!!

A note on cyberspeak, it evolves, kitco is developing a language, a languish language, there are codes and symbols, they echo around the net. How often have you done a search to be landed back at the site formerly known as kitco

e-gold?

I remember a NZ "High Flyer" of the eighteis "Gold Corp" - you give us your money, we'll buy gold, put it in our vaults and give you gold Certificates - I couldn't stop it- when the shizer hit the spinner the banks, as secured debenture holders got the gold, the paper holders got to realise the value of paper.

e-rugby?

Nick@C what are they selling forward at? didja see another? when he/she said up $100 in one day, up $200 in the next, I could see it. I remember what I've read of Jay Gould cornering cotton then gold. same tricks, can make piles on the short as feed rumours, turn around and screw the shorts, Gould saw those price jumps that another stated, I just hadn;'t seen it in black and white..

so that forward selling at what might seem "shrewd" price of even $380 oz ( remember those days goldbugz? ) will be seen for the shortsightedness it really is.

I suppose it depends upon the percentage of anticipated production is being hedged. Croesus, I can find a dozen financial/tax reasons to hedge.. but at what price cf production cost

How many groats in a dollar?

Auratious--did you see Donald's post--Ponzi gold?? Give me $140 and I'll give you 1/10th oz of gold. At this price you SAVE 50% or more. You can even get your gold for free if you send more $$$$. What a deal. Took an Aussie company to think of it. Why buy gold shares, mate. Send these guys ALL of your money and retire a multi-squillionnaire!!

http://www.squirrel.com.au/business/eyes/gold2.html

so if gold jumps $100 in one day, to say, $380, according to another's play- then the following day it jumps $200 to $580. on the third day?
I guess that'll be when everyone will want to buy, and all those regretters will start regretting..i love being a gold bug, cos i can spell it


auramicawberator


annual income nineteen shillings and sixpence


bliss...

Auratious--at gold 288 the Aussie miners are getting ( today ) about A$429 plus the contango ( premium for selling forward ) . This ain't bad under the circumstances. What is saving Aussie gold backsides is the Aussie $$ tanking nearly as fast as gold. See DJ's post at Dec 07/17:16. GOLD HAS NOT GONE DOWN IN PRICE ( unless your PRICE happens to be US$$$ ) . Hey, I'm buying the stuff and the price in my dollars has only gone down marginally. Wish I could say the same about Aussie gold shares!! Probably why they are SUCH a bargain right now. Big mining companies like MIM and WMC have gone up nearly 20% in the last two weeks.

Ya I did

But what about those darned Canadian coins that are redeemable at US$310?
Um,, lets rape the Canadian treasury... while TED's & the others are all asleep.

That's how Ponzi legitimised his scheme. a genuine looking forex arbitrage on Spanish Postal Orders ( stretching this poor old aurator's single remaining bwain cell ) , Nick, me old china, now's our time...


aurashellgamemate

G'Day from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

Last week I posted some open file information concerning HIGH GRADE SILVER mineralisation at the Munni Munni Complex in Pilbara District of Western Australia.

Grades up to 37% Silver, with a possible mean grade of 5% silver ( equivalent to a 50% Nickel ) . What a ripper.

Early days on the exploration, grade now confirmed, tonnes upside. Both stocks should do well.

Check it out in "The Australian" newspaper, 8 December 1997.

Headline....."East Coast find marks dawn of its silver age".

http:/www.australian.aust.com/business

Aye,

Haggis

Auresearcher--I missed Another's post. Have you got an approx. time??

Nick@C, Price is holding up in NZ$ too. I should throw in my paying job to continue the research I halted in 94. just don't time to devote to analysis as I'd like..can I interest you in solicitor's trust accounting?


auragardeningangels

Maybe the Oleman was right about Hillary as President, but just early by a few terms.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON ( D-NEW YORK ) ?

FIRST LADY Hillary Rodham Clinton: A U.S. senator from New York in 2001?

That provocative idea was broached with Mrs. Clinton at a White House party last week by New York Democratic Chairwoman Judith Hope, an Arkansas native whose father was once speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives.

http://nypostonline.com/news/1443.htm

try

Date: Sun Dec 07 1997 18:45

reprised about 20 mins later


a man a plan a canal panama


my eyes are falling down

NICK@C In case you don't think my crystal balls are up to it, I anticipated your question to Maud, my evil twin, what is Maud without au, but MD? ( they said enigmatically wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in an old newspaper )

viz:

Date: Mon Dec 08 1997 04:34
Nick@C ( maudlin ) ID#393224:
G'day Maud. Two in the world still awake. Predict the price of you-know-what for
me, mate. Three months, one year, five years. Are you game?


***
Am I game? why I anticipated your question, oh cousin over the ditch
...when i said , all those months ago. after some hard rubbing of dem crystall balls, I should tell you...



Date: Sat Sep 27 1997 08:41
aurator ( @ bluck.. ) ID#255284:
All === into your hands i commend thee === my precious, you'll see 280 b4
5000===
but you;ll see 5,000 before 10,000
my precious


and that's for sure, yuk yuk.

Oh Uh, talking to myself again and being bored by what I'm hearing ( should that be herring? )

nite all

last time i axed you to look after my precious, you weren't paying attention and we started to slip and slide and now look where we are.

JTF

now, JTF, it is up to you, i can trust nooone else. like cerberus ( ? ) the guardian of the underworld gold.. I have to sleep now, just as you have to sleep when I start posting, but at least I don't bore you the way I bore myself


anyone want to buy a subscription to a newsletter soon to be published by the auradora one? I promise I shall only make one prediction ever.. and you've just read it, but i guarantee you'll be amused.


aurarupetrmurdoch

away to start the printing presses and to wonder if  will be a columnist

You are the CEO of a small Aussie gold producer. Your bankers have been calling as they are "concerned" about the $40 million you borrowed to open up the Blue Sky Mine."Several large brokerage firms are talking about $$$250 gold. Doesn't your prospectus say your costs are US$285/oz???" "Are we gonna get our money back," says your best-friend banker who was begging you to take the money a year ago.

Well, you think, if we sell forward now we get A$429 + contango ( say A$460 ) . This might just see us through until gold goes to the US$325 ( A$484 ) we need to actually make a profit ( since we bullshorted just a bit on the initial figures - dumb shareholders will never know ) . Jeeeeeez, my options could expire worthless!!! BUY TIME. SELL FORWARD.

Here it is, mate!

Date: Sun Dec 07 1997 18:45
ANOTHER ( THOUGHTS! ) ID#60253:
Will we have Deja-vu again?



Some people have followed the gold market from 1970. Some

have followed it all their lives, depending on when you were

born. Some say they were right, as the market has fallen and

they held no gold. They council from experience and a short

life.



But, some have traded gold from times before.

Those who trade with the sun know we will never have

Deja-Vu again. This market is unlike anything from the past.

And those with a short life of investing will learn from this

coming future as gold will show their knowledge was limited

to where they stood on the mountain!

Unlike the past, this market has an end. And this end will not

be for those who have waited to buy! They see this bottom

at $100 or $200 or $250, and they will buy at the turn as no

fool should have held from $360! But, I say they will buy only

paper if lucky!

All should make ready and be holding metal only, as the turn

will move $100+ the first day and $200 the second day as

comex is closed! It will trade no more from the 3rd day on!

The gold market of your youth will be no more! For those

who were smart from experience not to buy at $400, will

look at $600 as the deal of a lifetime.



To close,



Try to live in this outcome and see how different the world

will be. It will not be the end of all things, only the changing

of most things in western thought. The Digital Currencies

will still trade, but we will value them as not before.

Anyone who has sold gold they do not have will not be

allowed to cover that position. Anyone who has brought gold

they do not have will not be allowed to cover that position.

Many will lose all they have in a world without honor! Looking

back , one will ask, how could I have thought that noone

wanted gold, when more of it was being brought than existed?

Indeed, more gold than exists or will be produced in the next

ten years! And some say, only a fool would say the market

was cornered.

During that time, a gold stock in the hand will not trade on

an open market! And the government of the country, of the

land, of the mine, will no doubt speak with you of new taxes

on GOLD!



A year has passed as the winds of change have started to

blow. Waste no more time on paper gold, you have suffered

enough. Play paper games no more, as the future of your

family waits a decision.

Gold hasn't reached 280 YET, mate. Maybe 5000 WILL come first. Your research skills are dazzling, mate. Sleep well.

Merci buckets Crystal Ball. Just imagine if Another's post came to pass. Better start figuring out how to sell "illegal" gold on the black market.

Steve: Thanks for all the Oz news. Gives me a non north american perspective which we need ( we drink a lot of our own bathwater )

Haggis I've been following the silver play on Gully's hot tips, plse keep us posted

regards.... cool and clear in the Cnd Roockies..

You got it. Exactly what is happening at the moment, not just with the junior producers either. What brings the entire ugly mess to a sticky end is when the first default occurs. At this stage, even the most blinkered of bankers needs to review their loan strategy. It is difficult to continue lending in any market where defaults are taking place. I cannot overemphasise the turmoil the gold producing industry is experiencing. It is getting close to the time when we will see multiple defaults on forward sale committments in an environment when less gold is being produced, when major closures can be expected at any time and all this with a background of financial turmoil gearing up in an unprecedented number of economies.

The signs are so clear, yet the unimaginative continue as if the industry that provides the stuff they are shorting is going to provide them with the material to cover their positions.

So what's the Fed up to? Either Washington has

begun to repurchase the U.S. bonds held by the

Japanese, or banks in this country are facing a severe

liquidity crisis because of the Asian situation and the

Fed is quietly bailing them out.

Either way, this isn't good for the U.S. Growth in the

money supply of this magnitude will soon ignite

inflation fears.

http://www.nypostonline.com/business/1445.htm

Rand gold price

cause for concern

MONDAY, 12.00NOON: BULLION's declining fortunes

saw the rand gold price hit a two-year low of R1 400/oz on

Friday in spite of the local currency's crash to a new all-time

low against the dollar.

There are fears in the gold mining industry that this new blow

could worsen an already desparate situation. Normally, a

dive in the rand exchange rate against the dollar would see

the rand gold price increase, but bullion's latest lows have

cancelled any gains from a falling rand.

With gold mines already planning large-scale rationalisation

that will inevitably lead to job losses, the low rand gold price

is likely to exacerbate the situation.

http://www.mg.co.za/mg/za/news.html#business

The euro will fall apart, capital will continue to flee

Asia and the bull market in US stocks, bonds and

the dollar could carry on for many more years. The

yen could drop below 160 to the US dollar by next

year and the currency crisis that began in Southeast

Asia will spread from Northeast Asia to Europe

within a year.

At least one thing will be certain: there will be a bull

market in volatility and a wrenching destabilisation

of the economic world order. Eventually, the

instability created by volatile capital flows will force

the world back towards a system of fixed exchange

rates.

http://www.scmp.com/news/template/templates.idc?artid=19971207223313064?=mar&template=Default.htx&maxfieldsize=5563

I agree 100%

I am of the opinion that there will be many problems. There are so many things we are not being told. There are enough computer related problems with things supposedly running properly. Certain parts of the system will function just fine. Those that are acting as if nothing is wrong are fools.

Regarding the metals. I think people will be scared of the Y2K problem. I personally have physical and I DO TRUST E-GOLD and I have put my money where my mouth is.

It appears to me that there will be parts of the system that will fail and there are parts that will not. Go with your gut, ask questions until you are satisfied, no satisfaction, take strong measures with those that BS you.

IMHO, the determined inflation by the Fed will test whether real interest rates can be lowered in a deflationary environment by pumping up liquidity. While this may lower nominal rates, prices will continue to fall faster than interest rates, and real interest rates will continue to increase. There is no way that the equities market can continue to rise under these conditions. Early on, it may cause a blow-off, but in the long run, real interest rates are set by the market, not by the CB's. As real rates increase and profit margins decrease as the oversupply of goods exerts severe pricing pressures, the bull market will be hamburger. Very much enjoyed all the posts of the past few days.

I like e-gold and I am a very satisfied customer. Have you ever EMAILed admin@e-gold.com>admin@e-gold.com and asked any questions at all. If you would I am sure that you would not make the comparisons that you do.

The e-gold system is far superior to any system that exists today IMHO.
Until you have communicated with them I think you can only make hollow assumptions. I for one believe very strongly in e-gold, have investigated till satisfied and feel comfortable in the honor and integrity within the system and the people running the system.

If you have any questions, ask admin@e-gold.com take it a step further call the 800-909-6590 number and speak directly to them.

I really think you are missing out on something good by not investigating it properly. IMVHO

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/971208/business/stories/rates_1.html

tolerant1: My pile is too small at this point to think about e-gold but I have read about it and it looks very promising. Have you actually had the opportunity to use it for transactions or are you using it mainly as a place to park your assests for now? Two things bother me about it at this point. 1. If there are any major telecommunications problems how do you get access to your assets. 2. Just seems too convienient a place for the Feds to grab it. How much notice will we have that something like that is coming down the pike? Despite these reservations, I'll probably put a small amount of assests into e-gold within the next year just to have that option available. Well, I'm off to slay the dragons ( Y2K monsters ) .

fundaMETAList

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971207/excessive_yen_weakne_1.html

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971207/swiss_banks_mergers_1.html

"If we have marked a bottom in gold we could see gold trade back up to

the 320 range, which I think would be the first level of strong

resistance on the daily chart. Here is a thought for readers. The last

few weeks, if you follow news stories, we have been inundated with

reasons as to why gold is no longer an investment of choice. If you took

the same reasons and applied them to stocks, why would anyone want to

own stocks?"

Commentary:-

http://www.oextrader.com/

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971207/s_korea_to_need_anot_1.html

All:

Three cheers, gold is UP 55 cents. This is actually better than it appears. Last night we had another huge hit in the Korean currency of about 12%. Previously, these currency wipeouts had lead to gold plunges. Not so today.

EB:

My horse is making up the stagger. Yeehaa!

World acclaimed economist, Martin Armstrong, of Princeton Economics predictions the Euro will fall apart.

Well-recognized French analyst Orpailleur gives a detailed and pensive report on the ramifications of the possible failure of the EMU vis--vis GOLD. He asserts, There is no doubt that something is brewing in Europe: Rumors of Euro backing by gold, and of politicians buying physical gold... His complete report at:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials/gold_euro.html

US: The Business Cycle Is Alive and Well

The financial markets remain in denial over mounting cyclical risks in the US economy. There can be

no other explanation for a bond market that held its own last Friday in the face of November's white

hot labor market surveys. Whether it's the power of the safe-haven play or the new-paradigm bet, the

willingness of investors to turn the other cheek in the face of surprisingly powerful cyclical evidence

tells us as much about the excesses of the markets as it does about the strength of the economy, in my

view.

Even for growth bulls like ourselves, the strength of the November labor market surveys came as quite

a surprise. Not only did last month's job growth surge ( +404,000 ) run fully 70% faster than average

gains over the preceding six months ( +235,000 ) , but there were further signs that the US economy has

moved sharply through its inflation-stable ( NAIRU ) threshold. That shows up loud and clear in the

form of an unemployment rate ( at 4.6% in November ) that has now set a 24-year low for two

consecutive months and a wage cycle that has now moved to an eight-year high of 4.1%

( year-over-year ) .

Equally compelling is the outsized surge in labor input that has occurred in 4Q97 and the implications

this development has for measured productivity growth. According to our estimates, the index of hours

worked will rise close to 5% in the current quarter; in the context of our estimate of 3.2% growth in

real GDP in 4Q97, this implies an outright decline in productivity in the 1.5% to 2% vicinity --

sufficient to unwind a large portion of the outsized productivity gain of 4% that occurred in 3Q97. We

argued at the time that this productivity pop was not sustainable, and the November labor market data

support that supposition. Like it or not, the US economy is now revealing increasingly classic

late-cycle inefficiencies that underscore the mounting risks of earnings compression and/or higher

inflation -- in sharp contrast to the new paradigm bets now embedded in the financial markets.

As I see it, the US economy now qualifies for a "Stage II" inflation alert. The first stage comes when

growth is sustained at a pace well in excess of the US economy's inflation-stable speed limit, which

conventional estimates would place at around 2.2% in the 1990s; for the record, real GDP growth has

now averaged 3.4% over the past nine quarters, more than sufficient to meet the "Stage I" criterion.

The second stage of an inflation alert occurs when there is evidence that the forces of supply and

demand have taken the economy through its cost-efficient threshold; a 24-year low in the

unemployment rate and an eight-year high in the wage cycle more than satisfy this criterion, in my

view. The third, and final. stage comes when there is an outright acceleration in the CPI; while that has

yet to happen, it remains our forecast for 1998.

The consensus, of course, doesn't see it that way at all. Hooked on yet another slowdown bet -- this

one driven by the "Asian flu" -- convictions are deep that the economy will slow into the 2% to 2.5%

zone in 1998 and thereby alleviate any potential outbreak of inflation. That could well turn out to be a

risky bet, in my view. Forget the debate over the magnitude of the Asian impact on the US economy; I

continue to believe that it's going to be small ( say 0.25% off 1998 GDP growth ) , whereas many

believe it could be three to four times that magnitude. What matters most, however, is that the

economy has now experienced such a significant breach of its inflation-stable threshold that cyclical

relief will not come that easily, even if the consensus bet on Asia is correct. That's the conclusion that

falls out of an "output gap" analysis which stresses that the US economy is already operating at least

2.5 percentage points above its full-employment potential; according to our estimates, such an

overshoot in growth can only be eliminated by a growth shortfall that is sustained in the 1% vicinity for

at least two years. As I see it, the Asian flu won't do that job -- only higher interest rates will.

As a result, I believe that it's now appropriate to draw Fed credibility into question. Alan Greenspan

said it all in early October when he warned that the US economy was on an "unsustainable track" that

"must" lead to higher inflation. In the context of that unmistakable warning, had it not been for the

severity of the Asian crisis, I continue to believe that the Fed would have tightened on November 12

by 25 basis points; moreover, the just-released November labor market report suggests the central

bank would have probably made another such move at its upcoming policy meeting on December 16.

However, with the Fed's focus on crisis containment, no such imminent move is expected. That means

the monetary authorities are about to fall 50 basis points behind the curve they would have embraced

were it not for the Asian crisis. Consequently, under the key presumption that crisis contagion subsides

by early 1998, we continue to believe that the Fed will have a lot of catching up to do. The US

economy has significantly breached its inflation-stable threshold, and the minor hits we expect from the

Asian crisis are not enough to change the cyclical endgame of rising interest rates in 1998.

Stephen Roach ( New York )

http://www.ms.com/gef.html

My best answer is to ask you to write to the e-gold folks. I think that if they properly answer your questions then you can start by opening an account with $100

admin@e-gold.com

The game is different this time around. It is not the 30s, the middle class in the US is much, much stronger. The FED had better watch itself this time around as their will be political hell to pay.

The Dem and Repubs are on notice and although it may not look like it the people are getting FED up. ( pun intended )

The fat cats keep getting fatter and at whose expense. Spread the word, demand fiscal responsibility, buy gold and silver.

PUT BIG GOVERNMENT ON A DIET.

Any threat of a jail term works both ways in this day and age. Demand your Constitutional rights. One heck of alot of people died so that we can live under the rule of law and not some jackass with a gun.

Peaceful, Constitutional, RULE OF LAW.

Rates will go up next year because of world-wide liquitity problems ( thirst for cash ) ...this is the same phenomenon that allows the beer man to get $5. ( US ) for a brew at the ballgame.
And the thirstiest bear will be Poppa Bear ( U.S. ) ....but he will remain thirsty because Momma Bear ( Nippon ) will have drunk all the green ambrosia. Don't go near the den...

Top o' the mornin'! Heard from your old friend BBW. Here's what he had to say-

THE TRUE STORY OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS

Everybody knows the story of the three little pigs. Or at least they THINK they do! I'll let you in on a little secret. Nobody knows the real story, because nobody has ever heard MY side of the story!

I'm the wolf. Alexander T. Wolf. You can call me Al. I don't know how this whole Big Bad Wolf thing got started, but it's all wrong. Maybe it's because of our diet. Hey, it's not my fault wolves eat cute little animals like bunnies and sheep and pigs. That's just the way we are. If cheeseburgers were cute, folks would probably think you were Big and Bad too!

But like I was saying, the whole Big Bad Wolf thing is all wrong. The real story is about a sneeze and a cup of sugar. Way back in Once Upon a Time time, I was making a birthday cake for my dear old granny. I had a terrible sneezing cold. I ran out of sugar. So I walked down th

On Friday we reviewed the status of another major financial systems project. This one will be implemented in June 1998. Once again, a client has decided NOT to attempt to make this system Year 2000 compliant. Well take a look at those issues some time next fall...

Has everyone been watching the runs on banks in Japan? You aint seen nothing yet! Wait about two years. Your banks systems wont be able to tell your account balance! Its not going to help if those accounts are insured by the FDIC, if the bank cant figure out your balance.

Everyone is talking about gold, but maybe paper U.S. dollars will be a good investment. Any thoughts?

So I walked down the street to ask my neighbor for a cup of sugar. Now this neighbor was a pig. And he wasn't too bright either. He had built his whole house out of straw. Can you believe it? I mean who is his right mind would build a house of straw?
So, of course, the minute I knocked on the door it fell right in. I didn't want to just walk into someone else's house, so I called, "Little Pig, Little Pig, are you in?" No answer. I was just about to go home without the cup of sugar for my dear old granny's birthday cake.
That's when my nose started to itch. I felt a sneeze coming on. Well, I huffed. And I snuffed. And I sneezed a great sneeze. And do you know what? That whole darn straw house fell down!! And right in the middle of the pile of straw was the First Little Pig - dead as a doornail. He had been home the whole time.
It seemed like a shame to leave a perfectly good ham dinner lying there in the straw. So I ate it up. Think of it as a big cheeseburger just lying there.
I was feeling a little better. But I still didn't have my cup of sugar. So, I went to the next neighbors' house. This neighbor was the First Little Pig's brother. He was a little smarter, but not by much. He had built his house of sticks.
I rang the bell on the stick house. Nobody answered. I called, "Mr. Pig, Mr. Pig, are you in?" He yelled back, "Go away Wolf. You can't come in. I'm shaving the hairs on my chinny chin chin." I had just grabbed the doorknob when I felt another sneeze coming on. I huffed. And I snuffed. And I tried to cover my mouth, but I sneezed a great sneeze.
And you are not going to believe it, but this guy's house fell down just like his brother's. When the dust cleared, there was the Second Little Pig - dead as a doornail. Wolf's honour.
Now you know food will spoil if you leave it out in the open. So I did the only thing to do. I had dinner again. Think of it as a second helping.
I was getting awfully full. But my cold was feeling a little better, and I still didn't have that cup of sugar for my dear old granny's cake. So, I went to the next house.
This guy was the First and Second Little Pig's brother. He must have been the brains of the family. He had built his house of bricks.
I knocked on the brick house. No answer. I called, "Mr. Pig, Mr. Pig, are you in?" And do you know what that rude little porker answered? "Get out of here, Wolf. Don't bother me again."
Talk about impolite! He probably had a whole sackful of sugar. And he wouldn't give me even one little cup for my dear sweet old granny's birthday cake. What a pig!
I was just about to go home and maybe make a nice birthday card instead of a cake, when I felt my cold coming on. I huffed. And I snuffed. And I sneezed once again. Then the Third Little Pig yelled, "And your old granny can sit on a pin!"
Now I am usually a pretty calm fellow. But when somebody talks about my granny like that, I go a little crazy.
When the cops drive up, of course I was trying to break down this Pig's door. And the whole time I was huffing and puffing and sneezing and making a real scene.
The news reporters found out about the two pigs I had for dinner. They figured a sick guy going to borrow a cup of sugar didn't sound very exciting, so they jazzed up the story with all that "Huff and puff and blow your house down" and they made me the Big Bad Wolf.
That's it. The real story. I was framed.

looks like we have had spikes up ( momentary though it may be ) in gold both Friday and this morning.

9:30am Friday spike $291 +

8:30am Monday spike $290.8

??? What does it mean when someone makes a purchase that much higher than the average selling price. Brings to mind ANOTHER.

????

http://www.quote.com/cgi-bin/jchart-form?genApplet=yes

An excellent point.

I must now put on My Red Riding Suit and Hop down the Lane to the office...where I must pump oil to give it away...and away I go.....

Date: Mon Dec 08 1997 09:05
tolerant1 ( fundaMETAList ) ID#31868:

Such a strong endorsement from you is good enough for me. I will check into it. Your idea of setting up a minimum account is solid. No reason not to test it out. Thanks.

Did you see the movie HERO with Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia? The little speech Hoffman gives his kid at the zoo at the end of the movie is priceless.

Thanks for the buckets, bucko! Re: Yours- "Better start figuring out how to sell "illegal" gold on the black market."

I believe gold was illegal in Soviet Union ( RIP ) , but people still used it. Where there's a will, there's a way. Necessity is a mother. ( or something to that effect ) Would you like any more clichs? Salut!

If anyone is intrested in the direction the domestic oil industry is headed and a problem looming read this article in the Midland Reporter Telegram. http://www.mrt.com/oilgas/costs17.html They have just redone their web page and the archive's are a little strange. Just arrow down after the page loads. Read the articles by J Riggs. Quite informative.

I LOVE that movie! What was the name of Andy Garcia's character? Bupp? Burp? Speaking of movies. Driving in to work today, I kept thinking of "Kelly's Heroes" with Don Rickles, Carroll O'Connor, Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, and more. Bunch of screwballs going after a stash of gold in a French town held by the Heinies during WW II.

John Bubber.

Murky buckets!

EB: You might as well pay D.A. now!!.....How bout dem Cavs ( YES ) ...go gold

Monday December 8, 9:10 am Eastern Time

Deutsche must react fast to Swiss merger-analysts

By David Crossland

FRANKFURT, Dec 8 ( Reuters ) - Deutsche Bank AG ( DBKG.F ) will turn from predator to prey in Europe's fast-consolidating financial services sector unless it reacts swiftly to the merger of Swiss groups UBS ( UBS.S ) and SBC ( SBVZn.S ) , analysts said on Monday.

Hell-bent on expanding its investment banking business, Deutsche will be ousted from its position as Europe's largest commercial bank in asset terms by the new United Bank of Switzerland and will fall behind in fund management.

``The UBS merger has changed the entire European banking landscape and if Deutsche doesn't do something fundamental it will eventually become a takeover candidate itself and fail to become a global investment bank,'' said Konrad Becker, analyst at private bank Merck, Finck.

Analysts said unanimously that Deutsche has no alternative but to respond to the Swiss merger, which will create a group with assets under management totalling $912.8 billion.

Deutsche has discretionary assets under management -- funds it manages on behalf of clients -- of more than 450 billion marks ( $252 billion ) . Banking sources said Deutsche's domestic business would not be significantly affected by the Swiss merger but that the impact on its international business could be greater.

Opinions differ on its options. Analysts cited various scenarios in which Deutsche could merge with foreign banks or insurers as growth in the market for fund management products has blurred the dividing line between banking and insurance.

A merger with French insurer AXA/UAP ( AXAF.PA ) would beef up Deutsche's position in asset management and give it the foothold it lacks in the lucrative French market.

Alternatively, it could tie up with ABN Amro ( AAH.AS ) , ING Groep NV ( ING.AS ) , Credit Suisse ( CSGZn.S ) , Banque Nationale de Paris ( BNPP.PA ) or Societe Generale ( SOGN.PA ) .

Even a merger with insurer Allianz AG ( ALVG.F ) -- a move which would turn the German banking market on its head given Allianz's close ties with Dresdner Bank AG ( DRSD.F ) -- is regarded as feasible.

Becker at Merck, Finck said a merger with Allianz would give Deutsche a large French presence via AGF ( AGFP.PA ) provided that Allianz's friendly takeover bid for AGF succeeds.

It would also enable Deutsche to avoid culture clashes involved in merging with a foreign institution, Becker said.

Other analysts said Allianz would be unlikely to give up its ties with Dresdner, in which it owns more than 20 percent. Dresdner and Allianz are discussing cooperating in asset management in Europe and beyond.

Shares in all major German banks rose sharply on Monday as the Swiss move rekindled merger speculation which has kept domestic banking stocks on the boil since the summer of 1996.

Deutsche ended floor trade up 3.75 marks at 121.85. Dresdner Bank AG ( DRSD.F ) up 4.35 marks at 78.95 marks and Commerzbank AG ( CBKG.F ) up 3.15 marks at 66.35.

Nathalie Grasegger, banking analyst at Bayerische Vereinsbank, says a merger between Deutsche and Axa-UAP would tie in with Deutsche's stated aim to strengthen its position in the French market.

``They have to do something next year at the latest, waiting until the year 2000 would be too late given the pace of consolidation,'' Grasegger said.

British banks are not regarded as suitable merger partners for Deutsche because they are withdrawing from investment banking, analysts said.

Italian and Spanish banks don't have the strength in investment banking that Deutsche would require, and the German bank already has retail banking operations in both Spain and Italy.

Deutsche has repeatedly said it is not seeking a major acquisition within Germany and analysts see little sense in its linking up with Commerzbank, at present Germany's third-largest commercial bank.

Commerzbank is in the middle of a late dash to beef up its investment banking by hiring hundreds of staff in Frankfurt and London but is not big enough in asset management to be interesting to Deutsche, analysts said.

Commerzbank, which has vociferously denied recurring market speculation that it is a potential takeover target, is now also expected to come under heightened pressure to find a partner.

( $ equals 1.783 German Marks )

I can do it Huff, Puff. I can do it, I can reach my high, Huff, Puff. I'm getting so old, Huff, Puff. Oh my! Oh sh*t!!!!

Foreign Assets--At the start of the 1980s America was the worlds biggest creditor. By the end of 1996 it was the worlds biggest debtor by a wide margin, thanks to its persistent current-account deficits. The recent appreciation of the dollar means that the gap is likely to grow.

At the end of last year, Americas net external deficit totaled 871 billion, or 11.5% of its GDP. By contrast, years of current-account surpluses have given Japan the worlds largest net foreign assets---even bigger than Americas liabilities at $891 billion, 20% of its GDP. Germanys net foreign assets have plunged, since peaking in 1990 at $350 billion, 21% of GDP. The deficits it has run since unification have reduced its overseas assets to only $143 billion, 6% of GDP. The appreciation of sterling during 1996 lopped Britains net overseas assets to a mere $8 billion. The Economist, Financial Indicators There is a chart, but--if you're USAer--you don't want to see it this early in the morning; ruin your day.

Is it not heartening that the world cant get enough of our bonds /debt? According to some econometric pundits, there is fear of a shortage!
It is a truly wonderful about face from the sixties, when foreigners were getting irritated by our chronic inability to live within our means; now, all is forgiven, if well only print more of those bonds, those wonderful, safe as gold, USD bonds...

What is wrong with this story? ( grin )

While World acclaimed economist, Martin Armstrong, of Princeton Economics predicts the Euro will fall apart, others strongly feel the very restrictive entrance qualifications for each country will ensure the EMU will BE STILLBORN on 1 January 1999. Like Websters dictionary definition of the EMU, ...a large flightless bird, related to the ostrich. In short, the EMU will never fly, and the EURO advocates are just playing a game of OSTRICH, with their heads stuck in the sand... and their backsides exposed to unspeakable danger.

International Analyst J.N. Tlaga provides another interesting viewpoint of the EUROs prospects:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials/Tlaga004f.html

The last post here from vronsky

World acclaimed economist, Martin Armstrong, of Princeton Economics predicts the Euro will fall apart.

Well-recognized French analyst Orpailleur gives a detailed and pensive report on the ramifications of the possible failure of the EMU vis--vis GOLD. He asserts, There is no doubt that something is brewing in Europe: Rumors of Euro backing by gold, and of politicians buying physical gold... His complete report at:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials/gold_euro.html

I agree. http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials/Tlaga004f.html is absolutely fascinating reading. M. Vronsky, I salute you. Your site Gold- Eagle is ( ahem ) a veritable goldmine.

Another or Others: Please explain this portion of the post from yesterday;

Date: Sun Dec 07 1997 18:45
ANOTHER ( THOUGHTS! ) ID#60253:
Will we have Deja-vu again?

During that time, a gold stock in the hand will not trade on

an open market! And the government of the country, of the

land, of the mine, will no doubt speak with you of new taxes

on GOLD! 

Does anyone else have a interpretation of what Another means by this statement.
I find it rather alarming since I own many mining shares.

Thank You

D.A. - More like you horse is just staggering......ugh.....we're going down BIG...

Ted - That one hurt.......DOH!

All - Have a Grateful Day......gotta go!

btw - that pesky US$ is sure being a Baaaaaad Boy today.......hmmmmmm...

Away.....to the grind...eh, nickC??



that reminds me NickC. I read an article in the newspaper regarding your beloved Bherriwerri Young tribesmen. Ya guys aren't letting them swim for the scallop's anymore.....calling 'em poachers. They had a little 'town' meeting in Canberra. Did you hang any of them??!? ;- ) C'mon...give 'em a break, they just want some sushi for din din.

go gold!

BREAKING STORIES:

Bank burns as rupiah plunges
http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/971209/world/world7.html

Clinton shifts strategy on nuclear war
http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/971209/world/world8.html

Taiwan's week of the bulls
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971209/market/markets5.html

Billion-dollar buyouts lead attack on bankruptcy
Korean Shipbuilding Group had 20 times debt to equity!
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971209/world/world1.html

Singer Sewing up 20% by sacking 25% of staff
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971209/world/world2.html

Investing for Growth - Speech by PM John Howard
( Would you vote for this guy with a speech like this? )
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971209/verbatim/verbatim1.html

IN REVIEW

Mixed Signals in 4pc Aussie export slump
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/news/news6.html

Malaysia makes drastic policy changes
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/world/world1.html

Fourth largest Korean ship builder collapses
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/world/world2.html

Gold plunge keeps ratings agency S&P busy revising
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/invest/invest5.html

Gold crash may hit $US250/oz
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets9.html

Silver tests ratio's mettle
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets10.html

Two Views of Asian Fallout & Dog of the Week
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets3.html

Central banks and official funds are questioning the
appropriateness of gold as an asset class.
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets6.html

Markets suspicious of Japanese intentions
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets8.html

Korean steel hits US & European production
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets11.html

'True Cost' of Middle East Oil Exceeds $100 Per Barrel,
U.S. Desert Storm Military Leader Says;

S.Korea media knock U.S., Japan on IMF bailout
http://biz.yahoo.com/upi/97/12/04/international_news/koreaimfm_2.html

IMF has the tigers by the tail - or does it?
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971206/perspective/perspective4.html

Trouble brewing in Indonesia?
http://www.brw.com.au/brw33.htm#Trouble

The good, the bad and the ugly banks of Asia
http://www.afr.com.au/content/971204/world/world4.html


BOOKMARK Steves News Page:
( Courtesy of Colin Seymour )
http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~netking/blizard.htm

There are a number of referrences regarding gold to 300 before backing back down, eh D.A.? Yikes. I hope I don't lose my 'wink' before I make some bigger duckets. I like bragging rights.....;- )

http://www.afr.com.au/content/971208/market/markets9.html

The beloved ( among bulls and bears alike ) Ted Arnold Speaks....

away...no really

goneunlesstedpopsoffandtheniwillsendhimaletterbombbutitwouldtakeayeartogetdeliveredgogold

The Bank of Japan is losing the battle to keep the Asian Dominos from falling: Friday saw the Nikkei dropped another 293 points ( 1.8% ) .

Just by extending massive loans to Asian Banks, the IMF IS NOT ADDRESSING THE ESSENCE OF THE PROBLEM: Which is simply that the borrowers cannot repay their debts! UNFORTUNATELY, ASIAN Debtors bit off more than they can chew financially.

It doesn't take a double Ph.D. in Mathematics AND Finance to understand the ludicrous folly of the Asian Banking Debacle looming on the horizon of the Land of the SETTING Sun... and the horrific ramifications which inevitably will ensue.

THIS is the LATEST analysis of the Asian Banking Domino Effect by John Kutyn -

http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest/kutyn120497.html

EB:

Reading about the 'bounce' to 300 has me worried. I wish they were talking about the bottomless pit.

Me mare tripped going round the quarter pole. Wish her name was silver. Now that babe can run.

Away to buy some more little gold stocks for our funds.

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/falling_nickel_price_1.html
Falling nickel price threatens Australia mines
KALGOORLIE, Australia, Dec 8 ( Reuters ) - Falling nickel prices had placed nickel mine projects in Western Australia in jeopardy of being delayed or cancelled, analysts here said on Monday.
``The conditions in the nickel market will be tough, particularly in the next two years, when we expect demand from Asia to stall,''
``The threat of lower nickel prices due to Voisey's Bay from 2001 suggest that nickel projects that have not got their project finance and feasibility studies in place by the end of 1997 are likely to miss the boat,''

Excerpt fom Robert Hitt at AstroEcon- The last of the conjunctions in Capricorn come up on Monday 12/8 with a Venus Neptune conjunction. I believe that the worst of the deflation fears may be ending and with it the steep decline in gold and oil. I will be looking to make a few long term purchases in some gold stocks. Many good companies are now off 90% and they wont go to zero. It may take a few years but they offer the best prospects for huge long term gains of any stock category. Buy on weakness and sell on strength is never wrong over long periods of time. This is the first time I have been tempted to enter these stocks long term in my own account. I will scale in over a period of time beginning MONDAY. P.S. MMMMM What happened to Bre-x ? Happy Trails..... away to the centre of music.

SDRer, All: Did you see Schultz' post this AM about gold and inflation? This says it all: The G10 group can collectively deny inflation, by buying the weakest currency to shore it up. Countries with strong currencies are also forced to devalue, or they lose the opportunity to trade.

In the past, a rise in the price of gold, or a sudden drop of one major currency would set off the inflationary alarm bells.

It is also quite clear that the EURO lauching on 1/1/1999 will not bail out the dollar. All of the G10 currencies will thus go down together eventually. Given that the "no inflation" deception can now be maintained for a longer period than it could have been in the past, the crunch will be worse when it finally comes.

My guess is that we will have our true gold-backed ( electronic ) currency, but only after it rises like the Pheonix from the ashes of the US dollar or the EURO. For a time we will also have very stringent rules about debt creation as well.

Isn't it ironic that the world has always had a single world-wide currency -- namely gold? There is really nothing special about gold as a currency, with the exception that no one has been able to create large quantities of it. If gold could be inflated, our economic leaders would certainly have done so, in order to delay the inevitable.

Analysts question reason for Japan loan disclosure
TOKYO, Dec 8 ( Reuters ) - Financial analysts said on Monday they were surprised by a report putting the total amount of problem loans held by Japan's banks at a huge 79 trillion yen ( $607 billion ) and questioned the reasons for the disclosure.
Some analysts said the figures published in the leading financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun on Saturday may have been leaked by the authorities with the aim of deepening national understanding of the seriousness of Japan's bad loan mess.
``It is unclear...why such a figure was revealed at a time when fears about financial stability in Japan are mounting,''
``I have not heard this sort of figure for problem loans before,''
http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/japan_banks_1stld_ne_1.html

If I couldnt produce the cash for my mortgage payments because I have TOO MUCH DEBT, maybe the IMF and the boys in Japan could help me out with some ADDITIONAL LOANS. Gee, that would make a lot of sense!

If I couldnt produce the cash for my mortgage payments because I have TOO MUCH DEBT, maybe the IMF and the boys in Japan could help me out with some ADDITIONAL LOANS. Gee, that would make a lot of sense!

God forbid telling the truth. And the analysts say it like it is better to let the people be totally in the dark about their own money.

All this talk about the Euro in 1999 is, IMNO ( N=neophyte's ) , hogwash. In order to process the transaction volume, the data processing procedures must be updated to accomodate the new currency and all the new ( presumably initially unstable ) exchange rates. And all this on top of Year 2000 code remediation efforts. The Euro start date is, no matter what high-level politicians' commitments, moveable. Y2K is fixed. There are not enought programmers in the world to handle one of these two conversions, let alone both at once. There are only two alternatives:

1 ) Euro is postponed to allow Y2K work to proceed as much as possible before 2000/01/01, some failures inevitable, but banking returns to normal in X months.

2 ) Euro work continues, flying in the face of Y2K, resulting in massive failures and collapses, years to recover, Europe as a major economic power will be kaput.

I don't think I'm out on a limb predicting that the Euro 'official' start date *will* be moved. As an aside, I posted my resume on the web. Got a response from a headhunter in England -- offering twice what I make here in USA. They are desperate for programmers at any price, but there aren't any programmers left -- at any price. ( *Quality* programmers, not six-week COBOL wonders from the offshore code factories )

No idea what the financial ramifications of this Y2K-versus-Euro might be, but I invite speculation. It may be, as Year2000 pointed out at 9:10, USD may be a good investment in the next couple of years...

Japan hint on T-bond sales helps cool bank premium
TOKYO, Dec 8 ( Reuters ) - Hints by Japan's ruling party that Tokyo might sell some of its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities to raise cash for the nation's banks have helped lower the extra cost those banks pay to raise funds abroad.
``It could have some negative impact initially on the U.S. bond market, but it would just give someone a great buying opportunity,''
``What Japan does is not necessarily going to make or break the U.S. Treasury market anyway,''
http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/japan_hints_news_ana_1.html

For the big moves in Gold and Silver ( a la Another )

A gold backed electronic system of payments, www.e-gold.com

Japan stocks unlikely recover soon--Morgan Stanley
According to a Japanese translation of Kinmont's remarks, he said that while Japan's financial system was nearing collapse, there was no indication that the government would take steps to correct the contradiction in its current policies and a short-term share price recovery would be difficult.
Speaking to an equities conference here, Kinmont said the government was unlikely to come up with any decisive policies as it continued to be obsessed with fiscal reform.
Kinmont said Japanese policy makers were counting on being able to compensate for weak domestic demand through exports, as long as the U.S. economy maintains its strength.
But, he added, the U.S. economy may face a regular, cyclical slowdown at the end of 1998, leaving Japan with no escape route.
http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/japan_stocks_unlikel_1.html

Anybody has any insight to this?
We will see by way of a flat price over severeral weeks.
And by the way, why is Platinum droping so much? Thank You in advance.

CHINA PRIVATISATION-China warily eyes its banks
SHANGHAI, Dec 8 ( Reuters ) - Wang Jian was an unusually diligent officer at a Chinese state-run bank, booking deposits worth $37 million and loaning out the cash.
There was just one problem: profits went straight into his pockets, not to the bank.
Wang was running a private loan-sharking scam from his desk in the Agricultural Bank of China in the eastern city of Nanjing. When police blew his cover, he tried to kill himself, and 44 accomplices were arrested.
As China pushes all but a handful of its 270,000 or so cash-hungry government enterprises towards the market, banks will have to organise a house-cleaning.
``Transforming the state banks into genuine commercial banks is crucial if China is to avoid a major bank insolvency.''
The four main commercial banks -- the Bank of China, the Industrial and Commercial Bank, the Bank of Agriculture and the China Construction Bank -- are technically insolvent.
They had a total capital base of 201 billion yuan ( $24.2 billion ) and total loans of 5.0 trillion yuan at the end of the first half of this year.
Official estimates show 20 percent of all loans -- equal to 1.0 trillion yuan -- are non-performing.
Lending officers are running scared.
``I am afraid to lend now,'' said a Chinese banker named Bai with 20 years of experience.
``Many proposals look good on paper but the reality is quite different,'
``You can't cover this forever,''
http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/china_privatisation__1.html

To nomercy

I am concerned that you are concerned that the gold

price in rands is down to 1400 - This concerning

development is in large part due to a special branch

of mathematics - multiplication.

For example - if one multiplies the price of gold

in $ by the value of the dollar in rands - one

always gets the rand gold price.

Lets try and see - 288$/oz times 4.87rands/$=

1402 - yep works every time.

Why does that bother you so much - were you expecting

the rand to "tank" because of the fall in the gold

price. I have explained separately that gold represents

only 20 % of RSA exports - 10 years ago it was 50 %.

It seems like every time a few of you guys gets some

shred of information on RSA, you get very excited about

it and express great "concern" or something like that.

Like poor nasty Winnie and her daughter ( you missed

that one - gee ) are kidnappers and murderers and she's

going to be president - oh my god.

That same Press that is frequently quoted to me was

calling winnie her a SAINT some 10 years ago. And so she

becomes DEPUTY President so what. From what I read on the net

the US President seems to be a serial killer - foster

- brown - where will it end.

Im beginning to understand the problem. The crazy p/e

multiples that apply to N.American mines must have

been built upon the implicit assumption that RSA

would go down in flames, their mines would "implode",

and 40% of the world's gold supply would disappear as

a result. Gold would go through the roof and the

nutty north american p/e ratios would be justified.

I believe some of you may be "concerned" that it

hasn't happened.

But dont be concerned, nomercy, im not. The rand will

probably slip a bit more against a very stong $ - but

not much - on a PPP basis its at least 10% undervalued.

The $Gold price - who knows. Maybe you could DEvalue

the $ against the rand and make the RSA mines

uncompetitive that way. I dont think so. We are all

headed down the same tube.

Your post is 100% accurate.

Is seems that in the USA, however, companies do not want to even recognize Y2K issues.

Earlier this year, I worked with two $50B+ companies that were expanding with mergers/acquisitions. Both companies were focused on the merger issues, and both were indifferent to the Y2K issues. Each had two or three people working on surveys and management plans, and absolutely NO ONE was working on actual repairs.

Ponder Points ( and a suggestion for Y2000 )

1. Again, from the Economist--Emerging-Market Indicators:
...A currency board has also helped Argentinas peso to retain its worth in dollars. But every other emerging country in our chart has suffered a currency depreciation against the dollar, with the exception of _______________.

Considering Anothers post only from a geopolitical point: he said 3 central banks were accumulating gold. I think one of them is the bank that has the exceptional currency above.

2. It is astonishing to me, when Japan has a current account surplus of 20% of its GDP, $891 billion, that all the news releases are focused on the terrible trouble theyre in and not a word about US with a current account deficit of $871billion.
Are we Gods Chosen Country or what? ( see past in last time segment for detail of G-7 current account stats )

3. With equity repos, particularly triparty equity repos, it seems to me that banks, mutual funds, insurance companies and pension plans now have a vested common interest in the market NOT going down, to the extent that legal market manipulation will become ( or perhaps already is ) the hot new game on the street. Sharefin ( and others with thoughts on this ) is there some way we can track this? Repos are a $50 million minimum ( that is what I read somewhere ) .

4. To address Y2000 debt: Securitize it, strip into interest strips and principal strips; sell it to friends and neighbors. People cant get enough of it ( debt paper ) ; youll make enough to build a whole new tranche of debt! Try it, youll like it!

5: JTF, excellent post. Euro or no Euro, I agree with your point
about the dollar. For the time being, my research into the "people"
around SDR/IMF/World Bank sorrowfully leads to the conclusion it won't happen. The men who see the wisdom of it are old and tired ( the Vaulers ) ; and the young and energetic are Pricers to the core. Are you still working on the Indicator? Update please!
Off to the wars.BBL

For stalder

The largest part of the platinum demand is unfortunately for

jewelry in Japan. That sector of the demand spectrum must be

perceived to be in difficulty.

Tolerant1 - please explain what would prevent the Keepers of the "e-gold" system from doing the same bloody thing the paper bankers did, i.e. issue more "e-gold" credit than there is physical gold in their vaults? Even COMEX can't keep their contracts to physicals straight. How can we trust them?

I might, if they had a Web Cam in the vault which anyone could link to and verify the ingots of gold were there at any moment.

Go to www.e-gold.com and click on examiner. If you have further questions zap all your questions to admin@e-gold.com

If they BS you, don't open an account.

That's all, plain and simple.

I opened an account so I am tainted, I think they run an outstanding system and provide an excellent service without peer on the planet.

I provided a newslink which is relevant in the current gold market.

SDR
They are playing the market along today.
Every time the dow starts to sell off they pump the premium up.
They have done it 4 times in the last hour.
Talk about gentle massaging.
They don't want it to go down here.

Let's face it, the bear scare is over boys. Fiend's SuperBear Page just upgraded the market outlook for the next from bearish to neutral for the 1-3 months. http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/fiendbea/homepage.htm

How can anyone expect a bear market near term anymore or even the market not going way up over its all-time highs and soon?

Thank-you for url it is most appreciated, and agree indeed, it is most
relevant to the Gold markets.

By the way I see that someone from the 5th Dimension is slowly coming
down to our earth, and may be just maybe awaking from technicolor
dreams, for it is necessarily the perception of a situation that really matters
and not necessarily the reality, even though the reality may still happen.

Nomercy

"concern" is a pompous word normally reserved for the chairman of

the board - you're not him.

The newslink is fine and dandy. But I am confused that you are so

"concerned". What is the motivation for your concern??

Thank you for your forecast...

I do know what you mean by bad luck in regard to forecasts, and do
not blame you.

I completely agree that quality of any forcast may be relative to
the amount of vodka consumed just before making any forecast.
I got my own experience - lets say gold chart looks bad... couple
of shots.....looks much better...couple more shots .... looks terrific!

Anyway, please do not consider yourself obligated to work for me,
but all jokes aside, it is pleasure communicating with you. I feel
you got a whole bunch of practical experience and knowledge,
and from time to time I do hope to be able to learn a couple of
useful things from you, if, of course, you do not have objections.

If I hear any rumors on Russian platinum, I will share

Best regards...

P.S. Now Russians know that you know that they got 2 sets of books.
Because they know that you can request the second set, I bet
they are rushly fixing a fake second set of books especially for you.
Anyway, it means that they should have ay least 3 sets of books now..
Holy Cow, what did I do... , I just revealed ....
it looks like even 3 sets of books...Oh my GOD!..4th set is coming..

For the unnameable kid from deep space.

I think they are calling you home - or was that your daddy telling

you to get away from his computer.

I beleive that is the 3rd or 4th time you've used that old line, and it is was really boring the scond time.

that gold does not flucutate, currencies fluctuate while gold remains the constant. The same might be said of land, it is even more stable inasmuch as for all practical purposes, no more is being created.
The question I pose to the Kitco brain trust: Is gold money? It has historically been considered to be money, having driven out feathers, beads and tulip bulbs which were fashionable at one time.

But if gold is money, what happened to silver. There are no pieces of eight floating around. It is used extensively by industry due to its unique chemical properties, but one does not buy silver thinking that he has a hedge against inflation. It seems to have been reduced to a mere comodity like coffee or pork bellies. Let the price rise to $12 or so, and endless supplies of the stuff will come out of the kitchens and attics of the world. If silver has gone the way of the buggy whip, can gold be far behind?

With 3.8 billion ounces of gold above ground with usages, for all pracitcal purposes, given its relatively high price, limited to adornment and filling teeth, why should resourcs be allocatged to the production of this metal which is essentially worthless? Silver will stand on its own two feet as it has commercial applications, but gold...?

The purpose of posting relevant newslinks stories related to the gold market, is to allow ALL of us to be better informed and make our investing decisions accordingly. I've provided newslinks from all over the world to provide our discussion group with background material originating from the local areas ( in this case SA ) rather than rely on North American news channels.

My fervent feelings, is for a healthy good bounce in the price of gold, hopefully at the expense of the gold bears rather than fellow gold mining shareholders.

Cheers

Read the post by vronsky at 10:06 - that is a start to answering the question for your last post.

Tolerant1: I checked out their Web page. Nice concept, don't know if I would trust them. Don't like the idea that their metals are scattered around in a lot of safe-deposit boxes. Hard to inspect. They are going to have to do better than a web page listing of their "inventory" too. As I mentioned, a LIVE, panable, zoomable web camera looking at the physical metal would be more believable; add a microphone so I can ask one of the vault keepers to walk over and point to my metal-on-deposit, hold the bar up so I can read the serial number. As I said, if we can't even trust COMEX...

Have you ever sent or received metal from e-gold as in terms of an e-gold transaction?

Gold's demand and supply do not remain constant.
So neither should it's price or value ( same for silver ) .
Yes the demand and supply of currencies also do
not remain constant. It's just much easier to print
more money than mine more gold.

Watch Out!! When the Superbears of the stock
market turn neutral or bullish they've turned into a
contrary indicator. Interest rates will continue to rise,
and this can only mean churning or downward
movements in the US financial markets.

So far my dealings have been in the form of redemption and I pressed enter on the keyboard and it was here in three days.

Here, try this, 1-800-909-6590 talk to them direct. I think you will be most interested to speak with these folks.

While World acclaimed economist, Martin Armstrong, of Princeton Economics predicts the Euro will fall apart, others strongly feel the very restrictive entrance qualifications for each country will ensure the EMU will BE STILLBORN on 1 January 1999. Like Websters dictionary definition of the EMU, ...a large flightless bird, related to the ostrich. In short, the EMU will never fly, and the EURO advocates are just playing a game of OSTRICH, with their heads stuck in the sand... and their backsides exposed to unspeakable financial and monetary dangers.

International Analyst J.N. Tlaga provides another interesting viewpoint of the EUROs prospects:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials/Tlaga004f.html

Tolerant1: Three days for metals to arrive? Hmm ... Blanchard takes +2 weeks. Perhaps we should be buying bullion from e-gold. Thanks for the info.

World acclaimed economist, Martin Armstrong, of Princeton Economics predicts the Euro will fall apart.

Well-recognized French analyst Orpailleur gives a detailed and pensive report on the ramifications of the possible failure of the EMU vis--vis GOLD. He asserts, There is no doubt that something is brewing in Europe: Rumors of Euro backing by gold, and of politicians buying physical gold... His complete report at:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials/gold_euro.html

Gusto Oro
Fiendbear changes his call often. He doesn't live up to his name.
If the Dow is to sell-off over the next couple of days, a new downtrend will be established.
A failure after a secular tripple top would be ominous.
The exit doors may well not be big enough.
Bonds are reacting like they should have on Friday

I realize that the demand for silver has outstripped the supply by a sizable number of oz for years now. We all assume it will continue to widen or at least stay the same for some time.
One concern I have, as far as demand is concerned, is the use of silver in the photography industry. This component of the overall demand is all important as it represents by far the most significant percentage of the total demand ( I believe it is almost 200 mil oz per year ) .
As you know digital photography is coming into the market very focefully. I just saw a camera ( about $600 ) and the quality of displayed pictures was outstanding. Also, there is no detoriation of the picture quality over time.

I have a big part of my pm portfolio in silver stocks and I am wondering how long will it be before the digital technology impacts silver demand??

Let me point out the following. Once you are part of the system, ie. your money clears, so forth and so on, then your metal is good to go. Like I suggested in an earlier post on the subject, open a small account with the company.

Try it, you will like it. Plus I still heartily suggest you call them my friend.

If you are lookiing just for coins in hand call Russ Savage - Jefferson Coin and Bullion. 800-593-2585 with a wire transfer I have yet to wait more than a few days to get delivery.

tolerant1
Thank you for considering my ill-considered downer on e-gold this am. My comparison with NZ's GoldCorp - fly by nighter's -- where's the gold? I got my certificate-- GoldCorp- was glib, light, and, spot on, I am pleased my intuition can master my intellect on such occaisions, now for a little intellectual comparison:-

Your statement re e-gold:

" I for one believe very strongly in e-gold, have investigated till satisfied and feel comfortable in the honor and integrity within the system and the people running the system."

OK well i never trusted Ray Smith of GoldCorp and I counselled those who asked not to buy GC shares, I was called wrong when the stags made 30%+ on floating--- 15 months later the cupboard was bare..

what am i saying? Like GoldCorp, e-gold relies on the integrity and honour of the system and the people who devised and control the system, like GoldCorp, every individual thinking about investing has to do DD,

But hold a coin or a small bar ( I've never held a big 'un ) {here's an opportunity for Nick@C} of gold, my precious, I have to believe and trust in nothing and noone but myself, my research, my emotions, I have to watch noone else.

I have read of your belief in e-gold, the e-gold system, and the e-gold people, I do hope your are right in placing your trust in these e-men and e-systems rather than in gold.

Just not so trustful, me..


e-aurator

From what I have read you have a few years at least to be worry free about the digital revolution and that comes direct from the manufacturers.
It is not taking off anywhere near like they thought it would.

I am also waiting for the FED to say that gold causes cancer, until then it will be the ONLY REAL MONEY on the planet.

Thought I would attempt to promote a little lively debate. I have openly confessed that I for one do not understand why goes up and down. I am reviewing Kitco posts to try to find some rationale for its fluctuaations. The supply seems to be practically constant with practically all of the gold mined throughout history remaining in circulation. it is demand that requires scrutiny.

So what is going on. The stock market has been going up because everyone is buying stocks. Countries with large gold reserves are looking foolish for retaining the yellow metal which primarily gathers dust. True for the moment, but during the next cycle ( the gold price fluctuates ) , the same guardians of a nation's weath who are now being castigated for their supidity, will be hailed as responsible stewarts of the nation's wealth. Governments are not good at micro management of assets. Sure as God made little green apples, if there is collective dumping of gold, the decision will come home to haunt them. Which raises this question, at what price would countries and CB's jettison their gold hoards. Switzerland has expended much in accumlating its hoard. The citizeny might vote to sell it for a price, but what price. The same applies to other countries which have strong emotional attachments to gold. $12 an ounce seems to be a price which will motivate owners of silver to melt down their flatware. At what price will government's and CB's sell their gold except under duress. Is it possible that governments will ban together to rid themselves of this awful element which competes with its paper.

My father showed me a cartoon one time which depicted to two Yanks in a fox hole during WW11 with bombs bursting all around. The capation was, "If you know a better hole, go to it." Gold may not be perfect, but I fail to see a better alternative at this time.

I understand fully. I posted the phone number of e-gold. Give them a call and judge for yourself.

To All: I can report that George S.Cole, eminent Internet Economist, is alive and well, here at the beach. He joined our weekend corn roast and his comments on the imminent secular bull in gold and the value of KITCO were well received by almost all. Debbie, who is a bit..well...dull, was confused about bulls and bears. As she said, "I've always liked bears, they're so cuddly. Could there be a secular bear in gold?" George was quick to set her straight--"Look at that XAU on Friday--up nicely. Been down every Friday for months". Debbie said, "I don't really are about XAU. If he has that sort of trouble on Fridays, maybe he should just go out on Saturdays. I sometimes read KITCO. They're a macho bunch, but I like Panda best. He seems to be a warm, friendly bear. Do you think he's a secular bear? I don't know why he posts those charts, though. The line always goes down..." Unfortunately, George was of no further help. He had met Merv, our local MLM guru, who was touting his latest get rich scheme. "This is the real bull", George was heard to exclaim as he trotted down the beach with Merv.

P.S. Panda--Debbie asked me to tell you that she doesn't have an e-mail address so she can't post, but she hopes to continue to read yours. She has one request, though--could you post a chart of something that goes up? She doesn't see the point of looking at things that go down. ( As I said, she's a bit slow ) .

Good ol' Boy - if there was no manipulation of the gold supply/demand equation, then gold's falling price would clearly indicate severe deflation is about to engulf us. However, since the markets are not free, then many explanations may be plausible.

Trouble at the Henhouse ? Bottom fishing?Watch that tide..... http://www.canoe.com/FP/dec6_stgenevieg.html

It is somehow comforting that you can spy them at their work. My concern is:
when using equities as collateral, it is very much in the best interest of the borrower, the lender and the party holding the stake that those equities stay well within the quantifiable, thus manageable range. Are we starting to talk about a stacked deck here?

This thing is endemic; pension funds, insurance company funds...one could view all this with greater equanimity were it not for the past lending record of banks...it is difficult to imagine brokers/investment banks could be worse, improbable that they are better.

Tolerant1: Cancer&Gold--Are you 'breaking' this story? ( grin )
The only "it causes cancer" study that died a very quick media death, was the one from UofMichigan ( I think it was they ) which said sex causes cancer.

Once you tie a specific amount of gold to paper and give it real value it is like nailing a politicians and bankers tongue to a yolk of truth.

Isn't it ironic that folks who have no faith in the U.S. Govt. ( ie the American people ) , our currency ( currently strongest in the world ) , our economy ( currently strongest in the world ) , paper promises, ( more safegaurds than any other ) etc etc. are more than happy to trust their "Gold" investments to an electronic silicon chip based system, based on the promises of the promoters. Fallible human beings with no system of FDIC, etc. to back them up!.

Partuclarly when commodity investment scams have bilked thousands of investors of every cent of their investment in many cases, over the past few decades, at a time when Govt. backed investments have not lost a penny to the individual investors ( albeit indirectly cost them a small amount of dough as taxpayers ) .

Sure seems like a total contradiction in strategy and philosophy to me. Looks like it does to you too. I know of a local precious metals and coin dealer who advertised "free storage" for years. Turns out then when metals dropped far enough to wipe the guy out, the "free storage" turned our to be very expensive storage. Namely a 100% loss for those who took advantage of it.

Some "insurance" policy against financial meltdown eh? GoldBug paranoids better at least be consistent in their thinking, by holding the physical, buying a bunch of guns, stockpiling food, building a fortress, and getting ready for Armegeddon.....

Death from friction or lack thereof?

Interesting sites

$$$$ UNSOUND AT ANY PRICE $$$$

The Federal Reserve, the Dollar, and the next Crash and Bust.

"U.S. mutual funds are allowed to prohibit withdrawals at times of market catastrophe, if they receive an exemption order from the Securities and Exchange Commission...

( After the crash of '29, the Dow declined from its closing high on September 3rd of 381.17 to a closing low of 59.93 on July 8, 1932. Staying in was very costly ) ."

http://home.clara.net/millenniumint/rsresearch/UNSOUND.html

"U.S. and other dollar exposed investors should take advantage of the depressed price of gold and the relative window of opportunity between

now and election of 2000 to diversify and reduce dollar exposure. Gold purchases ( physical, mining stocks, or futures and options ) are

especially attractive with gold in the mid $300's" [must be even more attractive now : ) ]

http://home.clara.net/millenniumint/rsresearch/dollar1.html

THE GOLD STANDARD: AN ANALYSIS OF SOME RECENT PROPOSALS [1982]

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa016.html

Rubin's just ANOTHER...

http://mouth.pathfinder.com/fortune/magazine/1995/951127/realcheck.rubin.html

Just for fun...

http://www.another.com/

irc.another.net ( Internet Relay Chat )

tolerant1

and that's another ( there's that word again ) problem, an 0800 number don't work internationally- anyone got a phreak for me to patch into US phone -lines? ( nice point of law? *where* does a conspiracy occurr in cyberspace? )

I do appreciate your comittment to e-gold, that in itself is enough for me to check it out

NZ, that wonderful country that was the first to give women the vote now has a woman Prime Minister for the first time. The leader of the opposition is also a woman.

Now when is the US actually going to wake up? I know some posters here assert that Billary is the US' first hermaphrodite leader...

aurator, liftin up skirts?

"There are men who love women who love men,
There are women who love women every now and then,
There are men who love men,
cos they cant pretend
they are men who love women who love men"


Steve Goodman RIP

Y2KBug__A: You wrote: "Euro is postponed to allow Y2K work to proceed". In fact, "implementation" period for Euro is 3.5 years. In 1999 only business transactions between banks, enterprises will be in Euro. People will continue to receive their salary in local currencies. Process supposed to last till the middle of 2002, when all local money will be completely excluded, not only from shop transactions but also from constitutions of countries - members of the monetary union. European banks and insurance companies spend now huge amounts of money on adapting or replacing existing software. Often it is combined with preparations for Y2000. For example, Dutch bank ING has a budget of NLG 1B ( 1 US$ = 2 NLG ) for both Euro and Y2K problem. Current situation really creates deficit for good programmers. But it feels here, in Europe, that it is really going to happened.
PS Several days ago one of my friends faced Y2000 problem in practice. He got new credit card with expiration "after". He had a trouble at gas station, when he tried to pay with this new credit card - machine refused to accept it, giving a message that it has been expired.

You support the single most debt ridden country and government on the planet. The single most over valued market in history and then turn it around to single out a system of payment you obviously know nothing about.

I say to you write a thorough and detailed email to admin@e-gold.com and then print both your email and the response in full for everyone here to read.

Just heard on morning radio

"If you see a Swiss banker jump out a window follow him... there's bound to be gold at the bottom"

off to work

Rats

Summoning the rodents of disbelief RATS

( Saki )

auraRAT

Another unsound analogy from LGB. : )

I don't find it ironic that so many distrust the U.S. government.

I find it disquieting.

Robby, if you're still around, the reason you got no response to your inquiry is that there are no good responses to your inquiry. You'll find that this is a pretty monolithic forum most of the time, rather than a genuine give and take analysis of the forces that drive the price of the metals.

Next time, if you want to get responses, stick with something REALLY arcane and irrelevant to Gold's price. You know, rather than easking such a fundamental ( and intelligent ) series of questions, ask something like "How will Y2K end civilization as we know it?", or "Doesn't the key to it all lie with George Soros and Rothschild LBMA connection", or "Will El Nino and the TWA Flt 800 conspiracy cause a crash in the DOW?"

That way you'll generate plenty of replies. Such minutia as what 99% of investors are thinking re Gold vs. currency carries no weight here. Current Kitco logic holds that such investor sentiment will be wiped off the face of the earth by a cataclysmic meltdown, leaving only Kitcoites left behind to trade Gold coins and bars for bushels of wheat. ( Uh huh.. )

I agree. But if you did so-went to a true world wide gold standard- whereby all assets of every time could be measured by some percentage of the world's availble gold, misicule amounts of gold would represent rather large assets such as the Empire State Builiding and there would be a tremendous rush to increase the worlds available gold supply to the point that gold could be extracted from sea water. People would l

I thought it be interesting to let everyone know that it takes several weeks now to get a hold of some gold coins. Just found out that Jefferson Coin & Bullion ( Blanchard ) has some difficulties getting gold coins from Europe due to weak ( !! ) gold price. I have been waiting for some German gold coins 4 weeks++ myself. Is this a sign of things to come? Comments?

Tolerant, Quite frankly I don't care about "E gold" or their policies. Maybe they are completely legit, maybe they will fold someday and leave some of their investors holding the bag ( as many other commodity investment plans have done ) .

It's irrelevant to me one way or the other. My comments were to point out the ironic inconsistency in "trust" toward the management of a small commodity investment house, vs, the "mistrust" of the U.S. Govt. and it's people to continue moving forward into the 21st century, with a trusted dollar / economy.

I think you have gotten used to your own BS. The US Govt robbed its people of their gold. Trust what, whom. The US Government is broke and prints debt at will and makes interest payments in pepetuity.

The US dollar is not money, it is a debt note on borrow from the issuer until such time as it is no longer accepted as a tranfer for goods and services.

Therefore it is not YOUR money. Plain and simple. It can be deemed worthless overnight. Gold will still have a value.

You keep investing in debt paper and I will keep trusting the Peoples money, gold and silver.

100oz Gold Comex-$1500.Long or short . More skillful price than all the commercials on this stamping ground today.Away to the centre of music.

I just lurked thru the posts and noticed yours 12/7-14:33. You say the US$ will be KING for a long time. I am not so sure about that in part for
the following: You say US can back $ with military, Oil and Gold. I would
certainly agree with the last. However let's look at OIL. As we speak the
winds of change are blowing in the Middle-East, Iraq is defiant with backing from Russia and China, and almost all the US "Gulf War Allies"
including the Saudies and the Syrians, and OH YES IRAQIES are attending an Islamic conference in of all places IRAN. I just wonder what they are planning.Remember that BOMBING in Saudi Arabia of th US
compound? And don't forget King Faad has been ill for some time and
his successor may not be exactly friendly to US ,so once again ( Deja-Vu ) Arab nations are uniting to have a larger voice ( oil ) in the world affairs.
How long can it be before a series of BOMBINGS in S. Arabia aimed at removing US troops there?

The military force aspect is also suspect, worl opinion has turned against US, and so IMHO any military action will be unilateral, which would further
injure US reputation worldwide. Let's not forget that China has been recently quitely seeking to have the 100,000 strong US troops in Asia
GO HOME. Deja-Vu? IMHO the World Throne will be shared by 2 1/2
Kings with no elbow room,let's see if youi agree and if so who are they?

p.s. I re-read your post last to me and you are correct you were reffering to the "FUN" of figuring it out. I guess my crystal ball is getting a bit cloudy.

Also for the record in my post of 12/3 :00:55 I suggested that GOLD
would hold around 280.00 . I was promptly challenged by someone
who was very worried about how I came to that conclusion since he was
forcasting much lower.

Hi Bro......go wind!

Tolerant, now I have a suggestion for you, and Spud, Kiwi, JTF, Puetz, et al. Before you keep bashing the greatest economy and political system of all time, try this simple task.

Make a list of every breakthrough in human endeavor that has come out of our "debt ridden" economy and political system this century. Since we have escaped from the regressive systems of the past 4000 to 6000 years ( when you're precious medium of exchange, Gold, still had a primary monetary function ) .

You might start with such things as

* The medical revolution, antibiotics, medicines, greatly increased lifespans coupled with better health throughout the populace.

* The industrial revolution, autos, planes, jets, air conditioning, washing machines, microwave ovens, refrigerators, telephones. hot water and plumbing, Space travel.

* The high tech. revolution, computerization that makes an "E gold" ( and all this instantaneous communication ) possible, and provides literally hundreds of millions of jobs worldwide.

* The ACTUAL lifestyle norms of today in this country, starting in say 1945 or so, compared to all the 6000 years of previously recorded history.

* The average workers wealth and security in today's "credit" economy, the plethora of jobs, the educational opportunities, the continuous progress in areas like civil rights and racial equality, ( which are of course economic opportunity based, not just socio/politically based )

I'm speaking in generalities. One need only sit down and start listing actual specifics to immediately find that the complete list of how far we've come the past 50 to 100 years, would fill several volumes....ENORMOUS gains in the human condition, ecenomically compared to the previous 6000 years of recorded civilization.

These breakthroughs we enjoy are in large part due to our "credit/debt" based economy. This is what has fueled our industries, our progress, our enterpreneurs, our expansion, our constant pushing of the technological/scientific envelope, our dominance in all the major high tech, revolution breakthroughs of this century.

You must get beyond the simplicity of inert metal vs, paper and understand the concept of what trust and faith in humanity means. It doesn't mean trust in a slippery lying politicican like Clinton. It means trust in your fellow man, and what he can accomplish, given the right freedoms, the right incentives, the chance for recognition, the right to enjoy what he's produced, a system of Govt. that at least tries to promote fairness and equiality, and yes....the LOANS to make it all happen!

Do I like Federal debt? No...I see my 1040 like everyone else, the pamphlet showing that debt service is costing us a fat slice of our federal budget. Love to see it reduced.

BUT...given the alternatives some of you folks would have us believe in...which would have given us a continued world of misery, poverty, a typical life spent working yourself to an early death at age 23.... the "Good old days".... I'll take this system and this booming economy ( with it's attendent wealth for all our citizenry ) ANY day over the world you folks envision we should live in.

You all just have NO IDEA what you have, why you should be kissing the ground in thanks for it, or what it took to get there. This generation can only whine and complain, completely ignorant that they have it so much better than their 1000's of years of ancestors did.

Too bad, you need to study a little less of the history of money, and a little more of the history of mankind and how we lived before the past 50 years booming "credit" economy lifted us from our morass of misery. You'd learn something a lot more useful for your philosophical point of view.

There's dreamers and producers in this world..who get things done, usually with borrowed money, creating jobs and tangible benefits for others.....Than there's naysaying, Luddite whiners. I'll take the former camp any day.

- For Mr. nomercy

Your motivation for providing the SITE was clearly

altruism and love of fellow man - claro -

However, I questioned the motivation for your

"CONCERN" which you seem unable to answer.

If you want a more serious newlink try

http://www.bday.co.za/ . Its the Business day site.

I noticed some other headlines on the site you

offerred -

Gold Mining in Crisis - July 21,1995

Gold mines struggle to survive - July 28,1995

As they say in outer space - "deja vu all over again"

- For the unnameable one.

You have given yourself away in your 12:54.

Earthlings do not spell "believe" that way. You have

used the dreaded Yog-Sothooth spelling and I think we

may be in for it.

John Disney
Don't mention the fnords

arrrgghhhh

squelch BBLL


the MGT

BIS Annual Report, Notes to the Accounts
 ( j ) Off-balance-sheet items
1. Derivatives
In the normal course of business, the Bank is party to off-balance-sheet financial transactions including forward exchange contracts, currency and interest rate swaps, forward rate agreements, futures and options. These instruments are used to hedge the Banks interest rate and currency exposure on assets and liabilities, and to manage the duration of its liquid assets. The Bank applies the same credit criteria in considering off-balance-sheet commitments as it does for all other investments.

2. Fiduciary transactions
Fiduciary transactions are not included in Balance Sheet, since they are effected on behalf of and at the risk of the Banks customers, albeit in its own name. transactions falling under this heading comprise gold held under earmark as well as safe custody holdings of bills and other securities for account of central banks and other depositors.

The Bank of Japan is losing the battle to keep the Asian Dominos from falling: Friday saw the Nikkei drop another 293 points ( -1.8% ) .

Just by extending massive loans to Asian Banks, the IMF IS NOT ADDRESSING THE ESSENCE OF THE PROBLEM: Which is simply that the borrowers cannot repay their debts! UNFORTUNATELY, ASIAN Debtors bit off more than they can chew financially.

It doesn't take a double Ph.D. in Mathematics AND Finance to understand the ludicrous folly of the Asian Banking Debacle looming on the horizon of the Land of the SETTING Sun... and the horrific ramifications which inevitably will ensue.

THIS is the LATEST analysis of the Asian Banking Domino Effect by John Kutyn -
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest/kutyn120497.html

The facts are these: About 60% of the gold mining industry is currently
unable to operate profitably. This is causing mine closings and project
delays because of both the low price and the inability to obtain financing. Scrap and mine output is exceeded
by commercial gold demand by 1500 tons this year and a
deficit has existed for 6 years now. Even bears like Arnold of Merill
Lynch say production will fall by 400 tons next year because of closures.
Demand according to the World Gold Council continues to rise because of
low prices. The short position is currently at least 8000 tons based
upon gold fields figures on what central banks have loaned over the past
7 years.
The fact that 99% of people love paper indicates that bearish sentiment
pervades gold and bullish sentiment pervades paper. The exact psychological conditions a contrarian investor should love.
An additional fact is that at the start of the year the world's monetary
reserve stood at 950 million oz. There have probably been net sales of
about 20 million oz. After subtracting the 8000 tons of gold loans, there
is only about 700 million oz left in inventory. At today's spot it would
take about $200 billion to buy the entire remaining stock. The hedge funds alone have 150 billion $ in capital and at leverage maybe 1.5 trillion $. So any change in investment sentiment could easily absorb any central bank sales or loans at much higher prices

It seems to me one could make the argument that gold is good long term
contrarian play even if it goes somewhat lower in the short term.

to you know who - ( i dare not speak the name. )

That is Fahd - not Faad I tink -

One day you may get something right - inshallah

Ted-Lake Simcoe calm with thin ice .No winds of change yet .Boring as the Gold Markets.Don't know why Celione Dion would do a love song for the Titanic? All those dead people.Time to short some film & record companys.Away to listen to God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols.Happy Trails

NOW you're talkin DEJ! Your argument is the one that makes sense for Gold investment, not the usual nonsense we read on this forum about debt and Y2K.

However, I'd take it a step further and say that Silver has an even better shot, due to supply/demand fundamentals, mine closures that have ocurred, production far below consumption, and no real overhand of inventory sitting in CB vaults and such, as we have with Gold. Course I invested heavily in Silver because I also believe in the future of our economy, and Silver preforms best as an industrially consumed metal, not a monetary one. ( Kodak's current problems notwithstanding! )

The one argument I have seen here that makes sense for Gold is your argument, coupled with the fact that it would take only a relatively "small" shift in investor sentiment to drive Gold higher at this point. Makes for a good play at this time, I agree.

My disagreement lies with the folks who feel Gold is somehow more "moral" as a form of monetary exchange than paper. I couldn't disagree more. I made that case at length in my last post.

Now then, Go Gold and especially Silver.... ( and Platinum.. )

That venerable Blue Chip North American Gold mining concern, Homestake, is broaching it's 5 and 10 year lows. Short trem bearish, long term bullish. And today I'm buying a small stake in Pegasus...yes a roll of the dice play, all or nothing.... ( Use only money you can afford to LOSE for this kinda play! )

LGB: I'll say the obvious here. Those scientific advances occured because we have been compounding our knowledge not our debt. Our last manned visit to an interplanatary neighbor was about 25 years ago. If this country had been managing its money properly we would have had enough to put a manned mission on Mars by now.

fundaMETAList

Where is the music centre? I must go there...away from here to a more perfect chaos...Cole Porter? Antonio Carlos Jobim? Johnny Mercer?

At some point in the last week someone posted an analysis of Rea Gold. Could someone tell me when that was?

Well Fun, of course it was our Govt. who paid for the scientific and medical research programs and space industries that fueled the advances. No "knowledge compounding" would have ever gotten us this far otherwise. As to Space programs and manned missions, I'd consider the Hubble, and it's incredible breakthroughs in the knowledge of the Universe and even basic physics, to be far superior an accomplishment than a manned Mars mission. But then, having owrked on it..I may be biased.

You use a great many words and say nothing. You spend other peoples money and speak not of the repayment of debt.

The price the world will pay for the debt-ridden future that only a few share will bring untold hardships on every member of humanity.

Time will tell. The yardstick will be in suffering, measured in daily agony.

Unless, of course, you worked on the original reflector. Come clean LGB. Was that your doing?

Earth to Tolerant..I may use a lot of words, but I do live here on this planet. Human misery? That's the whole text of what I discussed. Either you didn't read it or didn't understand it, in any case, how can I dialogue further with you? It's pretty silly. If you can look at today's human condition in comparison to the past and not see where we are, than you have no reference point to start from. A good reality check is in order...but I don't think it'll be forthcoming...meanwhile I can only say, that in our home, Thansgiving had a profound meaning. So glad I don't live in the world you "Gold as money" folks would have preferred.

Didn't work on the myopic reflector, but consider it amazing that is was fiaxable in space. Yet another incredible human accomplishment in my view.

Echo Bay off another 6% approx. today to yet ANOTHER new and lower, low. I think it's trading around 25% to 30% of it's historical moving average.

Buy them shares Goldbugs! BUY!!!

Poorboys: Where the hell is Lake Simcoe??.....Earl:Check your mail for some semi-literate chicken scratch from a dumb 'nail-pounder'......

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a46186.htm


John Disney RE: Mandella, Clinton
----------------------------------

They use the same defense as well; i.e., the dozens of eye-witnesses are all lying.

methinks it will be gold stk. buy time after tax sell time, soon....

Some one posted a short analysis about Rea Gold on
Kitco 2 yesterday at22:12.

You said profound, I agree, you are thankful for so much and have yet to respond to the repayment of debt crushing the US.

The repo man cometh.

You talk like printin Clinton but both of you never address the debt. Never.

For Dave In Co

The similarities are breath taking. And it comes so easy to them -

lying that is.

LGB- Have you thought about where we would be with those inventive Americans in our country if we were not saddled by the failings of our government and our world financial systems? We would be able to afford a working space station, and a colony on the moon. Have you ever wondered why NASA's budget is getting smaller and smaller, and that our best and most reliable spacecraft are probably behind us?

You talk of American achievements, and they are great! But aren't you mad that our crazy sytem will prevent any of us ( not just Americans ) from going to the stars?

I am -- to me it is especially frustrating to have the stars nearly in our ( human ) grasp, only to be stymied by a musclebound US ( and world ) government that is buried in red tape ( too many laws and special interest groups ) and a nearly backrupt economic system. How can all of our great minds in the USA create sucessfully when we are now known to owe more money than Japan?

You see, you need things for human greatness -- a stable social/economic system, well educated human scientists, and the money to support their research. Have you tried to get a research grant lately?

You apparently know how to get our space program back on track -- why don't you tell us how to do it?

Thanks Jack: The shares are only worth about 12 cents now and according to the last release they still are functioning --a bit.

I have 3 children. When I leave this world, they will partly inherit their share of a few trillion U.S. debt.

They'll also inherit some wealth, a strong economy, a great education, and enough economic opportunity to prosper. To have enough food, a home, security, all kinds of tangible assets.

They'll have enough, to not only pay the interest of their share of the national debt, but to also live better than all their previous ancestors ever have. Due in part, to the economic miracle their "inherited" debt created. Not the debt alone of course, but the system of democracy, freedom, and elightened thinking that accompanied it.

Their "debt" benefit/liability ratio is a pretty good trade off as far as I'm concerned. Especially when compared to what they alternative would have been.

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/brazil_posts_99_7_ml_1.html

Makes sense and speaks the truth.

I'm with you JTF, that we need to make some changes. Reducing the federal budget now, when we have a chance would be a good start, especially in the areas of defense waste, social program waste, medicare waste, Socialist security overpayment of benefits per what recipents paid in, holding Politicains feet to the fire on their porkbarrel programs, reducing the massive waste/costs of overregulation and over litigation in our lawsuit happy society, etc. etc.

These types of changes would be beneficial and allow us to spend more on areas that will be of genuine future benifit , I agree.

I just take issue with those who can't see where they are now, and how it compares to the "good old days" of no debt, Gold based monetary policies.

As my handle implies, I am somewhat concerned about the lack of attention being given to what seems to me is a problem with very serious repercussions, and as a programmer on the front lines of a large-market electric utility, I see those problems on a daily basis. Yet you refer to it as nonsense. Is this because

1 ) the Kitco forum is not the place to discuss such matters,

2 ) Y2K is ( in your opinion ) not a problem,

3 ) if Y2K is a problem, the banks of the world have the situation in hand, or

4 ) not even the Y2K problem will have any effect ( up or down ) on the price of gold?

I will be curious to hear your reply, because I see much sense in what you have to say, though I do not believe you have the corner on investing wisdom ( yet ) .

Comex warehouse silver stocks FELL 300,000 oz to 124,699,013 oz.

Comex warehouse gold stcoks FELL 18,030 oz to 676,102 oz. Of that drop, eligible gold stocks fell 289 oz to 166,044 oz.

Comex action reported as very quiet today. Seems like I recall an old commodity traders wise advise 'never sell a dull market'.

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/971208/international/stories/muslims_1.html

Vronsky's right, Japan ain't likely to hold 16000 this week. Korea was also down hard overnight. My prediction--that recent 26% one day rise in the Seoul market will vanish before Christmas.

I completely agree with you on the Y2K bug. I just finished reading my latesy issue of the "Remnant Review". There is a statement in the latest issue by Alan Greenspan. Even Alan states that 99% readiness by the banking system will not be enough. People don't realize as yet that we are possibly facing a total meltdown of our entire culture as it stands now. BUY GOLD! BUY STORAGE FOOD! GET OUT OF THE CITY!

LGB: We are finally on the same wavelength on your last post. What I'm afraid we have done by trying to eliminate the business cycle is to eliminate the cleansing process that humans seem to need. It is apparent to me that humans tend to forget their connection with reality if good times without adversity go too long without a correction. This is sort of like our bull market that goes on without end. Do you want to have relatively little corrections that we can recover from in a year, or do you want to create the grandaddy of a crash ( and depression ) by postponing everything ( reality ) another year and another year and another year? We took over twenty years to get over the great depression. Lets not do that again.

I certainly don't want a crash, but I am selfish I guess because I do want to see the human race make it to the stars in my lifetime. I don't want do go down in a blaze "of glory" before this happens.

It would certainly help if everyone came back to reality slowly, and realized that we must stop printing money without limit, and reduce our debts. Going back to a gold standard as outlined by our AG would be a start -- not physical gold, but the University of Warwick 1990 symposium type of gold standard that would work well in our modern systems.

Did you know that the Canadian people just voted to reduce their debt? Why can't we learn from them?

Folks: What LGB is trying to say is that if Americans 100 years ago had thought to get off the Gold Standard and increase their debt by 1000's of percents then they too could have had shiny rocket ships, jets and cool outer space telescopes. Right LGB?

LGB, go back and look over the advances up until 1900. While they pale in comparsion to todays advances they were something at the time. And while you are looking up things from the past take a look at the list of curriencies that died from being debased.

fundaMETAList

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/971208/news/stories/pakistan_2.html

Seems that some of the better Canadian mid range and junior gold producers carried some heavier volume today than in the past several months. Some were even up. Could be the final shakeout of weak holders?

Preach it brother! We're proud to have you on this thread. Your first name is "Midas" isn't it?

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/china_privatisation__1.html

I am not advocating full-blown survivalism, nor preaching The-End-Of-The-World-As-We-Know-It. There is still plenty that hard-working programmers and others can do to soften the landing ( for which we expect to be *very* well paid [grin!] ) , but priority must be given to the Y2K work *now*, because the amount of work remains the same while the fixed deadline grows ever nearer. My only question is how Y2K-related events will affect ( if at all ) the price of gold. I look at it as a good investment even without Y2K, I'm just trying ( like everyone else here ) to understand the market fundamentals so that I can make the purchase at or near the bottom. Don't head for the hills yet...maybe soon, but not just yet.

Y@KBug_A: LGB described it here as "completely over-hyped" which should fall in category #2. So you can rest easy.

Just because there seem to be so many posters here with programming backgrounds ( like myself ) compared to the population, tells me that there is high probability of financial disruption.

re: LBG's description of what a wonderful world we live in.
Usually I ignore such myopic generalizations - it doesn't pertain
to gold - and I will probably be flamed for this -

But it burns me to see how some people equate "comfy cozy" living
in their own little world with "everything is fine and will
always be". Maybe from your perspective, but what is the truth?

-medical revolution - seems like we have to rely on more new
medical advances in order to solve the problems that the old
"new medical advances" caused - toxins, harmful effects of
drugs/addtitives, vaccinations ( short term and long term
documented effects ) . It is too bad that the whole generation
of murdered fetuses don't live to enjoy all the benefits of such
a scientifically advanced but morally deficient medical system.

-industrial revolution - might look good from your office window.
But I hope you enjoy the Nikes and other toys made by child labor
in 3rd world countries. Gee, maybe one day they will be as
advanced as we are - but till then, let's ignore the problems
since they get in the way of such a perfect world view.

-hi tech revolution-lifestyle - do the words pollution,
exploitation, and oppression mean anything to you? You may
see great advances, but I see a less human, less caring
industrial system that will do anything to make a buck.
Are we really better off - do you just measure life by
the pocket book and how comfortable you are? ( interesting that
the space program started long ago as a means to beat the
Russians - so many advances are used or derived from military
programs - what a "noble" use of science )

The bottom line is that your perfect world, like the empires that have
gone before ( Greek, Roman, British ) , has been built on the greedy
theft from the less fortunate and on a massive debt to be paid by
future generations. Yes, you can be thankful - thankful that
you live where you do and when you do - and you can be hopeful
that things continue so that you will not have to live like
the majority of the people in the real world.

End of rant.

Echo Bay is my favorite play because they have increased their silver mining lately and remain oversold. Just wanted to let you know that I picked up more last week.

It seems that us systems folks are all in agreement with the Y2K issues.... That's what brought me to this site! Anyone have any other ideas ( other than gold, programming ) to make a few bucks off of this issue?

I agree with you last post. Take a look at TNX.

I for one, and I'm sure many others appreciate your daily comex posting. Thanks

Gusto Oro: Thanks and that does have a snappy ring to it.

Y2KBug: AMEN! We don't want to spook anyone here. We want to help them through the wall of denial. Once they get beyond that Goldbugs will know what to do.

And now, back to slaying dragons.

fundaMETAList

Thank you for your post. At what price progress? I think your post was just fine.

Yes, invest in Ryder and UHAUL.

I agree with what you said. What a legacy to leave the kids - an even more overwhelming tax burden to pay for this generation's excesses.

Work on this for a moment. LGB2 yapping about socialistic SS, but leaving his kids with a monumental debt which can never be repaid.

Am I missing something there?

Carl: You are quietly doing what the rest of us should be doing ( including myself ) . So - four of the largest banks in mainland China are "technically insolvent", and the authorities are going after criminals who are milking the system dry. I think the communist system in China still has one undesirable characteristic, despite their economic boom. Lack of proper disclosure, and no evidence of any organization that is supposed to evaluate the fiscal strength of these banks.

Doesn't sound good, does it? And how much of this SOEs debt is foreign?

Most of it? Japan? Korea? Europe? US?

Anyone out there have an opinion of Hecla Mining, good or bad, as a silver play? I know their last quarterly results were a surprisingly low loss. Thanks ahead.

Go learn some history. Then you may avoid submerging into the narcissistic pond you float on, and teach your children what the true probabilities of their inheritance are.

Aa..., I forgot. Things are different this time.

go to www.gold-eagle.com and look for the GOLDBUG. I remember he had some commentary on Hecla. Hope it helps.

I fell off my chair laughing... But thinking about it a second, the images scare the H... out of me.

I hate to say it but our society is in decline based on moral relativism. Further, the economy you extol is a lie it is not good. However, they need to say it is good or they will have to deal with the problems of the average taxpaying citizen.

Re Employment, If you include discouraged workers , forced part time and the unemployed along with not counting the prison population as employed we have the highest unemployment rate at approximately 17% of the so called advanced countries. The rising bankruptcies and credit problems attest to this fact. Further unemployment claims arent low because of a good job mkt but rather because fewer people hold the type of jobs where a layoff means unremployment insurance is available ie your contract work force ( although I think contract work is great ) . Real wages have been declining for 9 years even with the inflation numbers being underestimated. Gap between rich and the rest along with executive pay vis a vis worker pay is shamefully the highest of the industrialized countries. Basic medical care is unavailable to millions. Hopefully after the collapse we will get our priorities straight.

The bigger the lie the more they'll believe it... Joseph Goebbels 1937. How right he was.

Find a company with a clueless pointy-haired-Dilbertesque data processing management style. Find out when they plan to can the *expensive* long time contractors to replace them with new employees that don't know the system. Wait two months, then sell short.

Also, if awareness does not pick up *very* soon, start buying the inconsequential everyday type things that will be in short supply and will sell well in a post-Y2K meltdown.

If you aren't visiting the comp.software.year-2000 newsgroup, drop in and browse about. Also drop in and ask any questions you like at

http://www.ntplx.net/~rgearity which is our Y2K chat room, any night from 8pm to 10pm EST in the US. It's mostly programmers, but the knowledgable ones are usually there. Also, on the subject of electric utilities, try http://www.accsyst.com/writers/status.htm

Ted-50 miles North of Toronto in the Socialistic Province of Ontario Canada or 500 miles south of Timmins the town where all the Gold mines are about to close or maybe in the middle of nowhere? Away to listen to Gold Miner's Daughter.

Studio.R-Love that big band stuff have to dig out the old record player from the crawl space and wind her up.Away to the crawl space for some big band swing.Happy trails P.S. Who stole my Benny Goodman limited edition GOLD seal collectors lp? It had Chattanooga chowder on it's grooves.

Cavender- follow tolerant1's advice and go to goldeagle but to add. I talked to Claude Comier this AM about Hecla and it is mostly gold now and not so much silver and the same for Coeur d' alene. Pure silver plays are
listed in the article.

Tally Ho

My limited understanding of "modern" China is that it is much like the Soviet Union at its height, only writ a 1000 times more so. That is, a central government that rules by edict and then layers and layers of functionaries that work the system for their own benefit. This "works" especially well in China because of the cultural diversity of their population and the more exposed insanity of central planning due to its immense size. The situation with their debt is, I suspect, much worse than can be estimated at present. The whole system profits in the short run by force feeding credit as my post described. But how can anyone tell how much is simply being squandered until some external event brings on the problem of debt collection.

Dave in CO: I have done programming, but it was many years ago. With the y2k situaation, lets say that the primary code - fortran, etc. is missing, and all you have is fully compiled, executable programs. Am I right that the primary code cannot be resurrected from this compiled form? I certainly would not expect it because all that is left is usually compact executable code -- from the days when computers had much less ram memory.

I know there are programs that can create "reverse engineered" assembly language code that one can follow. I would guess that this would not be easy, and that the flow diagram ( can't remember the name for this ) of the program would be extremely difficult to resurrect. Am I right that even one trained in assembly language would have a very hard time reverse engineering the program? One might end up rewriting the entire program just to correct a few key lines of code.

Do I have this right? Thanks in advance -- JTF

LGB, smug & secure in his maximal state-loot home; Lamprey Maximus!

America the once great!

Once we could send men to the moon... now we can't get a space station
up in tens years, and ten billion dollars and in half-billion dollar shuttle launches. We can't even afford to design new rocket engines, RD-180, NK-33: we have to buy them from the rotting carcass of the Soviet Union.

Once our children were going to be scientists, physicians, engineers ... now they dream of "sagging", making 'D's and getting a MacDonald's career. Why should they care? Easier to manipulate & take money than work hard, defer gratification. They just watched how to do it in the modern movies & our noble Arkansas politicians.

Once our movies, theatres and radio presented quality plots & acting ... now they are just pretexts for mass-marketing of cheap-*ss junk and conduits for mass ideological control.

Once our journalists WERE journalists, intead of appollogists and prostitues for Imperial Washington D.C. National Public Radio - a perfumed sewer of information for prima dona New England-centric liberal culture & newly dignified pervert causes.

Once we could build Interstate Highway systems ... now we can barely repair them, using mass-imported, mass-exploited Mexican/Central American labour. We support the rotting, malignant Mexican politcal system with billions of IMF dollars, prolonging the misery of the Mexican people.

Once we had leaders like Teddy Roosevelt WHO really cared about America, now we have career criminals in the White House, scurrying about licking the boots of Indonesian and Chinese thug-lords for ready cash. Meanwhile saying: "we feel your pain"...

Once we believed in the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independance & US Constitution ... now, anything goes, right LGB? Chinese child-labor to make your Nikes? Business is business! It's all just fair market capitalism!

Once you could trust government figures ... now we know they are all fabrications. Inflation all around us. But not a word about it. Anyone priced a can of Cambell's soup lately?

Enjoy the "good life" ... it isn't going to last much longer. You are going to be like that Thai stock broker - $380,000/year salary one moment, selling sandwiches out of a plastic cooler the next. Or maybe desperately trying to get yourself out of a martial-law, city-in-flames type civil collapse?

LGB, you and your ilk exploited human nature, promising wealth & good things if only the great unwashed would beleive in paper promises. Well, they are all lies:

Social Security will be reneged upon.
Medicaid will be reneged upon.
Federal Pension Insurance will be reneged upon.
401K & IRAs will be confiscated by the Federal government.

Meanwhile, the politicians and their herds of culpable bureacrats lived like Kings and Queens. The Good Life!. Their end will not be enviable....

Stand up amoung your peers, LGB, and loudly proclaim your appreciation for the Founding Fathers of America, for the Declaration of Independance ... see if you aren't laughed at. Or worse, fired for "insensitivity" or racist/sexist leanings....

What is spot gold at, please. Can someone tell me a site that
lists current data? Kitco has been busted this afternoon, at least
I was not able to get through to the current gold page for current
data.

Also, are there other gold coin dealers on the web? Friendly people
at
http://www.tradeshop.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/raylc/ajpm/gold.cgi
I would like to find another such site.

Thanks.

Dave in CO.: Had some problems since 11/30 and have had to re-install all my files, many of which were not backed up. Would you please send me an email, as I lost your address along with many others ? TIA

Dow/Gold Ratio = 28.16

XAU/Spot Ratio = .229

FX liquidity, jobs seen hit by Swiss bank merger
LONDON, Dec 8 ( Reuters ) - Foreign exchange liquidity would
be one of the main casualties of the merger of Swiss Bank Corp
and Union Bank of Switzerland into one of the world's biggest
financial groups.
Currency trading jobs were also at stake, particularly in
London, as the newly-merged United Bank of Switzerland is
expected to eliminate overlap across its business, market
players said on Monday.
"It is definitely a concern for fx market liquidity going
forward, given the number of people quoting prices is
diminishing," said one British fund manager.
"Also, the participants on both sides of the merger are
likely be concerned about the overlaps."
Foreign exchange liquidity has already been dented in recent
years by mergers between major foreign exchange players such as
Chase and Chemical, and Bank of Tokyo and Mitsubishi.
As with UBS and SBC, these marriages were forged amid a
desire to attain the critical mass required to be a player on
the world banking stage, analysts said.

In reference to COMEX, what does 'eligible' mean? ... Thanks.

I e.mailed a coin dealer that I have been doing business with for some time. I buy all his oddball foreign gold, coins with nicks and coins that have been used a jewelery with solder spots and are not of numismatic quality. I thought you would like to read his reply below. I only removed his name and added the quote marks.

"Unfortunately, Don, with gold under $300 nobody wants to part with gold
and lots of "contrarians" are looking to buy. Therefore, people are
actually paying premiums for bullion coins that ordinarily you couldn't
"give away". Strange how that works. Even semi-numismatic U.S. gold
coins have a larger buy/sell spread now and we've had lots of calls for
that ( with, again, no coins ) .
If we should get something in during the earlier part of this week, I
will let you know, but don't hold your breath. Sorry Don.
Best regards and keep in touch"

I think your understanding of the problem is very good. There are programs written to regenerate source code from binary code for some programming languages running on some operating systems. But I would guess that, even if the source code can be regenerated, it would be difficult to read and fix. Fortunately, in 30+ years, I haven't had to deal with missing source code. This is a potential problem but the people working on Y2K projects directly can probably give us a definitive answer on its impact.

SpudMaster-You'r terrible whipping of LGB has also sent fright upon my own positive feeling for North America .Is there any hope? Away to listen to Brother can you spare a dime.Happy Trails

full circle in 200 years...

Cavender...your 16:55 post requested info on Hecla...here's the latest..

Silver May Prove Golden For Battered Hecla Mining Co.

By Charles McCoy

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho ( Dow Jones ) --Hecla Mining Co. ( HL ) is being hurt by plunging gold prices, but the company's expanding silver operations are cushioning the blow, executives told Dow Jones.
Gold prices, sliding all year, have fallen sharply in recent days -
dropping to about $288 an ounce, the lowest level since 1985. Gold sold for about $366 an ounce early this year. Underlying concerns that some central banks may sell reserves have hurt prices all year, but the turmoil in Asia has exacerbated matters since mid-November.
The swoon has pounded mining stocks, including Hecla's. Though it closed Friday at 4 9/16, up 3/16 or 4.3%, the stock is off more than 40% since the end of January.
But Bill Booth, vice president, noted that silver prices, which traditionally have moved in the same direction as the price of gold, have actually risen in recent weeks to more than $5.42 an ounce. At the beginning of the year, silver was mired at about $4.30.
This peculiar divergence, Booth said, may herald a long-awaited "de-coupling" of the two metals. Silver's recovery reflects the fact that depressed prices have discouraged new production for years, while demand has gradually risen. Booth said such factors as an increase in photography
- a major consumer of silver - jewelry and silverware sales in developing world markets such as China may finally be exerting enough pressure to tip the supply-demand balance and push up silver prices.
Booth said the phenomenon helps Hecla because the source of its cash flow is split roughly equally between gold, silver and other minerals. Many other mining companies are more heavily weighted toward gold production. "We think that's why our stock hasn't been hit as hard as some others in the sector," Booth said.
Indeed, since early November, Hecla's stock has dipped only 9% or so, compared to about 58% for Amax Gold Inc. ( AU ) and more than 20% for Barrick Gold Corp. ( ABX ) .
But relatively better still isn't particularly good. Wall Street has forecast that Hecla will lose about three cents a share in the fourth quarter, and Booth said it may be worse - that number may not take into account the accelerated skid in gold prices in recent days. "The negative impact of the big gold slippage will affect us," he said, declining to make a specific earnings estimate.
But Booth also noted that the company has expanded silver production at Green Creek mine in Alaska, which was essentially shut down earlier in the year. Hecla owns a 30% stake in the mine. And Booth said a previously announced $16 million expansion of Hecla's Lucky Silver mine in Idaho is on track for startup in 1998.
He said the uptick in silver prices is encouraging for the company, despite lousy gold prices. And although some of the increased demand has come from emerging market consumers in Asia, Booth said it isn't clear that the recent tumult in in the region will be deep and prolonged enough to derail shifts in silver fundamentals.
"People around here are starting to get a little more optimistic that the fundamental market equation ( for silver ) is coming into balance, and the result will be a period of higher prices," he said.

"Dow Jones News Service"
"Copyright ( c ) 1997, Dow Jones & Company, Inc."

Cavender: re Hecla Mining

This company has been in continuous operation for over 100 years mining silver in one of the richest silver ore bodies in the world at Coeur D' Alene, ID. Their Lucky Friday mine is the main silver producer where management is on the verge of doubling production. 1996 silver production at about 3 million oz. Gold production at about 170000 oz. One of the most interesting characteristics of this company is its diversity into industrial/basic minerals mining. Hecla is a major domestic producer of ball clay [porcelain] and kaolin. Over the past 10 years, the industrial division has provided a predictable cash flow stream in an otherwise unpredictable PM mining industry. Vary smart strategy. Arthur Brown is CEO, [South African] and has been with Hecla for 30 years. Other members on the board are well regarded within the mining industry. The company carries very low debt on the balance sheet. This company is at least equal to the best silver mining companies in US. Hecla [HL] convertible prefered pays an above dividend. Check out their web page through GOLDSHEET HOMEPAGE.

Kiwi: The Swiss are very proud of their Swiss banks -- as I recall - none in the last 100 years or so have failed. Even the merging of two Swiss banks is ominous. Perhaps they had too many foreign loans out, or someone was playing too much with derivatives.

I think the bottom line is that if the Swiss banks are merging -- what does that say about the rest of the world's banks?

I have two unrelated questions.

First, have you ever looked at Debouchet Wavelet analysis? If so can one construct real-time graphical predictions of say, market trends? And, can one mathematically compare one time series to another with wavelet analysis? The method ( wavelet analysis ) looks very exciting, as one can analyze a finite time interval with discrete time limited wave "packets" without the boundary condition problems of fourier analysis.

The second question relates to the earth. One reason I always thought the "flipping" of the earth's axis was nonsense, is because it would be nearly impossible for any external force short of a direct collision with an asteroid to impart enough energy to tip the earth. However, how does one explain the fact that the south pole ( I think it was ) was once tropical?

How about this: What if the earth's crust was considered like the loose skin of a peach -- namely that it is a thin solid layer sitting on liquid magma? Then- relatively little force would be necessary to "tilt" the earth, simply by sliding the earth's crust. I would guess that this might take 100 years or so given the viscosity of the magma, and probably would not happen unless the "pinning" effect of the earth's magnetic field was gone.

What did your calculations of the effect of China's giant planned new dam reveal regarding the stability of the earth's rotation?

Thanks -- JTF

Iffy. There is no human language to prompt your associations in a decompiled code listing. You have to work very hard to pick out patterns of coding which 'look like' date manipulations. Then there is the problem of an inaccurate interpretation which is inaccurately recompiled. M-E-S-S. Barf-a-roni!!!

Jung - Registered means stored but not on the market. Eligible means bullion that can be traded against ( on paper ) and/or withdrawn via for $$ on the futures contract. Currently we are looking at a situation in Comex were each 100 oz contract has only 0.9 oz gold in 'eligible' stock behind it. If 2% of these contracts were to 'take delivery' that is choose to pay for the futures contract and receive physical gold, then half of them would get the "I'm sorry, but we have no bullion to deliver to you..." message from the answering machine.

If your reaction to this is 'oh, sh!t'. Well, most on this forum have already expressed the same feeling. Its just a matter of time.

However LGB would say we are doom-gloomer's for not looking at how "wonderfully strong our economy is". Whatever.

Lease rates on silver hit new highs across the board.

Allen: Do you know how extensive this "missing code" problem is? I haven't run into it myself ( i.e., source code missing for a large legacy system ) but I've been away from large mainframe projects for a few years.

You're right. As I said, the resulting code would be difficult to read and fix; e.g.,

01 START-DATE PIC 9 ( 6 ) . could regenerate as
01 ABCDEF PIC 9 ( 6 ) .

Identifying and fixing a few dozen date fields like this in every program is not my idea of a fun job. Thanks for the input.

Back again, eh? You never seem to say anything different. Same 'blue sky' message and piss'em off attitude. Vintage LGB. You always seem to like us enough to come back though. Or is it just liking the negative attention you get everytime you post a roast?

How's silver treating you? What PM stox are you long/short? How're those platinum Eagles & StGuadens? So you *DO* think gold will rise because of fundamental supply problems? When's you guess?

Have a great day.

DEJ ( Your 14"45 ) - From the perspective of the world's buyers of gold, the current price is not low. On the average, it has remained constant +/- 2% since the beginning of 1996. In fact, if anything, the current price of gold is high to many of the major buyers.

The World Gold Council has a chart showing the relative price of gold weighted by the share of the major buyers. Check out the following link.

http://www.gold.org/Gedt/Gdt20/High20.htm

For a more detailed discussion, check out my post of 17:16 yesterday ( Dec 7 ) .

The real question is, since the price of gold is not down, why do we expect it to go up? There are answers, of course, but it is clear that "What goes down must go up" does not necessarily apply.

Have no idea. But figure there are some 'hidden gems' specificly in the financial world. Accreation you know. Just add another hunk of code; make it work; move on to the next project; no time to document. Multiply this by 1,000's programmers over decades of years. Unfortunately those who are used to an engineering environment have little idea how egregarious alot of programming practice in the non-engineering fields has been.

A major weakness, to my mind, is that alot of these systems ( aggregations of code divided into hundreds and thousands of smaller functional subprograms knit together through hand made interfaces ) are very sequentially dependent. Each piece MOST work or it ALL will fail. The interface dependencies are another complication.

What would happen if Microsoft decided to alter its Windows API, even just a smidgen? Would break a tremendous number of products. That's one interface. Multiply that by hundreds and thousands of unique, hand-made interfaces in these systems. Oh, My!

Does anyone know a source of information giving the breakdown of silver purchased by the various countries? If not, does anyone know of a silver marketing association similar to the World Gold Council?

Thx, in advance, for your help.

Donald: I think this would be classified under the rubric of people who "vote with their feet", a common phenomenom in countries under seige and similar in psychology to Gresham's Law. The local coin dealers I know who have sell prices $150+/- over spot laugh when I suggest they have a buy price in the same area. I've bben buying casting grain and wire recently and fully expect my wholesaler to raise his "fabrication costs"!!

Scare up some scarry news, OK? Thanks.

Have you tried CPM Group. http://www.cpmgroup.com

Excellent points. From my experience in the old days, programming was more art than science.

Seems like a lot of gov. software written years ago and still running per original contracts on old languages on old operating systems would be a massive problem. Any feel for this?

My daughter ( UCLA degree, non-tech job ) who is much better informed than most, hadn't even heard of Y2K. Wonder what % of the mutual-fund buyers know what might happen?

Re your 12/8 17:23 post -- Just wanted to say bravo!...quite well stated on the whole...

We must observe China with a mind less focused in only western
thought. There is the very real possibility that
they are not playing the same game using the same rules.

A tale of grief is told,
Fantasy most melancholy.
Since all live in a dream,
Why laugh at others folly?

All is insubstantial, doomed to pass,
As moonlight mirrored in the water,
Or flowers reflected in a glass.

from the Story of Stone, Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Insup Taylor, p.160
p.160

JTF@16:23
Well said!

On Sept. 27, '97, I posted on this kitco.com discission-board, a "poem", which I have re-copied below. Everything that has taken place, since then, substantiates the validity of this verse. A definition of terms, may be helpful:

"tent" = the global economy, as 'maintained' by the U.S. economy, stock-market, and 'U.S. dollar-imperialism'.

"center-post" = the U.S. stock market & economy

"side-posts" = the economies of the U.S.'s major trading partners - Europe & Japan, plus Mexico & Canada

"the stakes" = the economies of the 'Pacific Rim', the 'Asian Tigers',

including Hong-Kong, S.Korea, Tawaian, and India & China.

Here is a duplicate of the text/poem, posted on kitco.com's discussion-board, on Sept. 27, '97:

When the 'tent' collapses

it will not be the center-post

that goes first;

it will be the 'side-posts',

and even the 'stakes'.

For, as 'Asian Tigers'

shake, shudder, and quake;

shedding their fur...

while they feign to demure.

Just when a cold wind,

begins to blow in;

as 'indian-summer' - too long

holding on;

with wishful thinking, all a-long.

The markets can no longer avoid nor hide,

the Yuppie-Kingdom's crumbling, and cry;

as winter's clearing cold and rain,

clean us all, and clear out, even

all of our grains.

And some day in the future,

all will be clear;

while now, every stock market around

will 'tear',

and give ground.

.....

( to be continued )

Sincerly,

David Blair Macrory

goldfevr@pacbell.net

No conspiracy theorist I, just walking the circle:
We probably have one of the BEST informational centers around
( Thank you, Bart; Thank you; Thank you, All!!!! ) ...

Yet, the only information about UBS seen was the silver caper, the derivatives staff firing and one non-attributable rumor about losses ( which wasnt posed because the source was unidentified ) .

In my experience, which is--admittedly, limited--Swiss banks in difficulties quickly join another bank ( Swiss law is quite narrow-minded about bankers who get caught short--they go to jail. As UBS is the largest Swiss bank ( ? ) , there could be
little question of failure: as Jim Rogers sagely suggested, Put your money in the countrys biggest bank. However, this merger raises questions , dont you think? Or have I once again got hold of the wrong end of the stick?

It seems reasonable to consider that, if the Japanese banks are deep in it, the banks of other nations at least have their bare toes being lapped by it. Yes, risk has been socialized ( in Jim Grants words ) but surely it still exists! Doesnt socialized risk ensure that a lot of banks are in for a lot of trouble--irrespective of borders?

Add to this the sudden buzz about Japanese selling Tbonds Oh, they dont need to sell them, they can use them as collateral!, as if the Japanese were so economically naive that hadnt occurred to them...

Something, somewhere is slipping....

Oh! and the emerging country whose currency HAS appreciated against the dollar? China. The country that also said they would link their currency to gold.
As Tolerant1 would say, Hmmmmmm...

Blonde -- I never post charts that go up? I've posted the Dow-30 chart many times... :- )

Where the hell on Lake Simcoe???

Monday December 8, 6:15 pm Eastern Time

New mutual fund index options come with questions

By Gregory Crawford

CHICAGO, Dec 8 ( Reuters ) - The Chicago Board Options Exchange ( CBOE ) , hoping to capture another segment of the investing community, launched options on two mutual fund indexes Monday, but some potential users said the options were too short-term oriented.

CBOE chairman and chief executive officer William Brodsky told reporters the Lipper/Salomon index options would give individual investors the opportunity to hedge mutual fund risk and give fund managers the chance to manage risk and cash.

``We felt the market needed a product that meets the needs of investors and managers'' and the new products provide needed flexibility to them, added Kenneth Farrar, managing director of equity derivatives at Salomon Brothers.

The options are based on two indexes of fund performance -- the Lipper/Salomon Growth Mutual Fund Index ( .LGO ) and the Lipper/Salomon Growth and Income Fund Index ( .LIO ) .

The equal-weighted indexes each comprise the 30 largest mutual funds with ``growth'' or ``growth and income'' as their main objectives and will be rebalanced quarterly.

Michael Lipper, head of mutual fund analysis firm Lipper Analytical Services, said investors in the new options would most likely need to be ``reasonably sophisticated'' with a six-figure fund portfolio.

He added that he hoped the options would attract so-called fund timers who apply market timing techniques to funds and who can disrupt fund performance.

He added that the new options would also give individual investors a better chance to make timing decisions.

Jim Raker at fund tracking service Morningstar Inc said the new products were simply like index options with fees.

``I don't know how much extra value it adds except ( the indexes ) might be a bit more specialized,'' he said. ``It seems to be a way to get more exposure to index options.''

But Farrar said existing stock indexes represent passively managed portfolios, while the new fund indexes represent actively managed ones that correlate more closely to the market.

Lipper added that sometimes actively managed funds would outperform the S&P 500 ( .SPX ) , a portfolio manager benchmark, and ``when that happens, there's a very real need to have vehicles that are appropriate to the fund business.''

Some potential users said the products placed too much emphasis on the short term.

``This is one more unnecessary emphasis on short-term fund performance which totally distracts the individual investor from focusing on long-term goals,'' said John Cleland, chief investment strategist at the Security Benefit Group of Cos.

But Lipper said the products were ``very appropriate'' for long-term fund investors who are nervous.

Salomon's Farrar added that the options would give long-term investors the incentive and opportunity to ``stay the course'' during times of increased turbulence in the markets.

Brodsky also said long-term options on the new indexes are expected to be added in the next couple of weeks. The long-term options, known as LEAPS, or long term equity anticipation securities, have durations of up to two years,

Yeah, no more of them ski-slope ( gold stox ) charts....gettin toooo steeeeep----I might fall~~~~~~~~

When I heard about the Swiss bank merger and the news that 13,000 would be out of work the first thing that came to mind was how "un-European" the concept of force reduction was. After that I jumped to the conclusion that this was a shotgun marriage. We are unlikely to ever know the truth.

CNBC financial celebrity and analyst par excellence, Gene Inger, provides us a dissection of last weeks action, and shares his prognosis of that to come in various markets:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest/inger120897.html

Bulls v. Bears

Gold optimism corrodes

Monday, December 8, 1997
By Stephen Northfield
Investment Reporter

Gold bulls are dropping off the radar screen faster than the stocks of bullion producers, according
to The Globe and Mail's latest Bulls v. Bears survey of market professionals.

Their sentiment on gold has virtually collapsed in the past few surveys. Only a handful of
respondents now expect gold prices to be higher in six months, down from more than a quarter in
the previous survey two weeks earlier. Those expecting lower prices for the yellow metal remained
steady at about 40 per cent.

The most interesting result from the survey is the percentage of respondents who expect no change
-- up to more than half from just about a third in the previous survey. The change suggests that a
solid majority of market professionals believe the freefall in gold prices is nearing an end.

That would be a welcome relief to gold producers whose stocks have been crushed as bullion sinks
lower. Gold, which hit nearly $420 ( U.S. ) an ounce in 1996, sank below $290 an ounce last week
after Argentina said it had sold off most of its reserves. That, along with sales by other central
banks, is undermining gold's traditional role in the global monetary system as a store of value. Low
inflation and economic woes in Asia have also been factors. Canadian gold stocks have lost more
than half their value this year.

Many market watchers consider sentiment surveys such as these to be contrary indicators. They see
excessive bullishness as a warning sign that a market is peaking, while excessive bearishness may
signal opportunities.

While the outlook on gold gets gloomier by the moment, things are looking up elsewhere. Sentiment
on stocks and bonds has improved during the past two weeks.

Forty-four per cent of respondents predict bond prices will rise -- and yields will drop -- over the
next six months, the highest level of bullishness since the survey's launch in June, 1996. That's up
from 37 per cent in the previous survey. The number expecting bond prices to fall slipped slightly.

There's been a marginal improvement in the outlook for the Canadian stock market. Fifty per cent
of respondents forecast the Toronto Stock Exchange 300-stock index will close higher in six
months, up from slightly more than 40 per cent two weeks earlier. But there are also more
pessimists than in the previous survey, and they now total more than one third.

The shift in sentiment on U.S. stocks was more decisive. Almost a third of respondents foresee the
Standard & Poor's 500-stock index will close higher in six months, up from about 30 per cent in the
previous survey. Those expecting the index to be lower slipped slightly, although the balance of
opinion has improved for the bulls.

The markets have fared well generally during the past two weeks. The Standard & Poor's
500-stock index is up about 4 per cent. And, while the TSE 300 slipped somewhat in the first
week, the market regained its position over the second week. The Canadian market is struggling a
little because of its heavy weighting in natural resource stocks. The stocks of commodity-linked
companies are pressured by concerns that an economic slowdown in Asia will reduce demand and
prices for many raw materials.

Bulls v. Bears is a proprietary survey developed by The Globe and Mail as an indicator of Canadian
professional market sentiment. There were 26 respondents to the latest survey.

The investment pros fight it out

Every two weeks you survey money managers, strategists and advisers on where
they expect financial markets to be in six months -- up, down or unchanged.
Here is what they think this week.
% Bullish % Bearish*
TSE 300 50% 35%
S&P 500 31% 50%
Bond prices 44% 32%
Gold 8% 38%
-*The rest are neutral.

[ News ] [ Sports ] [ The Arts ] [ Commentary ] [ Report on Business ]



Back to the top of the page

We welcome your comments.
Copyright  1997, The Globe and Mail Company
All rights reserved.

tolerant1 - Thanks for the tip. I checked it out. Couldn't find any info in their free stuff. Signed up for a free trial subscription. Hopefully will find the needed info.

As an aside, God help anyone who follows the advise of these people. If you can believe it, in one of their "sample" newsletters which they make available to show the wealth of "valuable" information they contain, there is an article stating that gold is looking strong and likely heading up. This was published in the spring of 1996. When did the gold bear begin in earnest? Hmmm? Seems their info is questionable, but they're not too smart either. ( They could pick a different issue as a sample! They must have gotten something right sometime! )

I've fallen and I can't get up..... ( gold stocks that is... ) I guess LGB is right. The government did everything good for us! Now why is so much missing from my paycheck??? Oh, I forgot. Most people only look at their net pay, not the gross... Opps, I must be too smart for my own good.... :- ) )

TED you can cut and paste, I just want a nip and tuck after listening to these varmint gold bugs i done all my money. No point any more. Gold worth nothing, politicians promises worth nothing, Can't even find George Cole.

Oracle AT JAPANESE SURVIVAL Part - IV

Dec 5 - TOKYO:
Per Shuji Karasawa of the Japanese parliament: Japanese gold holdings are far too low

Dec 5 - TOKYO:
Per Head of Japanese LDP: US Dollar dependence too great, we need more gold to offset excessive Dollar dependence.

Financial Fairy-tale or Expedient Global Monetary Necessity: Global Gold Standard?! STARTLING IMF data demonstrate its feasibility. BOJs T-Bond holdings is the keystone for success. Japan would need to buy many tonnes of GOLD. EMU member participation essential.
http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest/oracle714.html

Gloomy Gus -- GSC was probably someone elses alter ego or, he just gave up in disgust.

BBL.

Still need info on geographic breakdown of silver buyers, by country. Come on, all you silver bugs. Out with it.

Your probably right, we won't. Did you hear that Wells Fargo
more or less put itself on the block last week. I thought that
a little odd, and really wondered after the UBS story. Help me
keep the "eyes peeled"? Who knows what we find ( well...you'll
probably find it first--you have the MAGIC touch! )

GSC is alive and well. I am waiting for his first post and return.

That is D O N A L D ( unless you're Celtic? )

Panda - I prefer hill climbs. Perhaps you could start posting charts showing the number of ounces of gold $1,000 would buy. At least they would be going up. :- )

ABC reported that the body of M. Larry Lawrence would be removed from Arlington Cemetery. Lawrence was the donor of $10,000,000 to the DNC and a close friend and confidant of Clinton. He apparently lied about joining the Merchant Marine and his heroic service in WW2. The administration did not check his service records ( or looked the other way. )

A few days ago this subject was just another one of those crazy conspiracy theories.

Gloomy:Just remember who gave YOU your start in life ( Christ I feel like Walt Disney---my animated creation has come to life! ) Panda: Get off the damn floor......ROR:So he's alive and poor...eh?....yer team ( Redskins ) are N fer a beating on Saturday.....

Its been my experience in dealing with people from other cultures, that I've had much more in common than not. It is the con men in any culture that plead that they aren't understood because of cultural differences. We living critters on this planet all have to play the same game by rules which we didn't write. Some live by deception and predation. Some live by productive effort. People in all cultures recognize the difference.

By the way, I don't think our trouble in understanding Another is due to cultural difference. He smells like a predator, or at least a wanna be predator, to me, getting his kicks from teasing what he considers to be his prey. He may have a surprise coming.

Dave in CO - I understand Larry Lawrence was a minor Ambassador. As such, he must have a Top Secret ++ security clearance. Do you think his background wasn't known? I've been through this. They knew all along! Clinton is giving new meaning to the sad phrase, "The U.S. has the best government money can buy."

What does anyone think of the silver draw down and TODAY ( see kitco )
THE HUGE ONE DAY JUMP IN LEASE RATES. theories? GSC if you are out there. TED?

Yes, as the year 2000 approaches, the perception of the Y2K crisis - that is, the degree to which faulty software systems will disrupt the world's economy on or about 1/1/00 - should cause the price of gold to rise accordingly. I have been one of the few voices on this forum to have taken that position consistently. As a result of my position and the resulting investment decisions, I have experienced depression - no, not the kind that Prozac works on, but rather the kind that a rise to $400 in the spot price of gold would fix immediately, namely, a financial depression in the value of certain of my assets that rivals the 1929-1932 drop in the Dow.

Fortunately, I will get my $400 gold ere long, and I suspect the events that accompany its rise will not be altogether pleasant.

Once again, this continues to be a very fine site, frequented by fine people. My thanks to all who post in a civilized, informed, and generous manner.

http://www.mem.gob.pe/new/mineria/estatist.htm

One of my two messages was returned as undeliverable.

Just gettin ready for some MNF ( making popcorn etc ) .....anyone else 'out there' hate Neon-Deion and the 'Boys'---go PANTHERS~~~~~~~and gold.....

Good point. My theory now is that, as ambassador to Switzerland, he was in charge of the administration's secret Swiss accounts. Remember Vince Foster's flights to Switzerland?

Did you send it by Canada Post????

TED I m movin to Cape Breton to enter my new life's work which is to spread the word of Ayn Rand throughout NS. Will you help in making the conversions?

http://www.swiftsite.com/veritas/silver.htm

ROR:Yup,I'll help---won't take long as there's only two potential candidates...........me + Willy

My plot is available...cheap. I didn't care for the surroundings that much....I hear Don King has first dibs.

Who the hell are you?? and how dare YOU take ONE of my OLD handles!! Why of all the #&^%@$%

Seoul...at this hour down bigtime percentagewise..Nikkei up...
http://quote.yahoo.com/m2?u

tolerant1 - Thanks for the effort, but that link has data from the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines. I am looking for a breakdown of amount or % of silver bought, by country.

Any other ideas?

Biblical teaching is "IT is harder for a rich man to get to Heaven than a camel through an of a needle." Maybe in the Long run we are on the right side ie this a very good LOOng term investment forum.

Sorry about the Peru link, I screwed up. I think the next one might help.

You're back? I must have missed something. Last I read you were chasing Greenie and Billy around the Pearly Gates. Or was it the other place?

Who the hell is Willy. Go Cowpokes. Skins to the playoffs and will kick Giant A if they meet. Skins cinderella team of 97 YES!!

Look what four years of church school ( 4 years of Theology,4 years of daily church,4 years of outlining the Old + New Testament did for me ( sickly grin thing ) ~~~~~~~~~

I agree. Homo sapien is homo sapien. We all share the same
biological imperatives, without doubt; but the cultural overlay makes us view our reality from different points on the circle. Remember the little kittens brought up in a world of horizontal strips? ( What a really
horrible thing to do--my opinion only ) .
And your absolutely right about the con man being an archetype
common to most cultures ( perhaps absent in small, close-knit, isolated
tribal-sort of settings ) . You make me remember the Yale Cross-Cultural
Survey Index which documented just how many things we all do have any
common.
However, I still think we watch China NOT expecting them to
do the accepted 'Western' thing. e.g., I can see them letting the
troubled banks 'go'... What think you?

An obscure but brilliant analyst in 1995 discovered for himself the incredible potential of the Bre-X gold mine in Indonesia. His analysis was based on only the data available to the public. At that time the analyst was an employee in a credit institution in Alberta, Canada. He is none other than John Kutyn, who IMHO is one of the most perceptive and accurate analyzers of the brewing South-East Asian currency and stock market debacle - which is rapidly precipitating the DOMINO EFFECT... capable of bringing the Japanese Banking system to its knees.

His story is as factual as it is indeed fascinating. Although his analysis was based upon fraudulent information fabricated by the unscrupulous management of Bre-X, his evaluation was nonetheless flawless. It is indeed a captivating read...

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials/kutyn120897.html

tolerant1 - Thanks again, but again a blank.

ROR:

We could look around for sophisticated answers and endless intrigue or we could go the easy route. I like the easy route because its easy. Why think when you don't have to. In brief it means we are about to enter the real squeeze phase where the scramble for silver is on and the commercial users are unhappy and specs move in for the kill. We should be blasting through 550 very shortly. Wait till the public gets a whiff.

At around $6.00 we may see some interesting stories. First we will see some bad inflationary numbers edging in. Then we will hear about how the Fed's hands are tied because of the Asian crisis. Then we will hear why the traditional inflation hedge ( gold ) is still in a bear market with a great overhang of supply. Then we will hear that guess what, there ain't a whole lot of silver around and it just might be a good hedge against those 6.15 bonds which by then may be 6.50 and climbing or falling depending on your perspective. Then silver will be at 8 or 9 dollars and everyone will finally 'get it'. We will be selling and toasting to vernal equinox.

One thing I have learned about squeezes and shortages in the last few years is that they are so obvious and well telegraphed you can't possibly believe they will happen and then they do.

While World acclaimed economist, Martin Armstrong, of Princeton Economics predicts the Euro will fall apart, others strongly feel the very restrictive entrance qualifications for each country will ensure the EMU will BE STILLBORN on 1 January 1999. Like Websters dictionary definition of the EMU, ...a large flightless bird, related to the ostrich. In short, the EMU will never fly, and the EURO advocates are just playing a game of OSTRICH, with their heads stuck in the sand... and their backsides exposed to unspeakable financial and monetary dangers.

International Analyst J.N. Tlaga provides another interesting viewpoint of the EUROs prospects:
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials/Tlaga004f.html

Damn 'newbies'.....sputter...sputter....who the hell is Willy you ask!! My CB bst friend,my soul mate-----my neighbor's ( Fast Eddie the scam man ) DOG,that's who!!....Willy lives @ our house 98% of the time and the other 2% is spent in transit......

ROR:

Cinderella was a fairy tale. The Giants are reality. The Skins are going to get crushed.

Did you like me go throught the 60s Catholic grade school thing. It was the eraser in you mouth rapped hands with a ruler or strap thus sickly grin red butt and hands thing.

you will eat those words friend~~~~~~~~no stop-N- 'Big Blue' now.....

The nuns used to tell us that for every minute you laugh you will cry ten ( this is true ) . However, the must have been prescient: they knew I'd be a goldbug.

Sorry about that. If I dig something up I will post it.

Have they no sense of humor?
http://www.federal.com/dec08-97/Story01.html

Here's another of my follies...should fit you well. This is one of my "projects" that I treasure just as much as my Philharmonics! As good as gold! Check it out...www.onaxis.com/cope That cat Cope grew up with me and I wrangled him into the "deal". Named for me....Capt. Prozac at your service.

This wasn't fukin grade school-----9-12 grades ( called forms ) ---where they tried ( but failed ) ta put the fear of GOD into ya....

I dont like all this anti Washington Fervor HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF THE IRS! Real EL wipeth off Grin thingy!!!!

Whad ya wimp out the first nine years and go public on us ol boy.

What is the IRS??.....teachers=masters @ the church thingy ( masters of what?? ) go GoLd~~~~~go Bart~~~~~~

Spudmaster, your 17:13, ever the happy, fulfilled, productive, optimist! Ahh Spud, so glad you can make all my finer argumants for me as to the differences between the outlook of GoldBug fanatics, and those who are actually looking forward to the future. What can I add to your outlook on reality vs. my own? I rest my case!

That's where I mastered the art of playin hookie ( versus hockey )

I think we should encourage a contest here to see what people can say ONLY POSITIVE THINGS ALLOWED about Rubin, Greenspan, the IMF, Central Banks, Camdusses, Clinton, Hilliary, and the Tri Lateral Commission not to mention the Bilderburgers.

D.A.- your 20:08 was verry interesting, I ALMOST GOT EXCITED. I got the feeling you wanted to say that some of the repercussion would spill over into the gold market. I think I see the same type SQUEZE in the gold market that is becomming obvious in the silver market. What do you say?

Tally Ho

China banks go under? They will prosecute some people, confiscate whatever there is to take, and blame the corrupt capitalist lackeys. Or maybe some power guy we haven't even heard of will encourage more money to be put into the pipeline and then when the whole thing blows, he will take over and institute a back to Leninist revolution. I don't know. But I do believe when all is said and done, it will be seen to be due to the same old human themes.

I'd win that contest----them are all great folks IMHO......

Hey Allen, did you hear "America the Beautful" playin in the background when you read my earlier post? To answer your questions, Saints have gone up about $15 since I bought em, ( as Gold has declined about $25 in the same timeframe, a gap of $40 per ounce! )

Platinum coins are in a loss position right now but not for long! Silver, needless to say it's in an approx. 21% profit ( average ) since I bought most of mine in the summer. Thinking of buying more soon.

Stocks? Made goos money on the short term moves in and out of Magellan, don't have any at the moment though. Big stake on my own employer's stock which is up about 15% in the past few weeks.

Other buy's? I bought a little Pegasus today ( of all things, first Gold shares I've had since Homestake in 1970's! ) Probably buy some ECO soon, a little SSRIF and SSC also. Moved in and out of the Silver's playing volatility, and made some gains, about ready to take a new small position in those 2 as they are "low" again ( why I don't know with SIlver climbing, sympathy for XAU I guess! )

Yep, been following that story closely and the NTSB releases today of their full investigation. Personally, I think they ought to make public, whatever these "independant" lab reports were and subjkect them to third party analysis from a neutral source. No doubt in my mind about the outcome of such a test though. People with an "agenda" ( and a book deal ) can be far better at conspiracy than thousands of Govt. workers. ( How DOES the FBI keep all them investogators silent anyway???? Must be a new special drug... )

personally, I say let all the conspiracy nuts publish freely. Makes for great internet comedy sites during my lunch break! ( When I'm not posting Pro U.S. of A. messages here that is! )

TOLERANT1: THANKS FOR THE 19:55 POST!
MY JEWISH FRIENDS KEEP REITERATING THE SAME THEME, STORY, CONCLUSION :
AFTER THESE PAPER GAMES ARE CONCLUED AND SHORTLY OVER,
WITHIN TEN YEARS THERE WILL BE THREE DISTINCT CLASSES OF PEOPLE IN THE
WORLD:
CLASS ONE: PEOPLE WHO OWN GOLD ( THE RICH )
CLASS TWO: PEOPLE WHO OWN SILVER ( THE MIDDLE CLASS ) .
CLASS THREE: PEOPLE WHO OWN NEITHER GOLD NOR SILVER ( THE POOR ) .
BEING NON-JEWISH AND WITH NO MEANS, WEALTH ON THEIR LEVEL,
I'M TAKING THE SIDE OF GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE AND LOADING UP ON
SILVER BULLION, NOW AT DISCOUNT PRICES.
THEIR INSIGHT AND VIEWS HAVE PROVED IN PRIOR TIMES TO BE CORRECT.
( GOD GRANT ME THE PATIENCE OF JOB AND THE FAITH OF ST. PETER )

My entry:

For a fat president, he doesn't sweat much, ... , of course I mean Taft.

LGB
You remind me of a scientist in a room with another 100 scientists.
Normally none of the scientists would agree.
All having their own beliefs.

Only this time 95% of them agree and you're in the wrong 5%.

Don't you ever reflect that you might have the wrong opinion.

Narcissism rules hey?

Dec. Gold is down another .80 @ 289.20----I'd like ta stay here and help 'you all' with your gold strategies but I got some fooooball ta watch but will be back later with some charts and gold advice~~~~~~ keep the 'faith'.....Away to the recliner and a huge bowl of popcorn.....authority suks!

Them are not all great folks The tri lateral Commission and the Bilderbergers are organizations not folks. Whad they teach ya at that there forms school.

Hail to the Redskins, Hail Victoree, Braves on the Warpath, fight for OL DC. Fight on Fight on til we have won Sons of Washington. ( and that includes the Fed,IMF and World Bank boy ) This ryhme is official and is a sing song type o' thingy.

Can some futures guru explain this to me?

Spot palladium = 207
Dec'97 palladium = 209.5
Mar'98 palladium = 206.5

Why is Dec'97 PA not following spot?

Pony express made it through...got the loot. Hoorraayy! Deliver the dusty dude a drink!

Got yours yet?

Have a look at these projections.
They will bring a smile to all goldbugs faces.
Wish they were real? patience please.
http://www.webcom.com/beacon/ongoingforecast.html
Gold $2000 to $5000
Silver $50 to $100
Platinium $2000 to $5000
Paladium $500 to $1000
Numismatics up at least 400%
T-Bonds 15%+
Dow to 2000

With all your schooling you should be able to pray to Our Lady of The Canada Post for deliverance.

Monday December 8, 8:35 pm Eastern Time

MOF says yen rate too low, Japan ready to act

TOKYO, Dec 9 ( Reuters ) - The current level of the yen against the dollar is excessively low and Japan is ready to take action to stabilise rates, Finance Minister Hiroshi Mitsuzuka told a news conference on Tuesday.

Asked about the recent weakness of the yen, Mitsuzuka said he would not comment on short-term movements of exchange rates, but added: ``The current level is becoming very excessive.''

He said he was concerned about the recent weakness of the yen and that excessive yen weakness was undesirable.

He added: ``It is important to maintain stability and we are ready to take appropriate action.''

Mitsuzuka said the ministry will support the proposals by a senior official of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party ( LDP ) to issue fresh bonds aimed at stabilising the financial system if the party approved it.

Seiroku Kajiyama, the former government spokesman has advocated a proposal to issue a new type of government bond worth about 10 trillion yen to stimulate Japan's economy and ensure stability in the financial markets.

``If the LDP discusses it and makes an official proposal ( to the ministry ) , I will support it,'' Mitsuzuka said.

Mitsuzuka also said the ruling party was likely to come up with a way so that the proposed issuance of the bonds will not contradict the government's pledge to fiscal reform.

The finance minister reiterated that the stability of the financial system was of utmost importance and said the idea of using public funds to that end must be considered.

``When we say government support ( to stabilise the financial system ) , it would ultimately lead to public funds,'' he said.

Ted-South Shores of Lake Simcoe near Sutton.Relax and listen ,eating North Atlantic Haddock in mornay sauce with a delicate 1979 french fine.Away to listen- Pink Floyd "Dark side of the moon" and "The Wall".

Chaostan Fact Book

Maps & Facts for the 91 Nations of Chaostan
http://www.webcom.com/beacon/nations.html
Chaostan is big: a third of all the land on earth. You probably cannot visit all of it in person, so we are making it possible for you to visit the whole place electronically. With just the click of your mouse button, you can wander all over Chaostan, jumping from one country to another as you please. And, it's free!

Ray:

Even though I own gold, and a boatload of little mining stocks both personally and in the funds I'm not yet excited. The recent talk about a bounce to 300 has me more than a bit concerned. These scripts just never play the advertised way. This leaves two possibilities.

The first, which I am growing more fearful of by the minute is the rapid collapse followed by the bounce which doesn't do a hell of a lot and leaves us languishing at these levels for a good long while until some big companies are forced to go belly up. In this first scenario I lose a tenth of and ounce of gold to EB and am eternally pissed, along with a far larger load of money in the form of bankrupted juniors, which will just suck.

The second, to which I cling desparately does go along the lines of your thoughts. An upward explosion in silver drags gold up a few bucks and we get a little short covering rally to 300. I score my little gold wink from EB, Ted Arnold gets frenetically bearish, gold drops 6 dollars one day and everyone is convinced that a new down leg has started. Only this time gold does not go down any further but chugs back to 300 hundred after a few more days and then spurts to 320 where the scene is played again. Et cetera Et cetera. All us gold bug types be way happy.

STUDIO R:
I'VE RECEIVED MY LAST TWO ORDERS OF SILVER BULLION FROM
GOBRECHTS OF SILVER SPRINGS, MARYLAND! THEY RATE AN A+
FOR OVERALL SERVICE, QUALITY, RESPONSIVENESS, ETC.
MY THIRD LAST ORDER HAS NOT BEEN RECEIVED! AS A RESULT
EASTERN NUMISMATICS OF GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK HAS AS OF
TODAY BEEN PUT ON MY DEALER BLACKLIST AND WILL NOT BE USED
FOR PURCHASING ANY PRODUCT UNLESS AN AD SHOWS UP SOME TUESDAY IN "USA TODAY"
FOR AN INCREDIBLE OFFER ON BULLION OR NUMISMATIC BRILLIANT UNCIRCULATED
PRODUCTS. STILL PURCHASING ON A MONTHLY BASIS CHINESE SILVER COINS
FROM THE WEISS FAMILY OUT IN TORRENCE, CALIFORNIA ( PANDA AMERICA & UNIVERSAL ) .
THEY RATE AN A+ RATING ALSO!

MR. GREENSPAN, WOULD YOU CARE FOR SOME KETCHUP WITH THOSE T-BILLS? "NO THANKS, I'M REALLY NOT THAT HUNGRY."

http://quote.yahoo.com/intlmarkets
Go look - bloods starting to flow -
Red everywhere, yet half an hour ago there was little.

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/korea_to_pay_dear_fo_1.html

The really huge mining houses ( Anglo/Minorco, RTZ, BHP ) must be viewing the plunge in gold prices as an opportunity to acquire smaller competitors. Afterall, THEY aren't leaving the gold mining game in this century or next. But where? Each of these houses is underrepresented in North America ( esp. low-cost Nevada ) . If so, then who? Well.... I think that Newmont is ripe for acquisition by one of the houses. Cripes... $27 and change for NEM? Any thoughts?

Monday December 8, 8:47 pm Eastern Time

Banks integral part of sovereign risk-S&P report

SYDNEY, Dec 9 ( Reuters ) - Standard and Poor's Corp said the financial systems of Malaysia and the Philippines were likely to undergo significant stress over the near term, owing to excess credit growth in recent years.

In a global report on the impact of financial system stress on sovereign creditworthiness, S&P said also that Hong Kong bank earnings and asset quality were likely to come pressure given the rapid loan growth during 1996-1997 and the erosion of the net external creditor position of the financial sector.

S&P said these expectations were based on analysis of the leading indicators of stress in financial systems.

S&P said most Latin American and Eastern European financial sectors were unlikely to experience stress in the near term due to a manageable level of private sector indebtedness and low rates of credit growth and asset price inflation in recent years.

``Latin American financial systems, in particular, enjoy relatively stronger regulatory and institutional frameworks and are less suspectible to credit boom and cust cycles, given their longer experience with financial liberalisation and successful adjustment to financial crises in the past,'' S&P said.

However, S&P said Eastern European financial systems ran a higher risk of excessive credit growth in the future due to nascent regulatory infrastructures and little experience with financial crises.

``Experience with fragile financial sectors has shown that banking system soundness is essential to a country's macroeconomic stability, effective demand management and sustained economic growth,'' the S&P report said.

``Because they are a source of direct and indirect costs to the government, privately and publicly owned banks are contingent liabilities of the government and an integral part of sovereign risk analysis,'' it said.

In its report, S&P ranked nearly 50 industrialised and emerging market financial systems in five contingent liability risk categories.

The risk categories, ranging from five to 15 percent, to 35 to 60 percent, denote the percentage of financial institution loans to the private sector and non-financial public enterprises that could become problematic in a worst-case economic slowdown.

``Reflecting their risk categories and large size, the financial systems of China, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan each represent 30 percent of GDP in contingent fiscal and economic costs.

``All of the countries' investment-grade ratings reflect their respective governments' low indebtedness, which confers substantial fiscal flexibility to overcome the sytem-wide problems,'' S&P said.

Conversely, despite their structural deficiencies and low ranking on the contingent liability scale, the financial sectors of Brazil, India, Russia and Turkey represent lower levels of contingent liabilities, at under 15 percent of GDP, because of their small size, the report said.

``The degree of asset quality problems of Japanese, Korean and Thai financial institutions are already within the ranges of their assigned contingent liability risk categories, due to the current economic dificulties in those countries,'' it said.

``The issue of transparency remains a challenge more generally in the region. Indeed, most of the troubled finanical institutions in the region have no rating.

``Greater financial disclosure will, over the long term, result in more predictable and manageable cycles of stress.''

S&P said the level and rate of growth of leverage in an economy were key determinants of the likelihood of stress in financial systems, strong and weak alike.

Credit growth, corporate and house indebtedness, asset-price inflation, and external funding of financial institutions were key indicators of leverage.

``Rapid increases in two or more of these indicators denote a growing, and possibly excessive, degree of economy-wide leverage,'' S&P said, noting that increased private sector leverage had been a significant contributor to past banking crises.

The complete S&P report is to be published in the December 10 of S&P's Creditweek publication and is available on the Internet at www.ratings.standardpoor.com/creditweek/coverstory.htm.

In our local paper in Vienna, Va there was an article about a store in Silver Spring Md called Spymasters. Apparently the James Bond stuff is available to us all. The article went on about uses in families etc. A tiny camera buried like a pin in a pillow records all sound and video. Scary stuff but the best defense is a good offence off to the store on Sat.

Has anyone thought of the scenario that maybe the CBs want the price of gold to drop precipitously so as to break the economy of South Africa, thus causing the IMF to come to the rescue to bail them out with the minerals in South Africa being the collateral for the loans...what a way to capture the crown jewel of resources...

"After Argentina's recent announcement of past Gold Sales, that leaves
Antartica the only continent not see official sales, though there have been rumors recently, that the penguins there are restless." Andy Smith
analyst UBS.

The US has not sold gold yet as far as we know..that will be when "the fat lady sings"

The way I see it things will just implode so fast it will make everybody's head spin. There is so much going on in so many parts of the world they can't keep up with it.

I mean, how much instant paper money can they create. Cultural nerves are getting stretched to the limit. Whole sections of humanity are watching the savings of a lifetime evaporate.

Don't blink or you will miss the crash. But certainly not the hangover.

LDP may not oppose foreign reserve use for banks
TOKYO, Dec 9 ( Reuters ) - Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the government may not oppose the idea of using part of Japan's foreign reserves to provide necessary funds to Japanese banks, Okiharu Yasuoka, chairman of the party's financial stability subcommittee, told reporters on Tuesday.
``But I do not think there is any opposition within the party and the government to the idea, because I think the use of foreign reserves would be important and effective.''
http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/ldp_may_not_oppose_f_1.html

ALLEN..

After reading your posts, I have one question.

What seems to me to be a solution far too simple:

1 ) Create a subroutine which intercepts all date inputs to the program and subtracts 2 years.

2 ) if negative, add 100 ( 00 becomes '98 ) ( Trash 1902 and before )

3 ) Go into the database using dates and subtract 2 years. ( erase 1902 and before )

4 ) After calculations, etc, are made, intercept outputs and add 2 years before printing results.

This would work for most uncomplicated, stupid programs, which only look at the date and compare with a database. It might require some manipulation of other subroutines. Comments?

Notice the bags under Printin Clinton's eyes lately. He is not wearing well the last three weeks.

Hey fellows- I got a bunch of Hecla and have been tryin to figure out why
it has not been responding to the rising silver price??? Thanks for the info it was useful to me! but the fact remains
Gold production 170,000 X $388= $66million
Silver prodction 3,000,000 X $5.40= $16million

It still is mostly gold and that might be the reason it ain't moved up.

Tally Ho

US Treasuries close down on lingering worries
NEW YORK, Dec 8 ( Reuters ) - The prices of U.S. Treasury securities ended lower on Monday as Asian concerns and a tightening U.S. labor market worried traders.
``It's dead. We're caught between the strong economic data and the prospect of weakness in the future,''
``If there wasn't an Asian crisis at this point the Fed would have to be seriously thinking about tightening,''
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has repeatedly warned that he watches wage inflation for incipient signs of overall price rises. The Fed's policy-making Open Market Committee meets on December 16 and many economists were shifting their views on what the body would decide.
Previously, the crises in Asia had most expecting no tightening of monetary policy in order to avoid any disruption of global financial markets. Others now are coming to the conclusion that the U.S. economy was growing at an unsustainable rate and the Fed would have to move sooner rather than later to slow growth.
http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/us_treasuries_close__1.html

Blonde, how about a compromise?

Does this suggest that Japan is going to cash in their US$? Note that Japan is up 500+ while HK$ which is pegged to the US$ is down, just a thought. How is the US$ doing over there?

Until I score some more Prozac...Studio.R is destined to roam aimlessly, perpetually through the cemetery...Momma Cool Lurk is stuck, drunk and broke in Vegas....me? well I'm thinkin' more and more about porn...Poppa Porn Lurker...I've started thinking I may be a lesbian...Whooooaaaa.

Do me a favor Mr. Dave...I live at GROUND ZERO ( okc ) ...LOST TWO DEAR FRIENDS on April 19...Give Mr. Nichols the same justice as McVeigh...
( I assume CO means Rocky Mountains? )

Rio Bravo. Gracias.

All:

The Korean Won is melting down again. We are right at the 1400 level. Just two short weeks ago they were defending the 1000 level. Perhaps they will come to the realization that punting on their foreign debt obligations is better than destroying their economy. If we don't turn soon, the whole place is going to implode.

Tolerant 1
I haven't had the pleasure.
Guess he must be tiring of this global charade.
Who knows the true extent of this melt down so far?
Privateer quoted possibly up to $2 trillion so far.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
INSTANT VIEW - Japan EPA economic monthly report
http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/instant_view_japan_1.html
TOKYO, Dec 9 ( Reuters ) - Following are economists' reactions to the Economic Planning Agency's monthly report in which the agency dropped the words ``gradual recovery'' for the first time since February 1996.
The EPA said the economy has stalled and weak business sentiment may affect consumer spending and business investment levels.
On the ruling Liberal Democratic Party considering a new type of government bond issue worth around 10 trillion yen:
``The Ministry of Finance only yesterday fronted up that the underlying problem was about three times larger than they originally thought. Seventy trillion yen of non-performing loans and here's 10 trillion yen of public finance to try and sort it out. So you could argue its not as large an amount of money as one would like. It's probably best described as a step in the right direction, but I want to see what they are actually going to do.
``The government will be able to claim that its fiscal targets aren't set in these terms and it can hit them, although the reality is that it is more public sector debt. But it's absoulutely necessary. I mean, the priority is stabilising the financial sector, and they should spend whatever it takes.''

D.A.- well that must mean we will have to wait until Jim Rogers gives his BUY call. I ain't liked what he has said but he has been right.

DAMN!

http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/4915/index.html

Gold Mining Outlook
by Steven Jon Kaplan

Gold touched $286 per ounce in the afternoon on Thursday, its lowest spot price since February 25, 1985.

Updated @ 5:10 p.m. EST, Monday, December 8, 1997.

COMMENTS OF THE DAY: Commodities rallied slightly on Monday, while precious metals ended lower. Gold dropped fifty cents, silver lost 3.3 cents, platinum fell $4.30, and palladium was down sixty-five cents. The U.S. long bond continued to decline after having briefly touched a two-year high on Thursday morning. Following its recent pattern, money exiting the bond market seems to be heading directly into the stock market. If investors continue to sell bonds to buy stocks, this portends an increasing risk in being invested in equities, since each incremental rise in bond yields heightens their value as a compelling alternative.

Kinross Gold Company of Canada said Monday that due to the low gold price, its QR Mine in British Columbia will be shut down on March 1, 1998. In 1996 the mine produced 43,629 ounces of gold.

The Taiwan Finance Ministry reported that November gold imports totalled 9.300 tonnes, up from 6.789 tonnes in November 1996.

The Hong Kong Commercial Daily stated that Hong Kong gold jewelry sales rose 84.7% in January through September 1997, compared with the same period in 1996, to a total of HK $25.984 billion, spurred by the low price of gold.

highrise - Don't think so. Tokyo stocks rose nearly two percent in early morning trade on Tuesday, encouraged by media reports that Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto was urging the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to consider issuing about 10 trillion yen worth of new government bonds.

Bob M ( gold@bitterroot.net ) "Has anyone thought of the scenario that maybe the CBs want the price of gold to drop precipitously so as to break the economy of South Africa, thus causing the IMF to come to the rescue to bail them out with the minerals in South Africa being the collateral for the loans...what a way to capture the crown jewel of resources..."
YOU KNOW WHAT TRUTH YOU SPEAK!!!!!!!

DJ -- Here's your chart. I admitt it's much more pleasing to the eye this way. :- ) )

Someone today posted that gold is only going down in terms of the US$; that in terms of golds price almost all other currencies have been steady or seen a rise in the price of gold ( asia comes to mind ) . First to say "thank you" to that person who has, IMO got the right perspective on this.

I also strongly recommend reviewing the three articles by KUTYN on GoldEagle ( Vronsky's recent post ) . A macro view with a bit of a different twist than the PEI view. PEI does not evaluate specificly where the credit money originated, which IMO is a crucial part of understanding this puzzle.

To the above I add this.

The problem is not the numbers. The whole system is made of many parts. Some based in nations and some not. The problem is not high numbers or low numbers or chaotic numbers or steady numbers. The problem is when people/institutions are no longer willing to or are able to remain invested in a particular part of the system.

As one part of the system becomes absurd in relation to others then a 'flight' occures: a large exodus from one part to other parts. This ALWAYS RESULTS IN IMBALANCES. It also creates the same kind of problems elsewhere ( what was being fled from in the first part of the system in the first place ) .

So the movement of participants and their capital creates a self feeding fire or wave which wastes everything it touches. The end result is an exhaustion of confidence in the entire system as a whole.

The rise in the US$ in relation to most other currencies is symptomatic of this movement. It has nothing to do with absolute quality in US currency or other quailites. It is completely relative to the environment in which it resides. Since the US$ is rising in relation to all other currencies IT MUST ALSO RISE IN RELATION TO GOLD. That is the price of gold must drop in relationship to the US$ and remain stable in relationship to all other currencies. It is doing this right now.

It is very important to note that the problem we have seen in Asia, when Japan's own bubble burst and it began to increase credit in order to take advantage of growth prospects in SE Asia, is a direct result of the EXPANSION OF THE ASIAN DEBT BUBBLE. The Asian bubble is bursting. The surge in the US$ is now the continued inflation of unrealisticly valued assets ( stocks, bonds and real estate ) that began in Japan in the 1980's. Just as this ballooning supply of credit created by all nations, but particularly by those who have been running current account surplusses, created an unsustanable bubble in Japan ( which burst ) , and which created an unsustainable bubble in SE/NE Asia ( which is bursting now ) it is creating the exact same problem here in the USA.

This is basicly a result, this ever expanding suppy of credit money, of not wanting to allow a normal process of correction to occure. The "solution" to each crisis has been to increase debt - which precipitates the next phase of this spreading contagion.

The "Asian Flu" is not devaluations and crashes per se. It starts with asset/credit inflation. That is the beginning of it. The end is the colapse. So far we are on track to be the last casualty of this process.

IMHO the USA is already well on its way to being the last domino.

GOLD will prevail in its immutable role. That role is one of value that lies outside of the system of credit. It is real money. Always has been and always will be.

Monday December 8, 9:30 pm Eastern Time

Japan LDP financial steps become official Friday

TOKYO, Dec 9 ( Reuters ) - A package of financial stablisation measures being studied by a subcommittee of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party will become official when it is submitted to and approved by the LDP executive council, party officials said on Tuesday.

Okiharu Yasuoka, chairman of the subcommittee, said it will present its proposals to the LDP emergency financial stability panel, headed by former prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa, on Wednesday.

Yasuoka said the schedule still remained ``fluid,'' and there were no plans at the moment for a formal announcement on Wednesday of the subcommittee's proposals.

Once the panel approves the subcommittee plan at its executives' meeting on Wednesday evening, it will then formally present it to party executives and policy research council members at their respective meetings on Friday, Yasuoka said.

After the panel's plan is approved and adopted as the official LDP plan on Friday, it will then be announced on December 16 as the financial stabilisation measures of an overall economic stimulus package, he said.

Announcements of an LDP taxation reform proposal, which would be part of its overall stimulus package, and the government's tax reform proposals are also scheduled on December 16.

larryn__A: That solution ( or one like it ) is called 'windowing' and

is being used a lot. The thing that makes it a beast is that

you need to find, identify, and fix each reference to a date-

in input, processing, and output.

Think about doing this for 30 million lines of code.

Now think about changing those databases while they're in use.

By a dozen programs. Running 24/7.

Been out of the country for a couple of weeks....down visiting my "hut".

I just tried to catch up on Another's postings, but for some strange reason, they cut off a when I left, on Nov 23. Do you have the address.
Thanks.
Cmax

http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/971208/business/stories/dollar_6.html

What address do you mean?

Golden Boy - the Bissett Mine should produce 6,600+ ounces of gold per month with the life of mine direct operating cost estimated to be under US$250 per ounce.

San Gregorio Mine - Operations and costs-to-date indicate that once full commercial production begins in September, San Gregorio should produce 5,850+ ounces of gold per month with life of mine operation costs below US$200 per ounce.

As of March 31, 1997 current assets $13,081,000, current liabilities $18,002,000. No info as yet on hedges.

You must bookmark this site.
http://intelligence-net.com/index.htm

Why, they've announced they're going to remove a body from Arlington National Cemetery. Bill Press from CrossFire is eating alphabet soup.

South Korea down 4%, Malaysia 5%

http://www.kitcomm.com/pub/discussion/ANOTHER.html

That was the address. But ass I said, they stop at Nov 23. Has he disappeared?

Great typo! He has posted in the past two or three days that I know of. I think sharefin has a complete list of all of his posts. There are more I am sure.

http://www.ncpa.org/oped/bartlett.html

Good evening to all fellow Kitcoites. Been putting in the hours lately. I am now the proud owner of a one ounce Maple Leaf. Paid cash for it at the local coin shop. It is the first time I have owned gold. This coin is absolutely beautiful. It has an unmistakable "aura" about it. Forget logic. If you want people to buy Gold, let them touch it. I'll bet not too many Americans living today have actually held a Gold coin in their hands. Maybe we should have the equivalent of a "petting zoo" for precious metals. At any rate, the next step is clear to me now. Bury it in the back yard, and declare Indianapolis a Sovereign Republic!

Believe me, the typo was not intentional....just the fatigue of 14 hours of travel in airports, the 2 hour drive out of "hutville" to the airport ( you know what I mean ) flights, ( 2 broken down planes and subsequent rerouting ) and lousy airline food. Oh yes, I forgot to mention the 30 year old Venezuelan taxi cab I just stepped out of, with it's ( typical ) drunk driver.

G'Day from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

Key issues for consideration, outlined by Eyres Reed Brokers...........

1. The gold share market has been ravaged by the weak gold price and tax loss selling.

2. The current level of panic in the gold share market is negatively correlated to the euphoria surrounding Bre-X. Is there any balance?!

3. The World Gold Council's latest report on the gold markets shows that gold demand in the first 9 months of 1997 has grown by 10%.

4. The gold price may be a function of NOT being forced down by long term fundamental demand/supply issues, but by the short term objectives of certain hedge funds.

5. Short sellers of gold are ruthlessly exploiting the fragile sentiment in the gold market. In direct contrast, the fundamentals point to a sharp change in the direction of the gold price.

6. The current gold market has a strong correlation to the market

Rea Gold has over 300,000 ounces of gold
hedged over the next three years or so at an
average price of $370-420 US.

Expect 200,000 ounces to be produced yearly
by 1998.

An obscure but brilliant analyst in 1995 discovered for himself the incredible potential of the Bre-X gold mine in Indonesia. His analysis was based on only the data available to the public. At that time the analyst was an employee in a credit institution in Alberta, Canada. He is none other than John Kutyn, who IMHO is one of the most perceptive and accurate analyzers of the brewing South-East Asian currency and stock market debacle - which is rapidly precipitating the DOMINO EFFECT... capable of bringing the Japanese Banking system to its knees.

His story is as factual as it is indeed fascinating. Although his analysis was based upon fraudulent information fabricated by the unscrupulous management of Bre-X, his evaluation was nonetheless flawless. It is indeed a captivating read...
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials/kutyn120897.html

From article in Long Island, New York newspaper "Newsday", Sunday, December 7 1997, section H page 3

"The Glitter of Gold Coins"

Want some good gift advice? Look to Wall Street. The experts at one of the world's leading investment advisory services, Standard & Poors, switched their attention from stocks briefly to give out some seasonal advice.

According to a recent edition of the service's Outlook letter:

"S&P analysts see lower gold prices as a reason to give gold coins as gifts this year. While wafers and coins as small as  ounce are available, 1-ounce coins are best for gifts, because they sell at smaller premiums to the price of bullion." For instance S&P says that both the 1-ounce American Eagle and the Canadian Maple Leaf "were recently quoted at $327, a 4-percent premium to the price of bullion, while the Krugerrand, at $318, was at a 1.5-percent premium.

For most recent prices check te daily "Cash Prices" table of The Wall Street Journal. Gold coins are available from dealers and many banks and are subject to sales tax in most states.

"To ensure authenticity, look for the stamp of a major international refiner, such as Johnson Matthey or Engelhard. Don't pay a commission in addition to the premium for gold coins, and if you have lots of stockings to fill, most dealers give a break on purchases of 10 or more coins." - Warren Berry

Now if 50 million Americans would take that advice and each buy an ounce...

G'Day,

This might be stating the obvious, but in todays "market" everything appears to work on marginal transactions, the shorter the time scale the better.

In discussions with some Stock Brokers in Perth recently concerning "parking" a 3000 square kilometers exploration tenement portfolio in the Northern Goldfields of Western Australia, highly prospective for gold and nickel as the portfolio is on the "door step" of Mt Keith and Nimray-Jundee, I was asked by the Broker..."where are we going to make money ( in this market ) ".

This caused me a problem, as I am a fundamental believer in exploration, development, production ... to produce GOLD metal. I am a Geologist.

Given what is happening in Asia at this time, with the immediate past "mis-allocation" of funds chasing short term margins, if you had a choice where would you put your investment funds now, with a view to future

JTF said: "The second question relates to the earth. One reason I always thought the "flipping" of the earth's axis was nonsense, is because it would be nearly impossible for any external force short of a direct collision with an asteroid to impart enough energy to tip the earth. However, how does one explain the fact that the south pole ( I think it was ) was once tropical? "

Sorry, this is a non gold response to a valued contributor.
The Earth did not "flip" on it's axis in order to change it's magnetic poles, the magnetic FORCE of the poles flipped. Just look ant any marine chart, at the compass rose.......you will see MAGNETIC VARIATION quantities indicated, with their respective ANNUAL increase or decrease. In other words, the magnetic POLES are ALWAYS moving, every day of every year, and without taking this into consideration, a dead reckoning navigator could never obtain a reasonably accurate fix ( position ) . Geologically, a 100,000 years is just a blink of an eye, and the magnetic poles could concivably "swap" positions during this time, as one pole, as it is moving annually, will generally cause the other pole to move, as it's contradictory force.

G'Day,

This might be stating the obvious, but in todays "market" everything appears to work on marginal transactions, the shorter the time scale the better. In discussions with some Stock Brokers in Perth recently concerning "parking" a 3000 square kilometers exploration tenement portfolio in the Northern Goldfields of Western Australia, highly prospective for gold and nickel as the portfolio is on the "door step" of Mt Keith and Nimray-Jundee, I was asked by the Broker..."where are we going to make money ( in this market ) ". This caused me a problem, as I am a fundamental believer in exploration, development, production ... to produce GOLD metal. I am a Geologist.

Given what is happening in Asia at this time, with the immediate past "mis-allocation" of funds chasing short term margins, if you had a choice where would you put your investment funds now, with a view to future intermediate to long term returns?

Can US sell gold bullion w/o congress's approval? Seems as I recall a prohibition on further PM selling -?

G'Day,

This might be stating the obvious, but in todays "market" everything appears to work on marginal transactions, the shorter the time scale the better. In discussions with some Stock Brokers in Perth recently concerning "parking" a 3000 square kilometers exploration tenement portfolio in the Northern Goldfields of Western Australia, highly prospective for gold and nickel as the portfolio is on the "door step" of Mt Keith and Nimray-Jundee, I was asked by the Broker..."where are we going to make money ( in this market ) ". This caused me a problem, as I am a fundamental believer in exploration, development, production ... to produce GOLD metal. I am a Geologist. Given what is happening in Asia at this time, with the immediate past "mis-allocation" of funds chasing short term margins, if you had a choice where would you put your investment funds now, with a view to future intermediate to long term returns?! High rise buildings or a precious metal mine. Aye, it makes you wonder.

Haggis

Ps.... we are STILL trying to "park" the tenement portfolio

Date: Mon Dec 08 1997 22:27
Auric ( GOLD ) ID#255151:

Congradulations. It is a big step, and your right I bet darn few Americans have ever owned a gold coin. Very sad when you think about it.

Things are looking kind of rough again in Asia.
Japan still up, are they cashing in their US chips?
How is the dollar doing? Was down a little. Is the US trading it's gold for it's dollars? How are/is Japan cashing in their chips? Anyone with thoughts on this - please.

Thanks

ANOTHER:
I think I am going shopping for some of the real stuff tomorrow.
http://quote.yahoo.com/m2?u

Monday December 8, 10:03 pm Eastern Time

Indonesian rupiah tumbles to 4,420 vs dollar

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/indonesian_rupiah_tu_1.html


onday December 8, 10:20 pm Eastern Time

Hong Kong stocks lose ground in early trade

HONG KONG, Dec 9 ( Reuters ) - Hong Kong stocks lost ground in early Tuesday trade with selling across the board, brokers said.

The Hang Seng Index fell 151 points, or 1.29 percent, to 11,571.

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/hong_kong_stocks_los_1.html


Asia/Pacific
Australia All Ordinaries ^AORD 11:11PM 2582.6 -4.4 -0.17% China
Shanghai Composite ^SSEC 10:31PM 1142.624 +3.260 +0.29%
Hong Kong Hang Seng ^HSI 11:10PM 11496.72 -226.22 -1.93%
India BSE 30 ^BSESN 11:10PM 3464.27 -3.92 -0.11%
Indonesia Jakarta Composite ^JKSE 11:11PM 420.925 -2.688 -0.63%
Japan Nikkei 225 ^N225 11:11PM 16550.35 +418.78 +2.60%
Malaysia KLSE Composite ^KLSE 11:10PM 638.37 -38.10 -5.63%
New Zealand NZSE 40 ^NZ40C 10:06PM 2410.08 +7.59 +0.32%
Pakistan Karachi 100 ^KSE 7:00AM 1803.97 0.00 0.00%
Singapore Straits Times ^SS1 11:11PM 1748.36 -5.27 -0.30%
South Korea Seoul Composite ^KS11 11:11PM 399.93 -14.90 -3.59%
Sri Lanka All Share ^CSE 3:28AM 680.20 +1.40 +0.21%
Taiwan Taiwan Weighted ^TWII 11:03PM 8333.49 -68.68 -0.82%
Thailand SET ^SETI 11:10PM 396.06 -5.74 -1.43%

NEW YORK, Dec 8 ( Reuters ) - Asian market turmoil has spilled over into an unlikely market segment -- U.S. mortgage securities.

Distortions in the one-month London Interbank Offered Rate ( LIBOR ) , caused by a spike up in Japanese bank rates, have affected Freddie Mac
( NYSE:FRE - news ) and Fannie Mae ( NYSE:FNM - news ) bonds pegged to LIBOR.

http://biz.yahoo.com/finance/971208/asian_flu_infects_li_1.html

tman: Where's the 200,000 coming from? I have the Nov 27 news release and it doesn't look very promising to me. It looks like their latest financing took place at .65 Unbelievable.

Strong Buy Recommendations by Eyres Reed.

Low Risk....

Battle Mountain, Euro-Nevada, Franco-Nevada, Normandy, Prime Resources.

Higher Risk ( reported negative Q3 1997 earnings ) ...

Bema Gold, Dayton Mining, Goldcorp, TVX Gold

So, who are Anglo and RTZ going to absorb first ?!

Haggis

Has anybody checked out CD rates @ your local bank lately? 6%+ same rate as or more than US Ts - interesting.

frustrated and tman: Centennial has 400,000 oz at a cut-off of .55g/t
It's incredible that they would use such a low cut-off. At this rate they'd have to process 60 tons of ore to get an oz. Rea also wrote down Mt Hamilton to the tune of 17.2 m What's goes with these companies?? last year they had a write down of 20m. They spent 59m on Bisset. Will they write that down too if they survive long enough. Where are they going to get financing at the present POG??

The stock price looks tempting only because it was high before. Have you looked at the chart since Oct ? It looks like it fell off a cliff. How come? maybe those people in at .65 dumping? at 130 m shares how lonf will it take to move up?? All these comments are MO only.

SINCE silver plays no monetary function, is not stockpiled by CBs and it's price is not artificially depressed,exclusive of"Sympathy" action what justification is there to expect any significant upside to silver price? ALso, what is the downside to silver demand posed by the introduction of digital photo-imaging?

Caution: S&P recently down graded lots of debt because of POG slide over last year and their prediction of continued uncertainty. I think if anyone is interested in buying gold stocks they ought to look closely at Barrick. They apparently have some big deposits coming on stream with extremely low costs of prodution, e.g., 50-100. They also have lots of cash and a strong board.

Another idea worth considering is purchasing PM mutual fund shares and dollar cost averaging over the next few months. To me this seems like one of the best ideas instead of guessing which individualcompanies to invest in. Many junior explo companies have alot of cash but that money can all be blown pretty easy which makes them a poor investment. Speculation is another matter.