Apparentlty the banks in Japan are in much worse condition than previously reported.

http://www.drudgereport.com

Options: You pay a fixed and thereby agree to either buy or sell a fixed amount of something. As time goes by the value of the option decreases according to a mathmatical formula. Towards the end of expiration if the option is still out of the money ( ie not close to the position you bet it would be at ) it is worthless. If the price moves in the direction you hope it will the value of the option increases. There are 2 things you are paying for: Time and strike price. The longer the option the higher the cost. The closer the strike price to market the higher the cost.
Options limit your downside to whatever the cost of the option is. There are no margin calls. However, your chances of coming out ahead are greatly reduced.

Futures do not expire. However if the market moves against you your broker will require a higher deposit if the loss exceeds the deposit. The chances of making money are much higher but so are the risks. If you want to discover whether you are prone to heart problems, ulcer or sleep deprivation this is your ticket.

I suggest doing paper trades to test your intuition. The problem is that once you pony up with real dough most people are not so cool under fire. I know I wasn't. Futures are easier to move into and out of. Options require that another buyer be matched against your position which may not happen right away.

If you are hell bent on trading with leverage and believe that the market is going to tank I would buy out of the money put options that do not expire until far into the future.

My advice: Buy some gold and go Vegas when you get the itch to trade futures or options. I have found the traders that these trades are executed through to be very dirty. They always delay your orders and it takes several minutes up to 10 minutes to get confirmation on a trade. Why you may ask?

As soon as they receive your order they make the trade. If you make money they simply delay fulfilling your order and substitue their account for yours. If your bet is a loser after you have been on hold for 5 minutes they will credit the loss to your account.

This allows them to bet with your money. Illegal, you bet but try and prove it. I've seen it happen over a dozen times to me personally. These people are lower than gutter scum.

The game is very much rigged in their favor. If they declare bankruptcy you are screwed plain and simple. Having seen firsthand the shell games they played with my money I have zero doubt that they would pay off their own options first ( which are held by various blind holding companies no doubt ) and make the small investors eat the losses.

If you think these guys have any ethical or moral fortitude you are fabulously naive. These bastards should be flushed down the toilet along with the rest of this diseased system. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Blow your money in Las Vegas instead. At least they give you free drinks while you're getting screwed.

The NEW YORK TIMES is reporting in
Monday editions that Japan's top
financial officials told their American
counterparts this weekend: their
country's banking system is acutely
short of capital, with the top 19 banks
in deeper trouble than Tokyo has ever
before admitted! "Capital supporting
those 19 major banks has dwindled to
dangerously low levels in recent
months," according to the report set to
hit the web at Midnight ET...
Drudge

I have beentrying to get on with this for 10-20 mins.

HighRise

Can someone that is really in the know give me an estimate on when Japan is likely to start dumping their 2,000,000,000,000 dollars of US debt back on us? All I can do is guess that it wont be long.

Your last post, did you type that on the posting window or on a word processing application then copy and pasted it on the posting window?

HighRise

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/uk.html

Here is a artical that must be at least 5 months old. It is a good primer
to the Global financial situation. Oh and there is that word Nuclear.

http://y2kwatch.com/showart.php3?idx=58&rtn=updates.htm

Derivatives are a kind of nuclear financial instrument. They are powerful
and highly complicated agreements designed to offset certain financial
risks. Under steady conditions they work well. But in derivatives, like
nuclear mishaps, there are no small accidents. And as the Asian economic
crisis worsens--and in Indonesia's case nears catastrophe--the financial
Geiger counters are beginning to buzz.

Then we have
http://www.ny.frb.org/pihome/news/speeches/MCD981001.html

STATEMENT BY WILLIAM J. McDONOUGH, PRESIDENT
FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF NEW YORK BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE

OCTOBER 1, 1998

Here are several ways that the problems of Long-Term Capital could have
been transmitted to cause more widespread financial troubles. Had
Long-Term Capital been suddenly put into default, its counterparties
would have immediately "closed-out" their positions. If counterparties
would have been able to close-out their positions at existing market
prices, losses, if any, would have been minimal. However, if many firms
had rushed to close-out hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions
simultaneously, they would have been unable to liquidate collateral or
establish offsetting positions at the previously-existing prices

Under these circumstances, there was a likelihood that a number of credit
and interest rate markets would experience extreme price moves and
possibly cease to function for a period of one or more days and maybe
longer. This would have caused a vicious cycle: a loss of investor
confidence, leading to a rush out of private credits, leading to a
further widening of credit spreads, leading to further liquidations of
positions, and so on. Most importantly, this would have led to further
increases in the cost of capital to American businesses.
-----------------------------------------
http://talk.techstocks.com/~wsapi/investor/Subject-12382
SI Crash Forum
http://talk.techstocks.com/~wsapi/investor/Subject-22689
SI Derivatives forum

http://talk.techstocks.com/~wsapi/investor/reply-5905104

It's a pretty good assessment of the way things have developed. I would only disagree with the claim that recent currency movements have been caused by the unwinding of hedge fund positions. Such transactions volume represents less than 1% of the daily NY Fed clearance. Mark strength, for example, has been building at the margin for years and has dynamically made an upside breakout. That wasn't due to hedge fund transactions.

Similarly, it has been persistence of T-bonds on the upside driven by flight capital from Japanese private banks, that blew the perfect hedges of LTCM. Hedge funds can't adjust the short T-bond, long GNMA spread because of rapidly translating spread divergence as a function of time where the hedge is assumed to be time independent. The structural basis upon which the spread depends is high correlation between interest rates and all debt securities. When you have a non-interest rate exogenous factor like the Japanese T-bond buying, and you have GNMA's which are linked more to flat interest rates, you can't adjust to delta zero the respective positions without adding long GNMAs requiring inaccessible quantities of margin. You can still manage the previous positions, but it requires shrinking the exposure and taking loses by covering T-bonds and selling GNMAs. Merriweather wouldn't do that because it meant major losses. That wasn't politically acceptable since the concept of LTCM is minimization of risk.

If anyone wants a more detailed explanation of what was going on at LTCM, feel free. I've been there myself with OPM.

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/japan.html

Used the posting window. Did it slow things down?

Havn't we been preaching to the Japanese, that is our buddies Rubin and AG, that they need to allow default on their bad debt, liquidate the bad assets, and get on with life using better criteria for lending?

How is it then....that after all this preaching, we now bail out LTCM instead of asking them to do the same thing? Crises in hedge funds and capital markets be damned, I say it's ABSURD that we bailed out these multi-millionaire investors. It wasn't even necessary from a world stability point of view....Warren Buffet offered 2.5 billion, just 15 mil shy of the bailout program.

Yes I sound like a hard core Kitcoite GoldBug tonight, but I believe in FREE markets at heart...not manipulated ones. Same goes for the stock market as far as that goes....Japan DOWN.... ( But Puetz will never get his 3000 DOW nonetheless )

Sunday October 4, 10:55 pm Eastern Time

Tokyo midday stocks down on post-G7 pessimism

TOKYO, Oct 5 ( Reuters ) - Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei average slumped on Monday by midday, weighed down by pessimism that Japan would not be able to take more effective steps to bolster its economy despite being urged to do so by the Group of Seven ( G7 ) industrialised nations at the weekend, traders said.

At midday, the Nikkei 225 average was down 247.27 points or 1.87 percent at 12,976.42. It briefly fell as low as 12,955.18, its lowest price since January 31, 1986.

December futures slid 290 points to close the morning session at 12,970.

``Right now, no economic stimulus steps look very effective,'' said Hiroshi Ichio, strategist at Commerz Securities ( Japan ) Co Ltd.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said at a news conference following the G7 meeting that there was an ``increased urgency'' for Japan to implement strong and effective action. Washington has long called on Japan to do more to stimulate its economy and clean up its debt-ridden banking sector.

Recent declines in Tokyo stocks are also due to fears a credit crunch could undermine Japanese companies, traders said.

Traders also said worries lingered in Tokyo over the possibility of a global financial crisis, although New York stocks posted a rebound on Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 152.16 points or 1.99 percent to 7,784.69 on Friday.

``New York stocks rose on Friday, but it did not completely ease our worries,'' said Yasuo Ueki, general manager at Nikko Securities Co Ltd.

Meanwhile, bank shares in Tokyo gained ground due to hopes after the G7 meeting that Japan would soon approve injecting public money into weak banks, traders also said.

The G7 nations urged Japan to shore up its fragile financial sector through an infusion of public funds. Rubin said at the news conference that it was crucial for Tokyo to support viable banks with sufficient amounts of public money.

Some analysts said banks' recent announcements of tie-ups also helped their share prices.

Shares in Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi were up 24 yen at 869, Sumitomo Bank Ltd was up 17 at 911 and Fuji Bank Ltd was up six at 281.

Other factors in the market:

*Broader indexes fell. The TOPIX index was down 12.30 points or 1.21 percent at 1,001.72. The Nikkei 300 was down 2.56 points or 1.29 percent at 195.40.

*Volume dwindled to 182 million shares in the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange from 271 million shares traded on Friday morning.

*Declining issues exceeded advancing issues 721 to 330, while 214 issues were unchanged.

*Fuji Photo Film Co Ltd fell 290 to 4,350, as the firm said Monday it expects group net profit for 1998/99 to be 92 billion yen, down from a previous forecast of 97 billion.

By DAVID E. SANGER

ASHINGTON -- Japan's top financial officials told their American counterparts this weekend that their country's banking
system was acutely short of capital, with the top 19 banks in deeper trouble than Tokyo has ever before admitted,
according to officials familiar with the discussions.

At a private meeting Saturday, the governor of the Bank of Japan, Masaru Hayami, told Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Alan
Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, that the capital supporting those 19 major banks has dwindled to dangerously low
levels in recent months.

The capital reserve levels are now so low that these banks of the world's second largest economy might be banned from operating
internationally "if the rules were vigorously pursued," said a senior Japanese official, relating the conversation.

But on Sunday, in a reflection of the enormous confusion surrounding Japan's financial crisis, other senior Japanese officials disputed
Hayami's presentation and insisted that the reserve levels have not declined to dangerous levels.

Banks that want to operate globally are required to keep on hand capital amounting to at least 8 percent of their outstanding loans.
Few and fewer of Japan's banks can meet that standard today. Hayami's remarks suggest some may fall below the 4 percent
minimum for operating within Japan's borders.

Japan's conflicting explanations came as leaders of the world's major economies met here for a second day at the annual meetings
of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to grapple with an economic crisis that many fear has spun out of control.
On Sunday, Rubin again pressed for changes at the fund and the bank that would improve their ability to head of crises.

"Strengthening the response to the current crisis and creating a modern framework for the global markets of the 21st century will
not be easy or quick," Rubin said before the committee that oversees the IMF's operations.

But many officials here, including James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, argued on Sunday that countries should focus
their energies on the immediate crisis and postpone a broader discussion of remaking the global financial system.

Rubin's meeting with Japanese officials on Saturday took place in the ornate private conference room adjacent to his office at the
Treasury. The session also included Japan's finance minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, a 78-year-old former prime minister who has
negotiated with the United States since the U.S. occupation ended nearly a half-century ago.

Later, Hayami discussed the problem publicly, though in less detail, telling reporters that Japan's major banks were
"undercapitalized." He called on Japan's parliament to inject billions of taxpayer dollars into the banks to restore them to health, a
hugely controversy question within the country.

Bolstering Japan's ravaged banking system is considered by many experts the single most critical factor in quelling the global
financial turmoil that has rocked markets around the world.

But there are still disputes, inside Japan and beyond its borders, over just how much trouble the banks are in. Much depends on
how the figures are calculated -- and there are many ways to manipulate the numbers.

Hayami, who runs Japan's independent central bank, appeared to be painting a bleak picture in the meeting at the Treasury,
describing how banks have been forced to eat into their capital to write off enormous bad loans in real estate. He used, Japanese
officials said later, a narrow definition of the banks' capital that put their condition in the most perilous light.

On Sunday night officials of the Ministry of Finance, which has been accused of greatly mismanaging its regulatory responsibility
over the banks, insisted that Hayami's presentation to Rubin and Greenspan was deeply flawed. In response to queries on Sunday,
they offered an alternative calculation, based on accounting standards set out by the Bank of International Settlements, that they
said demonstrated that the biggest Japanese banks largely exceeded the 8 percent standard.

The disagreement seemed to underscore the enormous disarray within the Japanese government at a time that the country is being
portrayed, by U.S. and European officials, as a major cause of the continuing turmoil. But it is also possible that some Japanese
officials are hoping that the disclosures with prompt enough foreign pressure to help force parliament to inject billions of dollars into
the banking system.

U.S. officials said that at the meetings on Sunday they were successfully building support for a proposal by President Clinton to
change the strategy of the IMF, so that it can offer pre-emptive aid to countries that are fundamentally healthy, but in danger of runs
on their currency or their banking systems because of "contagion" from other striken nations. They said it would probably be a
number of weeks or a few months before the plan is adapted, however.

Clinton is expected to press for changes in the IMF and an increase in social spending in a presentation to finance ministers from 22
nations on Monday evening.

At the same time, Britain, which has supported Clinton's plan, offered a pointed reminder on Sunday that the U.S. proposal to
restructure the fund would be sharply undercut if Congress failed to approve $18 billion in money the United States has committed
to it.

"The starting point of this is the American government voting the resources the IMF requires," the British chancellor of the
exchequer, Gordon Brown, said at a press conference on Sunday.

Some months back, someone posted a couple of options sites for gold and silver, which I promptly bookmarked on my laptop. Now that my laptop is in the shop I'm using my desktop which has never had those sites bookmarked.

Anyone have a good site or two?

Thanks in advance.

"The capital reserve levels are now so low that these banks of the world's second largest economy might be banned from operating
internationally"

Your IMF Guy isn't to bright!
This is really sick humor, right. I would guess that they rather unhappy with the IMF.

"The head of the International Monetary Fund
said Sunday he was troubled by the arrest and apparent beating of a former deputy prime minister who played a leading role at annual
meetings of the IMF and its sister institution, the World Bank."

HighRise

Good on'ya ..I hope the Big O heeds your advice ....you are oh so right ..for I to have learned the expense way.

October 4, 1998

IMF says ready to back "convincing""Russian reform

WASHINGTON, Oct 4 ( Reuters ) - The IMF's main policy-making panel said on Sunday that the international community would back "convincing and effective""measures on Russian reform, but gave no date when loan payments could resume.

"Members reaffirmed that the international community, including the international financial institutions, stand ready to support convincing and effective measures to stabilize and reform the Russian economy," it said in a statement.

The World Bank and IMF have put lending packages on hold until Russia draws up a coherent program of reforms, and fund experts evaluate the plans.

But some Russian officials have warned of dire consequences if the money is not available.

http://www.freecartoons.com/ReutersNews/IMF-RUSSIA.html

EJ, go ahead and read the Washington Post, totally different from what Boston Globe said. Oh well, I guess WP is not the major newspaper and this area is known to be "out of touch with reality" ;- )

I think it and another might have. We were really working on this problem Friday. And I think I discovered that this site seems to have a problem only when a certain number of posting windows are open and for a long period of time.

The longer post take longer to post anyway, but that is not a problem something else really hangs up the site for others. And I now believe it is holding a posting window open for a long period of time while creating and posting a long post. Somewhat like this one.

HighRise

I've been away for more than a month. Has Mr Disney been driven away in disgust or is he still posting?

...swp1

Did anyone catch Ed Yardeni ( ? ) on PBS today?

Was too busy this weekend having muchu fun and hanging out with pretty lasses to think a wit of metals. I find my initials spattered across the pages in re-post or reference for..... the re-post IS quite popular, yes?

One thing regarding LTMC caught my eye and caused me to pause. Foistly, LTMC does have short gold positions. I reported myself on the weekly Monex PM review the LTMC was reported to have 400 million ounces short. The numbers are still hazy, but they do hold short gold positions. I went into some detail for this Fridays review, but it has not posted yet and I dont know why.

What did catch my eye was some implication that these massive gold shorts would have to be covered, that this metal would hit the market all at once, and that the price would rise rapidly as a result. The specific quote is:

"It has been postulated that attempting to cover 5 tons of shorted gold would move the markets up-limit almost instantly. The effect of hundreds of tons would be unimaginable."

I would agree that if a block of this size hit the gold market, the price would rise. The question again begs, "how much is up limit gold?", but that was another discussion on another day. It would seem that the holders of these shorts would know this too, yes? It would seem that an orderly and quiet exit over several months from these positions, with corresponding new longs to absorb the rise, would be a wise and prudent approach. One would think that these folks have a pretty good knowledge of these markets, standard armor for those that play derivatives, but dont convince yourself that these savvy fellows are fools, but rather victims of hubris run amuck. They would know how to orderly exit positions and hedge themselves on the way up. Just takes cash to do it, and the cash was forthcoming.

Only fools dump a commodity. The rest know how to buy the other side and just eat the middle in vicious squeeze. Dont even have to be all that clever, just have some cash to go to. Greenspans warnings were dire, and the folks who stepped in to hoist up LTMC are serious folks indeedy. The ship will sail true now. Legitimate losses will be disclosed and the rest will be picked over. But do not think these shorts have no value. Can gold go back to the lows this year? Odds are not bad that it could. These would be nice positions to hold for a rescuer, yes? Particularly one who could offset the risk with exiting long positions. The deal looks sweeter, on reflection, than one may have originally believed.

My own home, Orange County California, got bit the same way. A decrepit and messianic Treasurer played the same game to the same results. That he did it with taxpayer money, and with great deceit to the members of the fund, made him a criminal. Are the boys behind LTMC any different? If taxpayer money is involved in the bailout, or if taxpayers are stuck with the bill to bail out some other entity that failed as a result of LTMC, even the Nobel Laureates should do time. But if it is private money, it was a bad roll of the dice. I agree with Greenspan though, there needs to be disclosure on the amount and type of loans outstanding to this and other speculative funds.

Does anybody remember the Sumitomo copper fiasco of a couple years ago? They had a trader go bonkers and start buying up all the copper in the world. Physical stuff. And stashing it in a warehouse. Then he leveraged himself to the hilt and went hog wild. When the smoke cleared, Sumitomo owned many million tons-o-copper worth more than $2 billion. The world cowered in anticipation of all this copper being dumped on the market. Prices plummeted further, eroding more the value of Sumitomos unwelcome copper.

Most of the metal is still scattered in warehouses, the largest of which is just up the road in Long Beach. The metal was not dumped. The owners of the metal knew that this would cause the market to collapse further. Why sell into that? The copper is good copper. It is just bastard copper... or maybe just orphaned. Itll wait for higher prices..

One could draw the conclusion that panicking is done by smaller minds and shallower pockets. The boys that play for the big numbers always have an option. They dont announce how many are puts and how many are calls; the same way a Central Bank does not announce sales as they are ongoing, waiting instead to complete the sale before announcing such and driving the price down.

An awful lot of folks see these fellows ( not just LTMC but THE worldwide movers and shakers ) as simpletons who could not find their way out of a few simple trades. I have a higher opinion of the intellect afforded these guys. The ones that fall do so by merit of the only true sin in finance, believing your own press. The rest involved are a clever bunch indeed. They did not accidentally fall to the top of international finance. One would almost have to believe that they made it there with equal parts intelligence, confidence, success, and luck. Further, one would think these skills and traits that gained their lofty positions, would also serve well in time of moderate crisis.

The problems with assessments of a particular situation, such as the one quoted in this text, is that they fail to take the rest of the equation into account - only those fractions that support their prejudices and lend weight to their arguments. It is for that reason that I have felt tired and easily distracted whenever I read USA Gold. I rarely visit Club USA because I come to some very different conclusions using the same set of facts. Tis not a question of right or wrong, but on Kitco both sides are voiced although not always necessarily heard. Most folks on these pages have learned that Rah Rah does not a market make and Rah Rah will not cause a price to rise. Most here are looking for a sober assessment of the market, with ALL the facts at hand. Most here keep coming back because this is the only place on the Internet that HAS learned that.

Kitco is all grown up. There are two views here now. The newcomer forums are still single sided coins, it either comes up heads or blank. Some prefer it that way, most do not. That is why all the traffic and the intellect is gathered around Barts campfire.

Where else is there?

OK

Can anyone confirm the report about Boris backing the rubble now with gold??

He is still lurking around. Want to hear from him? Just ask him why the SA Mines are not doing as well as NA mines. ie. RANGY

And he will be here in a few minutes.

HighRise

The Boston Globe also ran a piece that recommended "staying in it for the long haul" contradicting the "sell and lock in your losses" piece. Editorial balance, I guess. The Washington Post is a far better paper than the Boston Globe. The Globe isn't even in the same league. Washington, like Los Angeles, isn't out of touch with reality. It lives in a different reality of its own making. Both are one industry towns.

Good luck to you next week.

G'Nite.
-EJ

Maybe this is how they are raising money for the floats.

Monday October 5, 12:13 am Eastern Time
Citibank launches S$300 mln bond
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/f.html


HighRise

If you bought that many shares you must have some pretty reliable
sources.

RJ
Thank you for an enjoyable & educational read. Kitco at its best. But what about Platinum? If there is a big drop off in new car sales throughout the world won't that effect Catalytic demand? I believe Plat investment demand has all but disappeared, so, I wonder, what will happen to the stash of plat under the futon?

BART
I've noticed that when your Kitco system message banner is, like morphing, my curser flickers. It flickers at no other time. I think that others here are right, the banner is the fiend that's slowing us down.

toastaurator

http://www.newsweek.com/

Japan -263.13 -1.99%

"Only fools dump a commodity. The rest know how to buy the other side and just eat the middle in vicious squeeze. Dont even have to be all that clever, just have some cash to go to. Greenspans warnings were dire, and the folks who stepped in to hoist up LTMC are serious folks indeedy. The ship will sail true now. Legitimate losses will be disclosed and the rest will be picked over. But do not think these shorts have no value. Can gold go back to the lows this year? Odds are not bad that it could. These would be nice positions to hold for a rescuer, yes? Particularly one who could offset the risk with exiting long positions. The deal looks sweeter, on reflection, than one may have originally believed."

Isn't going long to cover short covering losses more or less a zero sum game? Regardless of how the shorts fare as they cover, prices will rise substantially, yes? And what about 8,000 tonnes short? Why then do you say that we can go back to our lows?

http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/boarddocs/testimony/19981001.htm
--------------

Executive Orders And Laws relating to National Emergencies Laws
http://www.disastercenter.com/laworder/laworder.htm>http://www.disastercenter.com/laworder/laworder.htm

From
http://www.disastercenter.com/

-------------------
Preparedness Nuggets Pages
http://www.justpeace.org/nuggetsindex.htm

Earthfriendly and Self-Sufficient Architectures
http://csf.Colorado.EDU/essa/

Salty -

Thanks, mate.

A long term bottom has held in platinum. There is talk of hoarding ahead of the 1998 contract expiry. Labor woes at Impala. Car sales stable in the west. Demand is said to be increasing from all sectors except jewelry - admittedly not an insignificant portion of the market. The stuff in Japan is under a lot of futons and not a stockpile by name or assembly. I still love the stuff. Unlike gold, which exists any direction you point, platinum supplies are scant to effectively non-existent. This is what I look for in a commodity.


TheMissingLink

In a vacuum, yes.

There are other players in the world with their own agenda.

Yes

http://cgi.ino.com/cgi-bin/quotefind.cgi>http://cgi.ino.com/cgi-bin/quotefind.cgi
http://206.7.107.50/pbscgi/pbsquote
http://www.insync.net/~fot/
http://www.nymex.com/contract/gold.html>http://www.nymex.com/contract/gold.html
http://www.numa.com/derivs/ref/calculat/multiop/multiopa.htm
http://www.tradepbs.com/pbscgi/optlkupr
http://options.quotewatch.com/search/quotefind.cgi

http://www.futuresource.com/ci302.html
http://www.optionscentral.com/>http://www.optionscentral.com/
http://webservices.pcquote.com/cgi-bin/cboeopt.exe?
http://www.cbot.com/l3fddj.htm
http://www.wiso.gwdg.de/ifbg/derivate.html
http://www.fxoptions.com/home-cgi-bin/htmlQ.pl?html=main.html
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http://www.nymex.com/futures/
http://homepage.interaccess.com/~jas/option_wizard.shtml
http://www.nymex.com/contract/gold.html
http://www.options-iri.com/comment.htm
http://optionsfutures.miningco.com/
http://www.phlx.com/market/equitop.html
http://www.ptdiscount.com/
http://quotewatch.com/
http://www.optionscentral.com/
http://www.e-analytics.com/vol.htm
http://homepage.interaccess.com/~jas/option_wizard.html
http://www.cyberramp.net/~chrismc/futopt.htm

Fears heighten of Turkish invasion of neighboring
Syria

ANKARA, Turkey ( AP ) -- With reports of Turkish troops massed on Syria's
border, President Suleyman Demirel on Sunday warned that Turkey would not
allow its neighbor to continue sheltering Kurdish rebels.

Ankara has indicated it is prepared to send forces across the border to eradicate
guerrilla bases in Syria, which Turkey accuses of harboring rebels who wage
cross-border attacks. Damascus denies the charge.

"I am not only warning Syria, I am warning the world. This cannot continue,"
the Anatolia news agency quoted Demirel as saying.

"We are in a position of self-defense. The situation is serious. Turkey has
suffered for many years, and it no longer wants to suffer."

In an effort to head off a military conflict, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak
held talks Sunday with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Damascus and was due
in Turkey later this week.

"War means the beginning of a chain reaction that will not end," Mubarak was
quoted as saying by Egypt's Middle East News Agency upon his return to Cairo.
"The use of military force does not resolve differences or settle issues."

The news agency quoted Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Sharaa as saying that
Egypt and Syria "agreed on the graveness of the situation and that it should be
dealt with diplomatically and not through confrontation or threats."

Turkish Kurdish rebels fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey carry out
cross-border raids from camps in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Turkey long has accused Syria of providing refuge to the rebels, a charge
Damascus denies. The 14-year-old insurgency has left more than 37,000 people
dead.

For its part, Syria is irked by Ankara's plans to build dams on the Euphrates
River, a key source of water for Syria. Turkey has said it would not negotiate a
water-sharing agreement unless Syria cracks down on the Kurdish rebels.

The Assad government also says Turkey's budding military and diplomatic ties
with Israel are a threat to the Arab world and undermine Syria's bargaining
position in peace talks with the Jewish state. On Saturday, Damascus again
accused Turkey of plotting with Israel to destabilize Syria.

Signaling that it does not want to be involved in any potential military
confrontation between Syria and Turkey, Israel has taken steps to limit routine
exercises along its own border with Syria.

Prime Minister Benjamin Ntanyahu on Sunday also stressed Israel's hands-off
approach to the escalating dispute between Damascus and Ankara.

"We have no part in this tension," Netanyahu told reporters in Jerusalem. "We
have taken steps to reassure Syria."

Turkey in the past few days has sent about 10,000 soldiers into northern Iraq to
attack Kurdish rebel bases there.

On Sunday, Iraq called on Turkey to withdraw the troops.

Turkey's claims that it is "pursuing rebels who oppose Turkish authorities does
not give them the right to violate Iraqi ... sovereignty," the Iraqi Foreign Ministry
said in a statement.

Also in northern Iraq are Iraqi Kurds who oppose the Iraqi government. The
Iraqi Kurds control the region.

Turkish newspaper headlines Sunday reflected rising tensions in Turkey.

"Critical Days," wrote daily Turkiye, while the daily Aksam claimed that Turkish
forces could reach the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon in 30 minutes.

"War is coming," said Kenan Kalelioglu, an engineer in Ankara. "If the Syrians
continue to support anarchy, Turkey will have to act. We don't like war, but we
are not afraid."

On Saturday, reports said Turkish jets buzzed the Syrian border and Defense
Minister Ismet Sezgin said Turkey would soon carry out military exercises near
the Syrian border, private television NTV reported.

But Sezgin insisted Sunday that war was the last resort.

"I don't believe it will come to that," he said.

Yeah that's what I thought they were: something people aren't supposed to understand. Good analogy with shadows.

It's strange how people talk about the strong US Dollar when it has not strayed too far from Post WWII lows against major currencies that it set 3-4 years ago. The dollar is in a Long-Term downtrend.

My question to you all is, do you think the dollar's rally over the past 2 years is over?

Mike...I trade metal options and can supply you real-time option and strike prices...whenever you need...just let me know!

http://router.minot.com/~bohl/

All that info will keep me up half the night.
Thanks also to MtHighNC and Snowbird.

France 3039.14 -117.61 -3.87%
Germany 3983.27 +20.77 +0.52%

France 3039.14 -161.38 -5.31%
Germany 3981.94 +19.44 +0.49%

http://www.house.gov/reform/gmit/hearings/testimony/980903jw.htm
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

Thank you for inviting us to participate in today's hearing on the Year 2000 problem. According to the report of the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, the United States--with close to half of all computer capacity and 60 percent of Internet assets--is the world's most advanced and most dependent user of information technology. Should these systems--which perform functions and services critical to our nation--suffer disruption, it could create a widespread crisis. Accordingly, the upcoming change of century is a sweeping and urgent challenge for public- and private-sector organizations alike.

RISK OF YEAR 2000 DISRUPTION TO THE PUBLIC IS HIGH

The public faces a high risk that critical services provided by the government and the private sector could be severely disrupted by the Year 2000 computing crisis. Financial transactions could be delayed, flights grounded, power lost, and national defense affected. Moreover, America's infrastructures are a complex array of public and private enterprises with many interdependencies at all levels. These many interdependencies among governments and within key economic sectors could cause a single failure to have adverse repercussions. Key economic sectors that could be seriously affected if their systems are not Year 2000 compliant include information and telecommunications; banking and finance; health, safety, and emergency services; transportation; power and water; and manufacturing and small business.

Got Physical????

Looks like players in France get a one day charge of five cents on the dollar to stay in the game. Damn, that has to hurt. I'm so glad I get to sit by and watch this thing unfold without worry.

The troops miss'ya you kantankerous old fart.

Did Oleman have anything to say about the coming week ? Always appreciate reading his comments, and I seem to remember you're the one who posts them.

oleman . . Fri, Oct 2, 8:03AM CST ( -0600 GMT )

glad I still got my puts, cause this bond's sayin we got REAL troubles somewhere.

oleman . . Fri, Oct 2, 2:32PM CST ( -0600 GMT )

soup: For at least a day or 2. But I doubt more than 3 or 4.

oleman . . Fri, Oct 2, 2:47PM CST ( -0600 GMT )

soup: I know you need to hear this: Today's action, tho bullish for the VERY short term, is bearish as all get-out for the intermediate term. It is a day and 40 handles early. The 'capitulation slide' is yet to come.

oleman . . Fri, Oct 2, 2:52PM CST ( -0600 GMT )

soup: After 3 downers, taking out the low of the 3rd downer and reversing, odds GREATLY favor follow-thru. May only be a "gap and puke" Monday morning, but expect it to trade higher on Monday.

oleman . . Fri, Oct 2, 2:56PM CST ( -0600 GMT )

nige: There is a fly in that bearish ointment I was spreading. That is that the action today was might similar to the action on 1/27/98, and you know what that led to.: )

oleman . . Fri, Oct 2, 8:45PM CST ( -0600 GMT )

been out for a while. Missed mr stupit. Dunno what the bondo is doing. Gotta assume someone knows sumpin i dont kno, couse I dont want to tie a lot of $$ up in 30yr ppaper at less than 5%. This reversal came at the wrong place on the chart for me. I'm long, but not for long i aint.: ) We're goin lower after this rally is over. No later than Wednesday, and maybe as early as Monday. Monday will trade above todays close, but may be only a gap up and flop. I will be flat before 1050 and looking for a sell thereabouts.

oleman . . Fri, Oct 2, 10:39PM CST ( -0600 GMT )

Welp, I'm long, but not for long. Should be short shortly. Gonna let somebody elses money take her thru those MA's looming above us here.

"I reported myself on the weekly Monex PM review the LTMC was reported to have 400 million ounces short."

Initial "rumours" suggested that LTMC was 375 tonnes ( 12 000 000 oz ) gold short....

If the 400 million ounces figure is indeed correct, then it is 200 000 000 times the annual production of the largest gold mine in the world, the MURUNTAU mine in UZBEKISTAN.......

The 400 million ounces is an ASTONISHING figure.....

If this were true........we are not going to the moon, but to the outer bounds............

Just watched AJ Hackett do the longest bungee from a building, 180m from the Auckland Sky Tower. Golden moments

France 3039.14 -156.21 -5.14%
Germany 3899.58 -62.92 -1.59%
Switzerland 5157.8 -98.6 -1.88%
Turkey 1960.99 -118.76 -5.71%

Sorex: Thank you for that post.

From the Avid chat

The gold share I own the most of went up 17.9% today. I can't figure out why, but am not asking stupid questions. Just popped out of a resistance area and kept going. Nickel/gold shares up strongly today. What's happening with nickel?? Is the POG correcting today or just an Asian/Aussie sell-off??

A little excitement also today. My daughter was out hanging up the wash on the line. I heard a loud,panicky "DAD!!!!" There is this big 8' brown snake ( for you N.Americans--a relative of the cobra and just as poisonous ) between her and the front door. Dad to the rescue--slowly. Fortunately for me it slithered around the side of the house and disappeared into the shrubs. Will look for it again tomorrow ( maybe ) and take some gold nuggets to throw at it. I've heard that gold is good protection.

".... I'm looking for a large default in the paper gold market. With the major CB only buying now something is about to give as the most extended shorts can not cover. A default is most likely part of a game plan to get the ball rolling. This spike in gold will no doubt crush the dollar. The next few months will offer the last period of time to roll out of dollar assets at a good price. Of course, all of this is my opinion from and for the most part, Another's

Late September 1998........LTCM

ALL: I played a little benefit concert over the weekend that was held in a multi-million dollar home. The owner was a CFP and Vice President of some big brokerage ( not Smith Barney, but one like it - I forget which ) . Anyway, after my performance, I was chatting with him and the subject turned to economics. I asked him what he did as a CFP. "I take people with a little money to invest and make them into millionaires," was his ( somewhat arrogant ) reply. Then I asked him about the recent decline in the stock market and he said in dead seriousness and without batting an eye, "Aw, that's nothing to worry about. In the last several weeks I've lost %50 of my net worth, but it's no problem. It'll all come back. I'm in for the long haul and so these dips don't bother me." It was all I could do to keep from choking on my Brie. A FIFTY PERCENT decline in his net worth! I wonder if his wife will be so complacent when their net worth declines significantly beyond that. Can you imagine that this is what he is telling his clients? BTW, the house was a big waterfront mansion on a resort lake in the high mountains. He gleefully related the story of how he held out for the price he wanted to pay for it. Unless I'm mistaken, the value of mountain resort property is the first to tank in a downturn and the last to return when the economy gets healthy. He'll be fishing for his dinner from the servants quarters of this big white elephant if the markets go down much further from here. Thank God I don't have him advising me on what to do with my money. Whew!!

Thanks for taking the trouble to post that stuff about the similarities betweeen 1929 and right now. It is indeed food for thought. In any case we will know very soon.....

RJ 00:30 - They would know how to orderly exit positions and hedge themselves on the way up. Just takes cash to do it, and the cash was forthcoming.

Anyone else notice this last move in silver came the same day as the LTMC problem was announced? We've been telling everyone here for months that the big move in silver will dwarf the move in gold. Are we at the edge? Sure wish D.A. was around to get the inside scoop on who was buying this last move.

More on the similarities with 29.
http://members.tripod.com/~crashready/index.html

Greenstone Gold ( RJ..... are these figures correct ? ) ID#428218:

"I reported myself on the weekly Monex PM review the LTMC was reported to have 400 million ounces short."

Initial "rumours" suggested that LTMC was 375 tonnes ( 12 000 000 oz ) gold short....

If the 400 million ounces figure is indeed correct, then it is 200 times the annual production of the largest gold mine in the world, the
MURUNTAU mine in UZBEKISTAN.......

The 400 million ounces is an ASTONISHING figure.....

If this were true........we are not going to the moon, but to the outer bounds............

TIA

G'Day Nick - Steve Kaplan is now at

http://www.goldminingoutlook.com

http://www.cme.com/cgi-bin/gflash.cgi

Muchas gracias Silverbaron. 4 minutes. This is what makes the Kitco family such a great bunch to be with.

Thanks to Jacob's Creek Shiraz Cabernet ( 1997--it never lasts long enough to 'age' in this house ) , I am taking the two rotties on a snake hunting expedition. My family is worried about the big-bad-brown snake in the bushes by the side of the house. I am filling my pockets with one oz. gold nuggets for ammo. Have also got a few 10 oz silver bars ( ( JM-no less ) ) and am prepared for all and sundry. PMs will never fail you in an emergency. If there are no further posts from Nick@C, you will know the reason. I know many of you are rooting for the snake. As my good mate, Doug said, "I shall return!!" BBMMMMMMMMML ( I hope ) .

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/0.html

http://www.quote.com/cgi-bin/jchart-form?genApplet=yes
They have dropped the volume choice.
And extended the minute time frame out to 1050 minutes.

------------------
Alert System Could Show Glitches As Y2K Dawns
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/y2k/TWB19981002S0013

A year 2000 "first alert" system will give up to 17 hours warning on possible disruptions in services, said Sen. Robert Bennett ( R-Utah ) , chairman of the Special Senate Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem, who proposed the system at a hearing on the nation's emergency response system.

The Y2K problem stems from computers reading the two-digit "00" year code as 1900 instead of 2000, which could shut down systems entirely. Billions of lines of code and embedded chips must be fixed prior to the date change in everything from cash registers to nuclear warheads to avoid any glitches.

----

Police consider law and order issues in Y2K assessment
http://www.idg.co.nz/nzweb/b282.html


Aurator@NZ
They're watching you mate.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/ca.html

Please don't kill that brown !!!! take it alive and send it to the IMF .........I'll pay the postage.....in gold, of course !!

Everybody ready for a little fun today ?

http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/98/10/05/timfgnfgn01005.html?1124027

Looks like a coordinated effort in Western Europe ( all now up ) , S&P futures now down by half of previous, precious metals down.

"Play ball... or else"

http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/1998/PR9847.HTM

Globex down, bonds mixed, dollar down, metals down, oil down.

Signals look ragged, almost mixed, although globex seems to have made up it's mind to down. Metals looking weak, particularly gold. Silver seems to be taking advantage of gold and PM downs to accumulate calls.

Will have to check again closer to open.

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON -- Japan's top financial officials told their
American counterparts this weekend that their country's banking
system was acutely short of capital, with the top 19 banks in deeper
trouble than Tokyo has ever before admitted, according to officials
familiar with the discussions.

At a private meeting Saturday, the governor of the Bank of Japan,
Masaru Hayami, told Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Alan
Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, that the capital
supporting those 19 major banks has dwindled to dangerously low levels
in recent months.

The capital reserve levels are now so low that these banks of the world's
second largest economy might be banned from operating internationally "if
the rules were vigorously pursued," said a senior Japanese official, relating
the conversation.

But on Sunday, in a reflection of the enormous confusion surrounding
Japan's financial crisis, other senior Japanese officials disputed Hayami's
presentation and insisted that the reserve levels have not declined to
dangerous levels.

Banks that want to operate globally are required to keep on hand capital
amounting to at least 8 percent of their outstanding loans. Few and fewer
of Japan's banks can meet that standard today. Hayami's remarks suggest
some may fall below the 4 percent minimum for operating within Japan's
borders.

Japan's conflicting explanations came as leaders of the world's major
economies met here for a second day at the annual meetings of the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund to grapple with an economic
crisis that many fear has spun out of control. On Sunday, Rubin again
pressed for changes at the fund and the bank that would improve their
ability to head of crises.

"Strengthening the response to the current crisis and creating a modern
framework for the global markets of the 21st century will not be easy or
quick," Rubin said before the committee that oversees the IMF's
operations.

But many officials here, including James Wolfensohn, president of the
World Bank, argued on Sunday that countries should focus their energies
on the immediate crisis and postpone a broader discussion of remaking
the global financial system.

Rubin's meeting with Japanese officials on Saturday took place in the
ornate private conference room adjacent to his office at the Treasury. The
session also included Japan's finance minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, a
78-year-old former prime minister who has negotiated with the United
States since the U.S. occupation ended nearly a half-century ago.

Later, Hayami discussed the problem publicly, though in less detail, telling
reporters that Japan's major banks were "undercapitalized." He called on
Japan's parliament to inject billions of taxpayer dollars into the banks to
restore them to health, a hugely controversy question within the country.

Bolstering Japan's ravaged banking system is considered by many experts
the single most critical factor in quelling the global financial turmoil that has
rocked markets around the world.

But there are still disputes, inside Japan and beyond its borders, over just
how much trouble the banks are in. Much depends on how the figures are
calculated -- and there are many ways to manipulate the numbers.

Hayami, who runs Japan's independent central bank, appeared to be
painting a bleak picture in the meeting at the Treasury, describing how
banks have been forced to eat into their capital to write off enormous bad
loans in real estate. He used, Japanese officials said later, a narrow
definition of the banks' capital that put their condition in the most perilous
light.

On Sunday night officials of the Ministry of Finance, which has been
accused of greatly mismanaging its regulatory responsibility over the
banks, insisted that Hayami's presentation to Rubin and Greenspan was
deeply flawed. In response to queries on Sunday, they offered an
alternative calculation, based on accounting standards set out by the Bank
of International Settlements, that they said demonstrated that the biggest
Japanese banks largely exceeded the 8 percent standard.

The disagreement seemed to underscore the enormous disarray within the
Japanese government at a time that the country is being portrayed, by
U.S. and European officials, as a major cause of the continuing turmoil.
But it is also possible that some Japanese officials are hoping that the
disclosures with prompt enough foreign pressure to help force parliament
to inject billions of dollars into the banking system.

U.S. officials said that at the meetings on Sunday they were successfully
building support for a proposal by President Clinton to change the
strategy of the IMF, so that it can offer pre-emptive aid to countries that
are fundamentally healthy, but in danger of runs on their currency or their
banking systems because of "contagion" from other striken nations. They
said it would probably be a number of weeks or a few months before the
plan is adapted, however.

Clinton is expected to press for changes in the IMF and an increase in
social spending in a presentation to finance ministers from 22 nations on
Monday evening.

At the same time, Britain, which has supported Clinton's plan, offered a
pointed reminder on Sunday that the U.S. proposal to restructure the fund
would be sharply undercut if Congress failed to approve $18 billion in
money the United States has committed to it.

"The starting point of this is the American government voting the
resources the IMF requires," the British chancellor of the exchequer,
Gordon Brown, said at a press conference on Sunday.

http://nypostonline.com/business/6341.htm

http://www.securitytrader.com/daily/10-02%20XAU%20-%20daily.gif

http://www.securitytrader.com/daily/10-02%20XAU%202.gif

Globex further down. Looks like the Team for the Promotion of Plunge is out early this morning.

This IMHO is worth a re-read, yes indeedy!

Date: Mon Oct 05 1998 00:30
RJ ( ..... Why do humans have two ears? ..... ) ID#410215:
Copyright  1998 RJ/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved

October 5, 1998

Gold Bugs at Last Cheer Their Pet Investment

By TERZAH EWING Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

If gold has been the dog of investments, it's safe to say it is at last having its day. On Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange's Comex division, the near-month October contract settled at $300.50 a troy ounce, up 90 cents, the first close above $300 for a front-month contract since May. The benchmark December contract, which is traded more heavily, settled at $302.80 an ounce, up 70 cents, its second close above $300 in the week. Those moves capped a banner September for the yellow metal. The nadir of gold's 2 1/2-year bear market was reached Aug. 28, when the front-month contract fell to $275.40 an ounce and December gold settled at $277.90 an ounce. Then, in September, the metal's price began to stage a recovery as economic woes in Asia and Russia threatened emerging markets elsewhere, deflation became a real fear and global stock markets began sinking under the weight of the various crises.

Of course, gold's $25 climb since its August lows looks less impressive in the context of its long fall from more than $400 an ounce in early 1996. Central banks, which traditionally hoard the metal, have fueled the decline over that period with selling and lending programs that feed more metal into the market. And a short-lived gold rally in the spring, which coincided with earlier worries over the Asian crisis, fizzled out and went into reverse without taking the metal's price above $320 an ounce.

Another Safe Haven

But this time, even veteran gold bears are starting to change their tune, if only a bit. That is because, they say, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is flirting with bear-market territory; the U.S. dollar is weakening against some world currencies, notably the Japanese yen; and general anxiety about the global economy has investors turning to gold as a safe haven. "For the first time in a long time, we're seeing a modest amount of flight-to-safety buying in this market," said William O'Neill, senior futures strategist at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York.

Ted Arnold, a metals analyst and trader with Merrill in London, who at the end of August described gold as "a dog of an investment" and advised clients to sell into any rallies to $300 an ounce, said last week that his operation bought gold to cover its short positions. "We took the view that the market would easily break through the $300 barrier," he wrote in a report issued Wednesday.

Mr. Arnold cautioned in an interview that the upward move "isn't underpinned by any enormous physical demand" for gold and "there's no wild bull market." And he noted that the market still is weighed down by selling by gold producers, particularly in countries where the gold price is favorable in terms of their weak currencies. That selling, he said, will intensify the higher the price goes, preventing any real gold
takeoff.

But, he said, "there is potential for the price to get to $320. You'd be very silly selling the market short now, unless you're a producer."

Borrowed Gold

Another fear that may be driving buyers into gold has to do with the positions of those who get access to borrowed metal without hedging their risk. None of those positions, some attributed to hedge funds, could be confirmed, as most trading takes place in the secretive and ill-tracked over-the-counter derivatives market.

But some analysts say gold prices long have been held down by a hefty amount of borrowed gold, whose one-month lease rate dipped to a low 0.5% at one point this summer, according to Donald & Co. Securities Inc., which tracks gold-lease rates. Veneroso Associates, a Summit, N.J.-based firm that tracks gold-market activity, estimated there were 8,000 tons of borrowed gold in the world market at the end of 1997. Frank Veneroso, a partner with the firm, thinks that total has fallen a net 100 tons as
holders of short positions have to buy gold to close out their bets and repay the metal, plus interest. That, he says, is another reason gold's price has risen. Available figures appear to back this up: Total open interest, or open trading positions, on the Comex have fallen to 182,156 contracts, from 207,005 contracts on Sept. 1, indicating positions have been closed out. If gold's price rise accelerates, some market participants say, it could squeeze those who still hold short positions, perhaps to a dangerous point if the price of gold really takes off and leaves them unable to close out losing bets.

"If the price rises rapidly, you'll have a red flag drawing attention to the fact that this is a problem," said James Turk, strategic adviser to Midas Fund, which invests in gold and gold stocks.

Hmmmmmmm ..... Everyone here is feeling a crash, but I received some charts from this ( free ) service with some opposing predictions. You can get a copy of the chart by an email request. I guess we'll test this system soon. Description provided says that the predictions are rarely accurate past 5 or 10 days, but the important thing is the overall trend ( in this case - the bias is up )

.............. DJIA SP500
Oct 05th up up
Oct 06th up up
Oct 07th up up
Oct 08th down down
Oct 09th up down
Oct 12th down up
Oct 13th up up
Oct 14th down down
Oct 15th up up
Oct 16th up up
Oct 19th up up

e-mail alela@netverk.com.ar
http://www.netverk.com.ar/~alela/

Did anyone see an ad in the Washington Post on Sunday from
Larry FLynt of Hustler mag about COngressional affairs? I
heard he was offering a $1 Million reward for something?
Sounds like he is a CLinton supporter ( Surprise, Surprise )

October 5, 1998
IMF Is Tempted to Sell Gold Hoard;
Critics Worry It Would Depress Price

BY NICHOLAS BRAY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON -- In all the talk about how to help developing countries hit by Asian economic turmoil, there is one question that seems to many taxpayers in the developed world to beg for an answer.

Why doesn't the International Monetary Fund raise extra money to fund its
rescue efforts by selling more of its gold? After the U.S., with around 8,140 metric tons, the IMF is the world's biggest official owner of gold with slightly more than 3,200 metric tons valued at around $30 billion at current market prices. ( A metric ton is 2,204.62 pounds. ) The bullion is part of assets put up by governments to pay their membership dues, and it is valued at well below market prices in the IMF's accounts. At a time when the IMF is short of funding and the U.S. Congress is holding out against giving it more, tapping its gold hoard could be a way to raise money.

Heart of What Makes Money

"They are really strapped for cash," says Ted Arnold, a metals analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. in London. "I can't believe that in the next five years they won't be auctioning off that gold."

Whether the IMF eventually does take that route will depend on a debate that goes to the heart of what makes money. In recent years, a number of countries including Britain have suggested IMF gold sales to fund debt write-offs for developing countries, only to have others such as Germany hit the notion out of court. Germany is the world's third-largest holder of gold, with just under 3,000 metric tons in its vaults. Worries that IMF sales would further depress the price of a commodity that for years has been trending downward aren't far from the naysayers' minds. Beyond such fears, however, the debate reflects the ambiguity of gold's function
in the international financial system.

Since a 1978 amendment of the IMF's articles of agreement ruled countries
could no longer tie their currencies to it, gold has had no formal monetary role. ( Coinciding with that amendment, the IMF already sold nearly 25 million ounces of gold between 1976 and 1980, equivalent to just under one-sixth of its holdings, at an average price of $246 an ounce, making a profit of $4.64 billion. It handed back another 25 million ounces to members. )

By contrast, gold's use as a store of value that can be tapped in time of need was demonstrated earlier this year, when South Korea appealed to its
citizens to sell their jewelry and other gold holdings in order to help the country out of its bind. Korea's fire sale of more than 200 metric tons of gold scrap depressed prices internationally. But it produced handsome returns in won for many Koreans.

Significant New Chapter

Now, some gold enthusiasts are saying that institutions such as the IMF should hang onto their gold as part of a drive to underpin the shaky world monetary order. Such an approach, if it wins official blessing, would mark a significant new chapter in gold's history. In recent years, official institutions have done more to undermine gold than to support it. Some central banks, including those of Belgium and Argentina, have
been substantial sellers. Others, including the German Bundesbank, have
contributed to gold's price weakness by lending it at low interest rates to banks that sold it as part of a process enabling producers to hedge the value of their future output.

Coupled with weak demand from Asia, such activity was a major cause of
gold-price weakness earlier this year, in spite of sustained demand for jewelry in the U.S. Two weeks after Russia's declaration of a cessation of payments sparked the latest round in the world financial crisis, gold slumped to a 19-year low on Aug. 28 of slightly more than $270.

Since then, prices have risen by around 9% in a rally prompted by talk that Long-Term Capital Management LP and other hedge funds had sold gold short and were having to unwind positions in the face of losses on other markets. At just over $300 an ounce at the end of last week, however, gold is 10% short of last year's average price of $331.29, and way below its 1980 peak of $850. Where gold heads next will depend on investors' analysis of the nature of the current crisis. Until now, rather than worrying about inflation, investors have been gripped by fears of a deflationary spiral in which falling demand leads to falling output and falling prices. In such an environment, it is better to hold cash or high-quality government bonds than a commodity subject to the vagaries of supply and demand.

But the collapse of LTCM could make both private investors and institutions reassess the desirability of low-risk, low-return assets such as gold. During the past few days, says Michael Coulson, an analyst at Banque Paribas SA in London, a series of market developments have revived interest in gold as a safe-harbor instrument. If such a reassessment makes IMF sales seem less likely, it can only help to support the gold price, Mr. Coulson observes. Mr. Coulson says: "The whole atmosphere surrounding gold has changed markedly."

Surprise, surprise...............NOT.

Silverbaron- XAU-T/A
Permit me to inject my interpretation of the long term chart, 'cause that's what I enjoy best.
Please notice the trend line you put in connecting the last two highs. I would have put that
line connecting the top of the move, which would mean no major trend has been broken.
See the down move ending in in '86 and in '92, where in both cases the bottoms were violated,
and then the up move came back into the pattern. This IMHO is bullish, but has to prove itself
further. What I foresee now is a correction say anywhere from 1/3-2/3 of the recent up move.
The smaller the correction will be the better for a strong up move. BUT near term down! My guess
about 65 to 70 range
OK now we wait and see.
Thanks for the charts, if you have any that date back even further please email them to me.
Reify@sitcom.co.il

RJ undoubtedly has much knowledge but perhaps he doesn't see the forest for the trees ...maybe he just doesn't understand gold at all .
CB's dont own copper they do own ( still we think ??? ) GOLD .
Copper is not GOLD it is just a commodity .....which is why us goldbugs believe in it so passionately ....we ( goldbugs ) think that we understand it ..... Time will tell .

Reminder ..my Carolan analysis of gold is still calling for a low on 18th October ( F25 from $103.50 August 1976 ) . As a passionate goldbug
I definitely don't want a high on this day as it really should be the final low IMHO .....so rumours of CB gold sales at this time are acceptable .

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/c0.html

The interesting bit is that counter-arguments to IMF sales are being published. There are definite cracks in the "sell gold" alliance. Away to new flex time at day-job. BBML

but the US stock market will eventually reflect the inescapable logic:

- Asia will not improve until Japan improves
- Japan is getting worse ( Japan Nikkei 225 ^N225 2:03AM 12948.12 -275.57 -2.08% )
- Unless Japan converts overnight into a consumer rather than an export economy ( not possible ) Japan relies on the US as a consumer of Japanes goods to fuel reconvery
- US corporate earnings are falling due to 1 ) lower demand for goods and services worldwide ( effects exporters ) then 2 ) deferred capital spending due to fears of recession ( effects all corporations )
- US consumer confidence is falling due to the "wealth effect" of the stock market
- Lower retails sales means lower earnings for US manufacturers that do not rely on exports and for foreign manufacturers
- Latin Am's future depends on Brazil
- Brazil's debt is $100B on $800B GDP, interest rates at 50%, currency overvalued, capital leaving the country, commodity prices falling, and $90B in debt that must be paid, rescheduled, or defauled on before the end of 1998
- Brazil is in a very precarious prosition
- The US has enormous investments in Latin Am and Brazil

In the 1930s we had protectionism. In the 1990s crisis, the word on everyone's lips is "capital controls." These will have the same effect.

The world recession hits, and capital controls seal it up.

Anyone see a way out of this mess?

-EJ

To ALL

How long can they hang on with all there losses until they have to pay the pipfr.Last week a Bloomberg report said that to-day was the day they would have to start unwinding there position.What is up?????

Your Spiral Calendar prediction hits the peak on this Fibonacci time chart for the XAU......no accident, I suppose.

http://tiger.golden.net/laird/TimeXAU.htm

Pt down hard in Japan & continues to fall......

Any thoughts on when we might see support?

$350, major $ support line appears not to be holding, ditto for 1500 yen.

Trying to figure out whether to hold current long position ( Aug. 99 ) or settle & wait for it to head back up.......

Positives:
*Tiny worldwide supplies.....move of funds into PMs could make Pt fly

Negatives:
*Lower jewelry consumption in Japan
*Lower car sales worldwide

Would it be a huge oversimplification to say that speculative/investment demand must make up for drop in jewelry/automotive demand?

My concern is that Japan, the world's major Pt consumer, is now heading down the tubes.....could that be the reason that the historical $350 support is not holding? Japan has not been this weak in 2 decades.

Any comments??

THC

have a bowl of toasty golden CheeriosTM and after being directed to RJ's post I feel like my Cheerios have been peed in.Well all I can say is remember LIAM NEESON and BARINGS ( sp ) Bank. He may not have been stupid but he was really gambling, he was way out there and I don't think he is the only one.He got caught ...that's all.But you know RJ is probably closer to the facts and reality in terms of golds potential. Although I'm going to continue to RA RA it up cause that's all I can do. GO GOLD! YAAAAA!

A woman panelist on WSW last Friday referred to the recent jump in
the POG as nothing more than a Dead Cat Bounce. This seems to be the
consensus of opinion among the paper crowd. We shall see this week.

Just speculation but .......it now seems to be accepted that LTCM is short 375 tonnes of gold . whereas initially insiders were saying that they were not trading in gold derivatives .
375 tonnes is 12 million futures contracts , open interest does not appear to be large enough for one party to have that many positions ....
To me it looks more likely that they have leased and sold 375 tonnes of physical gold .... just speculation
which CB can be convinced to sell 375 tonnes of physical if this is the case

Globex improveing slightly, bonds mixed, dollar moderately down, metals still down but stabiliziong, oil dow.

Looks so far like the market will open down, but stabilize quickly, perhaps even rise by midmorning. Metals stiil look weak, but not too weak, and silver still in accumulation mode.

interesting chart thanks
18th Oct should be a low , i will need to rethink if it is a high .
After 18th October the brakes on the POG should be off IMHO ....They might well keep a lid on it till then but after that reality of trying to find 375 tonnes of gold might be filtering through to more than one hedge fund ...I hope

There is much rumor mongering that LTCM had a large gold short position. Now I see that some rumors are using other rumors to support their position.

I notice that certain people known to be in the gold bear camp ( Ted Arnold et. al. ) and associated with people known to have dealings with LTCM ( Merrill Lynch and others in the LTCM bail-out crowd ) have recently turned bullish on gold.

What if LTCM DID have a large short position? Would it make sense for them to ballyhoo up the price of gold before covering their short?

What if LTCM DID NOT have a large short position? Would this not be a perfect opportunity for taking out some calls, running up the price on rumor, and then taking an even bigger short position before rumoring the price down again?

As I take it, these guys are masters at rumor and fake news releases.

375 tonnes x 32150.76 Troy Oz/tonne = 12,056,535 Troy Oz, not futures contracts

Enjoy all the good insider information that the salesclerks parrot to us from their bosses. It is helpful... Keep it up.

And that gift keeps getting cheaper! I love it!

So, when is it going to turn?

Right-O

Liam Neeson ..

Bully Beef ..

He must have given up his acting
career to become a trader .. Its
funny how trading gets a hold on
men. ..
You sure that wasnt Jackie Gleason??

That's because sales forecasting models that worked for many companies before do not work now. Expect a steady stream of announcements like this one:

Gm Says September Vehicle Sales 395,541, Off 3.1 Pct From Last Year

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/fc.html

expect the beatings to continue of IMF and others as THEIR policies have ravaged entire countires...they are dirtbags and deserve what they get...

Seems to me if I was a participant in the great gold short lease game I might be buying a little gold on these down ticks. Not enough to put the price up on the day but enough to be covering some of my exposure..

Gollumn I am lost to see how you interpret the gold and silver price action to be indicative of option buying or selling.

Watch the action at the end of the day - if gold really has any strenght it will rise into the close.

October 5, 1998

Russian beer becomes latest victim of crisis

MOSCOW, Oct 5 ( Reuters ) - Two prime ministers, one banking system, several billion dollars and a lot of global investor goodwill have already been swallowed by the Russian crisis. Is beer about to go the same way?

The brewing industry thinks so. Beer is about to come under a state monopoly along with other forms of alcohol, which in Russia means vodka.

A bill changing state regulation of the production and sale of alcohol, to institute the state monopoly, has already cleared the Duma lower house of parliament and is on its way to the upper house and the president.

Beer is big business in Russia. Vladimir Shishin, general director of the Association of the Beer Industry, told a briefing on Friday that Russia's 220 breweries produced around 250 million decalitres of beer last year.

Total consumption was 18 litres per head of population, but Shishin said the potential market was 60 litres.

"You can think of beer as good or bad, but when you consider its place in the budget, you've got to take it very seriously," he said.

He said 10 people in related industries were supported by each employee at Baltika.

"After drinking vodka, people become aggressive," Shelishch said. "After drinking beer, they don't."
http://www.freecartoons.com/ReutersNews/RUSSIA-BEER.html

THC__A -

I too am worried about platinum. The long term support of which I speak is at about $340. Lowest price weve seen in more than a decade has been$329 in 1992 after the entire market bottomed out. Decrease in Japanese Jewelry demand being offset by increase demand in China, according to the JM report.

I am disgusted with platinums performance this year, but the best I can discern is that every single ounce mined this year has a use in industry and industry will use more this year than was produced. This is a rather simple supply/demand argument but one that should hold water.

I have peered into the very bowels of this market and can see direction but up.

Sad to say it wants to test my mettle with some down first.

This does a market make.


Bully Beef -
Sorry about the Cheerios

Acronyms are great for saving space and usually I can translate them, but pog and imho have had me puzzled for some time.

Thanks

POG = Price of Gold
IMHO = In my humble opinion

( With Apologies to Sharp-sighted Earl ) , I still believe that Gold is being held below an important barrier that is at about the $302 mark.

October 5, 1998

Pakistan said delaying foreign debt repayments

KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct 5 ( Reuters ) - Pakistan has technically defaulted on more than $1.0 billion of foreign debt payments because of a hard currency crisis it blames on Western sanctions imposed for its nuclear tests in May, analysts said on Monday.

They said the government was also using grace periods on repayments in excess of a further $1.0 billion on its $30 billion official debt.

"You have over a billion dollar of obligation on which we ( Pakistan ) have technically defaulted," said Anisur Rehman, head of research at French brokers Societe Generale Securities.

He said the payments were due to commercial lenders, to Pakistani private and state-run companies, freight and shipping companies and portfolio investors.

The deadline for repayment of these debts expired during July and September 1998.

"Our estimate is that only oil and gas companies have been unable to repay something like over $400 million to their foreign lenders while other private companies have another $400 million stuck up with the central bank," Rehman said.

Analysts said that by juggling grace periods for its official debt, Pakistan was hoping to squeeze through to the year's end by which time it expects a $1.56-billion IMF credit and outline plans for a debt rescheduling to have been agreed.

Rehman said the default was not because the companies did not have the money but because Pakistan did not want foreign exchange to leave the country during a foreign currency squeeze with few parallels in the nation's independent history.

Pakistan cash foreign exchange reserves were last reported at around $670 million.

According to the World Bank, Pakistan had a total of $2.62 billion worth of private non-guaranteed foreign debt in fiscal 1996/97 ( July-June ) . Current figures were not available.

"It's a matter for four to six weeks ( before we get the IMF loan ) . The IMF will go to its board by end November-early December. In the meantime we are postponing ( repayments ) ," the official said.
http://www.freecartoons.com/ReutersNews/PAKISTAN-DEBT.html

At:

http://www.MONEX.com/mt.html

Or perhaps silver was running through the back of my mind. The correct figure is 4 million ounces. This is not carved in stone, but the LTCM short position is substantial.

OK

It could be that the real money maker in the leasing of gold or silver is not the leasing and reselling of the metal, but rather using the lease/sale transactions on the underlying commodity to manipulate the purchase or sale of options, or to force the options to become worthless at expiration.

Thanks RJ!

Note that we are speeding recklessly as we speak right for the support at $340.....something tells me it will not hold......

If its any consolation my local broker ( Osaka ) keeps telling me its a buy and the locals are buying.....but as long as the price is going down at best I will only hold my current position......I am tempted to sell, but the rationale of "it's a historical low" keeps me holding....at the same time, a powerful bust through the "historical low" would leave us with "bluesky downside", would it not??

My mind loves the long story, my heart fears the current market direction.....

Thanks again,

THC

PS: What is your take on silver? Holding long, & feeling good about it...

Open:300.80
High:301.80
Low:300.30

Current:301.20

Kitco will be slow today. The "backup thingy is already hanging up.

This "piece was
written by Perspectives and that the newsletter can be received for free by
sending an email request to perspectives@shaw.wave.ca."


"Commentary
I recall a conversation I had with a broker friend a little over a year
ago. He was marvelling at the returns of the bank stocks. And the utility
stocks. And the industrial companies. It was hard to believe that these
normally conservative, boring, hold till you die type stocks were giving
returns normally reserved for the high growth small cap stocks. What was
happening? Was the sky no longer blue?

It seemed we were not in Kansas anymore. Never never land became reality, a
place where multi-billion dollar bank stocks could move 50% in less than a
year.

Well, it may be that the paranormal was a bit of dream. Over the past
months, the unravelling of the large caps has taken the conservative stocks
back to earnings multiple more in line with historic levels. Banks stocks
are off more than half their 52 week highs. Those who died with bank stocks
in their portfolio may be rolling over in their graves.

Speculative stock investors have been punished more than any other during
the appreciation of the normally boring large cap issues. While declining
commodity prices and mining scams are largely responsible for the poor
performance of spec stocks, the amazing performance of large caps can not
be ignored either. Why take the risk of the small caps when the large cap
stocks deliver higher returns for seemingly lower returns.

You see, there is a perception that risk is defined by market cap. The
higher the market cap, the less the risk. Bigger companies with real assets
and real earnings are less risky because they are bigger and more stable
companies.

We submit that risk is dependant on how much speculation has been priced
into a stock. A stock that is in a stable sideways trading range near all
time lows is less risky than one which has increased 100% in a short time
period. No matter what price the stock, risk is related to market activity.

Many spec stocks are trading below intrinsic values, some with a market cap
less than their cash in the bank. Companies with hundreds of thousands of
ounces of gold in the ground trade at their cash value. Where is the risk
in a company that can divest its assets and pay the investor a dividend of
more than what the market cap of the stock is?

This is not to say that we think speculative stocks will rally higher
immediately and should be bought in mass quantity. Perception and market
psychology is all that matters for the trader, and while those things are
swinging in the speculatives stock investor's favour, the change is
gradual. Smart investors should slowly consider and accumulate the value
plays in speculative stocks. In a year from now, the world could be a very
different place.

Look, the sky is turning blue again.

Enough Said."
Certainly the comment regarding the large caps is correct. ( Hindsight? ) Now will the rosy future be correct for the juniours and specs. Time.

"My mind loves the long story, my heart fears the current market direction....."

You said it better than I could. But I will buy this morning.

As for silver, I like it. Tightness in the market is beginning to show.

Gotta go trade some..

OK

GLOBEX turning more strongly down as market open nears.
Bonds turning more up.
Dollar turning more down.
Metals down, silver resumes normal price action now that NY is open.
Oil down.

Could you jibble the 'KITCO" thingy... ( or the other way round )

Thanks Bart...now can you make the POG move up quickly and largely??

cheers...

The new German's resolve is already weakening.

Well, gold is a large market. Silver is a thin market. Gold is like the tide. It goes up and down and there is little that anyone can do to influence it by throwing cash around ( unless you are a central bank or someone with REALLY big bucks ) .

Silver on the other hand is very easy to manipulate with just a few millions of dollars. To move a couple of million ounces into or out of the COMEX warehouse by buying or selling physical takes only about ten million bucks or so.

Left to it's own devices silver future prices follow along with gold future prices except with an alpha of about two to one. Right now, as I look at December gold I see it's down about .6 %, so I would expect December silver to be down about 1.2 % or thereabouts. December silver is actually down only .7%.

This could be only a minor price fluctuation and by itself doesn't mean much. If it persists, however, one begins to suspect that there is more positive buying being done in silver than one can account for by the movement in gold. Depending on the time of day ( overnight market or day market ) , how the spot prices are moving, and other signs one can gain a "feel" for whether an excess of calls or puts are being gathered before a price move.

Last week silver looked weak, and sure enough, later it dropped. Aweak or two before the opposite case was true. Now it looks like it's gathering for a move up. We shall see.

Now, where's the latest lease rate info?

U.S. citizen includes enduring the threat of gold confiscation.
Like the price of US Eagles, but why are they minted if subject
to confiscation?
Premium on numismatics seems too high, so round & round go i.
Already have US silver coinage.
How to get into some very pretty gold??? Sigh ( :^ ( (

Dec Gold $300.40

As an internet stock short ( of late ) . I considered the purchase of puts, but checking on the behavior of these, I found that the popular puts and calls on ALL heavilly traded low float stocks expire worthless. The growth of option trading led investment banks to sell puts and calls for the purpose of income generation, using the accumulated income to manipulate the price of the underlying securities to minimize option value at expiration. The logic is obvious - the sale of at the money calls and puts in rough balance ( with some hedgeing through positions in the underlying security ) is the greatest source of income if your position allows you to manipulate the price to your advantage. Stocks with high turnover of the float are the main source for this income, as is the case with thinly traded commodities.

For the best example see trading in YHOO stock and options. The SEP 90 puts and calls were the most heavilly owned, by far, and the stock ended tripple witching for SEP at - you guessed it, 90 1/2. making the most popular puts worthless and providing the innocent investor a loss on the calls.

The gold market is similarly controlled to allow the investment bankers to sell options.

"Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss." ---Ralph Waldo Emerson

http://www.angelfire.com/or/truthfinder/index20.html

FWIW Due turning point this week, Oct.6/7.Gold won't run without Plat.
Will take position ,expecting 450/330 ,120 spread.SGOLY had a
interesting triple bottom breakout.Wheat/Corn spread money in bank.
Have a nice day.

http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19981004/V000524-100498-idx.html

I see big demand soon.

Tom

O'tay...I agree...watch the week of the 16th...the anti-Clintler candle burns brightly here at Cuervo Central...the Cuervo Shaman is working overtime...next up on the Cuervo Platter...the dog defiler Camdesuss...

Dec Gold $301.70
Dec DJ -127
Dec SP -15
Dec Dollar -.32

I'm looking for the online article on GPS's in the 12th Oct issue
tai


Good articles
http://www.angelfire.com/mn/inforest/grassroots.html#tools

From Reify's endless supply of light hearted humour.
"Todays' Stock Market Report

Helium was up, feathers were down. Paper was stationary.
Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading. Knives were up
sharply.
Cows steered into a bull market. Pencils lost a few points.
Hiking equipment was trailing.
Elevators rose, while escalators continued their slow decline.
Weights were up in heavy trading.
Light switches were off.
Mining equipment hit rock bottom. Diapers remain unchanged.
Shipping lines stayed at an even keel.
The market for raisins dried up.
Coca Cola fizzled.
Caterpillar stock inched up a bit.
Sun peaked at midday.
Balloon prices were inflated.
Scott Tissue touched a new bottom.
And batteries exploded in an attempt to recharge the market."

Is going to be VERY interesting this week!

Thanks for the replies. Both had merit and will be ingested into the data bank. Steve in TO - saw your reply about bonds issue. You are correct, I should have been more careful. There are sharks in the surf.

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop."
--- Lewis Carrol, from Alice in Wonderland.

Try to send short messages...it helps...

based on commodies, stocks, dollar...not down 1.50

struggle to keep the market above 996

struggle to keep the market above 996

http://www.bloomberg.com/feature.html


uh-oh. finger getting really close to the "purchase bond puts" shiny red trigger button.

help!

If you want to read up on why all the bonds in the world except for US treasuries are tanking you can go to Orlin Grabbe's homepage ( http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ ) ignore the ridiculous P.J. Gladnick cartoon at the top : ) and scroll down to the article titled: "Ill Winds from Abroad Slam Bond Markets."

- Steve

30 minutes since an update?

Ahhh, Good Morning from Arizona!

Dec. futures:
DJ -172
S&P -25
Dollar -.41
Gold $301.50

I agree Bill. It seems to me something fishy is going on today. Perhaps this suppression on the price of gold today will translate into a price explosion later on in the week or next.
Doesn't today's drop in POG kind of follow the prediction made by the Privateer Gold Commentary which Silverbaron brought to our attention this weekend? It basically said expect a counter attack on the price of gold this week. If the powers to be are unable to cause a signifigant drop in the POG this week, then this may be an indication that they have lost control of their monetary and currency stabilzationl policies and gold could be in for a good rally.
We'll just have to see what unfolds this week.

Regards

Rolly

The full moon happens tonight!

More precisely, at 20:13 UTC= 4:13pm EST, already the Monday trading day is over in Japan and they tanked below 13,000, almost a day in advance of the FM. Wonder what'll happen here today & tomorrow . . .

Steve

UPI:

The spot price of gold bullion is lower ( Monday ) in light trading in

early North American dealings on the Comex.

Analysts said the yellow metal came under pressure on comments from

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown that the International

Monetary Fund is considering selling part of its 103 million ounces of

gold reserves in order to help fund a rescue package for Brazil.

On the metals markets, in early trading on New York's Comex, a 100-

troy-ounce gold futures contract for October delivery opened at $298.80,

off $1.70 from Friday's close.

October 5, 1998

Toronto stocks set to dip on IMF 2

TORONTO, Oct 5 ( Reuters ) - Toronto stocks were set to dip on Monday on investor disappointment that meetings of policymakers from all over the world in Washington last weekend failed to yield solutions for the global economic turmoil.

Toronto slipped to a new 52-week low of 5415.18 points after the opening but then rebounded, perked up by the continued rally in Canada's closely watched gold shares as the battered sector enjoyed improved market sentiment.

Gold prices lost some of last week's luster on Monday. The yellow metal drifted below US$300 an ounce as European markets performed a little better than anticipated, calling a halt to the rush of safe-haven buying triggered by volatile equities last week.
http://www.freecartoons.com/ReutersNews/TORONTO-STOCKS-SET-TO.html

consultants to some financial company...although the reasoning escapes me as his track record is abysmal...contacts are contacts I guess...

.

October 5, 1998

Canada boosts reserves in September

OTTAWA ( CP ) -- Canada boosted its international reserves in September by $1.578 billion US, the Finance Department announced today.

The country borrowed $1.824 billion, gained $62 million from sales of gold, earned $98 million on investments, earned $238 million from revaluation and spent $644 million, including a $17-million loan to Thailand.

All figures are in U.S. dollars.

Total reserves tallied this way: $13.251 billion in U.S. dollars; $3.143 billion in other foreign currencies; $123 million in gold; $1.070 billion in special drawing rights; $1.956 billion in the reserve position in the International Monetary Fund, the department said.

In August by comparison the Bank of Canada spent about $5.8 billion defending the Canadian dollar. Government operations decreased reserves by $5.824 billion in that month, compared with about $627 million in September.

Are we to take seriously Glitch Boy Clintlerthe American malignancyI think nothe has certainly become a laughing stock creating a soup not fit to be consumed by bad clownsand the G ( greedy seven ) 7 are the group he will speak toand say whatthat he the reformed wants to reform themNOT!

from Yahoos currency news...
"Stark told a news conference in response to a question as to whether
gold sales were again being considered to provide the IMF with additional funding: ``Gold sales, or gold pawning, has not been an issue here.''
The idea of IMF gold sales was raised about two years ago as a way to raise funds to help offer relief to the world's poorest nations. The sale was blocked by a minority of IMF members led by Germany, which has strongly opposed gold sales."

Gollum: You pointed to this relationship last week and suggested that a one % loss in the USD value would start a strong movement away from US Bonds among foreign speculators. that would make bonds cheaper ( and interest rates higher. ) I found your considerations very important.

Within the last three months the USD lost relative to the Euro-block currencies about 12%. The dollar is still falling, little by little, almost every day. Therefore the momentum should turn into the direction which you pointed out. The perspective of lower interest rates has also an additional effect to encourage a flight from the USD into Euro currencies. Even though, that counteracts the perspective of lower bond prices.

Ref: manipulation of gold and silver prices

As far as the manipulation of gold and silver prices is concerned I'm looking in the meantime for explanations besides the usual ones being offered. Wouldn't it "make sense" for hedge funds like LTCM to sell uncovered calls and to finance shorts with the proceeds coming from these sellings? When they are able to do just that on a large enough scale, at least for silver they can influence the market price.

I tend to believe that the manipulation of the gold price on the COMEX market is also not such a big deal. Because what influences the price is just the net balance between buys and sales. That's not such a big deal every day. The LBMA deals, that's where the large gold quantities are traded, anyhow do not orient on the COMEX and negotiate their own prices.

These types of manipulation can only be broken by an increased physical demand. The paper has to be forced to follow the unavailability of physical metal. This point is near but not quite reached yet.

Looks like Bob Pisani's Worry Meter is stuck in Overload. Dow off 1%, Nasdaq off 4%. Just saw Dow 7666.26.

CSCO and LU took big hits due to charges of 'splitting up the networking market and taking over...' If the Internets are taking a hit, whither the general market????

Report: Reno Questioned U.S. Raids

NEW YORK ( AP )  The White House ignored Attorney General Janet Reno when she questioned whether evidence linking Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden to the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa was strong enough to justify retaliatory attacks, The New Yorker magazine reported.

The magazine also said in its Oct. 12 edition, due on newsstands today, that the White House kept planning for raids on suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan so secret that four members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and FBI Director Louis Freeh were bypassed entirely.

The Aug. 20 Tomahawk missile strikes hit bin Laden's purported terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan. President Clinton said the Khartoum raid was justified because evidence of a nerve gas component had been found at the plant.

The New Yorker piece, by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, said Reno believed that the evidence tying bin Laden to the embassy attacks did not meet the ``Tripoli standard,'' a gauge used to justify the 1986 bombing of Libya in retaliation for actions by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Chris Watney, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said she could not comment on ``internal security deliberations.'' A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment to The Associated Press on Sunday.

The article also said the Clinton White House consulted the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, on the raid plans but instructed him ``not to brief the three generals and one admiral who run the nation's armed forces, nor to consult with experts in the Defense Intelligence Agency.''

So ``the four men who know more about the use of force than anyone in the White House'' were kept out of the planning loop and learned of the plan one day before it was carried out, the article said.

``There is ... widespread belief that senior officials of the White House misrepresented and overdramatized evidence suggesting that the Tomahawk raids had prevented further terrorist attacks,'' Hersh writes.

``The lack of trust shown toward the Clinton White House by the military and intelligence communities goes well beyond the usual bureaucratic backbiting over a failed military action, and is far more corrosive.''

Freeh was excluded, Hersh writes, even though his agency had actively investigated the events that precipitated the raids  the Aug. 7 bombings of the embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Saalam, Tanzania, that killed 12 Americans and more than 250 Africans.

The article said Freeh and many of his top aides believe the agency was left out because President Clinton ``questions his political loyalty.''

The FBI did not return a call seeking comment.

David Leavey, spokesman for the National Security Council, said, ``We feel confident in the evidence that shows bin Laden association with Al Shifa and fully justifies the action the president ordered on Aug. 20.''

Loading the boat on GSR and TVX. Tried to buy 10,000 GSR @1 7/8 ( all-or-none ) this AM. Nobody selling that much for that price. Anybody who says they're selling a lot of gold now is flat out LYING! "Oh Please Mr. Central Banker, don't throw me into that GOLDEN BRIAR PATCH!"

Don't forget to answer my question of the other day when you get a chance, thanks.

Bonds reached yet another all-times high today. ( Dec bonds above 132.00!!! )

8 months ago, bonds were around 118.00.

People who invested in bonds around March and April of this year, have been part of one of the most amazing bull market of the board this year.

What are your friends thinking of this huge move Farfel?

Date: Tue Mar 03 1998 22:03
farfel ( @DONALD...YOU SAY DEFLATION, FRIEDMAN SAYS INFLATION, AND I SAY... ) ID#28585:
NEO-STAGFLATION....

I warned many friends to avoid this Wall Street propagandistic manipulation...in fact, I went down on my knees with some of them and BEGGED THEM not to place any monies in bonds. I categorically predicted the current bearish scenario now unfolding in the bond market; it will only exacerbate as the TORRENT of newly printed money ( printed in the aftermath of the October crash in order to maintain liquidity ) begins to hammer bonds even further over the short-term..

Date: Sat Oct 03 1998 19:18
PH in LA ( ) ID#225408:
Copyright  1998 PH in LA/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved

REALISTIC:

I sincerely hope you spend a little time congratulating yourself on what is obviously a clever way of expressing yourself. Because fortunately, these reposts are the actual truth. Instead of phony hypocritical deceptive lying of *Fspot and myself...., they demonstrate the perspective of your thought...the utter truth. As opposed to the utter dearth of imaginitive thought that I myself express when I fail to EVER give any original information or perspective on anything market related.

In fact, in this real world, most of us knee jerk liberal Clinton and Farfel defenders, do think one thing one day and the same thing the next....regardless of evidence to the contrary.

This is an inevitable part being subhuman and of not seeking truth. Your own obvious enjoyment in wallowing in honesty and facts is pleasant to behold. And it is whining by me to constantly assert, "on such and such a day, you said so and so, and...now you say blah, blah, blah...Can you please explain and prove and oh you're attacinbg my hero's again?"

It can only be termed a severely limited mind that demonstrates an inability to comprehend and/or accept one of the most fundamental tenents of the human condition: Facts matter! Words matter! What one thinks in all sincerity one moment has little to so with what Spinmesitering Propagandists like *Fspot and *Puetz pretend to claim they think in all sincerity another.

Without going into too much detail, a myriad of changes are constantly swirling around in each of our own personal environments, and to some extent they cannot help but define and redefine our all-too-human existence. But then, most of us understand what Robert de Niro's character in the movie The Deerhunter said to another whining weakling: "That was then! This is now!" Of course in the case of my failed Guru's, such intellectual honesty doesn't exist.

Why not consider working up some stronger material? Like the posts I always make on my own market perspective? Ooops, I forgot...I never make any..just parrot what my Guru's and liberal Govt. daddies say.

You may recall ( if it was not before your time ) what Walter Pirsig says in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, "The real motorcycle you're working on is the cycle you call yourself."

Think about it! I don't!

*******WARNING*******
These observations will be reposted as a reminder to REALISTIC to ignore the demented ramblings of PH, whenever one of his nuisance posts is observed.

PS. REALISTIC: Don't be too dis heartened by anything LGB says. He doesn't seem to be able to recognize an intelligent comment from me when he sees one. Ooops, maybe he never HAS seen one!

PH in LA

Looks like that a hot one.

Re:GSR....I got me some too...good luck..

Check this one out - http://www.sightings.com/political/popwergrab.htm

looking for 950-970 as possible bottom.

Just to put in my 2 cents. I spoke to my friend at LTCM. I asked once again ( 4th time ) about the gold rumors. He said he's heard them also and doesn't know where there originating from. He said this was actully bought up by a co-worker last week when they met with the partners ( 1st since this whole fiasco started ) . Since my friend is in a position to know what trades are being made and what they hold. Since I'm a gold bug and a stock bear I would like the short covering to be true but it ain't so. That's not to say other funds are not short however.

For a long time ( years ) the carry trades ( yen, gold,etc ) were profitable because of high real US interest rates due in part to the rising US dollar.

That is no longer the case.

There are still, however, profits to be made by playing the physical market agains the paper ( options ) market fo the player who is big enough to be able to sway prices.

Sometimes "big enough" means having enough cash, sometimes it means having enough clients to influence who have enough cash, and sometimes it means having access to the media to put out carefully composed hard to prove/disprove rumors and news items.

We'll be seeing even more of that now.

Got any specific US long bond short strategies/strikes/month/symbols for options?

Thanks,


HB

Are you the same as your namesake at Avid?

If so, please acknowledge over there!

Bob in DC

Is our Government brilliant or what? "...gained $62 million from sales of gold, earned $98
million on investments, earned $238 million from revaluation and spent $644 million, including
a $17-million loan to Thailand." ( Sells $62 million of OUR Gold and then promptly lends $17 million to Thailand! - What? )

All figures are in U.S. dollars.

Total reserves tallied this way: $13.251 billion in U.S. dollars; $3.143 billion in other foreign
currencies; $123 million in gold"
( $16.4 Billion in reserve currencies and only $124 Million in Gold - about 3/4 of a penny for every dollar! What???? )

Have to admit it - That is 1984 stuff! America the Free - Watch Out!

gold down -3.80/299.00

.

.

To me, when I listen to the arguments made by the Gold Council ( just now on CNBC ) , they seem to weak and shallow ones --for why gold should rise.
They're never convincing.

Highhopes

could someone spell out gsr and tell me where it trades. there is a gsr that trades in canada for .10. thanks

and I can say this...they have not got a clue...the billions that have been invested in them by the gold companies has been a calamitous to say the least...yup...

Metal comments from this morning at Hightower Reports:

GOLD: Gold attempted to hold above critical breakout up points in the overnight trade but is seeing some producer or hedge selling. Reports overnight were that supply in gold is tightening because of developments in the loan/lease market and because of general increases in demand due to credit risks rising. There is also some flight to quality buying of gold but that can't be too great yet given the minor reaction thus far in gold. Unless the market gets that spec interest it might have trouble taking out the key resistance of 306 to 310. Taking out resistance could ignite another $10 rally to 320. Traders lucky enough to buy gold back at 300 to 302 should attempt to sit on a long gold until this crisis is solved or gets out of hand. We think ultimate risk could be as little as $10 down to $290.

SILVER: The silver picked an unfortunate time to add a million ounces to Comex stocks as this week could be a proving zone for all metals. The poor close last week makes it appear silver is headed back to 500 and maybe even 495. Unless the stock market really comes apart or really recovers the silver might be locked in the range. For Gold something bad has to happen in stocks but for silver to rally stocks have to recover.

PLATINUM: Another possible downside breakout day with the only consolation being a huge increase in volume and open interest since January platinum made a new low for the move on September 23rd. Therefore, 352.5 becomes a critical pivot point for platinum. Like silver, platinum needs a positive resolution to the current economic mess.

http://www.wwmagic.com/haphov/links.html

http://www.quote.com/cgi-bin/jchart-form?genApplet=yes
Now has a great set of indicators.

Dow sell-off coming?

7/24/98
MS 61 Saints $475 today $500
MS 61 Libs $475 today $525
MS 62 Saints $485 today $535
MS 62 Libs $495 today $550
MS 63 Saints $485 today $575
MS 63 Libs $565 today $695
MS 64 Saints $550 today $700
MS 64 Libs $975 today $1175

FINANCIAL PEARL HARBOR

I THINK THE US/BOND MKT. WILL BE RIPE FOR THE ABOVE COME 12/07/1998 AND THE TREASURES WILL BECOME 30 YEAR BONDS.

JUST A THOUGHT

GSR is Golden Star Resourses. Buy some. I have a bunch!Good luck!!

FINANCIAL PEARL HARBOR

I THINK THE US/BOND MKT. WILL BE RIPE FOR THE ABOVE COME 12/07/1998 AND THE TREASURES WILL BECOME 30 YEAR BONDS.

JUST A THOUGHT

The full moon ( which rules silver ) is 1600:12 minutes ( this p.m. ) . Per the Farmer's Almanac: The moon stands neer Saturn on the 7th and Mars on the 16th. Saturn ( which rules mining, rock ) is now at its brightest since 1989 and its highest since 1979. It reaches an excellent opposition ( when it is the closest and most brilliant of the year ) on the 23rd. The current favorable conditions are due to the fact that its rings are less edgewise, its distance to earth is just 771 million miles, and it is occupying a more notherly perch on the zodiac, in the constellation ( they have ) Pisces.

Place a glass of water, beverage, fruit or even a silver coin, on a window sill under the full moon to capture "moon shine," according to ancient Hindu tradition. By morning the "soma" generating light of the moon is for your enjoyment, health, wisdom and the multiplication of wealth. Keep the moon over your right shoulder if you make a contract, purchase or make the sale of goods to gain the most profit.

Was a brilliant piece. Helpful indeed for those of us trying to make our way through the current minefield of changing world economic conditions by looking at the "forest" rather than single minded focus on a single tree.

"THE ( SE ) worldwide movers and shakers ( aren't ) simpletons who could not find their way out of a few simple trades...They did not accidentally fall to the top of international finance... ( and ) these skills and traits that gained their lofty positions, would also serve well in time of moderate crisis."

RJ:
In deference to your learned and professional remarks, and your well-earned reputation for acumen in these matters, let us grant your premise above. In addition to not being simpletons, let us further grant that any accident of birth to moneyed, privileged social status played no part in their "fall to the top of international finance" either. Let's assume they are smart, well-trained professionals; even with a touch of genius to assist them in their defiance of the international laws of gravity.

In return, please explain in your most simple, non-professional terms, how a position of this magnitude ( 375 tons of shorted gold ) can be unwound ( which is the stated purpose in bailing out LTCM ) without forcing prices up. In that explanation, please feel free to include the effect of the alleged curtailment of Central Bank leasing that rising lease rates presently imply; also keeping in mind your own reports of very high demand for bullion coins from the public in the physical gold market. Falling interest rates in the US, theoretically taking some of the shine off the gold-carry trade as those interest rates fall further would also appear to merit attention in such an explanation, as would the fact that the POG has recently risen from $275 to $300. It would also be interesting, if you could bear in mind the effect all of the above would have on other players ( such as Merrill--one of the principles in the bail-out team ) as their access to cash dries up with their commitment to the huge size of this bailout. Don't forget that other funds, whose managers have likely paralleled LTCM's strategies may soon be declaring similar positions, further compressing available cash as the Fed encourages this blatant attempt to keep the system's well-propped and trembling underpinnings from collapse.

In return for whatever effort the answering of all these unprofessional, even simple-minded questions might imply on your part, I will gladly offer, for what it's worth, answers to any questions I can offer concerning music and/or the music business that I am have/been involved in professionally here in Los Angeles ( or anywhere else ) .

And while I have your attention, would you mind expanding on your remark: "I rarely visit Club USA because I come to some very different conclusions using the same set of facts." What are some of these "very different conclusions" you have reached? If you lack confidence in the size and sophistication of their audience, would you consider enumerating here, for us, some of the other differing conclusions the enjoyment of so many "ears" here leads you to? I'm sure that "other" audience ( over there ) would enjoy and even benefit from reposts to that forum of your different conclusions.

Im in there too. It was one on the FEW stocks of any kind actually up today!
Looks like Puetz may be proven right. This market really looks like a disaster looking for a permanent home. I really hope it doesn't take the Gold stocks down with it as in 87, thats my only fear......

NASDAQ down over 90 points! Recovering a little now. Just about everything is being sold today. Joke of the day: 30 Year Bondo ( Safe haven my ascii! ) G3 ( Gold, Guns, Grub ) Let's Go Shopping!

09:49pst Kitcomm.com disappeared

http://www.cairns.net.au/~sharefin/Charts/Tick.jpg

Doesn't look to good.
Just started it's down cycle.

Watch the paper burn.

Criimi Mae files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
ROCKVILLE, Md., Oct 5 ( Reuters ) - Full service mortgage company Criimi Mae Inc. said Monday it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because of recent market turmoil.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/0s.html

Check it out: ) Financial companies are downgrading each other: http://biz.yahoo.com/c/u.html#u

I would suggest everyone should review Jeil's ASA graph. It looks like today is falling right in line. NOT a good sign for GOLD!

http://biz.yahoo.com/c/u.html#u

Been close to $20.00 a share has been able to survive in this crazy
market has 11 million in cash, and no debt...what can you do?

To all ..
If you recall .. a while back I posted a bearish
forecast for platinum .. things continue to get worse.
Platinum is a a protracted wave 5 .. It may stop
where it is ( 340-342 ) .. It may continue falling to
around 310... that unhappy event would transpire
somewhere around the end of October.

Dec. contracts:Gold 299.70,DJ-222,Dollar-.62,s&p-35

Out of drooy @3 1/2 from 2, earlier run from 2 1/4 to 3 1/4.

They're getting better.

The IMF may sell gold to help Brazil. And what about the rest of the world's markets that are poised to go off a cliff?

Monday October 5 12:03 PM EDT
...about overhauling "global financial architecture"...they'll never get it and all the while the debt burden will slay their economies and pump gold ever higher.


World Finance Overhaul Urged

By HARRY DUNPHY Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON ( AP ) _ A 22-nation group seeking to prevent future global currency crises urged greater openness by all countries, tougher
banking regulations and consideration of making investors pay for their own mistakes.

The recommendations of the U.S.-convened group, included in three separate reports, will be reviewed at an international conference later
today attended by President Clinton.

``The international financial crisis that began in Asia and has now spread to other continents lends urgency to efforts to strengthen the
architecture of the international financial system,'' the working group said in seeking rapid implementation of the proposals.

The working group focused on reforms in the areas of banking regulation, greater openness in disclosure of economic data by countries and
ways to prevent future crises by insuring that the private sector faces greater risks of suffering losses.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ap/financial/story.html?s=v/ap/19981005/bs/economic_crisis_3.html

Monday October 5 8:48 AM EDT

World Powers Disagree on Crisis Fix

By HARRY DUNPHY Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON ( AP ) _ The world's major economic powers strongly agreed they face a deepening financial crisis, but two days of
discussion failed to resolve how to contain the problem.

President Clinton, who has called the situation the worst threat to the global economy in 50 years, planned to join the debate today at a
special conference of 22 rich and developing countries convened at his invitation.

His administration was trying to demonstrate U.S. resolve to calm turbulent markets at home and abroad even though there is no clear
agreement among the rich nations on what to do to restore stability.

The initial reaction in Asian markets was not good, with Tokyo stocks dropping sharply at the beginning of trading today.

The policy-making body of the International Monetary Fund said Sunday night that the global economic outlook has ``worsened
considerably,'' but its discussions gave no clear sign that members had resolved disagreements over how to halt the crisis.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ap/financial/story.html?s=v/ap/19981005/bs/financial_crisis_21.html

Your friend at LTCM would not tell anyone of the holdings for one reason and one reason only....To reveal their holdings would give the sharks amunition......The program to help insiders unwind seems to be working....If they are short gold with the price dropping $3.50 presently is a great opportunity for them to unwind....This scenario will continue for some time until they unload their positions. IMHO.

Best regards,

Pete

Monday October 5, 12:48 pm Eastern Time
Note: this article has a followup with more information.

Stock sales,G7 reaction boost US Treasuries midday

NEW YORK, Oct 5 ( Reuters ) - U.S. Treasuries rocketed higher on Monday morning, spurred
on by faltering global equities and disappointment over the weekend meeting of the world's top
financial officials, participants said.

At noon EDT/1600 GMT, the bellwether 30-year bond stood 1-11/32 higher at 111-21/32 to yield
a record-low 4.76 percent.

In yield terms, shorter issues rallied even more strongly. Two-year notes were up 7/32 at 100-27/32, yielding 4.05 percent. And five-year
notes cracked the 4.00-percent barrier for the first time since late 1963.

``We've had slightly more flight to quality,'' said a head trader at a primary dealership. He pointed out that volume had been quite light all
morning, with GovPX registering turnover of $30.4 billion by noon, 17.4-percent below average when compared with fourth-quarter
Mondays in 1997.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/1i.html

October 5, 1998

Powers agree economic crisis deepening,disagree on remedies; markets fall

WASHINGTON ( AP-CP ) --

...As black limousines glided by IMF headquarters two blocks from the White House, some 200 protesters waving banners and shouting slogans called for the lending agency to be abolished and demanded debt relief for the world's poorest nations.
http://www.freecartoons.com/BizTicker/CANOE-wire.Economic-Crisis.html

They called it stormy Monday,
but Tuesday was just as bad.

Lord, Wednesday it was worse,
and Thursday was oh so sad.

But the evil ... the evil flew on Friday.
There was no money left to play ......

Lord have mercy ... Lord have mercy on us all.

Everybody and all his in-laws is selling everything they have, stocks, gold, silver, family heirlooms, etc. to buy bonds today.

Once the turn comes....

thanks: looked it up on stockwatch. looks as good as any i know. thnaks again.

Scary stuff, and go it will in due course.

Tom

for TsClaw ..
Woops .. oddly enough I see ASA UP a quarter .. do
I need glasses .. do jeil's charts show this little
UP wiggle ?? .. and do you still believe gold in
rands has topped out ??

For Ph in La ..
IF LTC has got umteen tons of gold shorted and has
to "unwind" .. translate "buy" then gold must go up.
For ONCE I agree with something that you have said.
..

for BUgal ..
I like to look at the trees .. stuff the forest.

to DDeep people ..
Sold off ALMOST all DD options today .. hee hee hit top
on that one. Also sold some randfontein .. and bought
some .. guess what ... RANGOLD !!!!! ( NAV about a buck
to $1.10 my way )

Don't ya know hedge fund managers have a sick feeling about now. Wandering if they can learn to drive a nail or if a shovel will fit their hand. This old diemaker loves it.

Will we see gold higher than plat soon? I say yes

What does NASB mean in your context? Thx in adv.

That's from LGB referring to ANOTHER...not as before...the gold market, that is. ASB...is as before, i.e., losing your a** with gold going down and down.

Tom

if IFM raises extra money ( to help economies in dire straights - and makes them look good in the eyes of the world ) by selling gold, POG goes down, short sellers can cover - , giving a helping hand to hedge funds and other buddies,------and than, buys Gold back when it is much cheaper , ( look how clever they are ) , the only ones getting hurt are small investors ( squash these bugs ) , ................
hm , what would hold them back???????.....

FWIW

l_b

Large private holders of gold would move to buy the cheap gold before IMF, no?....Anytime there is a bargain, there are many buyers. Gold is now a bargain, make no mistake.

I suspect a few of them ( hedge fund mgr's. ) could work, but my guess is that the only thing they're holding right now is a cup...of strong drink. And when the strong drink runs out, they will probably use it for begging like the rest of the homeless.

CHSE FUT OCT98 167.300B +5

CHSE FUT OCT98 167.300B +5

I have buyer out of Japan. Wants to purchase silver coins in 10,000 lots.1: Would like to know which coins are the best to purchase? He wants to take delivery, is that a good idea? 2: Whom should I contact and what is the commission %? 3: Gold coins; which are the best to purchase and from whom? do not want to pay broker fees! all transactons done by wire transfer. contact me through Kitco or at XAU4mark@aol.com

Stark told a news conference in response to a question as to whether
gold sales were again being considered to provide the IMF with additional funding: ``Gold sales, or gold pawning, has not been an issue here.''
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/q7.html

Y2K: THE GPS SYSTEM NEEDS ITS CLOCK RESET

D-Day for the Global Positioning System is Aug. 21, 1999

Just when you thought you knew everything you needed to know about the dreaded year 2000 computer glitch, guess what? There's another, lesser-known techno bug to worry about that could start vexing businesses and consumers as early as 10 months from now.

The problem: Precisely 13 seconds before midnight on Saturday, Aug. 21,
1999, hundreds of thousands of satellite-aided time and navigational devices--gizmos used to help guide everything from the Pentagon's smart
weapons to campers trekking through the outback--could suddenly go kaput.

What gives? Look to the heavens--to the military's Global Positioning
System, a network of 24 satellites developed by the Air Force in the 1970s to fight the cold war. Today, the GPS system also is used by businesses and consumers to time financial transactions down to the nanosecond, guide cars and boats, and help fly airplanes in stormy weather.

And now comes a problem just as GPS is starting to take flight in the
consumer marketplace. Researcher Frost & Sullivan predicts sales will
jump from $1.6 billion last year to more than $5 billion in 2001--if the GPS bug doesn't create havoc, that is. ''One small programming and software glitch could turn off some people if it's not fixed in time,'' says Stephanie Moore, a GPS market analyst with Giga Information Group ( GIGX ) in Cambridge, Mass.

Trouble is, the GPS network uses a unique time-keeping system that runs
on a 1,024-week cycle, which ends in the final seconds of Aug. 21. Back in the 1970s, cost pressures and bandwidth limitations forced programmers
designing the GPS system for the Air Force to limit the cycle to 1,024
weeks. That way, the software that kept the GPS calendar could be squeezed into a small block of code.

''ROLLOVER-DUMB.'' But now, some GPS users may have to pay the piper. When the current 1,024-week cycle ends, it's not clear how many of the estimated 3 million military and commercial GPS receivers will be able to handle the rollover. Receivers designed to accommodate the date--mostly those made after 1995--shouldn't be affected because their software was programmed to interpret the new cycle. But experts say many
older commercial receivers are ''rollover-dumb'' and could suffer a range of problems from minor glitches in service to complete shutdowns. ''It's
another familiar story of computer engineers designing these systems and
failing to visualize or care much about what could happen years down the
road,'' says Rich Bailey, a product manager for Datum Inc. ( DATM ) in San
Jose, a systems-timing manufacturer.

Businesses won't escape. Some companies have synchronized their computer networks to GPS time in order to record the exact second of a financial transaction. AT&T Corp. ( T ) , for example, says it aligns its core computer networks against GPS time because it improves the accuracy of
time-stamping on critical financial transactions. Some worry that when the rollover occurs, receivers may start thinking it's Jan. 5, 1980--the date the current GPS period began. ''If your system suddenly starts reading that a transaction was made Jan. 5, 1980, it might affect interest-rate calculations,'' says Ron Stearns, a GPS market analyst for Frost & Sullivan.

SIMPLE FIX. The good news is that the fix itself is pretty simple. Unlike the year 2000 problem, this one doesn't involve updating millions of lines of date-doomed computer code. Instead, it's a matter of determining whether your GPS receiver needs to be replaced--or upgraded with a software patch that will ''trick'' the receiver into thinking the August rollover date will never come.

But getting the word out to all those who own or use receivers is proving
tough. For the most part, big businesses and government agencies expect
to have their systems upgraded by next summer. The Securities & Exchange Commission, for example, says most large financial-services firms will have already made fixes by then. AT&T says it has upgraded or replaced any receivers that could have been a problem. And Boeing Co. ( BA ) says it has the rollover problem under control. ''We started testing for this back in 1994, and so we don't anticipate any problems,'' says Boeing
spokesman Bob Smith.

But small companies and consumers may be caught off guard. Moreover,
experts say they might have trouble wading through all the products and
manufacturers. More than 375 models of GPS receivers are on the commercial market from more than 60 makers. Charles Trimble, founder of
Trimble Navigation Ltd. ( TRIMB ) , a Silicon Valley GPS receiver maker, says the task of addressing the commercial market is ''next to impossible. No manufacturer has an accurate or complete database of who owns these things or how they're using them.''

The Defense Dept. may also find itself in a bind. Although the Air Force has assigned a GPS team to the problem, it may not be able to make all the fixes in time. ''We don't have a good sense of how many of the commercial receivers we bought will be affected. It's not a majority, but there could be many, and those most prone to trouble could be older,''says Aaron Reninger, a spokesman for the military's GPS program office in Los Angeles. The agency is upgrading receivers in the six GPS ground stations around the globe.

Defense's plans for all military aircraft to use GPS for navigation by 2000 and its growing dependence on GPS-guided smart bombs have heightened
its concerns about the vulnerability of the aviation system. ''People are
depending on the GPS system far beyond anybody's expectations,'' Lieutenant Colonel Rick Reaser, chief engineer for the NAVSTAR GPS Joint Program Office at Los Angeles Air Force Base, told a congressional panel looking into the rollover problem.

What to do? If you have a GPS receiver, contact the manufacturer. ''Only
the manufacturer will be able to figure out by testing which receiver will have problems and which won't,'' says Ed Parson, a GPS analyst with the U.S. Air Force's Space & Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles.

FREE UPGRADES. To help drum up awareness, both Trimble ( www.trimble.com ) and the U.S. Coast Guard ( www.navcen.oscg.mil/systems ) have created detailed Web sites outlining the problem. Trimble and other manufacturers also are offering customers free upgrades and some discounts on newer, glitch-free models.

But even if fixes are made, there's no guarantee of a glitch-free Aug. 22. ''No one can say with complete certainty that we'll know what will happen on Aug. 22,'' says Trimble. Adds Bradford Parkinson, a Stanford University professor of aeronautics and a co-developer of the GPS program: ''There's no way we can know everything at the time technology is developed. It's part of the complexity of the technological age.'' And, perhaps, a warning of its power.

By Marcia Stepanek in New York

After a year of lurking and reading I have found RJs comments helpful. They have tempered by judgment and kept me from rushing in while the statists still have a bit of steam. He has been generally right in the intermediate term; however, I believe that over the next few months his advise may be dangerous: LGB will be ruined.

I have not appreciated his attacks upon those who beleive that we are facing a global deflationary event and offer data to support their thesis. He has no rational argument for the long run scenario. Yes, RJ, answer the questions posed by PH from LA. Refute the arguments based upon fact, not emotion and personal ciriticism. You are clearly a very intelligent man. Please expand your basis of knowledge to include a perspective that encompasses more that a few months at best. Tell us how our illustrious finacial leaders will get us out of this mess in the long run.

Bobby Blue Bland... ( hack ) ...the correct lyric follows:

http://www.netspace.org/allmans/music/lyrics/sm.html


salud! ( hack )

Interesting oil forecast from Noesis this week...

http://www.oil-gasoline.com/forecast.html

Things seem to be falling in place for a very interesting year in 1999. Many surprises in store, I'm sure. Read a commentary the other day about Y2K concerns at major corporaions will prompt a change in the way they keep inventories. These companies will apparently, as the theory goes, start to actually inventory parts & resources in case of Y2K interruptions, and get away from just-in-time deliveries of needed parts. The writer felt that this increased demand would impact commodities prices positively ( at least from a producer's point of view ) .

http://www.bday.co.za/98/1005/company/c3.htm

Yes, we need all the professional sounding opinions and company generated propaganda as we can get from our resident prostitutes and salesclerks.

"Need more data..."

Every little bit helps.

Jan Plat 339.0
Dec Gold 299.2
Dec Silv 5.105

I am glad to see you post...I thought maybe winged monkees from the Land of Oz had swept you away with the tornadoes...and the Cuervo Shaman says a gulp to ya and this is good...

DOW has once again found strong support around 7550 and bounced off. Metals declining heavily. Bonds taking a breath.

Sunday October 4, 3:41 pm Eastern Time

Lehman denies takeover talk -- Barron's

NEW YORK, Oct 4 ( Reuters ) - Lehman Brothers Chairman Richard Fuld denied rumors that the New York Federal
Reserve was trying to encourage BankAmerica Corp. ( NYSE:BAC - news ) to take control of Lehman, Barron's
reported Sunday.

``Lehman Brothers has had no conversations about being acquired by the Fed or anyone else,'' Fuld told Barron's.

The rumors had been said to be the reason behind Friday's uptick in the Lehman's stock, which has otherwise been on a slide. Lehman shares closed Friday at
29, up from Thursday's close of 27-3/4, but still well below the year's high of 85.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the parent of U.S. primary dealer Lehman Government Securities, on Friday denied to Reuters several rumors about financial
troubles tied to its mortgage-backed portfolio.

According to the rumors circulating in financial markets, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which played a key role in the recent rescue of the troubled
hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, was involved in finding a way to save Lehman.
Sunday October 4, 3:41 pm Eastern Time

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/4b.html

The criminals are manipulating to their advantage. Soon the byword will be "TO THE WALL", no suffering for them, just hard feelings for their infamous deeds - then justice triumphs with the recoil.

The only way our less than lustrous leaders could help would be if they all committed suicide

Big Fish......explain to me how I'm going to be "ruined" in the months ahead? Will it be the money I pulled out of mutuals at DOW 8300 a year and a hald ago that now resides in the Money market ( a great place to be during deflation ) ..... is that what will "ruin" me?

Or will it be the large position I took in Silver 15 months ago at $4.25 an Ounce?

Or perhaps the few dozen St, Gaudens Gold pieces that will take a bath?

No? The SSC, DROOY, or HGMCY shares maybe?

The Gold AE's and Maples in my safe deposit box? Are those going to "ruin" me?

Just curious........

Now on the subject of PH in LA's take on markets vs. RJ's... I am also confused. PH has never given an IOTA of market analysis here. He does ocassionally parrot something from "Another" or that "Fword" fellow, but I have yet to see a serious attempt by PH at giving his own market perspective, explaining his own investment approach, telling us what his market positions are ( like the rest of us do consistently here ) .

Why then should a serious trader and analyst like RJ give PH's "questions" a second glance? I find little or no emotionalism in RJ's commentary's at all. Unlike most here, he has no preconcived "agenda". His interest is simply in using every tool at his command to correctly guess the direction of the metals. Without bias....His record on Gold calls has been the best one here so far...and this IS a Gold forum isn't it?

Just trying to make sense of your post......

By Cecily Fraser, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 11:48 AM ET Oct 5, 1998 Agriculture Outlook

NEW YORK ( CBS.MW ) -- December gold declined Monday afternoon on news that
gold supplies may swell thanks to the worsening global economic crisis.

"British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown indicated that the International
Monetary Fund is considering selling part of its 103 million ounces of gold reserves in
order to help support a bailout package for Brazil."

In other news, the U.S.dollar was weaker against most major currencies, helping to
support overseas buying. Metals, traded in dollars, are more affordable to non-U.S.
investors when the dollar drops. The dollar was down 1.59 Japanese yen to 134.544.

Comex metal statistics released late Friday are another factor pressuring the precious
metal as the latest data showed that gold stocks were steady at about 958,389 troy
ounces.

On the Commodities Exchange division of New York Mercantile Exchange, December
gold fell $1.80 to $301 an ounce.

...very cogent and a good read. Your analysis is top notch.

Thanks.

F*

My dog gets first dibs on Camdesuss...

The important question here once again is this:

WHO WOULD BE BUYING THE METAL?

Answer that question and you need not fear about IMF sales of gold.

Ask yourself who is buying the metal...that's all that really matters.

Everything else is simply a scare tactic ( and a tiresome one at that! ) . YAWN!

Thanks.

F*

Just to let you know , bought a thousand shares of LOR today.

Historically, you want to buy the lows during the mid-term election year of the presidential cycle ( 1998 ) and sell around the presidential elections. The average return on the Dow is +50% for this time period going back to 1914. I think that the lows were in for strong stocks early in September, and the weaklings are putting in their lows now. I may be early, but I have been buying my favorite beat-up stocks. I realize that this goes against the common view. The McClellan summation index was low enough for a real bottom early in September as well.

The answer is simple....gold shorts like Armstrong, Smith, Arnold....and hedge funds like LTCM, Everest, Converse, etc....brokerage houses like Merrill Lunch and Lehman and Goldman Sachs, etc.

Why?

In order to drive the price down before they cover their astronomical shorts of the metal.

Don't be spooked by the scare tactics. Just keep buying the precious yellow.

Demand immediate delivery.

The gold short squeeze is unavoidable.

Gold will be more expensive than Plat before the end of the year. Much more expensive.

Thanks.

F*

U.S. Treasury's continue to soar ever higher in response to stock market woes. Hmm, wasn't it that *F fellow who has been preaching the collapse of Treasury's due to wholesale liquidation?

Ahhh, if only some of that scared money would flow toward Gold today.....HGMCY off today JD... just temporary? Yes, just temporary...you already said so. I remain an impatient child..been on the sideliness too long messing with SSC share churning and little else.

11:57 GOLDMAN'S COHEN SAYS 1999 PROFITS MAY BE 'PLEASANT SURPRISE' - DOW JONES.

Great move that LOR, it's so oversold that it's an incredible long term profit opportunity. That is the ONE exposure I have to the non mining share market. A big position in LOR taken 2 weeks ago when it was around today's level.

Once we get all our constellations up and producing revenue, we'll be looking at $5.00 / share earnings making a 600 or 700% gain over today's share prices a real possibility by end of Y2K or early 2001. It's my opinion this will make me a lot more than any Gold or silver investments I'm holding.....but they make a fine hedge and I don't see how either can stay at these depressed levels either considering world conditions.

for rube
Platinum under gold .. It might shake
out like that .. But I think that event
whenever it occurs ofter heralds a major
bull in both ..

For Bugal
Temporary .. yes temporary .. only
temporary .. minor setback .. hmmm

What hypocritical bastards. LTCM has to be bailed out in order to avert fire sales because it would cause distress to the system whereas it's okay to have a fire sale of gold by the IMF thereby distressing a whole industry. Justice..BAH HUMBUG!

Almost forgot...ASB

How can this happen with stocks falling across the board and wholesale "flight to safety"?

How can this happen with 400 tons of "Short" position to cover by LTCM?
Or could it be that the position in question doesn't exist?
Does anyone have accurate verifiable info. on this?

Must be manipulation.......

...despite the announcement of possible IMF gold sales to aid Brazil?

Answer: the announcement was used as a scare tactic to drive down the price in order for various hedge funds, brokerages, and gold shorts to buy back their short positions. The gold price rallied upon the close as the gold shorts closed these positions.

Expect more of the same scare tactics. However, the likelihood of IMF gold sales remains low. Key members are opposed as such sales would undermine the value of their most precious monetary asset, gold ( NOT paper! ) .

You, the goldbugs, the gold investing institutions and funds...you are the only real suppliers of physical gold out there. The CB's, for all intents and purposes, have completed their sales. Now, they must meet increasing demand for physical from their respective native populations. This increasing demand is evidenced by the rising lease rate which will continue to rise so long as goldbugs and gold investment institutions do NOT allow themselves to be conned by the latest gold short scam, i.e., the IMF gold sale ruse.

Keep calm, do not panic...the gold bull is here in full force.

The best evidence I ever saw of the potential strength of this gold bull occurred on Friday when Homestake announced a special centimillion plus writedown. During the gold bear, Homestake stock would have trashed; instead, it rose strongly.

I have said it in the past and I will repeat it once again:

IT'S HERE!

Thanks.

F*

Just returned from a 4-day mission to Baton Rouge/New Orleans to bring some "coothe" to those shameless, wildarse maddog cajuns.....yes, I failed wonderfully. In fact, I was forced to absorb mass, copious quantities of their culture and espirits...and no longer give a flying flip. I drank the hurricane. ( trademark P. O'Briens )

I see my return crushed the POG.....so I'll just go back. ( twist my arm....O.K.! )

A quick review of your posts would indicate that your fever has broken! I thank my God. I was concerned by your tolerance.... ( ? ) ...Billdo and Camdessus suck rotten boudin.

A MIGHTY GulpO y PuffO to YA!!!

Post Script: All you pussy Rangy defilers can kiss my sausage...rangitO is only for the True Gritters...........yeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Don't forget to answer my question of the other day when you get a chance, thanks.

Bonds reached yet another all-times high today. ( Dec bonds above 135.00!!! )

8 months ago, bonds were around 118.00.

People who invested in bonds around March and April of this year, have been part of one of the most amazing bull market of the board this year.

What are your friends thinking of this huge move Farfel?

Date: Tue Mar 03 1998 22:03
farfel ( @DONALD...YOU SAY DEFLATION, FRIEDMAN SAYS INFLATION, AND I SAY... ) ID#28585:
NEO-STAGFLATION....

I warned many friends to avoid this Wall Street propagandistic manipulation...in fact, I went down on my knees with some of them and BEGGED THEM not to place any monies in bonds. I categorically predicted the current bearish scenario now unfolding in the bond market; it will only exacerbate as the TORRENT of newly printed money ( printed in the aftermath of the October crash in order to maintain liquidity ) begins to hammer bonds even further over the short-term..

Don't forget to answer my question of the other day when you get a chance, thanks.

Bonds reached yet another all-times high today. ( Dec bonds above 135.00!!! )

8 months ago, bonds were around 118.00.

People who invested in bonds around March and April of this year, have been part of one of the most amazing bull market of the board this year.

What are your friends thinking of this huge move Farfel?

Date: Tue Mar 03 1998 22:03
farfel ( @DONALD...YOU SAY DEFLATION, FRIEDMAN SAYS INFLATION, AND I SAY... ) ID#28585:
NEO-STAGFLATION....

I warned many friends to avoid this Wall Street propagandistic manipulation...in fact, I went down on my knees with some of them and BEGGED THEM not to place any monies in bonds. I categorically predicted the current bearish scenario now unfolding in the bond market; it will only exacerbate as the TORRENT of newly printed money ( printed in the aftermath of the October crash in order to maintain liquidity ) begins to hammer bonds even further over the short-term..

Don't forget to answer my question of the other day when you get a chance, thanks.

Bonds reached yet another all-times high today. ( Dec bonds above 135.00!!! )

8 months ago, bonds were around 118.00.

People who invested in bonds around March and April of this year, have been part of one of the most amazing bull market of the board this year.

What are your friends thinking of this huge move Farfel?

Date: Tue Mar 03 1998 22:03
farfel ( @DONALD...YOU SAY DEFLATION, FRIEDMAN SAYS INFLATION, AND I SAY... ) ID#28585:
NEO-STAGFLATION....

I warned many friends to avoid this Wall Street propagandistic manipulation...in fact, I went down on my knees with some of them and BEGGED THEM not to place any monies in bonds. I categorically predicted the current bearish scenario now unfolding in the bond market; it will only exacerbate as the TORRENT of newly printed money ( printed in the aftermath of the October crash in order to maintain liquidity ) begins to hammer bonds even further over the short-term..

Big Fisherman:

It should be noted here that LGB has never been able to "make sense" out of much of anything around here except himself, something that amuses everyone else because there is hardly ever any sense in his posts in the first place.

Don't forget that one of his most revealing criticisms of ANOTHER was that he "spoke in riddles" that he ( LGB ) could't understand.

And since when do posts directed to RJ call for any answer from LGB, anyway? Has he been appointed to the post of RJ's press secretary?

There has never been any gain posed to anyone here in trying to make sense to LGB.

Why so strong? Because once again, the usual market manipulators are determined to prove that, in any equities downturn, bonds are the only true flight to safety. They must prove that gold as a perceived flight to safety is complete delusion propounded by the lunatic fringe.

Again, as we move into a vicious stagflation, the bonds bubble will pop and decimate the value of these holdings. Many bondsholders will be completely wiped out as their bonds fail owing to the insolvency of the institutions backing them. The speed of such decimation will boggle the mind.

The only true repository of value in such an economic crisis will be precious metals, certainly NOT bonds.

Now you understand?

Thank.

F*

Date: Sat Oct 03 1998 19:18
PH in LA ( ) ID#225408:
Copyright  1998 PH in LA/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved

REALISTIC:

I sincerely hope you spend a little time congratulating yourself on what is obviously a clever way of expressing yourself. Because fortunately, these reposts are the actual truth. Instead of phony hypocritical deceptive lying of *Fspot and myself...., they demonstrate the perspective of your thought...the utter truth. As opposed to the utter dearth of imaginitive thought that I myself express when I fail to EVER give any original information or perspective on anything market related.

In fact, in this real world, most of us knee jerk liberal Clinton and Farfel defenders, do think one thing one day and the same thing the next....regardless of evidence to the contrary.

This is an inevitable part being subhuman and of not seeking truth. Your own obvious enjoyment in wallowing in honesty and facts is pleasant to behold. And it is whining by me to constantly assert, "on such and such a day, you said so and so, and...now you say blah, blah, blah...Can you please explain and prove and oh you're attacinbg my hero's again?"

It can only be termed a severely limited mind that demonstrates an inability to comprehend and/or accept one of the most fundamental tenents of the human condition: Facts matter! Words matter! What one thinks in all sincerity one moment has little to so with what Spinmesitering Propagandists like *Fspot and *Puetz pretend to claim they think in all sincerity another.

Without going into too much detail, a myriad of changes are constantly swirling around in each of our own personal environments, and to some extent they cannot help but define and redefine our all-too-human existence. But then, most of us understand what Robert de Niro's character in the movie The Deerhunter said to another whining weakling: "That was then! This is now!" Of course in the case of my failed Guru's, such intellectual honesty doesn't exist.

Why not consider working up some stronger material? Like the posts I always make on my own market perspective? Ooops, I forgot...I never make any..just parrot what my Guru's and liberal Govt. daddies say.

You may recall ( if it was not before your time ) what Walter Pirsig says in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, "The real motorcycle you're working on is the cycle you call yourself."

Think about it! I don't!

*******WARNING*******
These observations will be reposted as a reminder to REALISTIC to ignore the demented ramblings of PH, whenever one of his nuisance posts is observed.

PS. REALISTIC: Don't be too dis heartened by anything LGB says. He doesn't seem to be able to recognize an intelligent comment from me when he sees one. Ooops, maybe he never HAS seen one!

PH in LA

my respect for you remains intact and is strengthened by such activities...the Cuervo Shaman is dancing wildly within the gates informing the growing crowd of your antics....it is siesta time and some of his words fall on drunken deaf ears...

Have no fear...the anti Clintler and Camdesuss candles have been lit...gold will surge...false money will burn so quickly that the remaining ash will be wisked in a flash to the four corners of the globe before the holders of such know what hit them...

New pattern? Selling all day?

The Internet day traders need bigger yabbles every day to come in at the end.

-EJ

Don't forget to answer my question of the other day when you get a chance, thanks.

Bonds reached yet another all-times high today. ( Dec bonds above 135.00!!! )

8 months ago, bonds were around 118.00.

People who invested in bonds around March and April of this year, have been part of one of the most amazing bull market of the board this year.

What are your friends thinking of this huge move Farfel?

Date: Tue Mar 03 1998 22:03
farfel ( @DONALD...YOU SAY DEFLATION, FRIEDMAN SAYS INFLATION, AND I SAY... ) ID#28585:
NEO-STAGFLATION....

I warned many friends to avoid this Wall Street propagandistic manipulation...in fact, I went down on my knees with some of them and BEGGED THEM not to place any monies in bonds. I categorically predicted the current bearish scenario now unfolding in the bond market; it will only exacerbate as the TORRENT of newly printed money ( printed in the aftermath of the October crash in order to maintain liquidity ) begins to hammer bonds even further over the short-term..

to all
The IMF aint gonna sell no gold.

It looks like they just jumped in. ( DT's )

that's a beeeeeeg 10-4 good budddeeeeeeee!

P.S.S. lini and laura were the rowdies...deep negotitions required with policeOs....ohmy! studio.shamed.by.association
yeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I sold my FDPMX today. Looks like the gold sector has made a short term top. But despite all the talk of IMF gold sales, I doubt that POG will go much below $290 or XAU below 70. With real interest rates headed consideraly lower in the months ahead, gold's primary direction has changed from down to up.

been downgraded & is on the way to junk bond status. The Country is slipping further into the abyss. Yet the JY is strengthening against the USD. Makes perfect sense to me. I also think that the Ruble is extremely undervalued.

Just watched Insana interview John Galbraith. When he asked him if he thought that the politicians were making a serious effort to deal with the financial crisis. He replied, "Oh, it's much easier for them to talk about sex."

Soros speaks, and the world listens:
15:07 SOROS: CLINTON PLAN TO PROVIDE FUNDS FOR IMPERILED COUNTRIES 'ON RIGHT TRACK'.
15:07 SOROS: WORLD ECONS MUST SPUR CAPITAL FLOWS.
15:07 SOROS: CONCENTRATED RATE CUTS ALONE WON'T STEM GLOBAL CRISIS.

"British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown indicated that the International Monetary Fund is considering selling part of its 103 million ounces of gold reserves in order to help support a bailout package for Brazil."

Lets see, 103,000,000 X $300 = $30.9 billion

Brazil is having capital outflows in the $18-30 billion range. IMF gold bailout of Brazil will hardly work without additional capital, IMF will be without reserves ( Probably will be below BIS reserve requirements too ) , and Brazils economy will be further hurt by lower gold prices.

This sounds like either a really dumb idea or market manipulation of the price of gold.

Which is it LGB?

...the truth is that the IMF is reluctant to provide any aid whatsoever to failing nations across the world. In the past year, the institution has seen much of this aid squandered. Certainly, such aid failed to achieve any genuine economic stability in those turbulent economies it was designed to support.

I think the IMF is biased at this point to stay on the sidelines and avoid any action until the dust has finally settled. It's pointless to provide billions of dollars of aid to failing banks, institutions, and individuals who rarely conform to the requirements of such aid, instead squandering it on derivatives investments bets and purchases of luxury chateaus in the South of France.

My guess is that the IMF will do little if anything ( and certainly will NOT sell any gold ) until some kind of equilibrium level is reached in the world economic order.

Thanks.

F*

Be aware , inflation is DEAD for the next 10 years. This runaway deflationary trend CAN'T be reversed by any politician or central banker. It will run until it exhaust itself. Japan already in on the verge of the abyss.
I know it's hard to swallow but this is the truth. We will experience a depression starting in 1999. I expect the long bond yield to decline to 2 % or less by the end of 1999. Short term rates will decline to 0.1 % within the next 2 years.

My dog is frothing...close down the IMF and feed Camdesuss to my dog!!!

In case there is any question as to what kind of sense to someone like LGB expects, allow me to usurp, for a moment, the self-appointed task of REALISTIC and quote LGB's own words of Date: Thu Sep 10 1998 20:16 posted at the K-2 forum:

"I ( LGB ) wanted to comment point by point on everything in PH's extremely lengthy tome to you ( RJ ) ...which he THINKS makes all kinds of points and logical refutations...OK, without further comment ( here are ) Ph's best points and my response......: Blah, blah, blah.... ( excrement deleted ) ...blah blah blah.... ( excrement deleted ) ...blah, blah, blah......"

This demonstrates pretty well what kind of sense LGB finds in the posts of others!

Come on! REALISTIC. Maybe you could tear yourself away for a moment from Puetz and Farfel long enough to keep us up-to-date on LGB, too!

Don't forget to answer my question of the other day when you get a chance, thanks.

Bonds reached yet another all-times high today. ( Dec bonds above 135.00!!! )

8 months ago, bonds were around 118.00.

People who invested in bonds around March and April of this year, have been part of one of the most amazing bull market of the board this year.

What are your friends thinking of this huge move Farfel?

Date: Tue Mar 03 1998 22:03
farfel ( @DONALD...YOU SAY DEFLATION, FRIEDMAN SAYS INFLATION, AND I SAY... ) ID#28585:
NEO-STAGFLATION....

I warned many friends to avoid this Wall Street propagandistic manipulation...in fact, I went down on my knees with some of them and BEGGED THEM not to place any monies in bonds. I categorically predicted the current bearish scenario now unfolding in the bond market; it will only exacerbate as the TORRENT of newly printed money ( printed in the aftermath of the October crash in order to maintain liquidity ) begins to hammer bonds even further over the short-term..

The day traders are not adverse to becoming position traders overnight if conditions warrant.

The day trader retrace is most noticeable if there is a flat market through the day. On the other hand if, they come in on the short side say, and the market declines heavily and steadily all they day, they will often stay overnight for the next day continuation.

Last week the market did so last Wednesday and continued Thursday. Two full days. They got out Friday.

In an up market the reverse.

the IMF doesn't have any gold that hasn't already been commited several times as collateral. The English Fartface Brown sold all the limeys' gold....yup, he's a real big thinker....uhHuH...Blairesque. Great Britain is well on its way to becoming third world.

Europe Steps Up Pressure On U.S. To Pay IMF Bills
http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/news/international/1005/i_rt_1005_25.sml
http://www.usatoday.com/money/mds024.htm

"The international financial crisis that began in Asia and has now spread to other continents lends urgency to efforts to strengthen the architecture of the international financial system," the working group said in seeking rapid implementation of the proposals.

of course " ONLY " 120,000 contracts ( just a mispost ) , I was very sleepy ...daylight saving in NZ

However my point is still valid
open interest for DEc gold was 89,000 contracts according to my info
I still think scenario is likely to be LTCM short physical gold from sale of leased gold , this would tie in with employees asserting they are not short gold contracts .

As a bond trader noted, to current Treasury buying...yield
is not an issue. Return *of* principal not on it I guess, herding
into the apex of the risk pyramid, widening spreads between things
like Treasuries, German bunds and anything beneath, the further
down the wider and widening spreads.

Hey, I thought stock and bond markets were joined at the hip.
Given the Dax, the Dow, the Nikkei making lows and respective bond
markets making highs something seems dislocated.

Capital is parking on the top shelf, heavily.



and historic or postwar lows
in yield in the associated sovereign bonds, that seems dislocated
recently.

Must I remind you yet again for the zillionth time...to try and post something market related here and keep the STRICTLY personal rhetoric posts over on K2?

There's too much real economy news to clutter up Kitco with your bandwidth wasting "attack" posts. But feel free to keep them on K2 where they belong.

Thank you in advance.......

They really don't have a plan, do they?!

IMF money bails out the western financial interests. Not one penny of IMF money has helped the crashing economies of the third world. It is a grab at the U.S. taxpayers pocketbook to recapitalize the U.S. financial industry from overseas losses. The Republicans are absolutely right to stall IMF funding.

It is odd however that the Republicans are acting like Democrats on this issue and fast track authority. One would think the Republicans would be all for helping their own wealthy through IMF bailouts and globalization.

'Wall' Street may have a brand new meaning ... eh, Pete?

Bob in DC

This analyst "Droke" has had a rather amazing record of short term calls recently. Unfortunately, his outlook on Gold is short term bearish ( $250 ) . Definitely worth a read considering how well he's forecast events of late. ( I'm amazed this came from golden eagle!, Bravo Vronsky... )

http://www.golden-eagle.com/editorials_98/droke092398.html

Just like FREE LOVE, where most everyone gets F**ked.

The IMF sale rumours are ploys to save the jobs ( maybe the lives? ) of those Central Bankers who loaned the gold, and the hedge funds that sold it short. Most of will never come back, but it may give them the time to manipulate themselves back to a semblance of health.

MINISTER SHOOTS SELF BY ACCIDENT AT CHURCH

Jacksonville, FL ( AP ) - A youth minister was in critical condition Saturday after accidentally shooting himself in the head during a sermon as he waved a gun and compared Russian roulette with sin.

Melvyn Nurse, 35, was at University Medical Center after shattering his skull with a blank when the .357-caliber handgun discharged.

"He fired and then he fell. I thought it was part of the sermon, that he was supposed to fall." Said Anthony Speight, pastor at the Livingway Christian Fellowship Church International.

Nurse had fired the gun over his head several times without it going off, so the shooting caught the congregation my surprise.

He was using Russian roulette to make a point about the consequences of sin, witnesses said.

The minister said Nurse opened the gun's cylinder, inserted a blank, spun the cylinder and closed it. Each time he discussed a specific sin, he'd repeat the same motion, without putting in another blank, and fired the gun above his head, he said.

Though a blank, the casing still contains a hard cardboard-type wad that ejects several feet when fired, police said.

******

Jan Plat 339.4
Dec Silv 5.065
Dec Gold 299.0

Almost forgot..as Vronsky is so fond of mentioning, you must delete the "en" after Gold in the link in order for it to work.

http://www.golden-eagle.com/editorials_98/droke092398.html

Is there a website which keeps track of earnings reporting and has a schedule of who reports when?

steve@familyjeweler.com

JD will dig this! Hopefully the trend doesn't spread.

Monday October 5, 3:58 pm Eastern Time

RESEARCH ALERT-ABN AMRO cuts gold company ratings

CHICAGO, Oct 5 ( Reuters ) - ABN AMRO said Monday it downgraded five gold company stocks to hold
from buy.

-- The stocks downgraded included Barrick Gold Corp. ( Toronto:ABX.TO - news ) , Placer Dome Inc.
( Toronto:PDG.TO - news ) , Homestake Mining Co. ( NYSE:HM - news ) , Newmont Mining Corp.
( NYSE:NEM - news ) and Newmont Gold Co. ( NYSE:NGC - news ) .

Thanks for the lyrics link. I reworked this one Saturday while playing the 'At Fillmore East' CD, and thought it would fit the market this week. I claim no talent in this!

It seems to me Billie Holiday did this one in the '50s, and went along with Greg Allman's attribution to T-Bone Walker.

Bob in DC

OK LGB:

You want market commentary; chew on this!

Here are my quetions for RJ. Until he gets a chance to participate, why don't you work on them...If, that is you can even understand them.

They do relate to you, in a way, since you ridiculed Farfel's short squeeze comments so thoroughly and so disgustingly. And while you're at it, why don't you reply to my challenge yesterday to cite time and date on Farfel saying he was talking about the short squeeze within "two or three days", as you assert.

This is not personal, unless you call the unmasking of stupidity ( yours ) personal. After you finish trying to understand my questions that follow, if you still want to read more financial commentary from me, go read the archives at USAGold. But don't be expecting me to be trumpetting my own personal investment moves all over the internet like you like to do. Anyone could explain to you how no one here is any more interested in that than they are in hearing about yours. Besides, that is no more financial commentary than "Twinkle, twinkle little star" is Beethoven's 9th Symphony!

Good luck with the questions: You might like to include remarks to Disney since I'm sure he will be as interested in your answers as anyone else here.

"THE worldwide movers and shakers ( aren't ) simpletons who could not find their way out of a few simple trades...They did not accidentally fall to the top of international finance... ( and ) these skills and traits that gained their lofty positions, would also serve well in time of moderate crisis."

RJ:
In deference to your learned and professional remarks, and your well-earned reputation for acumen in these matters, let us grant your premise above. In addition to not being simpletons, let us further grant that any accident of birth to moneyed, privileged social status played no part in their "fall to the top of international finance" either. Let's assume they are smart, well-trained professionals; even with a touch of genius to assist them in their defiance of the international laws of gravity.

In return, please explain in your most simple, non-professional terms, how a position of this magnitude ( 375 tons of shorted gold ) can be unwound ( which is the stated purpose in bailing out LTCM ) without forcing prices up. In that explanation, please feel free to include the effect of the alleged curtailment of Central Bank leasing that rising lease rates presently imply; also keeping in mind your own reports of very high demand for bullion coins from the public in the physical gold market. Falling interest rates in the US, theoretically taking some of the shine off the gold-carry trade as those interest rates fall further would also appear to merit attention in such an explanation, as would the fact that the POG has recently risen from $275 to $300. It would also be interesting, if you could bear in mind the effect all of the above would have on other players ( such as Merrill--one of the principles in the bail-out team ) as their access to cash dries up with their commitment to the huge size of this bailout. Don't forget that other funds, whose managers have likely paralleled LTCM's strategies may soon be declaring similar positions, further compressing available cash as the Fed encourages this blatant attempt to keep the system's well-propped and trembling underpinnings from collapse.

Maybe I am wrong but I think the Republicans ( and DEMS ) fully plan
on bailing out their friends. They are just going to wait till after the
elections.
____________
Gold weak today but after good run it is allowed to pull back. My
girl friend has guts, she bought more RANGY today on the pull back.
I hope this works out as she already owned a bunch. But like she said:
"You can't get rich without taking calculated risks. And taking a risk means you are going to be uncomfortable, and getting rich means you
have to buy enough when the price is low."

"Yes, but," I retorted, "I bought a lot of Farallon after it had
fallen from $20 down to $4.50 and look at it now!"
"Well, it time for things to go up now. So buy me more." And so I did.

Time will reveal all.

Thanks, GD

an ominous Darth Vader type piercing dark cloud cover ( love those candlesticks cause they're so expressive ) . PDG, which I'm short from Fri. does'nt look quite as bad. I've been stopped out twice with negligible losses & would'nt be surprised if I'm stopped out again tomorrow. If the USD strengthens, then I think POG could go well below 290.

Is REALLY bearish. Looking for wave 3 to fall to the range 2365 - 3675; bottom in the Oct 26 - Nov 6 time frame.

He suggests Rydex Arktos Fund ( shorts Nasdaq 100 ) and long-term puts. Also says sell 1/2 if Dow breaks 3800 or any time after Oct 14 that the DOW drops 1000 points. Move completely to cash if Dow breaks 2700 OR if it breaks 3800 AFTER Oct 25.

BBL with gold & silver forecast.

Yup...you picked a fine tooooone alright.......a FAVORITE'o'mine.....when I'm bored in da' studio, I just drift off to a wierd version in B minor ( of course, it's supposed to natural! ) ....I just don't know any better....... ( B minor is the key to "The Thrill is Gone....BBK....BTW ) ....
salud! and as always, GO GOLDBUGS!!!

As projected, the tulips have started buying it, with the sweeter smelling tulips making a nice little pop-up rally there at the end. Financials continue to get their skulls stomped into the cement sidewalk by a wicked bunch of bears wearing combat boots, that after having fallen from four stories above. Said the hedge fund manager months ago, "Lolli lolli lolli get your profits here, quickly quickly quickly get yor.." *STOMP STOMP STOMP* *thud*. It's hard to say where this thing will go, but my bets are still all down. Is that a bond yield or what ? Full faith et al. The bear is mean, somebody talk some sense to him.

"Impala refinery employees came to terms with management today, ending the strike action that began Wednesday of last week. No serious disruption of production had occurred. The platinum markets showed a dramatic decline of 3.3%, though the drop in prices preceded the Impala settlement. With the Nikkei down to 12-year lows and serious concerns arising with it in the 12k-level, platinum may have suffered from fears regarding Japanese platinum demand. Meanwhile in Japan, the argument that Japan should attempt to inflate its way out of the current credit squeeze is gaining ground. Inflation may come to punish the majority of Japanese households with significant cash holdings, driving them to more nflation-proof investments."

This could bode well for gold, yes?
As for platinum........ Ouch.
I said it this morning though
I'm buying.

So I did

OK

Hmmmm PH, you just don't get it do you? In the same post you say you're "Not making personal comments" but are "Unmasking stupidity..yours". And I'm supposed to engage you in discourse? I don't THINK so!.

Why don't you go back to your posts defending your hero Clinton? At least those are highly amusing.

For the Zillionth time AGAIN... take your personal attack posts..... which have no other point whatsoever, to K2. I don't want to have to keep cluttering K1 with bandwidth consuming refutations for the sake of someone who is simply here to insult..mind you I don't MIND insults if their couched in some point or other....but I still havn't found your point. Oh yes...you post it over on GleeClubGold but expect a response here...uh huh.

As to reposts..apologies to other Kitcoites...but I can't get this guy to quit his personal only posts...so I will for the LAST time today....and given no real choice, repost the PH of yore that I'm supposed to respect.

As to your reposting PH, and your continued attempts to bait me over the past few days..which I have tried hard to ignore and/or send you to K2.........may I remind YOU of a few previous statements by someone named PH in L.A. My comments are in paranthesis....I'd love it if you'd pay PARTICULAR attention to the first two immediate posts below so we can determine whether you have any credibility at all

* "Well, LGB, I guess this is it! Time to bid you good-by. I will no longer be reading or responding to your inane and logically deficient posts.

( Uh huh, one could only wish....! At least inane and logic defficient fit in nicely with stupidity..glad you're showing me how to post on topic without "personal" comment )

* "PH in LA ( Did someone say mud? ) ID#225408:
Dear Mr. LGB: Please allow me just this once to violate my own self-imposed prohibition towards addressing you directly long enough to reply to your own spin-filled, distorted interpretation of Mr. Farfel's words.

( Oh...you mean like when Realistic and I repost his words verbatim? )

* "Take a look at the Spanish peseta for confirmation. Yesterday I posted at USAGold that it has fallen over 7% since August and today it is down nearly another peseta. As I read him, your nemesis Farfel is forecasting that such a fall will impact our markets by turning into a wholesale flight of foreign capital in the near future."

( Now THERE's a currency everyone follows to determine the future soundness of the U.S. dollar and capital transfers...the Spanish Peseta!! ......I got it now PH , BTW, was that U.S. Tbills I saw soaring to the MOON today? The Tbills *Fword said would crash? )

*" Yesterday's rise in Tbills does not by any means prove that they will continue to rise forever."

( Nope..just right now..over the past few weeks....a period in time when *Fword specifically predicted several times they'd collapse due to wholesale flight of foreign investors. Where'd they go today again?? )

* "As .....said just today: "Booms are always followed by busts". Always have been, always will be."

( Brilliant comment PH, ....can we also mathmatically infer that the inverse is true..and that Busts are always followed by booms? You can quote me on this brilliant bit of new inverse revelation )

* "By unemployment, Farfel was refering to his own reference to layoffs in the banking and financial sector to avoid bankruptcy. Insisting that he is addressing the state of the help-wanted ads in your own rocket science industry or your home-town is an excellent example of your usual short-sighted distortions being foisted off on us to further your own agenda."

( Funny..here I could have sworn *Fword was speaking about mass layoff's leading to a huge drop in 401K plan contributions..since that is what he said...that damned AGENDA of mine again.....the TRUTH.... )

* An agenda which has become more than stale for a long time now. Let me hereby ask you one last time on behalf of many here to desist in your mindless, spin-doctoring attempt to discredit Farfel. Otherwise, you will be treated to reposts of some of your own more mindless and contradictory posts from the past ala REALISTIC."

( Well, please see repost # 1 of yours above. Unless you are a liar as well as the self appointed defender of every word from your hero's Farfel and Clinton ........than why don't we cease and desist from wasting K1 bandwidth and you say whatever you like to me on K2 where it doesn't bother others....eh PH? )

* " If you feel you must disagree with the content of Farfel's posts, please feel free to do so. Just spare us the distortions, the spin-meistering and the name-calling. Just in case you were thinking of it, please spare us any mud-slinging too. "

( Gee PH, does anyone who disagrees with your hero's...guy's like Bill Clinton....immediately become relegated to the mud-slinging, name calling, spin meistering status?....Actually I'll decide what is appropriate comment and dissenting view from myself *Fword's posts or anyone else's...only me and Bart will make that final determination.......not you )

* "As I expected, you have once again found it impossible to actually engage in any meaningful debate whatsoever on any level above name-calling".

( By name calling I assume your referring to words like "Mindless, stupidity" et al you toss me way in each and every post.

Funny PH, I remember making HUNDREDS of Gold, silver, mining share, and U.S. economy related posts here at Kitco1....giving my views, my own perspective, debating the issues with others who disagree with me.... generally in discourse that was profitable at getting both sides out.....Yet I have still TO THIS DAY...failed to find any original thoughts from YOU on the markets or any of the above issues. Just the usual reposts and rehashes of your guru's.... and personal attacks on anyone who disagree's with them....... hmmmm )

* "As I said above, I will no longer respond to your stupid remarks. Not because they are in the least bit difficult to discredit. Or because I find them anything but pathetic, rather because it has become a repetitious and boring exercize..."

( More of that "not personal" analysis eh PH? Ohh PLEASE PH,.... PLEASE can I count on you just this once to stick with something you say? If not will you at least take it to K2 so others here won't be bothered? I've only asked this 15 times now.....Thank you! )

* "exactly what I expected, and expressed to you then, when I bothered to speak in your direction when you appeared here in the first place. You may note that I say "in your direction" rather than "to you". The reason for this intentional choice of phrase is --as I have told you before -- that you do not read and/or understand what others say to you...rather you live trapped inside your own little unoriginal opinions and merely go about braying them unceasingly to the world, as if that fact will make
them more believable to yourself. It is sad, actually; and you have my sympathy. "

( What a masterpiece of an articulate thought you demonstrate above PH )

* "Have you heard anything about LGB? Seems to have disappeared since his DOW 9000 prediction. Sure hope he comes back soon. Can't wait to trash him some more. You know, kick him some more while he's down."

( Funny, sounds a little like *Fword's influence here. Akin to his statements that he will rip out the hearts and kill anyone who disagrees with his views, but not personal, right PH? )

* "LGB claims to differentiate between mental patients and men, between a purveyor of false and misleading information and a man, between a coward and a man, frauds and men, etc. Where have we heard that before? Didn't Adolf Hitler make similar distinctions? Between human beings and jews, between homosexuals and humans, between ...."

( Here we go, cheapening Holocaust victims and genuine justifiable moral outrage again by likening anyone who disagrees with you, or makes critical statements about your Gurus as being akin to Hitler.... great logical discourse PH, reminds me of your pals Bill and Hillary ) .

* "Sex perverts are not men either. And LGB knows the difference between normal sex and perverted sex...that's how he knows he hates the President of the United States of America. Otherwise, would he know? One wonders."

( I have no idea what the above means...but I'm sure that you had some point in mind PH )

* "Actually, looking too closely at the words of LGB is embarrassing on so many levels that one is almost always well-advised to refrain from doing so."

( May I heartily invite you, yet again, to take your own advice for once PH.....thanks! )

* " RJ/Jujube:.... Did catch your reply over on K-1 in which you declared yourself through with the Farfel-thing, asking me why don't I do the same. I hereby agree to do what you seem reluctant to do. I will no longer disagree with you over Farfel, either"

( A commitment you stuck to well PH...for 10 or 20 seconds. let it go PH, if you insist on reposting *Fword's posts here, than you can expect opinions may be expressed about them.....see in a free society..........well never mind.... )

Just a final note PH.... There are hundreds of posts in my saved archives. I'd hate to clutter up K1 bandwidth by reposting them. So do please, feel free to say whatever you like to me on K2 ....if you INSIST on continuing to violate your self imposed commitment to ignore my posts. Thank you in advance...

LGB

PS...Apologies again to Kitco, my last post on this "off" today. I've only asked the man 23 times to take it "outside" to K2..he refuses.

By itself, this is an indication of a very serious slow down . As we sink further into deflation, I expect the prices of silver and platinum to stay flat or decline a bit as demand evaporate. Only GOLD rises in deflation as an hedge against bankruptcies and as a safe haven for money seeking refuse from equities and real eatste markets. Silver will rise later on, but I don't feel comfortable with platinum. I think that platinum could decline substantially from these levels.

Please! K1 has been fast up till now!

For publicly traded companies go to:

http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/srch-edgar ( Type in company name )

Quarterly reports ( 10-Q ) must be filed no later than 45 days after the fact. Annual reports ( 10-K ) must be filed no later than 90 days after the fact. You can determine the fiscal year by the dates on a recent 10-Q. You will also find reports about significant events ( 8-K ) and ownership ( 13G ) , etc.

Bob in DC

Seen this story told both ways today...which is right?

Gold futures drop on IMF news

By Cecily Fraser, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 4:49 PM ET Oct 5, 1998

NEW YORK ( CBS.MW ) --Gold futures lost their luster Monday, dropping
1.2 percent amid fits of profit taking and talk of sales by the International Monetary Fund.

The precious metal fell below the $300 mark as comments made by U.K.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown have added weight to gold
prices. While in Washington for a Group of Seven meeting, Brown said that
the incoming German government might be in favor of a plan in which IMF
gold sales would help to support debt relief for troubled countries.

The U.S.dollar was weaker against most major currencies, helping to support
overseas precious metals buying. Metals, traded in dollars,are more
affordable to non-U.S. investors when the dollar drops. The dollar was down
1.93 Japanese yen to 134.20.

Comex metal statistics released late Friday showed gold stocks were steady at
about 958,389 troy ounces.

On the Commodities Exchange division of New York Mercantile Exchange,
December gold fell $3.60 to $299.20 an ounce. In line with gold, December
silver fell 14.2 cents to $5.065 an ounce

You aren't drawn to read the pissing matches ( e.g., Ph in LA and LGB ) !

the Russian must start paying his workers in Gold and then DARE the G7 and the IMF to attempt to ROB his people's wealth....yet again.

I agree...I keep asking him....he refuses to comply...maybe a few more dozen requests? I'm really much more interested in the wild market activites, truth be known. And they HAVE been wild lately, yes?

http://cnnfn.com/markets/bridge_news/310.1.html

Disagree with the message slightly - if the DOW were to drop to 4000 or below, which would amaze me and the rest of the world, it'd be time to purchase calls hand over fist at the cheapest prices you could imagine, because when that puppy bounced off the bottom, it'd have to bounce a thousand points or more, so there is actually a better position to be in than cash after a tank, though it does require some pretty significant jewels imho. Just my 0.02$US ( adjusted for re-flating of the inflationary deflation )

Wait till tis chart updates, it will tell the story. Check out the 3month with S&P.
http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=BEARX&d=1ys

Motorolla earnings up, will this be enough to bump the markets up?

HighRise

I'm going to enter all of his comments from the current issue on Gold and Silver. No questions, please - I'm not on board with his thoughts here, except to note that there is a very good correlation with Yvan Auger's forecast.

"GOLD & SILVER

A newspaper headline from August 29 reads, "Gold Hits 19-Year Low; 'Safe Haven' Idea Dying." Now they tell us. 18 1/2 years after the top. In the last issue, our gold analysis indicated that wave ( 3 ) was underway from the $315.20 high of april 23, with no chart support until the $180-200 area. This remains the best count, so gold should soon start to accelerate lower as the mid-point of wave ( 3 ) , the point of recognition, draws near. However, gold's September rally may be opening the door to another excellent opportunity to position for that decline. The fall into the August 28 low of $270.75 could easily be wave B within a flat correction that started in January. If so, wave C would push prices to $315-$340 before the larger downtrend resumes. Any decline below $280 will signal that the larger downtrend has resumed.

The XAU's strong September rally is probably waning. Three waves have developed up from the August 31 low of 48.67, so we expect the larger bear market to resume. As with bullion, there is a chance that the index is tracing out an expanded flat correction from the 61.23 low of January 12. If so, wave B bottomed at 48.67. This allows prices to rally in wave C to just above 93.50 over the next month or so before topping. A decline beneath 64 will eliminate this alternate scenario. The 39-week cycle still calls for a low in October, ideally late October, so we may be turning bullish in the next issue if our outlook for the stock market comes to pass.

Silver has also rallied in three waves from the $4.62 late August low. Three-wave moves develop against the larger trend, so this pattern supports the bearish outlook that we have held since the day of the top last February. The next decline should bring silver beneath $4. Important resistance for the bearish case remains the July spot high of $5.91. Any move to that level would force a change of outlook."

passengers of a plane that doesn't have enough fuel to get
to its destination and not enough parachutes for everyone.
We cannot know WHEN, but we can know WHAT is going to
happen eventually."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://members.aol.com/wcrimi/oct98.html

If you're so interested in market gyrations, why do you continue to post 1700+ word attacks instead of discussing the issue raised, i.e., how LTCM can cover their gold sold short without affecting price? Don't bother to answer, tho'; for you it is a rhetorical question.

there was not much else to read...LGB..no one is compelled to respond...just a thought, my friend. Silver still s*cks. PMSP...the worm will turn, we hope.

ASB...so far.

Tom

This is for you out there who are thinking about shorting bonds:

"We remain firm in our bearish outlook on high-yield "junk" bonds and other low-grade debt ... U.S. Treasuries have been a different story. EWT was bullish from February through July, then forecast a top in August and September that never came. We stated that a rally above 128-20 ( 5.20% ) "would create a floor at 124-26 ( 5.48% ) as prices move much higher." The absolute floor is now 125-21 ( 5.44% ) , because it represents a 62% retracement of wave 3. Typically, though, a fourth wave will retrace only 38% of wave three, which currently places strong support at 128-07 ( 5.23% ) . We are not completely sure about the weekly chart wave count. Fortunately, we are in a situation where knowing a little helps a lot. Wave 3 or ( 3 ) will probably top this month, because it already achieved a 1.618 multiple of wave 1 at 131-15 ( 4.92% ) . A pullback lasting about one month will precede wave 5 to new highs. Even if wave 3 of ( 5 ) is topping ( the alternate count ) , it will tke at least until the end of the year to finish this uptrend. The market has reached levels not seen since the 1960s, and there is no meaningful resistance. Indeed, if buyers continue to be motivated by fear, there is little difference between 5.00% and 4.00%. An unexpected fall through 125-21 ( 5.44% ) will turn the picture bearish in a big way.

Dow Gold Ratio = 26.03. The 233 day moving average is 28.62

NORFED Introduces new Legal Currency Backed by Pure Silver. Article says that 40 US Communities have their own currencies. Is this possible? They also want to dump the FED. Great idea -no Fed and America is free again.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/981002/norfed_1.html
See their web site at end of artical

CALLING ALL RANGY SHAREHOLDERS.

I'm compiling a list of questions/comments to present to Mr. Kebble during his upcoming visit to the States.

So as to avoid turning Kitco into a rangy thread, please email questions/comments you have for Mr. Kebble to me at rangy@usa.net

Ill compile the list and post it here and on the rangy website when Im finished. Thanks gang.

( Ive already come up with 2 pages of stuff that Ill type up and post as soon as I get a chance. )

I like your style.....and you must be pretty nimble trading options. I'm not so quick, so I only do LEAPs. If this thing goes as scripted, however, they may outlaw options before you can buy them. ( ;^ ) )

You're quite right, point taken. The foodfight is boring even me, I can imagine what a bore it must be to others! I shan't give it another keystroke. ( not today anyway! )

We got hurt in SSC and silver today Tom...but wait awhile! When reflation fires up, and liquidity is determined to be the salvation of mankind...watch out above! ( And Comex inventories are still gonna be a droppin in the interim, yes? )

XAU/Spot Ratio = .264. The 233 day moving average is .247

Any plans for Mr. Kebble to be available for a U.S. shareholder/ADRer meeting? thanks again for your help.

That BEARX does exactly what it's supposed to do. So far, anyway. That's why I cheer the S&P's demise. I got some chips on it.

Will good news from Motorola help the market tomorrow? There was plenty of good news today. Ford is kicking GM's ass, for example. With this and other positive news, the market went down anyway, a lot before recovering, and NASDAQ really took a beating. In a bear market, good news get lost in the din of bad news. Even good news can be interpreted as bad news, just as in a bull market bad news can be interpreted as good news.

Cynicism and fear are infectuous. Does anyone really think a "group of world leaders" are going to solve the world's problems if each of member of the group is unable to solve their own country's problems? What is each member country suggesting? Actions that the other guy can take. The US says, "Japan must clean up its banking system." Japan says, "The US needs to manage its precarious bubble economy, with consumer spending dropping even with 0.2% savings rates." That's what everyone expected. A lot of finger pointing.

Meanwhile, there's a giant sucking sound. The ideal of a free-market global economy creating prosperity for all is washing down the drain. The leftists got a lot more votes in Brazil on Sunday than anyone expected. Why? And the pres there will announce "intermediate measures" tomorrow. Capital controls, perhaps?

"Capital controls" is 1990s speak for "protectionism."

This time it's different. This time it's the same.

-EJ

Re-post

Date: Wed Jul 15 1998 17:14
Delphi ( IMF Gold ) ID#258142:
IMF has shortage in cash now. You know the story - South Korea, Indonesia, last Russian deal, etc. There is no money left for emergency cases. Thats a news item. What if something is going to happened somewhere in South America? No money for help At the same time they have a gold reserve, and not a small one I do not want to say that they are going to sell now, or soon, but, IMHO, we have to consider this as a possibility, just a real situation I think, we shall see some more messages about this subject here soon

my reasoning is simple...every other sentence out of all their mouthes is "we do NOT want to waste the taxpayers money"...I kinda like the sound of it...

Wth Germany going left, Brazil leaning, France moving, Britain shifting, Russia possibly going all the way.....etc

You think we may be headed back to centrally planned economies? Or will the EU successfully forestall this with their new program?

This equities primary bear market can't be worked off by any means. It will continues until it exhaust itself. The advance/ decline line is a proxy for all stocks traded on the NYSE. It is following the path of least resistance and that is--down. This is only the beginning of the bear market ( phase 2 ) which will turn out to be a long drawn out affair where stocks respond to basic deteriorating economic conditions.

RIGHT ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!He just can't stop being an arse.

Why not just GIVE it to the ailing country?

This would be extremely more beneficial....but no they have to sell the gold and give the poor country poor man's money...dollars.

This incredible insanity gripping humanity proves the dillusion is complete ....real money is not gold.....
you can fool some of the people only some of the time but.....

Old Gold: I agree, sold my gold mutual funds too. I think the gold shorts may have a chance to recover a little ground.

The real reason I sold my gold mutual funds -- only gold call options remaining now -- is that Japan and Brazil both appear to be clamoring for help from the same trough. It looks like 'the powers that be' consider their last 'line in the sand' to be the stabilization of Brazil. World wide deflation is likely to follow Brazil's implosion.

So-- the IMF might actually sell their gold, because even Germany and France may be terrified of the prospect of another SEAsia type collapse in South America.

It will be interesting to see how much gold can drop this time, with the US dollar plummeting -- not far, probably even if the IMF sold all of its gold for Brazil. Unfortunately, I don't think it will do much good, except buy some time. Will probably give an excellent opportunity to buy gold equities again fairly soon.

All: Did you notice that the House impeachment committee has asked a racketeering/gangster type investigator to consult? Now, why would they ask for assistance from somone like that it we are talking about Monicagate? And where did Ross Perot get his info on WJC drug use? Interesting that they are using the same room that the Dems used with WaterGate.

Now we have a contaminated blood scandal in Canada complements of a firm linked to the Arkansas Clinton machine. 1000 or so HIV positive Hemophiliacs in Canada, as I recall, due to blood taken from prisoners in Arkansas. Appalling!

Concidence? Direct link to WJC? This alone would bring him down, but making anything stick other than Monicagate and witness intimidation will be next to impossible. But -- they put Al Capone behind bars for income tax evasion, didn't they?

Too bad HR Perot is such a flake -- gives conservatives and libertarians a bad name.

Silverbaron: Less worried about options being outlawed than I am about the broker going under and taking the profits to cover their loss *grin*. That insurance has limits, I read the little print at the bottom of the big print the other day when it was brought up on Kitco. As for timing, when the line starts going straight down, it's time to sell puts and buy calls - sounds simple, has worked so far.

EJ: "This time it's different. This time it's the same." - Reminds me of another message I saw the other day "We're going to have to learn a new way of trading, it's call the old way".

name of the young man from Britain who tanked the bank instead of leaving that actors name in my head. Thankyou.There is only one difference between this place and Disney. Disney made money.

http://www.naic.org/products/libr/sub55.htm

I travel a good bit with a laptop computer with a phone modem. I also carry a cell phone. Is there a way to access the internet combining a cell phone and a laptop? Recently I was on the road for two weeks and had no access to the net during that time. Anyone have any experience hooking up on the road. Thanks.

It was NICK Leeson, not the other guy.

many...but not me. Yes, silver is a go if you are not faint of heart ( and highly leveraged ) . : )

Can't wait for NASB...we wait and watch.

Tom

PS...watch out for the small caps to blow out near the end of Oct...just a thought. Big caps early next year?

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/tc/story.html?s=v/nm/19981005/tc/y2k_7.html

According Senator Bennett ( R: Utah ) we just watch what happens in the Pac Rim like NZ -- they get hit 17 hours earlier than we do!

And these people are running the asylum? Nurse Ratchett, it's mediation time!!!!

LGB, when the people of those countries you name -- Russia, Brazil, etc. -- suffer pain caused by the current economic contraction that exceeds the level of pain they recall experiencing over generations in the previous controlled economies, then you'll see a move back to the old systems. The grass is still far greener in the new system. But the longer the problems drag on, the more they will glorify the old days, as bad as they were, and the less they will recall how good it was, even for a brief period, and even if the benefits were not evenly distributed, when capitalism and democracy opened the window and let some fresh are in.

JP, the word is: inexorable.

-EJ

Pete... Make that HORSES Arse if you're going to comment. My mama can toss better insults than you pal!

*Fstain.... Where'd Tbills end today? You never answer Realistic's excellent questions.

Tyro.... The sum total of Gold, silver, and stock market related posts compared to yours has a ratio of 967X10 thirtieth : 1

So considering the source, I'm not sure your point is entirely valid.

If RANGY is liquidated can we get someone in RSA to buy the options for us? Say a person from the magic kingdom.: ) Could really cover our behinds with the ability to protect our....you know.

Tom

From the Ottawa Citizen-- http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/981004/1912498.html

If the I.M.F. gave these poor countrys gold instead of money.
What would they do with the gold?

http://207.87.27.10/forbes/98/0420/6108478a.htm

Did I miss something. Didn't Droke just turn bullish on Gold. There have been several articles by Droke in the past weak on golden eagle. In fact he has just put out a list of recommeded junior Canadians.

korody,
it's not Senator Bennett doing, it's interpretation of some stupid reporter writing and interpreting what was said. Sen. Bennett is one of the most knowledgeable Y2K players on the Hill. Believe me, I was in a few meetings with him and he would never make such ignorant comment.

What was probably said is something like this "we have no idea what disruption in utilities and transportation services will be caused by potential Y2K failure. emergency plans and warnings will incorporate the "First Alert" system using observation of Y2K impact in the Pacific Region so that the emergency plans can be adjusted based on events unfolding 18 hours ahead of the USA"

That is a prudent approach to emergency planning.

JMHO

.RESEARCH ALERT-ABN AMRO cuts gold company ratings
CHICAGO, Oct 5 ( Reuters ) - ABN AMRO said Monday it downgraded five gold company stocks to hold from buy.

-- The stocks downgraded included Barrick Gold Corp. ( Toronto:ABX.TO - news ) , Placer Dome Inc. ( Toronto:PDG.TO - news ) , Homestake Mining Co. ( NYSE:HM - news ) , Newmont Mining Corp. ( NYSE:NEM - news ) and Newmont Gold Co. ( NYSE:NGC - news ) .

make sense to utilize incoming information as decisions could be made to try and conduct damage control with the thought in mind of bringing core systems back on as quickly as possible...it's is not much time...17 hours...but it will be real world activity...actual reality and no tests can simulate that...

They would probably put it in a vault in New York and write gold-backed bonds, loan it out on paper, revalue it and whatever other accounting lies to rip the poor country's people off and keep the game running longer.

They should coin it and put it in the hands of the people and let them decide.

Hey folks, that is just a rumor to knock the market down. The IMF is about as likely to sell its gold as the US gov't.

And a $3.80 down day in no way can be identified as the market turning down.
The trader commitments are still very bullish from all the way back to the 1st week of June.
And if the dow 7400 level is really a breaking point that will activate hugh margin calls for hedge funds, what are they going to do with all those short contracts?

To that fellow whose name escapes me but we all like and would normally have something to do with mice with large ears and making money and ohhh... I'm all confused now. ( Ronnie did you fart? No Nancy was I supposed to? ) Was That a good rebound or is the egg still running off my face? Oh well it was only my Cyber ego that was damaged. My real one is much bigger than this site.

imho, at some point, buying some cheap out of the money puts will give you a nice gamble on the long term bond market breaking down...

it's just a matter of whether and when. i'm still waiting for more experienced people at kitco to tell me it might be time ...

I think that if your ego is only as big as this forum, you're probbly in about 10th place. ( ;^ ) )
To be honest....the name you quoted sounded funny, but I didn't catch the mistake - had to look it up for you. If that's the biggest mistake you ever make in posting, you're doin' pretty good in my book.

Go gold! ( the proper direction is UP! )

ABN-AMRO also posted profit warning today. Currently below NLG 28 from 55 high

i may be incorrect. lord knows it could be anything.
but i've spent the last several years working with slow pc's and internet connections from some pretty beefy networks so i'll relate my experiences in the hope that smoother surfing prevails.
typically there is no such thing as "holding" the posting window open because once the data is sent and received, that's it. the window is no longer "held". several posters here have commented that whenever you see your browser loading a page for more than 10-20-30 seconds, you should stop it by clicking a "stop" button with your mouse or just hitting ESC on your keyboard. this is good advice. this kills the transfer.
the nuts and bolts of it is that as soon as you request ( attempt to load ) something with an address that begins www.kitcomm.com, the server ( which is just a ( hopefully ) big fat fancy computer somewhere in the bowels of Kitco the company's offices ) where the forum resides attempts to process your request. this request could be several things:

1. clicking the "submit your comment" button
2. loading changes to your view ( full/short txt, date/time )
3. clicking on a url or graphic somebody else posted

there are potentially many others.

as many have suggested before, using a "short text" view saves "bandwidth" ( you're requesting less data ) , but if this causes you to click many times on many different posts to "expand" them individually, you are making many requests and not saving much of anything! if you're a lurker ( i confess... ) , you're best off requesting the long text view ONCE, then read at your leisure. grab the URL's with a copy function and paste them into the "open url" field in another open browser. the key is to limit the requests you make of the server.

from lurking i can tell there is much computer expertise here so take my advice fwiw. like investing, computing is all about how it can work best for you. like investing, it's just a tool to get you where you want to go. maybe for some it IS where they want to go -- into a computer that is. virtual reality dude.... and hey, right on, go nutz! if you'd rather be virtual than real, how different are you then then fiat "lenders".

whoa! woof woof!

Sounds like you are well hedged... I just worry for those who seem to get angry when a case for a deflationary collapse is presented. No offense intended.

Short term and intermediate term data will not reveal a deflationary trend. In the thirties the mainstream never imagined what was happening as it happened. Those who tried to to bring the subject up were scapegoated and ridiculed. Like James Grant on Wall Street Week last Fall. Like farfel and another. I see history repeating itself. Right here on Kitco.

I, for one, miss farfels and anothers perspective on this forum. I and others here are quite capable of filtering their opinions. While the "deflationists" have been amazingly accurate about the sequence of events enfolding in this world, their timing is a bit premature. Being early can be worse than being wrong.

All debt instruments will become relatively worthless as this cycle plays out. Then we will rebuild. In 50 years or so it will all happen again. This has been going on for 2000 years.

Nikkei hits a 12-year low and falling by Tony Boyd, Tokyo
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Index plunged 2 per cent to a 12-year low of 12,948 yesterday amid predictions that it will soon test the 13-year low of 12,000.
The selling of blue chip stocks has become an established trend, with both domestic and foreign investors booking profits on stocks which until recently provided the only sanctuary from Japan's recession.
So-called nifty stocks such as Sony Corp, Honda Motor, TDK and NTT have fallen by about 30 per cent from their highs in July, outpacing the 20 per cent fall in the Nikkei in that period.
Other blue chips being dragged down by the overall market fall include Toyota Motor and Fuji Photo Film, both down 18 per cent since July, and Canon, down 26 per cent from its July level.
Yesterday's sell-off was attributed to a number of factors including the failure of the Group of Seven finance ministers to come up with a plan for reviving the world economy.
Other important reasons for the fall included disappointment with the Japanese Government's progress on injecting public money into the banks, worsening corporate earnings prospects in Japan and profit taking on securities to cover book losses.
"Companies are rushing to take profits on their securities holdings," said the chief investment officer at National Mutual Funds Management ( Japan ) , Mr Sumio Sakamoto.
"There are a few quality companies in Japanese portfolios which are showing a book profit compared to their cost and these are being sold to cover the huge losses in their total portfolios."
Mr Sakamoto said both Japanese and foreign investors were "very much frustrated with the lack of leadership shown by the Japanese Government".
"A lot of people are talking about the Nikkei falling to the 12,000 level and I don't dismiss this possibility at all," he said.
Major internationally traded Japanese stocks are suffering from downward revisions in earnings estimates.
Salomon Smith Barney has just revised its fiscal 1998 profit forecasts for the Tokyo Stock Exchange first section non-financials from minus 11.6 per cent to minus 22 per cent and predicted flat profits in 1999.
Warburg Dillon Read believes the market's earnings estimates for 1999 are too optimistic and it has warned that the sectors most vulnerable to further downward revisions are semi-conductors, precision instruments, all basic industry sectors and traders.
The broker said that a fall in US growth next year would hit consumer electronics, autos and machinery.
Bank stocks dominated trading yesterday with the sickly Long Term Credit Bank topping the turnover list at 15 million shares.
It fell 2 to a record low of 13 a share.
Trading in other banks was mixed with rises recorded by Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Sakura and Mitsui Trust and Banking, while falls were recorded by Sumitomo Trust and Banking and Fuji Bank

courtesy of http://www.asiachart.com

Jack, regarding your 18:14; URL below links to Ithaca ( NY ) Hours, a local currency. Many communities are now using script in lieu of fed notes. It is apparently totally legal.

http://www.lightlink.com/hours/ithacahours/

I am afraid that our financial/political leaders are irrelevant. Even thier suicides won't help. Hasn't been working in Japan...

Namaste

Gunrunner -

The young minister did not shoot himself with a blank cartridge.
It was I, high up in that there bell tower, what did the poor bugger in.
Wiff my trusty BPAR M-16. Got him on the third shot. If only I had me a handgun

Blam Indeedy

need to be naturally purged...I was thinking of the uplifting emotional aspect of their demise...aw shucks...there goes another good idea...oh well...

Central Fund of Canada closed up today. All is not as bleak as it looks. Go Gold!!

Watching through the night...

Aussie gold shares down @3%. No big deal panic. Just a little profit taking from the big run-up lately. Gathering a bit of strength for the next move to 315-320 area.

My only worry is that the Merrill Lynch-mob has told all its clients to cover their gold shorts and that gold would go to 315 in the short term. As you know Merrill's forcasting record on gold is absolutely abysmal. I would feel more comfortable if they were sticking with their 250 line. Merrill bullish on gold is the most bearish thing I've read in months!!

I might mention another complication is that if you are using the frames version ( price update thingees ) you are also hacing to reconnect to Kitco.com as well as kitcomm.com

One can just go to www.kitcomm.com and wait for the "click here" icon to connect if you don't really need the price updates.

http://www.cnnfn.com/markets/9809/29/chase/
---
JAPANESE BANKS IN DEEP DOO-DOO
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/100598worldbank-imf.html
Japan's top financial officials told their American counterparts
this weekend that their country's banking system was acutely short of
capital, with the top 19 banks in deeper trouble than Tokyo has ever
before admitted, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
At a private meeting Saturday, the governor of the Bank of Japan,
Masaru Hayami, told Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan,
the chairman of the Federal Reserve, that the capital supporting
those 19 major banks has dwindled to dangerously low levels in recent
months."
---
IMF IS OUT OF FUNDS
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/1998/PR9847.HTM
-----

Gold futures fell sharply on the New York Mercantile Exchange amid fears the
International Monetary Fund is moving closer to selling about 5 million ounces
of its reserves.

Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom's chancellor of the exchequer, said the
incoming new German government of Gerhard Schroeder is showing signs of
softening that country's stance against selling gold to reduced debt owed by
very poor countries.

The IMF holds 103 million ounces of gold -- more than annual global mine
output.

euro versus gold or euro = gold?

Place your bets.

It should have gone down...well above NAV...strange but true..people getting physical for some reason or just follish folk? Hmmmmm

Tom

We're setting up a new machine with a new connection to host our discussion group as well as live quotes and just about everything else.

I'd like to ask everyone to help us test the connection by clicking on this URL:
http://207.96.251.131/test.html

It's a full text version of today's discussion up to now. It's kind of long, but that's part of the test. If it works well, I don't need to know about it. But if you have problems or find the connection unusually slow, let me know. I'm at bkitner@kitco.com. Thanks for your cooperation.

This is the first test. If it passes, the next one will be for everyone to access simutaneously at a pre-determined time. That one should be more fun.

with a huff and puff, we blow your house down.

Microsoft

Sometimes the biggest stories are those sitting there on your
own front door step, but for some reason everyone chooses to
ignore them. The accounting implications of Microsoft's
employee stock option scheme might not immediately seem like
one of these, but that's because most people do not realise the
extent to which the software goliath has been paying its
workers in shares.

As an example of the speculative froth that has built up on Wall
Street over the past five years, the Microsoft employee share
option scheme, taken together with the company's hedging
activities in its own stock, takes some beating. Indeed what
Microsoft has built for itself could reasonably be viewed as a
financial pyramid.

A potentially vast, unrecognised liability has been accumulated.
And its relevance to us here in the UK? Microsoft's share price
has so far proved remarkably resilient to the correction in
markets. Even a worldwide slump is not going to stop Bill
Gates, is the general view. But can this really be true? Is not
the rise and rise of the Microsoft share price the Wall Street
bubble in microcosm?

Like most US technology companies, Microsoft has had to
promise big stock options in order to attract the calibre of
employee it needs to stay competitive. Its own chief financial
officer has admitted that but for payment in stock yet to be
exercised, the company's wage bill - its main cost - would be
two to three times higher than it is. The effect has been to
establish a potential liability running to some $34bn, or eight
times annual net income.

Some of this liability has been hedged, either by buying
Microsoft stock directly, or by selling put options in the market
- that is selling investors the right to put their shares in
Microsoft on the company at a predetermined price. But a large
and undefined part of it appears not to have been.

According to Parish & Company Portfolio Managers, an
Oregon-based consultancy, if this liability was adequately
accounted for, then Microsoft and some other leading Wall
Street technology companies wouldn't make any money.
Already, the valuations put on these companies might seem
stretched enough at upwards of 50 times earnings, but if it
were generally accepted that the emperor had no clothes at all,
then they would seem like pure fantasy.

What Microsoft should perhaps be doing given the importance
of these options as a way of remunerating staff is accounting
for them against profit as if they were an ordinary cost. Present
accounting rules in the US do not require that Microsoft do
this, for it would destroy the illusion of profit if they did.

And yet the only reason people want to go and work for these
companies is that they are offered stock in an enterprise whose
share price only seems to go up. It can readily be seen that
Microsoft and others have created for themselves not only a
very large potential liability, but also a serious operational
problem should the stock head south, as it is now beginning to,
and employees' expectations are disappointed. But that, as they
say, is only the half it.

Microsoft has also been selling put options in its own stock on
a grand scale. You may well ask what a serious commercial
company is doing speculating in its own stock, but actually
they do it all the time these days - a process we have come to
know as share buybacks.

In theory, selling a put option is no different. But in practice it
may very well be, since Microsoft actually books the money it
earns from selling options in its own shares. Last year it earned
hundreds of millions of dollars in this manner. If the stock
plunges through the value of the option, as it is almost bound
to in a crash, then Microsoft has to fund the difference. Again
this would seem a highly dangerous and speculative activity for
a company whose business is not that of investment banking
but one of designing and selling computer software.

It may seem odd that a company made up of such self evidently
clever people could allow itself to become as exposed as this.
You could argue that if the stock collapses, then it's nobody's
problem but that of the employees, since it is the value of their
share options that disappears down the plug hole and
Microsoft's liability with it.

But just as the illusion of profit would be shattered by proper
accounting for this form of remuneration, so too would be the
illusion of wealth once the fragility of the structure it is built
upon is realised. Isn't that rather what's happening to financial
markets as a whole right now?

As Japanese banks fold, their ability to supply credit to domestic producers is disappearing. The net effect: production shutdown right and left. It's happening at full speed even as I am typing this post.

So, what happens in America? Aggregate domestic American demand is still relatively strong. Soon, we will see fewer Japanese cars, stereos, cell phones, etc., etc. on retail shelves.

You will go down to Circuit City to buy that PANASONIC you always wanted...but it will not be there. Empty shelves because foreign product supply will disappear.

In order for the Fed and Treasury to convince Americans abandoning stocks to stay in bonds, Greenspan and Rubin have happily aided and abetted the propagation of the "deflationary spiral" thesis. As part of this thesis, we encounter the notion of "cheap exports" flooding America from desperate foreign countries trying to acquire Amercian Dollars. In the short term, this thesis has proven to be correct. No surprise there. However, in the medium to long-term, the thesis is an abject deception.

It is a complete fabrication, no different than Clinton's lies about Lewinksy's oral talents. No surprise there. When a chronic liar leads the country, then why would anybody in their right mind expect the Fed Chairman or Treasury Secretary to be any more forthright and candid about
the economic realities unfolding in this country.

Goods shortages will show up this December in AMerica just in time for X-mas. That Nissan you've always wanted...forget about it. You will search long and hard to find it...and when you finally find it, in all likelihood, your neighbor will beat you to the salesroom floor.

Thus, one can expect certain industry sectors to be rife with inflationary pressures....at the same time that other economic indicators are giving every indication that we are sliding into a major economic slowdown.

In order to stem these sectoral inflationary pressures, the government will be forced to hike interest rates even as unemployment is rising at breakneck speed. The bond market will collapse and in my opinion, I believe this collapse will trigger the final equities market debacle.

That leaves precious metals, notably gold and silver, as the true flights to safety. In all the turmoil, CB's will be competing with individuals, gold funds, and other institutions for the physical metal. The paper crisis will be in full effect as the masses desperately chase a currency with real intrinsic value....something backed by something more substantive than just the "compromised" faith of any national government.

As they say on K-1, Do Ya Got Gold?

Thanks.

F*

When the panic is over in the equities market and the first big rally begins it has been my thinking for some time that bond money would rush back into equities droping bond prices fast enough for foriegners to panic out creating a Bond Dollar panic. I'm looking for this to occur in late November or December. Some ( smart money ) may come out of gold at that time also.
When the XAU hit 50 a few weeks ago I purchased 100 ea. LXAAT @ 1/2 ( Dec. 98 XAU call option ) , sold all this morning at 2 5/8. Now the Jawboneing of the G7 about the IMF selling gold is gona let me do it again. I love em.

the connection was quick as lightning...yup...

Why the Clinton Plan Will Fail
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

In his speech on the world economy before the Council on
Foreign Relations, President Clinton said that the most pressing
problem facing us is global "financial turmoil." But his solutions
take us entirely in the wrong direction. He recommends more IMF
funding, more environmental and labor regulations, and a new
international conference to create a new financial "architecture"
for the world economy. These policies can only exacerbate the
problems that stem from the fundamental institutional failures that
lie at the heart of the modern monetary regime.

What gives rise to this speech is the continuing meltdown of
once-growing economies in Asia, the collapse of the Russian
economy, the strong signs of contagion in Latin America, and the
fear that it will all come home to roost in the U.S. unless
something is done. What he does not seem to understand ( and in
many ways, he speaks for the banking and financial elite as well ) is
that these events are not due to the inherent instability of markets,
but to government manipulation of them.

Clinton began by drawing attention to the problem of inflation,
which he considers long gone. In Clinton's mind, the problem of
inflation and the problem of global financial instability are
unrelated. They have different causes and different solutions.

But he could not be more off the mark. Inflation and financial
instability flow from the same source and both date from a critical
turning point in the history of politics. During the Great American
Inflation, depreciation has taxed away the purchasing power of the
1969 dollar and reduced it to 22.6 cents today. This has resulted in
incalculable losses to the efficiency of the American economy,
and dramatically redistributed wealth from savers to debtors.

The price has been a shrinkage in savings, a reduced incentive for
capital accumulation, and thus lower incomes and less economic
growth. It changed the psychology of personal, government, and
corporate finance as well. Debts were inflated away and excessive
speculation was encouraged. The savings rate plummeted by half,
and a dependency developed between the monetary regime and the
financial sector that did not exist in a time when money was
honest.

Chronic price inflation began to abate in the early eighties, but the
problem of credit on the loose began to show up in other ways.
Starting with the domestic rescue and restructuring of the S&L
industry, policymakers came to believe in the magical power of
the financial bailout to fix all problems. No more would there be a
price to pay for systematically bad investments and overbuilt
capital sectors; they would instead be saved by a combination of
fiscal intervention, debt conversion, and credit guarantees.

The troubles with the S&L industry began to be duplicated on an
international level, first in Mexico and then in Asian countries and
now, increasingly, in Latin America. In each case, the details are
different but the overall structure is the same. A certain sector of
the economy becomes overvalued and bloated relative to the
underlying savings and consumer demand available to support it
over the long run. Look deep enough, and you discover excessive
and unchecked bank lending, subsidized by political design, at the
root of each.

What happened thirty years ago to inaugurate this epoch of
inflationary instability? In 1968, the gold exchange standard of the
Bretton Woods system began to unravel. After a decade of credit
expansion to support the burgeoning welfare state and the invasion
of Vietnam, artificially overvalued dollars began to pile up in
foreign countries, which were increasingly being redeemed from
the U.S. at the fixed price of $35 for one ounce of gold.
Meanwhile, on the free gold market, which the U.S. was pretending
to ignore, prices were soaring. Fearing the loss of its entire gold
stock, the Nixon administration suspended gold redemption at the
same time it imposed wage and price controls in 1971.

The monetary crisis resulted in one of the most disastrous
experiments in monetary planning of all time. Currencies were
entirely decoupled from their historic linkage to a physical
anchor. And for the first time in history, central bankers and
governments the world over were completely unshackled from the
outside monetary discipline that the gold standard, even the
unstable one created in the postwar period, had imposed on them.
Now, the dollar would be backed by nothing other than the promise
of politicians and central bankers to make good in the long run.

At the time, experts opined that we had entered into a wonderful
new era of monetary flexibility that would permit central bankers
to impose stability on an inherently unstable global market
economy. In reality, the opposite happened. The global market
economy would no longer be protected from the ravages of
unchecked credit expansion, fiscal profligacy, and unlimited debt
accumulation. We experienced stagflation, hyperinflation, and a
long round of financial calamities which continue to this day.

The experiment in free-floating, global fiat currencies has nearly
unraveled many times in the past. It has also resisted every attempt
to try to bring it under control ( one thinks of the pitiful efforts of
Treasury Secretary James Baker to fix exchange rates in the
1980s ) . What we are witnessing now is the definitive judgement
that such unsound currencies are no basis for consistent and stable
international economic development.

Clinton shows no awareness of the roots of the current global
crisis. He referred to the problems of "financial turmoil," but
equally to the problem of "declining economic growth" and
"negative economic growth." His solution is a simplistic one: "spur
growth." But he has confused the condition with the cause, and
thereby begged the whole question. As Clinton made clear, in
today's political lexicon, spurring growth means flooding the
world economy with ever more credits and bailouts, in the vain
hope that problems can be literally papered over rather than
fundamentally solved.

It's hard to believe that anyone can deny, at this late stage, that
making the IMF the world's lender of last resort doesn't generate a
moral hazard for governments. But in urging Congress to refund
the global bailout fund, that is precisely what Clinton is doing.
What's more, he is agitating for the Ex-Im Bank to underwrite ( or
"generate," in his words ) more of the kinds of projects in foreign
countries that are most in trouble, and also to make the expansion
of world trade conditional on more labor and environmental
controls.

To top it off, he announced that he wants a meeting of the finance
ministers and central bankers from the major industrialized
countries to "recommend ways to adapt the international financial
architecture to the 21st century." He means yet another attempt to
realize the dream of monetary central planners since the 1940s:
global deposit insurance, or, even worse, a global central bank with
the power to create money out of thin air.

The road away from recession and financial crisis, and to a solid
and stable prosperity, begins with a recognition that downturns
serve a genuine market function. By purging unwarranted
investment and deflating inflated prices back to their market level,
recessions serve the crucial function of putting the economy back
on an even keel.

Yes, a market-driven transition from recession to recovery can be
painful. But the option of more debt, more bailouts, and more
putting off the inevitable, is frankly unthinkable, except for an
administration that seems to have a knack for denying the obvious
and papering over problems in a vain hope that they will go away.

* * * * *

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of the Ludwig von Mises
Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

I don't know if this is any help or not, but if I am in the regular frames version and click on the URL you gave with the test.html everything comes up fine. IF I then hit the "submit" button to refresh the screen, I get the following message and an otherwise blank text frame:

CGI Error
The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers. The headers it did return are:


Can't open perl script "C:\InetPub\wwwroot\display_short.cgi": No such file

I picked up a few thousand dollars in cash today and the $20 bills they gave me were mixed up old and new-every other bill. There is no way this happened by accident. The new ones look so fake, I wonder if people are staying away from them and that was the banks way of getting them into circulation? Anyone else have this happen to them?

I mean hitman, oh jeeeesss sorry, you know #&*@!%%*#!....Him.


they represent the opinions of AOL members.
Do you think President Clinton has committed impeachable offenses? Yes

28974
66.6%

No

14059
32.3%

No opinion

499
1.1%

Total votes:

43532

How would you describe your interest in the case? I actively seek out updates and details

21144
48.6%

I stay updated, but skip the details

14988
34.4%

I listen when it's on the news

5283
12.1%

I don't follow it

827
1.9%

I actively avoid it

1278
2.9%

Total votes:

43520

Are you: Democrat

13365
37.0%

Republican

20533
56.9%

Not affiliated with a major party

2177
6.0%

Total votes:

36075

Are you: Male

20995
53.9%

Female

17934
46.1%

Total votes:

3892

I have been spun till I think I may be dizzy for the rest of my days. Hmmmmm or was it that last Bloody Mary.

The bond market is very topish. The rush from bonds might not wait for the equity market to recover. It might just happen to get away from the falling dollar. Which will of course make the dollar fall faster as bond paper is turned back into cash paper. Which will of course create even more panic in the bond market.

With cash and bonds both falling and the equity market going nowhere there will be a certain interest in metals, yes?

I don't know where I am but everything appears to be in order. Submit works and the post thingy works as well.

Gollum, articles about wretched excess are themselves indications of bear markets. These reach a crescendo after the market has bottomed out and all the little guys are broke and the press, which had before been supporting the interests of the rich guys, suddenly becomes populist and calls for "those responsible" ( the formerly rich ) to be taken out and shot. The ones who are still rich take off for safer ground until the trouble blows over.

sharefin, it never ceases to amaze me that the IMF owns any gold at all. The great purveyors of 21st century digital dollar hegemony owning heathen metal? Ask anyone you know how much gold the IMF owns. I guarantee they'll respond, "How much? I didn't know they ( the great modern saviors of high-tech global capitalism ) owned -- GOLD!!??

These guys are all tipping their hands, as far as I'm concerned. All this talk about selling gold and gold is not a hedge anymore and so on and blah, blah, blah -- this keeps the "G" word in the press where you'd have never had seen it six months ago. There's no such thing as bad publicity, as they say. Joe Sixpack is now like a dog hearing a man speak. He cocks his head at the word "gold." Huh? But he's not stupid, just gullible. The seed is planted. Gold. Has something to do with safety. The world is becoming less safe. Ergo...

-EJ

Alan's actions as well as the markets' reactions are both contradictory. If investors believe the global situ-ation is so severe as to merit steep rate cuts, they ought to have been relieved that a potentially destabilizing collapse of a hedge fund was avoided. Similarly, if Mr. Greenspan really believes that the consequences of a fund collapsing are so fearful as to justify his haz-arding his credibility to rescue it, then that suggests that the global economic crisis is serious enough for him to press for steep cuts now. That he did not- that neither he nor the markets made any attempt to connect the dots-is significant.
The fact is it is difficult to tell how much of a boost the US economy needs. Its unemployment rate is still at a three-decade low; retail sales remain ro-bust; housing starts and business investments, though slipping, are still about 15 per cent above last year's levels; and stock prices, despite recent falls, remain high by many measures. On the other hand, "the first signs of erosion" in the US economy, as he puts it gin-gerly, are already noticeable. Corporate profits are moving downwards; job creation is slowing; banks have begun to tighten lending terms; new home sales fell by 4.4 per cent in August and the prices of US manufactured goods fell at their fastest rate for nearly 50 years last month, prompting fears of deflation if consumers postpone big-ticket purchases in the ex-pectation of lower prices. Given this confusing pic-ture, the Fed is probably correct to opt for a measured rate cut now, and step on the gas pedal ( and convince Europe to follow suit ) when the "signs of erosion" multiply. Indeed, at present, the US will better serve the world and itself if it acts quickly on its as yet vague plans to inject liquidity into collapsing economies, re-structure international debts, and increase trade fi-nancing. A further reduction in rates will help weaken the dollar, and thus reduce the debt burdens of emerging markets, but that in itself will not reverse a slump in global demand. Significantly, despite a booming economy, US imports from Asia rose only 9.5 per cent in the first half of 1998, but its exportzs fell by a whopping 14.5 per cent. Clearly, maintaining US and European demand is only half the equation; the other is increasing demand where it has collapsed most- in Asia. The nation that leads in this effort, the US or Japan, will gain leadership of the region.

It's repost...but a damn good one, I must say.

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

As Japanese banks fold, their ability to supply credit to domestic producers is disappearing. The net effect:
production shutdown right and left. It's happening at full speed even as I am typing this post.

So, what happens in America? Aggregate domestic American demand is still relatively strong. Soon, we will
see fewer Japanese cars, stereos, cell phones, etc., etc. on retail shelves.

You will go down to Circuit City to buy that PANASONIC you always wanted...but it will not be there. Empty
shelves because foreign product supply will disappear.

In order for the Fed and Treasury to convince Americans abandoning stocks to stay in bonds, Greenspan and
Rubin have happily aided and abetted the propagation of the "deflationary spiral" thesis. As part of this thesis,
we encounter the notion of "cheap exports" flooding America from desperate foreign countries trying to acquire
Amercian Dollars. In the short term, this thesis has proven to be correct. No surprise there. However, in the
medium to long-term, the thesis is an abject deception.

It is a complete fabrication, no different than Clinton's lies about Lewinksy's oral talents. No surprise there.
When a chronic liar leads the country, then why would anybody in their right mind expect the Fed Chairman or
Treasury Secretary to be any more forthright and candid about
the economic realities unfolding in this country.

Goods shortages will show up this December in AMerica just in time for X-mas. That Nissan you've always
wanted...forget about it. You will search long and hard to find it...and when you finally find it, in all
likelihood, your neighbor will beat you to the salesroom floor.

Thus, one can expect certain industry sectors to be rife with inflationary pressures....at the same time that other
economic indicators are giving every indication that we are sliding into a major economic slowdown.

In order to stem these sectoral inflationary pressures, the government will be forced to hike interest rates even
as unemployment is rising at breakneck speed. The bond market will collapse and in my opinion, I believe this
collapse will trigger the final equities market debacle.

That leaves precious metals, notably gold and silver, as the true flights to safety. In all the turmoil, CB's will be
competing with individuals, gold funds, and other institutions for the physical metal. The paper crisis will be in
full effect as the masses desperately chase a currency with real intrinsic value....something backed by
something more substantive than just the "compromised" faith of any national government.

As they say on K-1, Do Ya Got Gold?

Thanks.

F*

I haven't noticed it so much with 20's, but the 1's I get these days are ready for the rag bin. I think they're not recycling currency like in previous times...must have something to do with Y2K, hoarding, etc.

Look Slick, you either gota step down or find someone to bomb really quick.

noshit, they look really cheesey.
gb

Yep. The old IMF gold sales trick comes out everytime the POG takes a run up, just as predictable as the sunrise. Obviously you've figured out the plan, and turned it to your advantage!

True enough, but it has been my experience that there is ALWAYS someone or another calling for a bear market even in the most robust of bear markets. Just as today in the midst of the bear Abbey Cohen was saying that US stocks were still 10%-15% underpriced.

Today I saw one item where they were seriously talking about making 20% a year in bonds!!

I think it's more a percentage of how many bear/bull reports you see rather than the isolated few ( that one about Wretched Excess, by the way is an old one...from April I think ) .

The consensus among all of the people I've asked about the new $20 -- too many, if you ask my wife -- is that the bills look fake. Still, I don't think the banks are going to extraordinary efforts to see them accepted. ATMs are filled with new ones only. I'm not sure about how they are dispensed by humans at the bank, but I expect in the order they were received. Banks are notoriously low-margin operations, laborwise. No one has time to shuffle old and new bills to mix them.

Seen my Greenspan Greenback? Made it with the Photoshop-like software that came with my scanner. Yes, I do have better things to do.

-EJ

The forst correction of the new gold bull market is in progress. First teeny tiny support should be at 297. Don't hold yer breath on that one. First major support should be about 290. ..... If that don't hold, ask RJ.

I agree with John Disney on the IMF gold. They ain't gonna sell any at all. Period. Them scumbags are relying on that gold to pay their salaries and perks when the serious stuff really begins. ...... This dog ain't gonna hunt for long. It's old and tired. ...... Next story in line will be about the little old lady in Pasadena who sold her entire gold holdings in order to help the IMF. .... Coupla rings and her father's watch fob.

Trade the stocks and other paper as you would anything else ...... but if it's bullion in the hand, forget it. The times are much too precarious to become a believer of ANY official lines. ..... "Believe little, resist much".

Why not precious metals?

Because America has one hell of a major National Debt to service. As foreigners sell their US treasury bonds positions ( owing to a weakening US dollar and foreign government desires to take care of home fires ) , the American government hopes that Americans will step in and fill the enormous void. Despite Clinton's continuous gleeful declarations about balancing the budget, he has made essentially no progress in cutting the National Debt. America barely meets its daily principal payments on the debt.

Moreover, the government wants to encourage Americans fleeing the equities markets to continue investing in corporate bonds such that the great American corporate machine does not shut down completely. If America's corporations cannot raise funds through equity offerings, IPO's, etc., ( after a market crash ) , then the thesis is that at least American corporations should be able to function via Americans' continued purchases of bond offerings.

If American's direct their investment monies into precious metals purchases, then such investments do little if anything to satisfy the National Debt obligations.

Thanks.

F*

with the G7 knocking down confidence in Gold at every opportunity bonds are getting the flood of cash even with a falling dollar. The first time that the badmouthing or sell anouncements of gold is ignored by the market it's party time for gold.
My wife is the extreem conservative, ( CD's only ) I finally talked her into turning dollars to Swiss Francs a few months ago @ exchange of 1.47.
She hasn't been this happy with me since our Honeymoon 30 years ago.

Log drifting upstream...

Spot log floating upstream too....

Don't forget to answer my question of the other day when you get a chance, thanks.

Bonds reached yet another all-times high today. ( Dec bonds above 135.00!!! )

8 months ago, bonds were around 118.00.

People who invested in bonds around March and April of this year, have been part of one of the most amazing bull market of the board this year.

What are your friends thinking of this huge move Farfel?

Date: Tue Mar 03 1998 22:03
farfel ( @DONALD...YOU SAY DEFLATION, FRIEDMAN SAYS INFLATION, AND I SAY... ) ID#28585:
NEO-STAGFLATION....

I warned many friends to avoid this Wall Street propagandistic manipulation...in fact, I went down on my knees with some of them and BEGGED THEM not to place any monies in bonds. I categorically predicted the current bearish scenario now unfolding in the bond market; it will only exacerbate as the TORRENT of newly printed money ( printed in the aftermath of the October crash in order to maintain liquidity ) begins to hammer bonds even further over the short-term..

Well, either scenario can happen, or even some other. It kind of depends on how long the bond bubble holds up. These bubbles can last far longer than anyone expects possible, or they can burst overnight. In any case, after years of carry trade, flight money, rate increase speculation money and who knows what all piling into bonds and driving them to record low interest rates they are a powder keg.

Farfel, can you tell us when will the market collapse as it certainly didnt do so last Spring as you announced it will.

Thanks.

Date: Sat Mar 07 1998 17:50
farfel ( WHY A STOCK MARKET COLLAPSE WILL OCCUR THIS SPRING, NOT IN FALL... ) ID#339265:
Once the American stock market collapses ( along with the Dollar ) , there will be significant instablility in the world financial markets. The net effect: essential commodities will revalue themselves upward ( in U.S. dollar terms ) in an astounding slingshot effect

http://www.csis.org/

The NASDAC fell about twice as far as the DOW? Just coincidence? Looks like I'll start saving my money to buy Pt soon.

After WW2, the Marshall Plan vectored money ( US$ ) throughout Europe. The Germans, who were included, made the best use of it. Rather than spend it outright, the Germans kept much of it to be used for US$ based reserves, upon which credit was created!

Yes, fractional banking leverage can work, as long as it is built upon a strong foundation, as long as interest rates are low or nonexistent, and as long as bankers are honest.

Gold works even better!

It is not dependent upon the strength of any individual, 'artificial entity' or nation-state, etc. It can be a non-debt basis for storage of value, medium of exchange and unit of account. A gift of gold, wisely used, can be the economic spark of Prometheus which drives progress for generations!

Bob in DC

Farfel,

Do you still buy more when Gold goes down like today? Do you still don't care and buy more? Any news about the promised Gold short squeeze?

Please let us know, thanks.

Date: Tue Mar 31 1998 19:30
farfel ( ) ID#340302:
Copyright  1998 farfel/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved
...while I was down at the unemployment office, I got into a lengthy chat with all the fellas standing in line. Drunk as I was, I still managed to explain quite coherently my favorable opinions on gold as an investment asset.

By the time I finished, an amazing thing happened. All the guys were chanting...some weird, sing-song slogan...I think it went something like this...

I DON'T CARE...I'M BUYING MORE.
I DON'T CARE...I'M BUYING MORE.
I DON'T CARE...I'M BUYING MORE.

Now, I can't predict what the cumulative purchasing power of some 30 unemployment cheques will have on the price of gold but every little bit counts, don't you think?

Fondest,

F*

Manipulation or no, we are STILL in the box ( golden that is ) that a few of those around here mentioned month's ago. ( At least I think their were other's besides me - HELLO! Is there AnyBody IN there? ) ( the Pink F. like Gold also. ) Basically we have been in the $280-310 box for nine months or so with very short aberations above or below. ( Recently the short sharp spike down and back up to $280 - which lasted 7 days comes to mind. ) Many of the predictions we have seen lately call for further UP if we can decisively break $310 and much more DOWN if $280. does not hold. Ho-Hum. Still - 'IN THE BOX'.
Remember you heard it first here on Kitco. Tomorrow could be echos ( Pink Again! ) on CNN CFNN CFOX WSJ Times Globe AND Mail etc., Etc., ETC. In the box.

to the extreeme. I love it. Thanks for the laugh.

I thought that the Koreans were tight fisted when it comes to gold.
And look what they did?

I find it strange how so many whispers whispered here at Kitco.
Months later come out into global focus.

I don't know - at all.

But there's a whisper out that the IMF will need a lot more cash soon.

Perhaps.

but first watch a little news and stuff on the tube. G'Night,

I got $2,000 in $20 and every other one way new. The $50 were all new same with the $100.

LET'S HERE ALL OF THE ALTERNATIVES FROM THE PLAYERS....AND REVIEW YOUR INVESTMENT DECISIONS IN 30 DAYS....DOES ANYONE THINK ABBEY MIGHT STAKE OUT HER OPINION HERE????

6 times in percentage the fall of the Dow.

This stuff just doesn't make it into the US press. If you can read Chinese and picked up the World Journal ( Taiwan ) today you got juicy itmes like this one. This, at least for me, clashes with the image of HK as a sophisticated Center of World Commerce and, more recently, Center of Desperate Acts of Market Intervention by National Government.

Seems some bad guys weren't too happy about the way the federal legal system is handling a certain mob case so the bad guys drove by the courthouse with a machine gun and pinched a few off at the good guys. Then they threw their gun out the window. Of course they got away. Traffic, I guess.

-EJ

This stuff just doesn't make it into the US press. If you can read Chinese and picked up the World Journal ( Taiwan ) today you got juicy itmes like this one. This, at least for me, clashes with the image of HK as a sophisticated Center of World Commerce and, more recently, Center of Desperate Acts of Market Intervention by National Government.

Seems some bad guys weren't too happy about the way the federal legal system is handling a certain mob case so the bad guys drove by the courthouse with a machine gun and pinched a few off at the good guys. Then they threw their gun out the window. Of course they got away. Traffic, I guess.

-EJ

Canada sold off another 7 tonnes from reserves in Sept. The C$ is plumeting in value, and this is the policy that got it there. Im getting out of the C$ every chance I get. Paul Martin seems to be leading the G7 down the pathway to financial Hell, and theres nothing anyone can do about it.........

todays drop will create some serious margin calls Thursday.

Everything started out fine. It was loading up to the end and
then only the logo etc. came on line. I could not see any postings or
scroll up and dowm. I will try later. I have a power MAC 7500.

Thanks, GD

This game is getting too easy to play. Gold down 8 bucks in the last couple of days is an obvious sign that markets will tank this week. Gosh if I had only figuered this out when I played with equities. If they push it below 290, I'd bet we see the DOW drop to 7000. Remember guys its only preseason- can't wait to see the tricks they play when it's time for the playoffs.

Item # 1

Congress must act now on US farm aid, Clinton says

WASHINGTON, Oct 5 ( Reuters ) - President Clinton put emergency aid to
farmers on his list on Monday of legislative priorities for the final days of the congressional session.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/bri.html


Item #2

Clinton urges revamp of world economic system

By Knut Engelmann

WASHINGTON, Oct 5 ( Reuters ) - Economic policymakers met on Monday
to discuss how to save struggling nations from becoming embroiled in the
financial chaos that has upset the globe but there was little hope they would come up with bold new action.

http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/981005/bsc.html

Ok, Bill. How about you figure out a way to get the US Congress to save US farmers BEFORE you take on SAVING THE WORLD ECONOMIC SYSTEM? Better yet, FIRST figure out how to keep your hands off 21 year old interns, THEN save the farmers, THEN save the world economy.

Sheesh. How can ANYONE become CYNICAL with all this PROGRESSIVE thinking going on here? Save the whales, too? Save coins and stamps, sure. But where am I gonna put a collection of whales?

G'Nite.

-EJ

But why not just pure Gold coins?
That way counterfeiting is a moot point.
Anyone who bangs out a 1/4 oz chunk of .99 Gold
has a trade piece that is still worth 1/4 oz of Gold.
Problem though -
if Gold and Silver diverge any more {and it already is too far}
There is a huge gap in the middle for a convenient coin size.
Silver can carry the load under a value = US$20.
But Silver, I think, would be easier to "counterfeit" than Gold
because its density is so similar to base metals.

Somehow script doesn't do it for me, regardless of printer
unless it contains the Gold or Silver that it is "backed by"
whether as Silver or Gold threads OR Silver or Gold leaf.
A one dollar script note, by my measure, should have at least
50 cents of Gold or Silver embedded within it or glued upon it.

I guess I am just a purist.
I don't trust authority and "faith".
Either it is or it isn't - worth what it says it is.

When gold goes down $5.00 I am buying 10 maple ladies. If it goes
Down another $5.00 then I will by 10 More. With this strategy you
can't loose. Go gold, Hold minning and calls...

PH -

Im not sure where you got the impression that unwinding gold shorts would not make the price rise. It did not come from anything I have posted. Apart from others, I know what happens to the price when shorts are covered. If you reread my words you will see that I call for long positions to offset the rising price. I also called for equal parts intelligence, confidence, success , and luck for those that sit atop the highest thrones of finance. I believe that the luck portion of that covers those born to positions of power, so no useless nit-picking on that, yes?

As for curtailment of CB sales and leasing, you seem a convert to my most holy cause by citing the very reasons for which I have called for gold to rise substantially only AFTER the start of the year, when European CBs will have a much more difficult time playing their gold shenanigans. That I have been making this argument for months, and you now parrot it back to me, tells me my words must be getting through. I was the only person making this argument for a long time. When the truth of it became evident, others began to speak of this possibility also.

You mentioned also the $25 dollar rise in gold, a phenomenal move considering the last two years, would you not agree? After most good rallies, one could well expect some sort of pullback. My target is $285, and I think we will see it before the year is out. This is a reasonable trade and one that had the preceding paragraph well in mind when they were placed. Do you think that CBs, anxious to complete and sales or leasing, without interference from the new ECB, would sell or lease before the restrictions come into play or after? It seems that before is the path of least resistance. Given that that is EXACTLY what they have been doing all along, I do not consider my analysis even very clever. Just more clever than most folks who thought the first blip in gold would create a guided explosion that would cover all in the warm glow of our faded yellow sister. I am glad to see though, that you have taken my projections to heart.

As for other hedge funds, do you have any information on other funds? I am interested in specifics, not some faceless bogeyman fund that will rise to thwart us all.

Regarding Club USA, or golden eagle: I find both of those places single minded to the extreme. It is like listening to a Democrat defend Clinton - weve already heard it a thousand times, and it still doesnt hold water. I make no judgment of the merits of the respective companies, but their forums are boring and filled with vapid propaganda.

One site continues to publish the farce known alternatively as ANOTHER, Friend of ANOTHER, Kidney of ANOTHER, and Hair Follicle of ANOTHER, and ( my favorite ) DNA of ANOTHER. This is ample enough reason to stay away. You, and others have chided myself and LGB regarding our disdain for the farce called ANOTHER. The specious argument usually goes like this: "Who cares if he isnt some Saudi Prince, it was what he said that had merit". This contention sounds more like Maxine Waters than any free thinker that I would spend effort to communicate with. My problem with the schmoe was his cover story, which I called a fraud. I would now like to amend this and weigh in with my feelings on the person who typed the words ( I will use the male gender in my diatribe ) , which has until now remained unsaid. Thanks for the invite to do so.

To put the ANOTHER argument to rest for all time, let me say the following. If this clown had something so important to say, why did he choose to lie, create false and ever changing syntax, and incarnate friends and fingernails who pass his holy message along? If his words are true, are they not compelling in themselves? Why the snow job? Why the false accent? Why the subterfuge? Why the myriad of folks claiming to speak for him? Why is USA GOLD selling the book? Sharefin is giving it away for free.

It was all a sales pitch. I cant stand the little creep for coming to these pages and lying to us all. I do not care WHAT he has to say, the exact same way I dont care what Clinton has to say. They have shown their stripes and have proven that they are not to be trusted. I do not like liars. I rather enjoy exposing them and watching them squirm on the spit like a roasting pig. If you and others are fooled by this pitch, fine. But I am sick of all this whining about scaring the liar away. If he had any guts he would stick it out. But his story was unraveling, so he ran and hid.

So ANOTHER is a liar. ANOTHER is a coward. ANOTHER has been exposed for what he is. If you would like me to offer a couple thousand word essay on why this jerk deserves to be called every nasty name in the book, wait until the market calms down a bit and I will let you know exactly what I think of him. I wont be nearly as polite as I am being today, though. He came into your house and he lied to you. His story is a sham. If you believe it, my estimation of your intelligence may not fall, but my judgment of your gullibility rises to alarming heights.

I could blast this fellow for months for the lies and the tricks he tried to pull on us all. I actually know who he is, and he is a liar. Any further words addressed to me on this fecal fraud will bring more harsh words to the same. I dont believe in liars. If you are looking to defend the liar from harsh words, why do you solicit these words about your favorite subject? I will not believe a liar just because you, or any other, wags a scolding finger at me and cries, "shame". Shame on all who fell for the fraud.

Just so this is clear: I have zero but disdain for the fraud who called himself ANOTHER. He lied to us and he lied to you. That you are not offended at this crime does not raise my estimation of you, but I have every right to be offended, for he lied to me too. Besides, your sweet prince is alive and well on another forum. If he were to show up back here, I would likely have a few hundred questions for him. Invite him over, lets see how this vampire fares in the light of day. Trust and believe in one thing You dont want me over on those other forums. I am not limited to using my name as a handle there. I may not necessarily exhibit the extraordinary restraint I have shown on these pages.

Thanks for your questions. You probably dont like the answers. But you asked. You know well the conclusions I come to given the same set of facts. I have written tens of thousands of words, in great detail, for my reasoning, so no need to repeat it all again. It seems as if you once again are more concerned with picking over silly nits rather than speaking of the markets. I wish you and others all the luck and fun in the world over there. As long as it does not personally affect me, I will stay where I feel most at home.

I am of Kitco blood, I.

OK

PS -

Your attacks on LGB have a nostalgic ring. Although I do recall it was you calling for others to stop attacking some of your very own favorites. LGB can well take care of himself, he does not need my help. You complain about him and he dices you up with brutal logic. Listen. Logic is one of my things. You are a smart feller, but this Lurky feller is a tough nut to crack. I have found very little in his recent words that I can disagree with. I do think that these arguments do belong at K2, yes? I also believe that it is thwarting Barts intentions to post banned K2 dribble on these pages. He made the rules, why do you think they do not apply to you or your bed buddies? He banned some folks for a reason. He offered them a way back. You make an end run around all of that and deliberately defy Barts intended result. This post by proxy is poor manners and makes you look more the lackey that a sovereign being.

Sigh

What happened with that snake? Did you kill it, or did you package it up and send it to the IMF? Kitco has been holding its collective breath.

http://www.aci.net/kalliste/endofnwo.htm

How do I "know" he is a liar?

The same way I knew:

Clinton was a liar before he admitted he was.
OJ was a liar even though the Jury found him not guilty.
Hillary was a liar when she claimed no crooked trading in cattle futures.
And the Sears Santa was a liar, cause there aint posed to be more than one of him, and there was always one in every store I went into..

I used my brain.


Besides.. I know who he is.

Uh Huh

RE : EJ ( AK47 fired at the Courthouse in Hong Kong ) ID#45173
EJ, the recent event that you mention happened in Macau, not HongKong.

See the report from the SCMP ( Internet Edition ) below.


http://www.scmp.com
Monday October 5 1998

Macau gunman fires AK-47
ADAM LEE in Macau

A gunman yesterday opened fire with an AK-47 near the building where four alleged 14K triad bosses had been interrogated hours before.

The shooting came after authorities transported the four men, including two former policemen, from the Central Prison on Coloane Island to the Crime Investigation Tribunal to face charges stemming from a series of bombings, organised crime and fake IDs.

Witnesses said a man drove a white car along the Avenida da Amizade from Hotel Lisboa to an intersection less than a block from the tribunal at about 7am.

He got out and fired the gun into the air, before dumping it on the road and driving to the nearby Landmark Plaza where he abandoned the car and fled. Police found seven empty shells.

Fearing a repeat of last month's planned bomb blast that injured five policemen and 10 journalists, police cordoned off the area.

Firemen moved in on standby and bomb-disposal specialists searched the car for two hours before releasing it for forensic examination. Police said the car was stolen.

Sunny Kong, Yip Kam-tim and former police officers Renato Ferreira and Arturo Calgeron were arrested on Saturday.

The four suspects are believed to be top 14K members with close ties to alleged leader of the gang Broken Tooth Wan Kuok-koi.

They are suspected of being involved in the bombing of the car of Judiciary Police chief Antonio Baptista on May 1 as well as last month's bombing. Wan has been in detention since his arrest in May on charges of criminal association.

Since Wan's arrest, Macau has been hit by a spate of arson, bombings and gunfire attacks.

Violent threats were made against casino tycoon Stanley Ho Hung-sun and Xinhua boss Wang Qiren, prompting the mainland to announce last month that the People's Liberation Army would be stationed in Macau after the sovereignty transfer next year.

What did Another lie about?

http://www.cairns.net.au/~sharefin/Markets/Swing.jpg

Whither we go?

It was probably RJ having a posting window open so long to compose his last post. I have noticed that Kitco seems to have a limit to the no. and amount of time posting windows are open. Just an observation, but as of right now that appears to be the one consistent thing that hangs up others when they are trying to get open or post.

I would suggest composing your post on another app. then copy and paste to Kitco.

By the way, someone posted that Kitco is using a Microsft app. and Windows 95/98, and we know what that means - Bill Gates control factor.

HighRise

The PPT has had me Shanghied & pressed into keelhaul service on a slow steamer to that island where Fay Ray first met King Kong !
I'm back & loaded for S&P Bulls in Bear's clothing & Drag Queen's in GoldBug Bars.
God bless us all every one & let me hear from you soon.

Y.O.S.,

Tar Baby

I had to open another window just to see if my post made it?

HighRise

How do I know who ANOTHER is?

ANOTHER is me
And I am she

Indeedy O

Go to USAGOLD and spout...please.

Tom w/out permission

Is there any reason that Kitco is at least 7 mins behind time 10:54 now

HighRise

I do all my composing in MS Word.
I open the post window, paste, and submit.
As quick as I am in, I am out.
I notice it is slow also.
But since I have posted little these last couple-o-weeks
I can spend a bit of bandwidth, yes?

Interesting thing about the size of the daily files. I have sorted the archives by size, to see what was going on in those days when traffic on this site was high. Until this summer, the average size of and entire day at Kitco was about 280K. It is now bigger than 400K on most days. The Kitco Back Up banner is 95K - nearly a fourth the size of a day at Kitco. But the banner is being loaded in short text, partial days, full days, all of it. I wonder if it is the GIF animation thingie that is causing us our interminable waits?

Sigh again

I was absolutely fasinated with your post of 22:26. That article is a gem.

Interesting article:

Bill Clinton, with his "policy team" intervening to
buy up Dow Jones and S&P futures in an attempt to maintain a pumped-up pre-election stock market, understands what Boehler was saying perfectly. So do Hong Kong, and Malaysia, and all the other places where the disease of stock market manipulation--once unthinkable--has now become rampant. That such efforts are doomed to ultimate failure does not prevent their earnest practice. Yet nothing about the Hollywood dream factory could have been any more hokey than the popular interpretations of "market economy" that accompanied the spread of NWO ideas. 
http://www.kitcomm.com/comments/goldlive/index.html

HighRise

Tis another quirk of the Kitco Universe.
The time has been about 7 minutes behind for as long as I can remember. Since I save each full Kitco day for the archive, I long ago found I had to wait until 7 minutes after the hour to get the last post of the day. Eldo knows this too. We had a battle to be the last post-o-the eve a few months back, which he won - with great glee and HARs all around. No clock stalled his hand.

OK

Greenstone Gold ( RJ..... are these figures correct ? ) ID#428218:

"I reported myself on the weekly Monex PM review the LTMC was reported to have 400 million ounces short."

Initial "rumours" suggested that LTMC was 375 tonnes ( 12 000 000 oz ) gold short....

If the 400 million ounces figure is indeed correct, then it is 200 times the annual production of the largest gold mine in the world, the MURUNTAU mine in UZBEKISTAN.......

The 400 million ounces is an ASTONISHING figure.....


Could you please provide me with the reference to 400 million ounces ??!!

The bond rally is the undoing of hedge fund and bank positions. The routine bond shorts and secondary fixed debt longs that banks, investment bankers and hedge funds carry are a result of routine hedges that provide protection against interest rate rises. What has been lacking in this strategy was a way out in the case of a significant rise in spreads - i.e. repayment risk premiums demanded by the market. LTCM and others are unwinding long UK Gilts/short bonds hedged positions which we see in the BP dropping most of the day.

The unwinding of the treasury shorts after the firing of the Nomura, UBS and other traders who set up the hedge strategies, is what looks like a short capitulation on the charts, similar to what I have seen in the internet stocks time and time again. By the way, Fidelity Magellan seems to be setting itself up for a "sell to whom" situation in YHOO - into which all of the upside internet day traders are piling up every afternoon.

Another unwinding we benefited from was undoing part of the Yen and Gold carry trades which have backfired of late. Note that the dollar is weakening against the Yen althogh the interest rates on yen are next to 0. This means Americans covering yen obligations, Japanese repatriation of US holdings, and US payments for yen imports - that were usually reinvested in the US in the past.

The last three trading day's rise in the bond is preventing some action into gold, since few can bring themselves to sell into a short squeeze meltup.

Gold fundumentals are intact; enormous bullion coin demand, the beginning of the unwinding of the gold carry ( anywhere from $1/2 to 1 trillion ) .

The gold and XAU technicals are still in intact, the current peaks they formed are well over the old resistance line of the declining trend and some of the weaker issues have fallen under their recent support line. This is a warning signal, not necessarily a sell signal I use it to start putting in stops at the support line. If gold weakens to below 297 ( Dec98 ) , I'd sell. I'm worried that the usual ( of late ) buying into gold and XAU during the minor intraday rebounds in stocks has all but vanished, only absurdly priced utilities are moving in that way, in tandem with the bonds, though their yields are 60 basis points lower than the bond, and their fundumentals are not good at all ( delayed capital expenditure and worked to the bone skeleton staff, as well as newly introduced competition ) . This makes for a potential 15% minimal correction in the utilities - just to bring them back to the appropriate ratio ( eliminating the 60 bp premium for rusty equipment ) .

Hi Ol' ( young ;- ) Surf Lord Dude, Gold Lovin' Women Watchin' Roller Bladin' Buddy. Glad Ta see you're hangin' in and all this food fight crapola ain't'ffectin ya none. So whatcha tink 'bout my box? And waht's all this 'I am he, as she is me, I am de Walrus' type garfoula? Sheesh. In de box. S'aull Right? SAULLE RIGHT! APH - I missed it, but I know you had a stop loss in there somewhere ( S+P ) , I trust you're still intact. What's latest Silver prediction? Glenn - Update your Gold prognostications please! Goodnight Gracie.

Disappeared, mate. Even the rotties couldn't find it. It may have been a SIGN that gold would tumble. I don't believe in signs but sold a heap of gold shares on the opening today. Am now trying to buy them back 10-15% cheaper before the close, or maybe in the next day or so.

I know your herpetologically challenged Prez. would have found the snake in the grass. In fact, he probably would've joined it.

The test averaged about 2K bytes per second.

Thanks.

You found the right country, full of Chinese who speak Portuguese, or Portuguese who speak Chinese. Whatever. I guess that's why you call yourself Columbo. You're a good detective, but do you know any jokes like these?

Q: What do you call eight days of continuous sex?

A: Chanukah Lewinski.

Q: What did Jennifer Flowers say when asked if Clinton treated her the same as he treated Lewinski?

A: "Close, but no cigar."

Thanks for pointing out the error. Now I really am going to sleep.

-EJ

Thanks for the response. Kitco access and posting problems are really difficult to figure out.
Right after I posted the 7 min thing, it was back on time? I can be accessing without any problem at all, then all of a sudden be hanging out there in cyber space for 10 mins.

It has nothing to do with volume either, on Saturday, we were having problems. I e-mailed Bart and he replied that they are in the process of changing their server or what ever.

HighRise

Well, ere we go again, I submited this 5 mins ago and I don't know if it got posted. Wait and I will check...back in a minutre or two..... no it is not there yet but this is:
Date: Mon Oct 05 1998 23:17
Oro ( Bond technicals vs. gold, yen and stocks. ) ID#71231:

Well I try to post again, it is 11:23 tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick .................................tick tick tick tick tick 11:27
I will now hit the submit button again. Just hit the "stop" button

Perhaps you missed this correction of mine at 5:47 this morning:

Date: Mon Oct 05 1998 08:47
RJ ( ..... I am having trouble quoting myself ..... ) ID#410215:
At:

http://www.MONEX.com/mt.html>http://www.MONEX.com/mt.html

Or perhaps silver was running through the back of my mind. The correct figure is 4 million ounces. This is not carved in stone, but the LTCM short position is substantial.

OK


When I posted that this morning, the PMR from Friday 9.25.98 was still up - to my great consternation since I spent about three hours Friday morning working on it to get it done on time. Tis the bane of deadline journalism. You also notice that I got dyslexic with the LTCM thingie. Never could proofread my own stuff. The paragraph read:

"Gold staged an impressive rally Thursday, closing up $5 at $295. The rise was attributed primarily to short covering in the wake of a Wall Street Journal report of the possible collapse of a troubled hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management, with reported open short gold positions of nearly 4 million ounces. Although the report said that a deal was reached to shore up the fund, backed by the New York Federal Reserve, fears that this would include closing out existing short positions sent the rest of the market scrambling to cover existing shorts. Gold rallied further Friday, stalling at spot $299.50, a 12 week high, before fresh selling stepped in to cap of the current rally."

The new review is up tonight. Same place

http://www.MONEX.com/mt.html

OK

We've heard your arguments and ambiguities so long it has become sickening. Others here may tolerate your rudeness, self esteem and intolerance but I will not. Are you related to LGB? You both always have to get the last word in no matter the consequences. It must be a great thing to be so knowledgable and all omnipotent. Thanks for reminding us, but please do it under 100 words, or better yet, don't do it at all.

ANOTHER and F* have been mercilessly crucified by you and LGB much to the chagrin of many. You say you know who ANOTHER is...I say you know JACK SHIT.

Goodnight and goodbye,

Pete

Thanks for the reference......

What's a few million ounces between friends ?!

I'm sure that LTCM are still looking for "Friends", heaven help them !

As for "Friends", ANOTHER has them too !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oche aye the nooooooooooooo..............

Haggis

Thanks for the reference......

What's a few million ounces between friends ?!

I'm sure that LTCM are still looking for "Friends", heaven help them !

As for "Friends", ANOTHER has them too !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oche aye the nooooooooooooo..............

Haggis