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THE GOLDEN POT gold news & views - charts & more not so much a forum but rather a news archive

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Gold -- Sharefin, 17:29:56 02/21/02 Thu

Edgy speculators offload gold

COMMENTS from the head of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, provided edgy gold speculators with the ideal opportunity to offload some of their gold positions, leading to a drop in the gold price and profit-taking across the Johannesburg-listed gold companies.

The JSE Securities Exchange's gold index dropped 8,96% to 2352.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 17:28:08 02/21/02 Thu

Good as gold

NOTHING is as good as gold, and certainly the euro isn't. What a good buy gold has been in bad times, climbing when the world's stock markets were crashing.... Hang on a moment, is somebody spinning these figures? Surely the price of gold has been moving sideways for years? Even that, of course, would be better than the FT-SE Index, which tracks the shares of our leading companies and has lost 16 per cent of its value and is down by a quarter from its peak - but the point is that we are used to measuring the price of gold in dollars. Measure it in euros, and it sparkles. Anyone in any of the dozen countries of the eurozone who distrusted the new currency when it was launched three years ago and switched his money into gold shows a profit of 20 per cent. Now these countries are being papered with promises to pay (in euros, naturally) but gold does not depend on the promises of governments and central bankers. It is the natural ally of the individual against the state or superstate, which is more than can be said of the euro.

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Silver -- Sharefin, 17:26:52 02/21/02 Thu

Silver Falls 2 Percent

“There's no real supply fear with the silver market right now,'' said Howard Patten, an analyst at Barclays Capital in London. “I would expect prices to soften from here onward.”

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Bill Murphy (Gata) Interview with Jeff Rense Feb 19 -- Shadowfax, 20:16:03 02/20/02 Wed

Well worth a listen
Feb 19 in archive

http://events.yahoo.com/shows/endoftheline/02archives.html

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Gold -- Sharefin, 19:21:02 02/20/02 Wed

Financial Sense Online

Central Banks - Battle Gold to Keep it From Rising
The recent gold rally ended yesterday after the German central bank surprised the gold markets by saying it wants to sell off some of its reserves. The statement coming from Germany’s central bank shocked the gold markets because previously they had said they would not sell gold. The announcement was designed to stop the gold rally in its tracks. If gold is allowed to rise, many of the world’s leading banks in the US and Germany would run into problems with their gold shorts and their derivative books. The statement was designed to have a maximum effect on gold prices to keep gold from rising above $305 an ounce. Several key banks start to get themselves in trouble as prices rise above $305, $315, and $325.

Financial Stress Increasing
It is now a question with dwindling supplies and rising financial stress in the world’s financial system if central banks can keep the lid shut on Pandora’s Box. Currency devaluations are spreading around the globe, central banks are inflating and printing paper like there is no tomorrow, and credit and financial risk is growing everywhere. It is the ultimate "Confidence Game," a game they have played so well for so long. However, the brush fires keeps spreading and sprouting out of nowhere. There are more fires that are getting harder to contain. It is becoming the ultimate battle between the forces of paper and gold. Looking at 5,000 years of history the odds favor gold. Fiat money systems have never survived very long. This one has survived for three decades. The fires you see spreading in the financial markets, the currency markets and throughout economies around the globe signal its coming demise.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 18:02:58 02/20/02 Wed

If Germany shuns gold others may follow

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Gold -- Sharefin, 18:01:56 02/20/02 Wed

Early NY gold still retreating after Buba clarifies

"The Bundesbank was an excuse yesterday to help knock the market down when everybody was looking at all the longs in the Commitments of Traders report," said a floor broker, referring to the unwieldy 36,333 net speculative long position reported by the CFTC on Friday.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 17:59:47 02/20/02 Wed

Gold finds support in afternoon as Bundesbank tries to ease concerns

A spokesman said today significant sales of gold are not foreseen in the immediate future.

"We are bound by the accord between the central banks, which is valid until Sept 2004 and we will respect it," he said.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 17:58:06 02/20/02 Wed

Gold falls to 'good rebuy' area

David Solin, technical analyst at partner at FX Analytics, says the recent sell-off in gold has brought the shiny metal to a "good rebuy/add area." He thinks gold could resume its upward trend to a high around $308.25 to $308.55, with potential for gains to $318.50 to $319.00, and possibly even the October 1999 high of $338.50. "Though I am still no long term bull, the continued widespread bearishness could provide enough fuel for another sharp upleg ahead," he said in a note to clients.

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Fanny Mae & Freddie Mac -- Sharefin, 17:54:32 02/20/02 Wed

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Face Risk Similar to Enron's, WSJ Says

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Gold -- Sharefin, 17:50:13 02/20/02 Wed

Gold soothed after Buba comments, turns to upside

On Wednesday morning a Bundesbank spokesman told Reuters that it planned no immediate gold sales.

``Gold has a lot more going for it (than silver). It may have more to do and might have to get its boots on and have a rally,'' one trader said.

``I think gold was heading to $292 anyway and it was a question of when. Maybe it wouldn't have done it so quickly without the Buba comments,'' he said, adding that the central bank's comments threw the bears exactly the bone they needed to sell off an already overbought market.

``I'm not convinced that Buba is driving the gold price. I think it just helped the bears get their way,'' he said.

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Kaplan Snippet -- Sharefin, 17:44:53 02/20/02 Wed

Gold in correction mode

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Kaplan Snippet -- Sharefin, 17:41:47 02/20/02 Wed

Bundesbank

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported a comment by the president of the Bundesbank hinting that, perhaps, they were considering selling off some or all of their gold reserves in order to obtain other assets that pay interest. The market took such comments quite hard and sold off sharply. Due to the fact that Germany is a signatory to the Washington Accord, it was incomprehensible that such gold sales could occur before the year 2005. The comment was officially retracted this morning and full adherence to the Washington Accord was stated.

I find it almost impossible that Germany would even consider selling off gold reserves as the Bank of England has shown the folly of selling gold reserves in a rising market.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 16:23:36 02/20/02 Wed

Short-term Gold Update

Since the September high at $296 gold has broken through no less than five layers of supply between November and January. This is the mark of a healthy baby bull. In the past, gold rallies that failed and reversed took ages to regain the lost ground and supply hung like a dead weight around the market's neck for months at a time. Yet gold's last correction only lasted about 10 weeks and prices exceeded the September high. In the process several new layers of demand have been created in this market as delineated by the multiple parallel channels in the gold chart. A sign of even greater short-term strength would be if gold manages to keep above $290-$292 throughout its latest correction. This would add even greater impetus to its next upward leg.

We mentioned recently that gold's dominant interim cycle (the 40-week cycle) is up into spring and we should have a ways to go before gold's next serious correction. The cycle channels have aligned across all timeframes and are pointing to the target chart resistance area near $345. Looking at a two-year continuous contract gold chart provides a magnificent perspective of where we are along the gold cycle. Three distinctive parabolic bowls are visible in the gold chart from January 2001 to the present. We are presently completing the third (and presumably final) bowl before the blast-off in gold prices, which nearly always takes place after a triple parabolic bowl-shaped bottom. This is more than just an inverse head and shoulders pattern, it is extremely parabolic in nature which means that not only are the commercials heavily accumulating but that long-, intermediate-, and short-term cycles have aligned beautifully to produce an extraordinary rise in gold prices.

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JP Morgan -- Sharefin, 09:51:53 02/20/02 Wed

Over 30 trillion in derivatives

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ChartsRus -- Sharefin, 09:42:22 02/20/02 Wed

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ChartsRus -- Sharefin, 09:41:03 02/20/02 Wed

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Gold -- Sharefin, 07:45:38 02/20/02 Wed

Bundesbank nails gold

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Gold -- Sharefin, 07:42:44 02/20/02 Wed

Calling the gold price

On June 25 last year, Murenbeeld's consultancy issued a report entitled "Gold - A Brighter Outlook" that put the metal's slump to last year's April low of $255 an ounce, and subsequent recovery, into perspective. The report is prescient in its entirety and in its specifics. Maybe economics isn't so dismal after all; maybe it is even science.

Although the report has aged, it contains important and permanent lessons about gold's economic mechanism.

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Snipped from Le Metropole -- Sharefin, 07:30:27 02/20/02 Wed

Welteke Comments and Gold

By Bernard Connolly

Welteke’s comments this afternoon suggesting that the Buba might consider selling some of its gold in certain circumstances had a substantial impact on the intraday price of gold.
However, Welteke’s comments are not all that surprising. They express Buba satisfaction at the recent rise in gold prices, and seem largely aimed at giving notice that when discussions on extending the Washington agreement (expiring 2004) open in earnest, Buba wants to be allocated part of the quota of gold sales.
Welteke comments suggest a desire to sell into a rising market, and that Buba sees the gold-market rising. They also imply that any sales would be driven by necessity stemming from Germany’s problems in complying with the stability pact. However, Germany’s stability pact problems are only one indication of the growing problems in the world financial system-problems which are likely to make gold increasingly attractive as a real asset.
Weltekes' comments this afternoon, suggesting that the Bundesbank might contemplate slowly selling some of its gold in certain circumstances, have had a substantial impact on the gold price.. Any suggestion that the Bundesbank might sell is very major news. And if the Bundesbank attitude is changing, then so might the attitudes of, say, the Banque de France or the Banca d'Italia.

However, what Welteke said was not actually all that surprising. He says that recent gold price rises are pleasing to the Bundesbank and show how important it is not to sell at the wrong time. Welteke also refers to the Washington agreement. That is due to expire in September 2004 and a number of participating central banks have already said that discussions about its extension or replacement would start well before that date and might be somewhat less secret than the discussions preceding the current agreement. Among the 15 participating banks, several -- the SNB, the BoE and the Nederlandsche Bank -- will have been able to sell, by September 2004, most or even all of the gold they want to sell. The agreement was supposedly based on limiting participating central bank sales to the excess of annual final demand over annual gold supply. If that is carried forward beyond the expiry of the present agreement, then the only realistic potential sellers, in any size, among the participating central banks are indeed the Bundesbank, the B d'I and the B de F. Welteke says clearly that he does not want a return to a free-for-all in gold sales, so it looks as though Welteke is giving advance notice that when the quota is shared out in the next agreement, the Bundesbank will want to have the right to some of that quota.

The reasons for Welteke's apparent desire to sell some gold are made clear in his comments. First, there is a timing issue: he implies one should think of selling only into a rising market, not into a selling one, as a number of central banks were doing in the several years before the Washington agreement. He seems to believe that gold is indeed now a rising market and is likely to remain so when a renewal of the agreement might make Bundesbank sales possible. But why sell if the price is rising? Welteke's comments answer that question, too. His answer comes in the context of necessity: a discussion of Germany' s fiscal problems under the Stability Pact. He says that any interest payments received from assets bought with the proceeds of gold sales should be used to reduce the budget deficit (he actually says debt, but the mechanism would have to involve a lower deficit), not to increase public spending as many in Germany have been advocating. But it is precisely problems of the sort that Welteke is concerned with that have contributed to recent increases in the gold price. Such problems --whether in private sector borrowers, semi-public borrowers or state borrowers --are likely to become more widespread around the world. As the example of the London Gold Pool in the 1960s showed, when there are perceived to be systemic problems in the world financial system leading both to inflation fears and to credit worries (indeed the latter may end up producing the former) -- and in an environment where financial regression and suppression are likely to be restricting the menu of alternative hedges -- even deliberate attempts by a cartel of central banks to depress the gold price will be unsuccessful. The more that institutions such as the Bundesbank are seen to be under pressure from politicians to increase the amount of seigniorage they extract (there are limits on how much the Bundesbank can do this on its own, given that it can no longer independently increase the monetary base, so it has to look to ways of increasing the return on its assets rather than to expanding the size of its balance sheet) the more likely it is that that private markets will lose confidence in central banks in general and will be attracted towards real assets with no counterparty risk and relative ease of acquisition and storage without incurring the costs of capital controls, of which gold is likely to be the most attractive.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 06:57:02 02/20/02 Wed

Newmont Mining/Normandy -2: Connected To Franco-Nevada

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Newmont Mining Corp. (NEM) completed the acquisition of Normandy Mining Ltd. (A.NDY) and named David H. Francisco acting chief executive of Normandy.

On Sunday, Newmont completed its purchase of Franco-Nevada Mining Corp. (T.FN) and declared its bid for Normandy unconditional. At the beginning of the month, Newmont said it expected to complete its $2.2 billion combined acquisition of Normandy and Franco-Nevada by mid-February after AngloGold Ltd. (AU) dropped out of the battle to acquire Normandy.

In a press release Wednesday, Newmont said the Normandy shares, together with the Normandy shares owned by Franco-Nevada, represent more than 79% of all Normandy shares. Newmont wants to transform the three companies into a mineral resource company.

Newmont's bid for Normandy expires Tuesday.

Francisco, who now serves as Newmont's executive vice president, operations, replaces Robert J. Champion de Crespigny at Normandy.

Normandy also reconstituted its board with the appointment of Bruce D. Hansen, chief financial officer and senior vice president of Newmont, and Britt D. Banks, vice president, general counsel and secretary of Newmont. They join Pierre Lassonde, president of Newmont, John Prescott and Bernard Wheelahan on the Normandy board. The other Normandy directors resigned.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 06:53:49 02/20/02 Wed

Sliding gold and Wall Street do some serious damage

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Aquarius Platinum -- Sharefin, 06:51:05 02/20/02 Wed

Aquarius Platinum Confirms Canadian Takeover Talks

Aquarius Platinum, the British-listed mining group, confirmed on Monday it had been the subject of takeover talks with Placer Dome, the Canadian precious metals miner. The admission, made in a statement to the London Stock Exchange, followed speculation in the Australian and UK press over the weekend.
Aquarius said it had held "some discussions with Placer in relation to it acquiring an interest of some nature in Aquarius", but that the discussions had been terminated.
"Aquarius is unable to anticipate whether there will be further discussions between the parties," it added.
The group's Australian-listed shares rose 11 per cent to A$9.45 on the news while the London-listed shares rose by a more modest 6 per cent in early trading to 325.5p.
Press reports on Sunday said Placer Dome, the world's sixth-largest gold miner, was preparing a bid of 400p a share, valuing Aquarius at about £285m ($399m).
There had also been speculation that any offer for Aquarius could draw counter-offers from Anglo American Platinum, the world's largest platinum miner, Barrick Resources of the US or Lonmin, the £1.8bn platinum miner listed in London.
Lonmin has previously said it wants to expand its platinum interests and Impala, the South African platinum miner that is Lonmin's main rival, owns about 10 per cent of Aquarius.
Aquarius, a Bermudan-registered group, has interests in South Africa in the geological region known as the Bushveld Complex. In 1999 it set itself the target of becoming the fourth largest primary platinum producer. It aims to have three mines - Kroondaal, Marikana and Everest South - producing 500,000 ounces a year of platinum group metals by 2003.
Prices for platinum group metals have been buoyed in the last two years by strong demand for catalytic converters in the automotive industry and from mobile phones.
However, analysts are forecasting that slowing mobile phone sales and better catalyst technologies, which require less PMG material, will exert downward pressure on prices for the next few years.
Placer Dome, based in Vancouver, was uncontactable for immediate comment.

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SWC -- Cyclist, 06:50:14 02/20/02 Wed

reached support at 15.60.Risk reward is positive with a 20.00 target

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Gold -- Sharefin, 06:49:19 02/20/02 Wed

Europe Precious Metals: Sellers Push Gold Dn Amid Nervous Trade

Gold continued its downtrend Wednesday, with sellers pushing prices lower following comments by Bundesbank President Ernst Welteke that Germany may start to sell some of its gold.
With France and Italy expected to throw themselves into the ring for a potential rollover of the September 1999 Washington Agreement, aggressive sellers entered to push spot gold to a low bid of $291.88 a troy ounce before some light profit-taking helped take the market into slightly safer territory, around $294/oz.
With U.S. fund long liquidation having entered en masse Tuesday, dealers believe selling is set to continue this afternoon and prices could test $290/oz support.
The next support below this is around the important 50-day and 200-day moving averages, at $284/oz and $278/oz respectively, with a move through these levels likely to see prices freefall to the lows seen at the end of last year.
Silver watched gold and meandered around $4.50/oz throughout the morning.
Platinum failed to attract renewed interest despite news that Russian quotas have been signed, giving the Central Bank, Gokhran (Ministry of Finance), Koryak and Amur quotas for platinum and rhodium, while providing main producer Norilsk Nickel with a five-year platinum quota and a one year rhodium quota. It would appear that nothing was awarded to either Rosbank or Vneshtorgbank.
Spot platinum moved around $470/oz, with palladium following a similar pattern, hovering around $375/oz throughout the session.
Analysts said the platinum group metals are still in their traditional position of waiting for Russian announcements on deliveries and hoping to find nervous consumers willing to enter the spot market to buy. "So far it appears that no one wants to play," sadi analyst Ross Norman of thebulliondesk.com.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 20:38:20 02/19/02 Tue

Gold prices fall sharply

The recent rally reflected "the problems the global economy and financial markets are having dealing with a deflationary environment and the consequent undermining of credit quality," Sean Darby of Hong Kong-based Nomura International said in a research report issued Monday.

Although Darby sees spot gold prices, which were trading around $293 Tuesday, as "overbought," he changed his suggested asset allocation to favor holding gold over the U.S. dollar.

Erik Gebhard, an analyst at Altavest.com said comments from Ernst Welteke, president of Bundesbank, inferring that the German central bank will sell gold reserves contributed to Tuesday's price weakness. However, "if we were to look at the timing of central bank sales, a 'sell' indication is almost a perfect indicator to buy as they are notoriously poor market timers," he said.

All-in-all, however, Tuesday's move lower is "simply a technical correction," said Gebhard. "It's what markets typically do after a big move," he said.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 20:31:58 02/19/02 Tue

Gold Down More Than $5 On Fund Sales

-- Bundesbank news sparks more aggressive liquidation
-- Support at $290 seen tested in near term

New York, Feb. 19 (OsterDowJones) - Comex Apr gold was dumped by speculators Tuesday to nine-day lows of $293 per ounce as a failure to go higher last week prompted widespread disappointed selling.
Dip-buying and trade short covering managed to prop prices up at recent lows just above $296 through most of the day, but an announcement by DeutscheBundesbank that it may consider selling its gold reserves in the future sparked a more aggressive campaign late in the session that drove prices sharply lower.
Bundesbank President Ernst Welteke made the following remarks on Bloomberg Television about German gold reserves:
"We have significant gold reserves in the Bundesbank, and of course we are happy if the gold price rises. That shows that you shouldn't sell your gold at the wrong time.
"At the moment, there is an agreement between the central banks limiting the sale of gold. That is sensible since if we all sold central bank gold we

** Part of story missing **
Euro gold coins strongly suggests the German authorities are acquainting themselves with market counterparties."
"They are already very heavy gold lenders," he said.
The current European Central Bank agreement announced in September 1999 limiting central bank sales to 400 tons per year expires in October 2005.
Analysts claim it is "highly likely" that it will be announced that the agreement will be rolled over for another five years before the end of this year, and that at that time Germany will be added to the list of sellers. Should that be the case, the earliest date German sales could be made would be late 2005, they argued.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 20:27:43 02/19/02 Tue

Golden Star having a bumper year

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Gold -- Sharefin, 20:04:57 02/19/02 Tue

Scientists skeptical on gold claim

Scientists are skeptical about claims by a Chennai-based chemical engineer having a technology to commercially extract gold from sea water and say that such tall claims should have been scientifically examined before being aired in public.


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Seems like desperate times calls for desparate news.
Scraping the bottom of the barrel to try and inspire fear in the hearts of those who want gold higher.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 19:58:43 02/19/02 Tue

The Bullion Desk's Norman Comments on Welteke Gold Statement

Following are comments by Ross Norman, an analyst at TheBullionDesk.com, on Bundesbank President Ernst Welteke's statement that Germany, the world's second-largest gold holder, wants to sell some of its reserves to buy other assets.

Welteke's comment came in an interview with Bloomberg television, to be aired tomorrow.

``Even if there were sales, this doesn't step outside the Washington accord (limiting central banks' gold sales). The impact wouldn't occur for two or three years.

``All that it's doing is shaking the nerve of the weak longs. With Comex (division of the New York Mercantile Exchange) particularly long at the moment, you might see some short-term selling on the back of it.

``Fundamentally I still believe the market should be above $300 (an ounce). I suspect that this might be a temporary setback when some of the weaker longs are shaken out.

``I suspect (the Bundesbank) will do it in an orderly fashion, and the unwinding of hedging that's going on and the supply-side discipline that'll come from the contraction of the producer base will more than counter what the central banks will be prepared to off-load.

``There's nothing new in the expectation that the Washington accord will be extended anyway. In a sense, I suppose the Germans are saying they want to be in the queue when the next round comes.''

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Gold -- Sharefin, 19:56:47 02/19/02 Tue

Gold dives on Bundesbank comments

Bundesbank president Mr Ernst Welteke told Bloomberg Television: "We have significant gold reserves in the Bundesbank, and of course we are happy if the gold price rises. That shows that you shouldn't sell your gold at the wrong time."

"At the moment, there is an agreement between the central banks limiting the sale of gold. That is sensible since if we all sold central bank gold we send the gold price plummeting. That wouldn't be sensible.

"But I could imagine that we slowly sell some of this gold and reinvest the revenue in assets that pay an interest," Mr Welteke said.

The current European Central Bank agreement announced in September 1999 limiting central bank sales to 400 tonnes per year expires in October 2005.

Analysts claim it is "highly likely" that it will be announced that the agreement will be rolled over for another five years before the end of this year, and that at that time Germany will be added to the list of sellers. Should that be the case, the earliest date German sales could be made would be late 2005, they argued.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 19:54:24 02/19/02 Tue

German comment shakes gold

"It's shaken out some weak longs, I guess, and we touched off some stops below $294.70 in April. That was the key level," said a dealer at a bullion trading firm. "Now I think people are trying to digest the news."

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Seems to me the news is a non-event, just more of the propaganda goldbugs are used to.

One would guess that the strong hands are still holding,
And that the selling was done by one of the big gold sellers as per usual.

Smells like an Enronitis lie to me.
Disinfomration from a CEO who knows otherwise....^o-o^....

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Gold -- Sharefin, 19:49:03 02/19/02 Tue

Bundesbank comment shakes gold bulls on COMEX

COMEX gold tumbled Tuesday after European Central Bank council member Ernst Welteke raised the prospect of eventual German bullion reserve sales under a 1999 agreement capping European central bank gold selling.

Welteke, who is also head of the German Bundesbank was quoted in an interview to run Wednesday on Bloomberg Television saying "I could imagine that we slowly sell some of this gold and reinvest the revenue in assets that pay an interest."

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Seems most goldbugs believe this is what's already happened.
That the Bundesbanks has already leased(sold) it's gold forwards and is enjoying the paltry interest.

Now they want to sell what they don't have,
And they are talking about it two years before they are allowed to do it (2004).

Strike two in the propaganda wars.
With strike one being that the Al-Quada Gold Strike.

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Buffett Ends Banking Investment in Citigroup -- Giovanni Dioro, 19:23:09 02/19/02 Tue

In a recent SEC filing it appears that Buffett has ended his investment that originally started with Salomon Brothers, which was taken over by Travelers, which merged with Citibank and formed Citigroup.

For an investor who loves financial investments, he appears now to have dumped Citigroup and also dumped Freddie Mac a couple of years ago.

Does Buffett know something? Did all these accounting shenannigans scare him off? Are Banks overextended and is a financial crisis looming?

Well Buffett is shrewd and conservative of an investor. He is an insider and a genious in his own right. It may just be that Buffett finds better risk/reward investments elsewhere.

I will tell you one thing - once interest rates start rising there is going to be a lot of hurt out there both in financial institutions and for most everyone. But even then, we look to Japan and we see that interest rates can remain low for a long time.
Buffett May Have Severed Citigroup Ties

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You Lie....You Fry!! -- auspec, 18:15:41 02/19/02 Tue

The following was written in response to a friend's explanation of Placer D's assurances of reducing their hedges post Washington Agreement and then doing exactly the opposite:


Give em hell, friend, the days of abusing gold advocates and skating freely away are kaput! Ask Buttock Gold how{e} their shareprice and management incentives have done lately. Their deeds exposed on the internet have played a huge role in this falling out of favor. We are in a small gold fishbowl and communication is widespread and up to the minute, little slips by anymore. Blanchard Re-Smirch, JT and Place Mats, StrangloGold and Buttock have clearly identified their allegiances, no true gold advocate would have ANYTHING to do with them. To quote my favorite S. African: "Screw Em!" Let's accelerate their demise.
We {gold advocates} DEMAND that our companies follow the roles played by the likes of Durban Deep, IAMGOLD, GoldCorp, Samex and the multitude of avowed non-hedgers who are showing true insight and leadership qualities. We are into and sold out for GOLD and its proper place in world finance and will not tolerate lies, chicanery, or acts of sabotage on our King of Metals!!
Don't just sell these losers that DON'T believe in gold, give em hell as you go, spread the word far and wide in this little fishbowl where every ripple reaches the other side. ******There is NO other market this small that has such a world-wide impact and degree of importance!******* Unified gold afficionados control this market, WE make the rules, sooner or later this will be visible to ALL!!
You buy gold from Blanchard Be-Smirch? You're trading with the enemy. You own Pusser Dumb and tolerate their lies? Who's side you on?
Time to ascend the nearest table top and start screaming bloody murder! These sphincters cannot hear you otherwise. Sort em out one by one, StrangloGold's Boy Bobby talks a nice game, but is a few nucleotides short of a chromosome. Maybe he doesn't really know what's going on, but quite likely it's his responsibility to find out. Turn a blind eye to misdeeds often enough and you'll end up w Enronitis.
Will we soon have a new Boston Strangler?? Bout time for the "Judge" to quit diddling and perform his Constitutional duties, no? Can the man still access his conscience? Cough it up, Man, you think this is all going to fade into distant memory? Your social schedule too programmed to permit this straight-forward case the attention it deserves? You gonna fold from pressure above?
A college hockey player, former pro football player, a Yankee Newspaper Editor, and a rag-tag bunch of gold lovers going to defeat the proudest and the richest?? HELL, YES! Just watch.
Restful evening to all,



auspec

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Venezuelan currency falls 2.9% today -- Donald, 12:45:11 02/19/02 Tue

The currency has fallen a total of 16.3% since Feb. 13

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swc -- Cyclist, 12:45:02 02/19/02 Tue

has made a 50% retracement

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gold -- Cyclist, 12:15:44 02/19/02 Tue

is being played like a violin...:)

April gold -- Cyclist, 17:22:04 02/18/02 Mon

looking for a home around 285 at the end of the week.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 10:01:42 02/19/02 Tue

Dollar Moves Higher; Gold Falls

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Gold -- Sharefin, 07:02:22 02/19/02 Tue

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Silver -- Sharefin, 05:06:57 02/19/02 Tue

DAVID MORGAN SILVER REPORT - Audio

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Gold -- Sharefin, 04:08:56 02/19/02 Tue

Further Consolidation In Canadian Gold Sector


Miramar Mining has agreed to buy its smaller rival Hope Bay Gold for US$29.7 million in stock to expand their gold mining and exploration operations in northern Canada.
Under the terms of the proposed transaction, Miramar would issue 0.263 share for each Hope Bay Gold share, the companies said in a Business Wire release. Miramar shareholders would own 62 percent of the company and Hope Bay Gold shareholders would control the rest, the companies said.
The companies are already partners in the Hope Bay gold exploration project in the Canadian territory of Nunavut.
Completion of the transaction is subject to approval by regulators and Hope Bay shareholders, the companies said.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 04:05:35 02/19/02 Tue

Major gold campaign lined up for DSF

"Gold has always been viewed as an investment and a wise spending choice, but the Gold and Jewellery Group is working hard to bring the point home. Since gold prices have room to rise, this is perhaps a very good time to invest," said Tawfique Abdullah, chairman of the Group.

This year, the Group is offering a 'passport' to all shoppers spending Dh500 on gold and jewellery, which includes a coupon for a daily raffle that would fetch 1 kilo of gold and a separate coupon for the grand raffle that would fetch 10 kg of gold on the concluding day of the festival.

Besides, the passport would offer a series of discounts and facilities in various outlets, including Wild Wadi, Bur Juman Centre and Al Ghurair City. All the draws will be held in the new Global Village at the Festival City.

The group's campaign has a golden egg as its central mnemonic, aimed at giving gold a 'face-lift' and breathing new life into the gold industry.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 04:01:47 02/19/02 Tue

Major gold campaign lined up for DSF

Dubai's gold jewellery retail sales fell by 9.42 per cent last year to Dh250 million compared to Dh276 million worth of jewellery sold in 2000, according to the Gold and Jewellery Group.

The group has also ann-ounced a comprehensive promotion for this year's Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF), which involves 41 kg of gold to be given away in raffle draws and five golden egg races every day.

The total volume of bullion and jewellery sold in the emirate is about 101 tonnes amounting $1 billion, according to officials.

---

U.S. may be falling into the same liquidity trap as Japan -- Donald, 03:59:51 02/19/02 Tue

click here

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 03:59:03 02/19/02 Tue

High Street gold turns a new leaf

HIGH street jewellery stores in the UK enjoyed record sales of gold jewellery in 2001, it has been revealed.

The World Gold Council, the industry body that promotes and monitors gold consumption internationally, said sales of gold jewellery in the UK in the final quarter of last year rose by 12% to 21.6 tonnes.

And for the year as a whole demand rose by 7% to an all-time record level for the UK of 69.2 tonnes.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 03:53:06 02/19/02 Tue

Newmont Completes Purchase In bid To Be Number One Gold Producer

Australian group Newmont Mining completed its purchase of the Franco-Nevada Mining, clearing a final hurdle for Newmont to become the largest gold producer. Terms have not disclosed.
The acquisition of Franco-Nevada, which controls 19.8 percent of Normandy Mining, helped Newmont win a bidding contest against South Africa's AngloGold last month for Normandy. Toronto-based Franco-Nevada, the third-biggest mining company, agreed to be taken over by Newmont as part of the consolidation.
Newmont's Canadian shares will begin trading Wednesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “NMC.” Newmont plans to start trading on the Australian Stock Exchange on February 25th under the ticker “NEM.”
Newmont extended its $3.28 billion bid for Normandy, Australia's biggest gold producer, to February 26th from last Friday to give Normandy shareholders more time to accept the proposal.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 03:49:59 02/19/02 Tue

Africa's South Deep Gold Mine Seen At 700,000 Oz By Aug 2003

---

London morning gold news -- Donald, 03:48:56 02/19/02 Tue

click here

---

Black Friday 1869 -- Sharefin, 20:31:29 02/18/02 Mon



When Ulysses S. Grant assumed the presidency in March 1869 the national economy faced several problems: the federal debt was huge in the wake of the Civil War; hundreds of millions of unredeemable "greenbacks" had forced gold coins out of circulation; and the country's credit was precarious. As his first presidential act, Grant signed a law promising that the federal government would pay holders of U.S. bonds in "gold or its equivalent" and would redeem the greenbacks as soon as practicable. The price of gold dropped to $130 an ounce, a low point not seen since Congress suspended payments in gold or silver in 1862.

Grant's talented treasury secretary, George Boutwell, implemented reforms at the Treasury Department to limit counterfeiting and enhance tax collection. Boutwell also began selling the Treasury's surplus gold for greenbacks, and then used the paper currency to buy back government bonds. The administration's policy kept the money supply even, the price of gold low, and reduced the national debt $50 million by September 1869.

Because the gold market hovered around the relatively small figure of $15 million, the federal government was essentially able to set the price; selling more of the Treasury's gold reduced the price, while selling less raised it. Thus, gold investors could not try to make a profit based on economic indicators, but were hostage to unpredictable government actions in the market. Gould and Fisk realized, though, that gaining inside information on the government's plans would allow them buy massive amounts of gold at a low price and then sell high, reaping enormous profits.

Black Friday 1869

Jay Gould

Jay Gould

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 19:36:04 02/18/02 Mon

Placer Dome stock lower on limited growth outlook

Shares of Placer Dome lost some of their recent glitter on Monday as investors sifted through the gold miner's recent earnings.

Placer Dome shares were down 73 Canadian cents, or 3.6 percent, at C$19.10 a share on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

A research note said the company has no growth prospects and is dealing with maturing mines.

``In short, 2001 was a declining year for Placer Dome that reflected the maturing nature of its operations and lower commodity prices,'' Barry Allan, an analyst with Research Capital, said in a research report.

Allan forecasted higher average gold prices in 2002 but added that Placer Dome has a ``clear absence of growth prospects and is dealing with its maturing mines.''

Allan, who said his overall outlook for the gold sector is positive, has a ``hold'' recommendation on Placer Dome stock.

Last week, the Canadian gold miner reported fourth-quarter earnings of $29 million, or 9 cents a share, up from a loss of $89 million, or 27 cents a share, in the year-earlier period.

On Friday, Placer Dome told analysts its hedge position at the end of September was 8.7 million ounces, including call options, compared with 7.9 million ounces sold forward at the end of December.

Brian MacArthur, an analyst with UBS Warburg, maintained his ``buy'' recommendation on the stock due to Placer's strong hedge book and its leverage to gold and copper.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 19:33:59 02/18/02 Mon

Gold, tin reserves found in N. Sumatra

---

Gold propaganda -- Sharefin, 19:28:56 02/18/02 Mon

Terrorists mine gold trade


Al-Qaeda gold shipments routed through Dubai


Al Qaeda's Road Paved With Gold

----
Psychological warfare that was expected here in this commentary.

In the sound-bite culture we are immersed in, everyone should have their BS meter turned on "high."

Regarding the timing of the Prudential and Bloomberg statements, the Bard said it best:

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.-Hamlet, Act II, Scene 1

As this coming Monday is a market holiday in the USA, expect some fresh gold-bashing statements in the press, while the anti-gold forces try to regroup.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 19:19:11 02/18/02 Mon

Market to abandon tael for new service

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 19:17:48 02/18/02 Mon

Hong Kong to commence 99.99% gold trading before April

The Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange Society in Hong Kong will commence its 99.99% purity gold trading service in the first quarter of this year, an official from the Exchange said Monday. "The new trading service is a strategy in response to the market demand. In regards to the growing demand for 99.99% purity gold, especially in the Asian markets, more goldsmiths favor using higher purity gold to produce gold jewelry and coins," the official said. The Exchange now trades only 99% purity gold. "We have no plans to stop trading our existing 99% purity gold as there's still a group of supporters although its popularity is expected to weaken soon," he said.
Meanwhile, the official said the 99.99% purity gold would be traded in grams, instead of the "tael" unit which the Exchange is using in trading 99% purity gold. "Gram is becoming an international symbol unit for gold, and has been used in countries like Japan and China. To follow the international market direction, the 99.99% purity gold will be traded in grams rather than tael," he said. Meanwhile, the official added that the Exchange was looking for opportunities to cooperate with the Shanghai Futures Exchange once it officially launches this year. The Shanghai Futures Exchange started its simulation trading in November last year, but has yet to decide on an official launch date.

---

Gold Fields -- Sharefin, 19:16:18 02/18/02 Mon

Gold consolidation plan crumbles

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 19:13:41 02/18/02 Mon

Barrick Gold Posts 4Q Net Loss On Costs

Barrick Gold Corp., hit by costs tied to a lawsuit and a major acquisition, reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $94 million, or 17 cents a share. The gold producer also changed its long-running practice of selling all its gold production at prearranged prices.

Barrick said the latest quarter included $117 million of costs associated with its acquisition of Homestake Mining Co., completed Dec. 14. Barrick also booked a provision of $59 million due to a recent court ruling that a Homestake affiliate had improperly failed to complete the acquisition of Troilus gold mine from Inmet Mining Corp. in 1997. Barrick is appealing the ruling.

For the year-earlier quarter, Barrick reported a net loss of $996 million, or $2.51 a share, including a $1.1 billion asset write-down. Barrick said it has restated its full-year results for 2000 to conform with U.S. accounting principles, which the company recently adopted as its main standard, but the company didn't provide restated results for the fourth quarter of that year.

Boosted by Homestake's production, revenue from gold sales was $520 million for the latest quarter, up 38% from $377 million a year earlier.

Barrick expects to produce 5.7 million ounces of gold with total cash operating costs of $167 an ounce this year. Last year, Barrick and Homestake produced a combined 6.1 million ounces of gold with cash operating costs of $162 an ounce. The drop in production seen for this year is due to the previously announced planned closure of seven mines, including Homestake's namesake mine in South Dakota.

Altering its long-running practice of hedging its gold output, or selling its future gold production at prearranged prices, Barrick said it will sell half its 2002 gold production at spot-market prices. The other half is expected to be sold at $365 an ounce, it said. For 14 years, as the price of gold sagged or stayed flat, Barrick sold its entire annual production at prearranged prices above spot prices, a move that generated billions of dollars of added revenue for the company.

The move to reduce the amount of hedged gold was prompted by Barrick's increased production base, higher spot prices for gold and lower interest rates, Barrick President and Chief Executive Randall Oliphant told analysts. Under Barrick's hedging strategy, the company earns interest on cash raised by selling gold borrowed from central banks.

---

I think I made a mistake posting that e-mail here. -- kapex, 19:06:58 02/18/02 Mon

I know finny wants to keep the site Gold related and I should not have posted it.
OTOH

It is relavent to whats going on and thats why I did.

It contained quite a few relavent pieces of info that pertains to a lot of what is happening, but nonetheless I regret doing it now.

As far as Gold goes, I have been in a watch mode over the last week as the metal and stocks have hit a bit of a brick wall.
Understandable and not unexpected, although what happens over the near term is not as important as what is happening longer term.
Gold has climbed a wall of worry and the entire fundamental picture for it is better than ever!
Unfortunately, with that improved enviroment there are a few drawbacks. The main one being the "Opportunity" to buy at incredible bargin levels is gone. I don't see Gold going back to the 260's. Hell, I don't even see it going back to the 270's.
The world is moving into physical Gold ownership and the mining stocks are showing whats comming for physical metal prices.
The thing to watch for in here now will be dips that will shake your faith in the true direction.
I said a week and a half ago that Gold and the stocks looked toppy and I actually bought puts on the XAU. I got out at the 65 and change level and then late Friday played the Feb expiring 70 puts again as a combination of things happened that told me they were going to hit it and they did.
In at 1.05 and towards the end of the day they were 3.50 in the money although they closed at 2.60 at cash settlement.
The funny thing is I have made money on the short side over the last week with the exception of Hecla Mining.
It just keeps going and going and going!

So tomorrow the markets are open again and I don't have a clue as to what will happen next. Actually......I do have a feeling, but I am becoming reticent to post it as a chosen few can't handle anything but Gold to the moon and beyond for stocks, and this group really needs to get a grip!

The last thing I am going to do is start calling day by day.
Feb Gold which is cash for all intents and purposes did make a 5th wave.
April did not.

BUT!
The 5th wave could have been a B wave and the XAU looks similar.
But I wouldn't count on it.

My gut says we could correct right now and the other side of my gut says we could begin back up. One thing for sure is I don't want to be on the sidelines with fund money and I'm Not!

So, a few more days of action and things should clear up Elliott wise.

Technically speaking, the MACD for weekly Gold has made a series of lower peaks as Gold has spiked up. Thats not good!
So maybe Gold does need to show something over the near term as there are some things of concern. Sentiment has gotten a bit ahead of itself as Lots of bullish articles came out about Gold.

I think the next 3 or 4 days will be interesting to say the least!

---

Silver -- Sharefin, 18:30:09 02/18/02 Mon

The LME suspends trading in silver contract

The Exchange has decided to suspend its silver contract with effect from close of business 1 March 2002

and therefore, with immediate effect, no trades in this contract will be permitted if they have a prompt date beyond 1 March 2002.

---

April gold -- Cyclist, 17:22:04 02/18/02 Mon

looking for a home around 285 at the end of the week.

---

Kapex, -- normandy revulsion, 17:00:50 02/18/02 Mon

The evidence is crystal clear. If the sheep don't wake up soon its all over.

---

TandT. Scruffy -- normandy revulsion, 16:48:48 02/18/02 Mon

Good Post.

---

TERRORISM and TREASON is a way of life -- Scruffy, 14:37:42 02/18/02 Mon



The evidence is overwhelming that the US governemt is complicit in the cover up and was involved of the 911 attack

Historically, this is nothing new

The US government was involved in the Oklahoma City Bombing and the WTC Bombing of 1993 including cover up

Involvement include US intelligence, military, president and congress, fbi, justice department. I don't blame them for what they did. This couldn't have happened without the complicity of whoever is voting for or supporting them,

Obviously, a good response is to attack Afghanistan and focus on Bin Laden since it will boost moral of the nation and not focus on things that make people uncomfortable ... better to stick our heads in the sand

The anthrax attack seems to have been of a variety gotten from Fort Detrick, the US biological weapons in a CIA project ... at least their contributing

There was a story about the Taliban, bin Laden and Al Queda using GOLD to finance their terrorist operation ... that validates gold's value

There is no doubt in my mind that Bush and gang will carry out biological attacks either real or phony to stir up the fear of the country

I am not enthusiastic about those mandatory vaccinations especially given the estimated 25,000-40,000 dead, 275,000 permanently sick, studies indicate about 500,000 veterans sick, with 8 out of 10 Gulf War Vets families where at least 1 person is chronically sich ( pretty staggering ) got the anthrax vaccine ... so probably over a million military and civilian casualties from the gulf war ... not to talk about the hepatitis B vaccine given to the gays in NY and SF ...

the official burning of the constitution and bill of rights by overwhelming approval of congress and the american people was not a happy event but i say, people get the kind of government they deserve


I see part of the plan is to destroy the economy of the US and make it closer to a third world country.by looting the wealth ... the poorer one can make the people, the more power and control can be gotten. i can see why they may want to beef up security. when the future really comes, there will not be a lot of unhappy campers out there so they will need to deal with the disgruntled element ... the standard of living is headed towards the sewer for future generations but i sense it may arrive there even quicker than i think

I have written off the countries future ... the Homeland Security agency is an indication of where we are headed ... but I think if people want security, they should have it, have microchips and other implant devices ... the better the government can track and control people, the safer people will be ... i will forego protection

My hope is that GOLD will go up in price so I can find safe haven somewhere else or maybe get a high paying job helping to build that pipeline thru afghanistan or a courier for the largest drug trafficker in the world, the US government


What effect will domestic terrorism attacks - biological attacks, small nuke weapon ( just one ) - have on the price of gold

I can see them contaminating the food supply

Will people buy gold if they are in a state of fear

Will they say anybody who owns anything gold is a terrorist

If the price of gold without manipulation ajnd stability longer term should be at $600-$800

then i figure with the shortage, it will be much higher $1000-$1400

and if demand for it picks up in a major way ... the sellers will pump it up, i can see $2000-$3000

and if it becomes like dot.coms ... maybe $6000 an ounce where they are pumping the crap out of it ... well actually if it was really like the dot.coms, we'd be talking $6,000,000 per ounce at least


i work in the city so not a good place to be ... i can imagine them doing a small nuke to further terrorize the population and further their agenda

there is no doubt they will either release smallpos or contrive it in order to vaccinate the population with who knows what ... don't want to be around for that

there is a view that the cabal is trying to hold down the price of gold. that is true but they also intend it to be a nuclear bomb into the economy. all those derivatives were intentional. on one level, they make money, loot the economy. on another level they create an economic bomb they can detonate the US economy and make it's inhabitants poorer and obtain more control

the biggest looting is going on at the Pentagon .... 3-4 TRILLION dollars is unaccounted for ...

catherine austin fitts found 59 billion missing in 1999 and another 12 billion the next year ... she has a website
she also did a study on HUD properties and CIA drug money


in the 30 years i have observed congress, they have covered up virtually every major scandal. contrary to popular belief, even watergate was covered up except the more trivial aspects ...

when things get this bad and still people don't notice, our country is pretty much toast

the fact that GATA was allowed to go on C_SPAN, it is an indication, the cabal may want more exposure ...

maybe the cabal can have more control and the goldbugs can make a few dollars

as soon as i can scrape together a few dollars, i want to exit out of the war zone ... go somewhere a little more quiet


Scruffy

---

WGC 800,000 oz of retail purchases -- BillD, 13:31:57 02/18/02 Mon

Someone posted the other day that the 800,000 number was a MISPRINT ... the actual retail that day was 80,000 oz. Big Difference.

Check it out ..

BillD

---

An e-mail I recieved from a friend in Hawaii -- kapex, 13:26:22 02/18/02 Mon

Subject: [InternationalLabourNetworking] The Bombshell !! Bush Urges
Daschle
to Limit 9-11 Investigations !! WAKE UP CALL


EVIDENCE BUILDS - ACT NOW TO PREVENT A COVER UP & WAR:

There are now 12 Congressional Committees planning to investigate 9-
11, and how it was allowed to occur. Bush & Cheney have taken the
unprecedented step of urging the Senate to "limit" inquiries into 9-
11. Read the below reports and you may understand "why" Bush and
Cheney don't want this in the light of day. [Also, Canadian
Television Program SCALDS mainstream US media for completely ignoring
the below disturbing reports.]

It is CRITICAL THAT YOU SPREAD THIS INFORMATION OUT AND DEMAND THAT
WORLD MEDIA AND THE CONGRESS FULLY INVESTIGATE THIS. Cheney has
spoken of a list of 40 to 50 nations where US military strikes may
occur. If another major terrorist strike occurs in the US, we may
very well lose our civil rights completely. As this begins to come
out there may be some desperate people in our government that will do
desperate things. We must act now, while we still have freedom to
act. For a freely emailed Activist Kit, reply to
findtruth40@hotmail.com with "Send Kit" in the subject line.

Does all this sound too bizarre? I'm sure pre-war Germans had the
same skepticism in the 30's. After seeing the "Superbowl-Neuremburg
Rally" on Sunday, any conscious person should begin to be worried.

CALL TALK SHOWS, WRITE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ASKING, "WHY DOESN'T
BUSH WANT A FULL INVESTIGATION OF 9-11?" and "WHY ARE ONLY FORIEGN
MEDIA LOOKING INTO THE BELOW REPORTS?"



We may be witnessing the Nazification of our nation.
--Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate in literature, January, 2002


What do we know of 9-11 that should be investigated?

Pre 9-11 Intelligence Breakdowns:
- Reportedly the Bush Administration forced the FBI to "back
off" on their investigations of terrorism in the Middle East. FBI
Deputy Director O'Neill (killed in WTC on 9-11) reportedly resigned
not long before 9-11 over this investigative obstruction, claiming
that the main obstruction was the interests of American Oil
Companies. (Source: Recently released French Book, "Bin Laden,
La Verite Interdite" (Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth)

- US Oil interests were well represented within the negotiating team,
that apparently was the source of the threat to "bury Afghanistan in
a carpet of bombs" unless they played ball in creating a major oil
pipeline through Afghanistan. This threat was reportedly made
several months before 9-11. (Bush's family has a strong oil
background. So do some of his top aides.

-U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was until the end of last
year president of Halliburton, a company that provides services for
the oil industry;

-National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice was between 1991 and 2000
manager for Chevron;

-Ministers of Commerce and Energy, Donald Evans and Stanley
Abraham worked for Tom Brown, another oil giant.
[ BBC interview on the above issue: - The Bush Administration forced
the FBI to back off of the Bin Laden investigation months before 9-
11. Source: BBC transcript BUSH ? BIN LADEN HIDDEN AGENDA!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/16455
27.stm]

- CIA Station Chief in Dubai met with Bin Laden only 7 weeks before 9-
11 took place, yet they did not try to apprehend him, only met with
him. - The CIA station chief in Dubai met with Bin Laden 7 weeks
before 9-11, and at a time when Bin Laden was supposedly "wanted" by
the CIA.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,584444,00.html·
(English)
(German Trans.) http://www.orf.at/orfon/011031-44569/index.html

- US government agent claims the CIA has been dealing with Bin Laden
since 1987, and he suggests in his interview that the terrorist acts
of late may well have been planned and paid for by the CIA with US
taxpayers money to enable the Bush Administration to "legitimately"
bomb Afghanistan into submission.

An interview with Michael Springman exposes the CIA's links
with the terrorist attacks on September 11 [Michael Springman worked
for the US government for 20 years with the foreign service and
consulate. He just went public with the story of his involvement in a
large scale CIA operation that brought hundreds of people from
the middle east to the US, issued them passports and trained them to
be terrorists. Hear the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)
interview here. http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewNote.cfm?REF=1267]

-Insider Trading profits off the 9-11 terror don't lead to
Osama Bin Laden, but to AB Brown Trust, until recently chaired by the
3rd highest man in the CIA.

-[Someone with considerable financial resources, and foreknowledge of
the terrorist event, put stock options "against" the airlines that
were to explode that week of 9-11. - INSIDER TRADING PROFITS from 9-
11 were reported by the US media when they thought it was Arab
terrorists . . . but then the story mysteriously died. Then the UK
Independent revealed that it leads to a firm chaired by the 3rd
highest man in the CIA (and stranger still is that $2.5 million of
the "winnings" are still unclaimed (see below for URL to entire
story). http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP110A.html .
Info confirmed by Independent Newspaper in UK:
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=99402]

[Standard FAA and DOD "intercept and shoot down procedures" were
violated on 9-11 (see FAA and DOD procedures on "intercepts").]
It is a FACT that standard intercept procedures for dealing with
these kinds of situations ARE TOTALLY ESTABLISHED, IN FORCE and ON-
LINE in these United States 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours
a day. Regarding rules governing IFR requirements, see FAA Order
7400.2E
- 'Procedures for Handling Airspace Matters,' Effective Date:
December 7, 2000 (Includes Change 1, effective July 7, 2001), Chapter
14-1-2.
Full text posted at:
http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIR/air1401.html#14-1-2FAA

- Guide to Basic Flight Information and Air Traffic Control (ATC)
Procedures,' (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001) Chapter 5-
6-4 "Interception Signals" Full text posted at:
http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIM/Chap5/aim0506.html#5-6-4

- FAA Order 7110.65M 'Air Traffic Control' (Includes Change 3
Effective: July 12, 2001), Chapter 10-2-5 "Emergency Situations"
Full text posted at:
http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/ATC/Chp10/atc1002.html#10-2-5

- FAA Order 7110.65M 'Air Traffic Control' (Includes Change 3
Effective: July 12, 2001), Chapter 10-1-1 "Emergency Determinations"
Full text posted at:
http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/ATC/Chp10/atc1001.html#10-1-1

- FAA Order 7610.4J 'Special Military Operations' (Effective Date:
> November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000;
Change 2, effective July 12, 2001), Chapter 4, Section 5, "Air
Defense Liaison Officers (ADLO's)"
> Full text posted at:
> http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch4/mil0405.html#Section%205

- FAA Order 7610.4J 'Special Military Operations' (Effective Date:
November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000;
Change 2, effective July 12, 2001), Chapter 7, Section 1-2, "Escort
of Hijacked Aircraft: Requests for Service"
> Full text posted at:
> http://faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch7/mil0701.html#7-1-2

- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3610.01A,' 1
June 2001, "Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict
Airborne Objects," 4. Policy (page 1)
> PDF available at:
> http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf
> Backup at:
> http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/3610_01a.pdf

For a clear and detailed description of flight plans, fixes, and
Air Traffic Control, see: 'Direct-To Requirements' by Gregory Dennis
and Emina Torlak at: http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/atc/D2Requirements.htm

Absolutely NO executive-level input of ANY KIND is required for
standard intercepts to be scrambled.


WHY DID BUSH'S STAFF NOT FOLLOW NORMAL PROCEDURES IN THE CASE OF A
NATIONAL EMERGENCY ON 9-11? DID HE KNOW WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?

The UK Independent Newspaper has questioned how Bush, who claimed in
two public appearances to have seen the first plane hit the first
tower on television the morning of 9-11, before the 2nd tower got
hit? The significance of this is that no one in the world saw that
first tower get hit, at that time, on television. They also question
why Bush continued to sit with elementary school students after the
2nd tower was hit and he was informed, "America is under attack."
Standard procedure for such a situation is to whisk the President
away, if not for his safety, for the safety of the students. Unless
he knew something more than we did that morning. The Independent
asks, "what television station was HE watching?"


Is it Outrageous to Consider that Elements of a Nations' Government
Could Committ Terror on It's Own People for Political Reasons?

- ABC News.com's May/2001 story resurfaces about how the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff have in the past ACTUALLY DESIGNED a plan to committ
domestic terror on Americans to whip them into a war hysteria, to
support war efforts by the govt.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html

[The National Security Archive has a PDF version of the Operation
Northwoods plan, which author James Bamford says "may be the most
corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government." It can be found at
the following URL:]
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/

After 9-11 Oddities:

Anthrax sent to top Democrat Daschle and to the U.S. media (NBC & The
National Inquirer) had the effect of "uniting the nation behind the
Bush Administration's war effort," and literally shutting down
Congress in many ways.

Oddities exist when the anthrax issue is looked at closely:
- New Science Journal says Anthrax sent to Daschle is NOT Russian or
Iraqi, but likely US military strain.

- San Francisco Chronicle reports, the anthrax strain produced in US
University is destroyed on ok of FBI (they had studied this for
years, some at university question the timing of the destruction of
those anthrax spores . . . right now of all times (?))



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
f=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/09/MN153227.DTL

Terror Anthrax Linked to Type Made by U.S.
The powder used in the anthrax attacks is virtually
indistinguishable from that produced by the United States
military, according to federal scientists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/national/03POWD.html?todaysheadlines


After 9-11 Administration Damage Control Efforts:

Fire Engineering Magazine assails the incredible speed that the
evidence in the WTC collapse is being destroyed. Never
in the history of fire investigations has evidence been destroyed
this fast before exhaustive investigations can be completed. ["We
must try to find out why the twin towers fell" By James
Quintiere,Baltimore Sun 1/3/01
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-
op.towers03jan03.story
-WTC "INVESTIGATION"?: A CALL TO ACTION from Fire Engineering
Magazine]
-
- Bush Admin. declares they will "seal the records of presidents
beginning with Father Bush/Reagans (an act never before done in US
presidential history)."

- "It is not a stretch to wonder if this White House is up to
something that it doesn't want known 12 years from now or
anytimethereafter. [A direct quote from the piece carried by Scripps
Howard News Service, 11/5/2001. Re: Bush's sealing of presidential
records for the first time in U.S. history]


- Bush & Cheney urge Senate Leader to "limit" inquiries into 9-11:
Senate perplexed by this. Don't go there: Bush Asks Daschle to Limit
Sept. 11 Probes Date: Wednesday, January 30 @ 10:09:24 EST
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush personally asked Senate Majority
Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation
into the events of September 11, congressional and White House
sources told CNN.

The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders
Tuesday morning. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation. He
asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look
into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have
allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry
that some lawmakers have proposed, the sources said.

Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice
President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request.

"The vice president expressed the concern that a review of what
happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from
the effort in the war on terrorism," Daschle told reporters.

But, Daschle said, he has not agreed to limit the investigation. "I
acknowledged that concern, and it is for that reason that the
Intelligence Committee is going to begin this effort, trying to limit
the scope and the overall review of what happened," said Daschle, D-
South Dakota. "But clearly, I think the American people are entitled
to know what happened and why," he said.

Foreign Officials have powerful concerns over 9-11:

FORMER GERMAN CABINET MINISTER ATTACKS OFFICIAL BRAINWASHING ON
SEPTEMBER 11 ISSUE
[Source: Tagesspiegel, Berlin, Jan. 13] PARTIAL TRANSLATION

In a full-page interview with the Sunday edition (Jan. 13) of the
Berlin Tagesspiegel daily, former German Minister of Technology,
Andreas von Buelow, said he does not buy any of the official theories
that have been presented to date, on the events of September 11.

Q: You seem so angry, really upset.

Von Buelow: I can explain what's bothering me: I see that after the
horrifying attacks of Sept. 11, all political public opinion is being
forced into a direction that I consider wrong.

Q: What do you mean by that?

Von Buelow: I wonder why many questions are not asked. Normally, with
such a terrible thing, various leads and tracks appear that are then
commented on, by the investigators, the media, the government: Is
there something here or not? Are the explanations plausible? This
time, this is not the case at all. It already began just hours after
the attacks in New York and Washington and--

Q: In those hours, there was horror, and grief.

Von Buelow: Right, but actually it was astounding: There are 26
intelligence services in the U.S.A. with a budget of $30 billion--

Q: ...more than the German defense budget...

Von Buelow: --which were not able to prevent the attacks. In fact,
they didn't even have an inkling they would happen. For 60 decisive
minutes, the military and intelligence agencies let the fighter
planes stay on the ground, 48 hours later, however, the FBI presented
a list of suicide attackers. Within ten days, it emerged that seven
of them were still alive.

Q: What, please?

Von Buelow: Yes, yes. And why did the FBI chief take no position
regarding contradictions? Where the list came from, why it was
false? If I were the chief investigator (state attorney) in such a
case, I would regularly go to the public, and give information on
which lead are valid and which not.

Q: That sounds like--

Von Buelow: --like assailants who, in their preparations, leave
tracks behind them like a herd of stampeding elephants? They made
payments with credit cards with their own names; they reported to
their flight instructors with their own names. They left behind
rented cars with flight manuals in Arabic for jumbo
jets. They took with them, on their suicide trip, wills and farewell
letters, which fall into the hands of the FBI, because they were
stored in the wrong place and wrongly addressed. Clues were left like
behind like in a child's game of hide-and-seek, which were to be
followed!

There is also the theory of one British flight engineer: According to
this, the steering of the planes was perhaps taken out of the pilots'
hands, from outside. The Americans had developed a method in the
1970s, whereby they could rescue hijacked planes by intervening into
the computer piloting [automatic pilot system]. This theory says,
this technique was abused in this case. That's a theory....

Q: Which sounds really adventurous, and was never considered.

Von Buelow: You see! I do not accept this theory, but I find it worth
considering. And what about the obscure stock transactions? In the
week prior to the attacks, the amount of transactions in stocks in
American Airlines, United Airlines, and insurance companies,
increased 1,200%. It was for a value of $15 billion. Some people must
have known something. Who?

Q: Why don't you speculate on who it might have been.

Von Buelow: With the help of the horrifying attacks, the Western mass
democracies were subjected to brainwashing. The enemy image of anti-
communism doesn't work any more; it is to be replaced by peoples of
Islamic belief. They are accused of having given birth to suicidal
terrorism.

Q: Brainwashing? That's a tough term.

Von Buelow: Yes? But the idea of the enemy image doesn't come from
me. It comes from Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, two
policy-makers of American intelligence and foreign policy. Already in
the middle of the 1990s, Huntingon believed, people in Europe and the
U.S. needed someone they could hate-- this would strengthen their
identification with their own society. And Brzezinski, the mad dog,
as adviser to President Jimmy Carter, campaigned for the exclusive
right of the U.S. to seize all the raw materials of the world,
especially oil and gas.

Q: You mean, the events of Sept. 11--

Von Buelow: --fit perfectly in the concept of the armaments industry,
the intelligence agencies, the whole military-industrial-academic
complex. This is in fact conspicuous. The huge raw materials reserves
of the former Soviet Union are now at their disposal, also the
pipeline routes and--

Q: Erich Follach described that at length in Spiegel: ``It's a matter
of military bases, drugs, oil and gas reserves.''

Von Buelow: I can state: the planning of the attacks was technically
and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four huge
airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them
into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers! This is
unthinkable, without years-long support from secret apparatuses of
the state and industry.

Q: You are a conspiracy theorist!

Von Buelow: Yeah, yeah. That's the ridicule heaped [on those raising
these questions] by those who would prefer to follow the official,
politically correct line. Even investigative journalists are fed
propaganda and disinformation. Anyone who doubts that, doesn't have
all his marbles! That is your accusation.

Q: Your career actually speaks against the idea that you are not in
your right mind. You were already in the 1970s, state secretary in
the Defense Ministry; in 1993 you were the SPD [Social Democratic
Party] speaker in the Schalk-Golodkowski investigation committee--

Von Buelow: And it all began there! Until that time, I did not have
any great knowledge of the work of intelligence agencies. And now we
had to take note of a great discrepancy: We shed light on the
dealings of the Stasi and other East bloc intelligence agencies in
the field of economic criminality, but as soon as we wanted to know
something about the activities of the BND [German intelligence
agency] or the CIA, it was mercilessly blocked. No information, no
cooperation, nothing! That's when I was first taken aback.


The Legacy:
"On the surface, selling arms to a country that sponsors terrorism,
of course, clearly, you'd have to argue it's wrong, but it's the
exception sometimes that proves the rule."

- George Bush on Good Morning America. 01/28/87


"You f**king son of a bitch, I saw what you wrote. We're not going to
forget this.",

- George W. Bush shouted at writer & editor Al Hunt,
& his 6 yr old son in a restaurant - 1988 ....



IF YOU WOULD LIKE AN ACTIVIST KIT TO GET INVOLVED URGING A FULL PUBLIC
INVESTIGATION OF 9-11 AND ITS AFTERMATH, REPLY to
findtruth40@hotmail.com WITH "SEND KIT" and it will be freely sent to
you.



"OUR LIVES BEGIN TO END THE DAY WE BECOME SILENT ABOUT THINGS THAT
MATTER" --
Martin Luther King

We may be witnessing the Nazification of our nation.
--Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate in literature, January, 2002



1) Enron Investigation Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/ddc22/petition.html

2) 9/11 Investigation Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/11601TFS/petition.html

---

Nick - Delete double post -- Giovanni Dioro, 10:32:39 02/18/02 Mon

Sorry about the double post. I refreshed main page and didn't think my post went through. I wanted to add the light bulb. So please delete first of 2 plus this one.

Thanks,

Gianni

---

The Stock Market is no Haven for Retirement Funds -- Giovanni Dioro, 10:19:47 02/18/02 Mon

The crux of the following article is that so much money has been poured into the stockmarket via individual retirement accounts (IRA's, PEP's, etc), and that the inflationary effects of the cashing out of these plans in the next 5 to 10 years cannot be allowed to happen. And thus people must protect their savings with an investment in precious metals.


All those Baby-boomers who have their entire retirement nestegg in the stock markets are up for a rude awakening in the coming years. Why?

Simply it is this, the govt has encouraged people to tie up their savings in IRA's or Individual Retirement Accounts. There have been Billions upon Billions poured into these accounts by Baby-boomers over the past 20 years or so.

The peculiar thing about IRA's is that if you put excess money into them, you can take a deduction off your taxable income. However if you try to take money out of the IRA, you will be heavily penalised. So what we get is a sort of Roach Motel where money can come in but it can't come out.

So what are the effects of a system where buying is rewarded and selling is penalised? Obviously the effects can be seen in what we got - a bloated stock market where traditional values were thrown out the window.

This bloated stock market presents a problem for monetary policy. The Fed has had a very easy money policy for the last 10 years which has encouraged borrowing. Now there is a huge debt overhang and in the face of a credit crunch, the Fed has been printing at even more obscene levels since the NYC attacks last autumn.

Now if we look at that over-inflated stockmarket again. Through "roach motel" retirement plans, the stockmarket has been a valve into which excess money could leave the everyday system and not affect consumer price inflation.

More importantly here is the key - Babyboomers can't get at their IRA's until they reach retirement age. Well baby-boomers are born starting in 1945 to about 1960. This means that they will start to retire around 2005, meaning starting from around 2005 onwards, $100's of billions of stocks will want to be sold and worked into the real economy. The inflationary effects are enormous.

I'm saying now that there is no way the Fed is going to let the stock market bubble stay intact until the bulk of these IRA's become freely redeemable. Therefore, we should continue to see more air let out of the stock market bubble over the next 5 to 10 years.

There will likely be some stocks that will perform well, but most will be losers. That is why it is important to be liquid in this environment. In this environment of devaluating currencies and savings accounts that pay negative rates of return (accounting for inflation and/or taxes) the holding of precious metals is of paramount importance. I feel that not only will precious metals hold their value over the next ten to twenty years, their purchasing power will increase dramatically.

Being 100% invested in precious metals can be risky because metal prices can stagnate for decades before they spurt higher, though I feel 10-20% invested in gold or silver bullion is prudent in these times.

(By the way, I took a tax accounting course in college about years ago, and I think you can start tapping your IRA in your 60's. If someone could clear up at what age you can cash out of an IRA, please post).

---

The Stock Market is no Haven for Retirement Funds -- Giovanni Dioro, 10:17:39 02/18/02 Mon

The crux of the following article is that so much money has been poured into the stockmarket via individual retirement accounts (IRA's, PEP's, etc), and that the inflationary effects of the cashing out of these plans in the next 5 to 10 years cannot be allowed to happen. And thus people must protect their savings with an investment in precious metals.


All those Baby-boomers who have their entire retirement nestegg in the stock markets are up for a rude awakening in the coming years. Why?

Simply it is this, the govt has encouraged people to tie up their savings in IRA's or Individual Retirement Accounts. There have been Billions upon Billions poured into these accounts by Baby-boomers over the past 20 years or so.

The peculiar thing about IRA's is that if you put excess money into them, you can take a deduction off your taxable income. However if you try to take money out of the IRA, you will be heavily penalised. So what we get is a sort of Roach Motel where money can come in but it can't come out.

So what are the effects of a system where buying is rewarded and selling is penalised? Obviously the effects can be seen in what we got - a bloated stock market where traditional values were thrown out the window.

This bloated stock market presents a problem for monetary policy. The Fed has had a very easy money policy for the last 10 years which has encouraged borrowing. Now there is a huge debt overhang and in the face of a credit crunch, the Fed has been printing at even more obscene levels since the NYC attacks last autumn.

Now if we look at that over-inflated stockmarket again. Through "roach motel" retirement plans, the stockmarket has been a valve into which excess money could leave the everyday system and not affect consumer price inflation.

More importantly here is the key - Babyboomers can't get at their IRA's until they reach retirement age. Well baby-boomers are born starting in 1945 to about 1960. This means that they will start to retire around 2005, meaning starting from around 2005 onwards, $100's of billions of stocks will want to be sold and worked into the real economy. The inflationary effects are enormous.

I'm saying now that there is no way the Fed is going to let the stock market bubble stay intact until the bulk of these IRA's become freely redeemable. Therefore, we should continue to see more air let out of the stock market bubble over the next 5 to 10 years.

There will likely be some stocks that will perform well, but most will be losers. That is why it is important to be liquid in this environment. In this environment of devaluating currencies and savings accounts that pay negative rates of return (accounting for inflation and/or taxes) the holding of precious metals is of paramount importance. I feel that not only will precious metals hold their value over the next ten to twenty years, their purchasing power will increase dramatically.

Being 100% invested in precious metals can be risky because metal prices can stagnate for decades before they spurt higher, though I feel 10-20% invested in gold or silver bullion is prudent in these times.

(By the way, I took a tax accounting course in college about years ago, and I think you can start tapping your IRA in your 60's. If someone could clear up at what age you can cash out of an IRA, please post).

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 01:18:43 02/18/02 Mon

WGC Weekly Review

The press is carrying reports of over 800,000 ounces of physical retail purchases last Friday alone.

-------
The 800,000 ounces purchased on the Friday mentioned is greater than the three month intake for the 4th Quarter 2001.

Slightly less than 25 tons all purchased on one day.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 00:48:12 02/18/02 Mon

Jill Leyland: Spokesperson, World Gold Council

I think the investment story is probably the interesting one. It's not just in Japan, but Japan is the big part of it.

It started with September 11th and the need for insurance or safe-haven assets, and it's continued partly because there are concerns over the Japanese economy, because of concerns over the financial frailty of some banks, and the fact that guarantees on your bank deposits are going to be limited from next April. The Japanese hold an enormous amount of their wealth, over half, in bank deposits.

So if you are concerned about the reliability of the bank and you know that only a certain amount of the deposit you have with the bank is going to be underpinned by guarantee insurance, then clearly you might well be looking for a way out - and a number have switched into gold. So we've had some very strong buying, partly at the end of the fourth quarter.

---

Barrick -- Sharefin, 00:45:26 02/18/02 Mon

Barrick to Sell Gold At Spot for First Time in 14 Years

The gold industry's arch-hedger and easy villain for purists will contribute to the upbeat tone of the bullion market this year by selling half its production at spot prices; the first time in more than a decade that it will not make full use of its premium gold sales programme.

---

Lenny's Daily Commentary -- Sharefin, 00:39:44 02/18/02 Mon

DAILY COMMENTARY

In an environment of rising lease rates, silver managed to improve by 8 cents in the last week as rumors swirl that a major international hedge fund is buying in quantity.

In January, it is thought that Japanese investors bought 10 tons of gold or so, a paltry $90 million USD or so,

-----
Strange how the numbers don't gel with the earlier reports from the WGC of over 800,000 ounces being sold in one day alone

The 800,000 ounces alone are worth approx $240 million, so January's purchases must be many multiples more than that mentioned in the above commentary.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 17:47:35 02/17/02 Sun

Australia says 'thanks a bullion'

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 17:44:07 02/17/02 Sun

Gold bulls on the increase - LBMA

The London Bullion Market Association is distributing the results of what must be the biggest and most comprehensive poll ever carried out among precious metals markets analysts.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 17:41:02 02/17/02 Sun

'Africa's mining could collapse if Mugabe stays'

Cape Town - Never before has the link between politics and economics been so clear as this week's warning by the foreign investment community that Africa's mining industry could collapse in the wake of another Robert Mugabe regime.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 17:37:47 02/17/02 Sun

Barrick Gold reduces hedgebook

Barrick Gold Corp said on Friday it will not increase its gold forward sales programme amid a bullish outlook for gold prices and low interest rates, but will put more emphasis on spot sales.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 17:35:51 02/17/02 Sun

Gold sector slips into foreign hands

Out of our grasp...overseas investors now have about 60pc of the Australian gold mining industry

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 17:34:15 02/17/02 Sun

Gold hopes rise despite output slide

AUSTRALIA'S gold production fell 5 per cent to 281 tonnes in 2001, making it the fourth year in a row in which production of the nation's third biggest export earner has fallen.

The plunging production between 1997 and 2001 coincided with weak US dollar bullion prices and some of Australia's best gold producing assets going into foreign hands.

---

Prudent Bear -- Sharefin, 16:25:04 02/17/02 Sun

Money, Monetary Policy and the Structure of Debt

---

Enron -- Sharefin, 15:54:18 02/17/02 Sun

Enron losers take revenge on Wall St

---

7 Fundamentals For Dollar Fall -- Giovanni Dioro, 10:22:05 02/17/02 Sun

The Following was written by Gary Scott. You can subscribe to his free electronic newsletter type mailing list at his main site at
http://www.garyascott.com
By the way from what I know of Gary Scott, he was spot on in saying 4-5 years ago that the Swiss franc would not be the strong reserve currency it once was, and he recently correctly called the Yen devaluation.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$$$$
$$$
$$
$
Seven Fundamentals For a Dollar Fall

A look at the history of the US dollar gives us an urgent and timely warning.

Dear International Friend,

We have looked in numerous messages over the past year at the unusual strength of the US dollar and have seen that much of this strength is by default. With a basket case Japanese economy and unknown Euro, where else is there to go? This question remains unanswered (though we will see one idea later here), but seven economic fundamentals we reviewed at our last International Business Made EZ course in Quito are so similar to those of the last great dollar crash, we should review them again.

In the early 70s when the US dollar dropped dramatically against the yen, Swiss franc, German mark etc. and gold, the following forces were at work.


The US dollar was the reserve currency of the world.
A US President from Texas was fighting a war at the same time he financed great social reform. (Guns and Butter).
The US stock market had crashed after rising to all time highs. Overseas investors were looking for other markets that could rise.
The US government shifted from having budget surpluses to huge deficits.
The US economy was in a recession.
Energy prices were rising.
US dollar interest rates were very low.

The question is where to go? Japan and the Euro still pose problems, but now I am adding to my Euro position. More so I am increasing my Australian and Canadian dollar positions as well. Keep an eye on non Euro, European currencies, the Swiss franc (but not too much as there is danger here), plus the British pound, Danish kroner, Singapore and Hong Kong dollar.

Also keep an eye on silver and gold.

Until next message, good global investing and business!

Gary
http://www.garyascott.com/investing/500/

---

Piling into Gold vis-à-vis the ever-devaluing Yen -- Giovanni Dioro, 10:11:00 02/17/02 Sun

The Japanese piling into gold is exciting. People talk about the government doing away with or limiting the amount of money in savings account that will be guaranteed by the japanese govt.

While that is perhaps the main catalyst, there is also the fact that the japanese central bank is deliberately devaluing the Yen. The media tries to use the smokescreen that the japanese economy is a basket case and that is the reason for Yen weakness, but the fact is that the Japanese Central Bank is intervening in the currency exchange markets to prop up the dollar and devalue the Yen. Other Asian countries are griping about the weakening Yen, and the JCB plays dumb.

The JCB holds hundreds of Billions of Dollars in so called reserves - It got these Dollars by printing Yen and buying dollars so as to keep the Yen from appreciating, or now in this case, to blatantly devalue the Yen.

The common japanese people have been cautious about their currency, just like the Germans who saw their currency become virtually worthless at the end of WWII in the late 1940´s. They know what it is like to see paper currency burn, and they have been vocal in the past about govt attempts of increased govt/deficit spending that would devalue its currency, even if their objections to devaluation has prolonged the economic recession in Japan.

However in my opinion Japan needs a washout of its debts before it can get its economy moving again, not just these stimulus programs and low interest rates that keep the aenimic status quo.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 08:23:43 02/17/02 Sun

Ominous signs reflected in the rush to buy gold

FOR the past 30 years, few assets have seemed of less relevance to investors than gold. Yet when the price moves, as it has moved in the past 12 days, investors cannot afford not to pay attention. There are few more accurate barometers of approaching financial instability than the price of bullion.

In scrambling up by more than $40 to cross the $300 level in the past week - closing on Friday just a whisker below $300 - gold is signalling a widespread apprehension that the world economy may be far from out of the woods yet. When analysts such as Ian Williams of Durlacher forecast that gold will hit $600 an ounce within two years "on the basis of supply and demand imbalance", we could be headed for turbulent times indeed.

"The stock market bubble may have burst, but the gigantic credit bubble is intact and the most euphemistic prediction is that, like so many recessions, this one is going to be a ‘dubyah’. But, the second leg, when it commences, is likely to become very ugly."

Japan’s gold rush has not just developed in the last three weeks. While world gold demand fell 2% in the final quarter of last year compared with the previous year, Japanese demand jumped by 20% in the September-December period, with a 54% surge in investment demand for bar and coin to 21.5 tonnes.

This is one of the sharpest increases recorded, directly attributable, according to the World Gold Council’s biblical Gold Demand Trends, to the prospect of the Japanese government reducing protection for bank deposits in April.

This stampede has intensified in the current quarter. Rhona O’Connell, the City’s inestimable precious metals watcher and keeper of the abacus at the World Gold Council, noted strong interest from Japan in the past two weeks, with reports of 800,000 physical ounces of retail purchases in Japan on one day alone. So far in this up tick for gold, "dips are being bought", says O’Connell, "and the tone in the market remains positive".

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 08:19:03 02/17/02 Sun

The Full Monty

APR GOLD (298.90): The futures continue to traverse a lofty range with ease, suggesting they are building wind for a surge to 320. You should consider the move under way on a close above 304.50.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 08:17:18 02/17/02 Sun

Cycles Predict Real Estate, Stock Crash

The great equities sell-off is just around the corner as almost every Dow 30 component stock has traced out a bearish parabolic pattern with enormous downside implications. Along with the stock market, real estate prices stand to suffer their worst decline since the Great Depression.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 08:10:37 02/17/02 Sun

Watch the Fed for clues to rise in gold sector: Rest is just 'noise'

Mr. Williams says the real driver for gold is the Federal Reserve's interest rate cycle. What's more, he is confident that driver is about to serve up even larger gains in gold shares and investors should get ready to buy in on any pullbacks in the stocks.

"We reiterate our belief that the greatest upside in gold and gold stocks, related to the end of the most recent Fed easing cycle, is yet to come," he concluded in a note to clients earlier this week.

"Over the past 20 years, every time that the Fed has ended its easing cycle [this has happened six times] and the U.S. economy began its recovery, gold and gold stocks have risen significantly. End-of-easing rallies have the highest predictability, greatest duration and most amplitude of any type of gold rally."

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 08:07:22 02/17/02 Sun

India leading in gold consumption

India continues to top in the demand for gold. According to World Gold Council, (WGC) during January-September 2001 it was 662.3 tonnes while it was 855 tonnes for the year 2000. Next comes the United States, with total consumption less than 50 per cent of the Indian consumption.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 08:06:04 02/17/02 Sun

Newmont gets 66 percent of Normany Mining

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 08:04:32 02/17/02 Sun

Gold Demand Dips Slightly In Worldwide Downturn ; Investment In Precious Metal Rises As Jewelry Use Falls

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 08:03:27 02/17/02 Sun

Gold To Target $320/Oz On Investor Demand

-- Japanese retail demand for gold bullion anticipated at 40-50 tons in Q1
-- Concerns over equities valuation sparks investor interest in gold equities
-- Gold supply could tighten if jewelry demand revives

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 07:59:31 02/17/02 Sun

Gold Gets Respect ; `Rodney Dangerfield' Of Investments Sees New Surge During Uncertain Times

---

GATA -- Sharefin, 07:50:47 02/17/02 Sun

Massive debt and messy books

If you're looking to be, as is said of hockey great Wayne Gretzky, where the fiscal "puck" will be in a month or two, review this week's two hours of presentations by the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to journalists and investors at the Washington Press Club. GATA Chairman Bill Murphy and others describe how the world's largest bullion banks have manipulated the market for gold prices, in essence depressing the price in an effort to promote profitable bullion lending. See the testimony on C-Span.

"It's like a neutron bomb; it's like Enron," said Murphy, a former Wall Street commodities trader. He and the members of GATA see gold prices "melting up" to $600 an ounce and more as the world's largest money-center banks, and hedged gold producers, unwind tens of trillions of dollars of derivative trades and other gold short-sales and exchanges. "It's coming; I can't predict the timing." Central banks and commercial banks conspired to keep the price of gold depressed in the late 1990s as a way of manipulating economic signals, he says. See more on Murphy and gold at CBS MarketWatch.

---

Gold -- Sharefin, 07:47:39 02/17/02 Sun

Van Eck gold bug still bullish

The manager of the nation's oldest gold fund is convinced that the recent run-up in the precious metal and its suppliers isn't over.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 07:35:52 02/17/02 Sun

Al Qaeda's Road Paved With Gold

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Charts Online -- Sharefin, 00:47:07 02/17/02 Sun

Gold Charts

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MULTI-TRILLION DOLLAR FINANCIAL SCANDAL -- Sharefin, 00:43:26 02/17/02 Sun

MULTI-TRILLION DOLLAR FINANCIAL SCANDAL

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Gold -- Sharefin, 00:26:37 02/17/02 Sun

Declines in the Gold Mining Industry

---

Hiding Tangible Wealth -- Sharefin, 00:21:46 02/17/02 Sun

Hiding Tangible Wealth

---

Japanese Demand For Gold -- Sharefin, 15:51:26 02/16/02 Sat

The New Japanese Gold Rush

---

Dow 10,000 Versus Gold $300 -- webfoot, 15:23:14 02/16/02 Sat



Weekly Update from Jim Puplava
main page

Sharefin please edit this :
I believe I followed the authors request at the bottom of the page for linking . You may want to check . Thank you
for the forum .
regards ,webfoot

---

Even though they have lost many trillions of dollars of paper wealth -- Donald, 13:33:49 02/16/02 Sat

56% of Canadians think the Bear Market is over

---

Even though they have lost many trillions of dollars of paper wealth -- Donald, 13:26:18 02/16/02 Sat

56% of Canadians think the Bear Market is over

---

Ron Paul -- Sharefin, 16:59:27 02/15/02 Fri

Congressman Ron Paul

Mr. Speaker, while I certainly share GATA's concerns over the effects of federal dealings in the gold market, my bill in no way interferes with the ability of the federal government to buy or sell gold. It simply requires that before the executive branch engages in such transactions, Congress has the chance to review it, debate it, and approve it.

Given the tremendous effects on the American economy from federal dealings in the gold market, it certainly is reasonable that the people's representatives have a role in approving these transactions, especially since Congress has a neglected but vital constitutional role in overseeing monetary policy. Therefore, I urge all my colleagues to stand up for sound economics, open government, and Congress' constitutional role in monetary policy by cosponsoring the Monetary Freedom and Accountability Act.

---

Credit Crunch -- Sharefin, 14:55:53 02/15/02 Fri

Commercial-Paper Market Slump Triggers Fears of a Credit Crunch

---

JP Morgan -- Sharefin, 14:42:39 02/15/02 Fri

GET READY FOR A JPM CHASE DEBT DOWNGRADE

---

Warren Buffett -- Sharefin, 05:18:48 02/15/02 Fri

Buffett's Berkshire Reports Holding No Citigroup

``In the post 9-11 and Enron world, there's a new focus on risk,'' said James Armstrong, president of Henry H. Armstrong Associates, which owns 603 Berkshire shares, a stake worth $44.4 million.

``It wouldn't surprise me if (Buffett) thought there were too many moving parts'' of Citigroup, he said. ``When he sold Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae he said he was concerned with the level of risk they were taking and didn't trust overconfidence in the risk management department. He sold his positions in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at prices lower than today which shows how much he was concerned about risk.''

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Gold -- Sharefin, 04:56:15 02/15/02 Fri

Gold jewellery sales ease

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Gold -- Sharefin, 01:04:48 02/15/02 Fri

Gold keeps firm levels but appears to have hit ceiling

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Gold -- Sharefin, 01:03:02 02/15/02 Fri

Gold demand unexciting, but steady

The widely reported Japanese gold buying in the wake of government limitations of bank deposit insurance saw annual investment demand rise by 54 per cent, while quarterly demand was up one fifth. That contributed to a net increase in investment demand to 394.9 tonnes (12.7moz), a 4 per cent increase over 2000's 378.5 tonnes (12.2moz) in 2000.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 00:56:07 02/15/02 Fri

Indian Gold Demand Falls 20 Percent

Gold demand in India, the world’s largest consumer of the metal, plunged by 19 percent in the fourth quarter as the September terrorist attacks on the US discouraged year-end jewelry buying, the World Gold Council have said.
Indian gold use fell to only 185.1 metric tons during the final three months of 2001 from 229.6 tons a year earlier, the London based industry group said in a report. Indian gold demand normally is boosted during the quarter by seasonal gift-giving and purchases by farmers using income from harvests.
“Price volatility and a fall in confidence following the events of September 11th served to discourage even the traditional purchases of gold during this season,”the report said.
The drop in Indian demand contributed to a 2.2 percent decline in global gold consumption during the quarter to 876.9 tons from a record 896.7 tons a year earlier, the council said.

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Gold -- Sharefin, 00:54:07 02/15/02 Fri

South African Gold Producers Become Takeover Targets

The rising gold prices and a falling rand have boosted profits at South African gold companies, making them takeover targets at a time when the government regulations try to curb their growth abroad, analysts and executives said.
A 37 percent plunge in the rand against the US dollar last year sent gold prices to a record high when measured in the local currency. AngloGold and Gold Fields of South Africa, two of the world's top four gold producers, said profit in the recent quarter have as much as tripled from the preceding period.
There have been more than $10 billion worth of gold industry takeovers since the beginning of 2001. AngloGold, once the largest gold miner, has been overtaken by Canada's Barrick Gold and will slip to third when Newmont Mining buys Franco-Nevada Mining and Australia's Normandy Mining. Gold Fields' own planned merger with Franco-Nevada was stopped by the South African government.
“Industry consolidation does not have to be limited to a predatory role” for South African gold companies, James Wellsted, an analyst at J.P. Morgan, told a mining conference in Cape Town. “There must come a time when the merits of South African gold producers make them targets.”

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Gold -- Sharefin, 00:52:03 02/15/02 Fri

Asia Precious Metals: Gold Up, Quiet;More Gains Next Week

TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Spot gold was trading slightly higher late Friday in Asia after a day of restrained consolidation with the metal appearing destined to push toward even greater heights from next week, market participants said.

Gold is at the top of a bullish trading channel, but should be expected to retrace recent gains and test US$290/oz support within the next couple of weeks, a Singapore trader said Friday.

Gold is at the top of a bullish trading channel, but should be expected to retrace recent gains and test US$290/oz support within the next couple of weeks, a Singapore trader said Friday.

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GATA on CSPAN -- Sharefin, 20:03:05 02/14/02 Thu

Watch - Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee: “The Gold Standard”

Tuesday, February 12, 2002 - Washington, DC

Speakers: Catherine Austin Fitts, President, Solari & former Assistant Secretary of Housing; William Murphy III, Chair, GATA; Chris Powell, GATA Secretary/Treasurer.

Length: 1 hr. 50 min.

(half way down the page)

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New charts page -- Sharefin, 19:12:55 02/14/02 Thu

Japanese TOCOM Precious Metal Charts

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Lenny Kaplan -- Sharefin, 18:21:47 02/14/02 Thu

DAILY COMMENTARY

But, all said, the gold market has a firmer tone then I have seen in many a year and it does indeed look to go higher. I remain very friendly to the upside although I do not see a runaway market occurring quickly as many of the technical indicators show this market to be overbought.

The financial press has made a very big deal about the Japanese buying of gold as a hedge against the collapse of their banking system and the further depreciation of their currency. While the percentage increases of their buying are most impressive, the absolute numbers are less than paltry. Please remember that in January, the Japanese bought about 10 tons of gold (a bit over $90 Million USD) from their huge savings pool of about 11 Trillion USD. I remain to be impressed. I firmly agree with most analysts in the industry that Japanese buying has the POTENTIAL to be the biggest, most bullish, stimulus seen in the gold market for decades, but potential is far from realization. As the famous line in a recent movie, "Show me the money".

Silver has been very strong of late, currently trading over $4.50 as bullish news continues to surface. Just yesterday, Comex depositories were drained of about 1.5 million ounces of silver and lease rates rose by about 50 basis points overnight

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HUI -- Sharefin, 18:03:38 02/14/02 Thu

HUI Index


GOX Index

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Cobra -- Sharefin, 17:59:09 02/14/02 Thu

The metals certainly look bullish and the traders sense an upward bias.
It wouldn't surprise me to see a hefty rally.

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Tick-by-tick charts - Looking very bullish -- Sharefin, 17:42:08 02/14/02 Thu

GOLD Tick-by-Tick Chart

SILVER Tick-by-Tick Chart

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Silver -- Sharefin, 17:38:30 02/14/02 Thu

Lease Rates Confirm Silver Rally



- Silver lease rates rise on more borrowing, confirming price advance
- Gold consolidates further, preparing for another test of $310/oz
- Platinum rally anticipates likely Russian supply delays ahead, not
reflected in lease rates

By David Bogoslaw
New York, Feb. 14 (OsterDowJones) Precious metals futures settled mostly
higher Thursday with silver stepping out from under gold's shadow for the
first time in a few weeks, posting more solid gains on tightening short-term
lease rates in London.
"It appears our borrowers are back in silver. You had an almost two-point
jump in short-term lease rates," said Frank McGhee, a dealer at Chicago-based
Alliance Financial LLC. "It was the confirmation I was waiting for, the first
sign that demand is there."
The one-month silver lease rate had been languishing around 0% in recent
weeks, after plunging from a January high above 30% as borrowing demand was
satisfied by physical metal deliveries into London.
(Prices in Dollars per Troy Ounce)
Spot Change On Leading Nymex
Thursday Late NY Nymex Range (Includes Access)
Gold 299.50 Unch 302.20 (Apr) 298.50-301.10
Silver 4.55 +0.04 4.53 (Mar) 4.475-4.565
Platinum 481.00 +11.00 481.10 (Apr) 470.00-484.00
Palladium 378.00 -12.00 386.70 (Mar) 378.00-396.00

McGhee said it's not yet clear whether lease rates are merely catching up
to prices, which would suggest silver had been overpriced before.
"Or it's the same group that pushed us up to 35% that is back borrowing the
metal," he said.
March silver on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange
peaked at $4.565 a troy ounce before drifting back to close at $4.53, two
cents higher than Wednesday. The benchmark contract penetrated resistance at
$4.50 on Wednesday.
If borrowing persists, McGhee predicted the initial target would be around
the $4.80 level, and $5.00 after that.
"I'm back on the bull bandwagon," he declared.
Gold futures spent another day consolidating gains around $300, recovering
once again from early selling pressure as buying appeared on a lesser price
dip.
Buying by a major trade house pushed April gold to nearly $301 an ounce,
where it ran out of steam, eventually settling at $300.20, a 20-cent gain over
Wednesday.
"Gold is very quiet, stable. There's a wait-and-see attitude in the market
now that you've reached 148,000 contracts of open interest and you have bunch
of new longs," noted George Gero, senior vice president at Prudential
Securities. "Most of the eyes are on Enron and Globa