 Fiat -- sharefin, 23:19:48 10/06/05 Thu Signals of the End of the Dollar Standard I am an economist who worked for 25 years in large investment companies in South Africa. I “retired” to the UK a few years ago. For most of my career I lobbied for policies such as money supply targets and later inflation targets that were (implicitly) intended to substitute the role of gold as an independent anchor for the monetary system. I was never an advocate of any form of gold standard, unlike the current Fed Chairman, now ironically testing the fiat money system to destruction. However, in recent years the scales have fallen from my eyes. As Voltaire said in 1729 “paper money eventually goes down to its intrinsic value – zero.” Every fiat paper currency before or since has confirmed to this prediction. A fiat paper currency that is also the global reserve currency becomes this problem writ large. A US Treasury official of old - Sam Cross - put it this way: “if you postulate a system that depends on one country always following the right policies, you will find that sooner or later no such country exists. The system is eventually going to break down”. In my view the Dollar Standard system is irretrievably breaking down, as signaled by four recent developments described below: ~~~ 4. The gold price is breaking out in all key currencies. Not all the world's investors (or central bankers!) are blind to the scary developments sketched above. Gold in dollars has definitively been in a bull market for some time, but in recent weeks gold has decisively broken out all key currencies including the Euro, Yen, Swiss Franc and Sterling. Markets are recognizing that the failure of the Dollar Standard is one not only of US economic management but one inherent in the fiat money system itself. In the long term they may demand gold's return as an anchor to the global monetary system. The flight from paper assets (and especially dollars) towards hard assets is now underway in earnest. There is still time - this is a multi-year trend - for investors to switch from devaluing dollars to rising gold. Those ahead of the herd are moving but the herd itself is yet to stir. Gold -- sharefin, 23:18:12 10/06/05 Thu Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: The economist Robert A. Mundell, inventor of the euro, got top billing Thursday evening at the fall meeting of the Committee for Monetary Research and Education in New York but it was Murray Pollitt of Toronto stock brokerage house Pollitt & Co., president of River Gold Mines Ltd. in Canada and veteran engineer and gold share trader, who stole the show. Pollitt gave the CMRE crowd of about 100 a review of the gold market that was virtually identical to GATA's. His points: -- Central banks long have been trying to regulate the gold price and are doing it now. -- He has it on excellent authority that the International Monetary Fund recently joined central banks in leasing gold. -- He also has it on excellent authority that the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund, which collapsed in 1998, was heavily short gold. -- If the gold price had kept up with the price of oil and copper and not instead been suppressed by central banks, it would have reached $800 by now. -- The gold price suppression scheme is falling apart RIGHT NOW. -- Gold's rise this time will be far more dramatic than its rise in the late 1970s, for back then there were no gold short positions and no gold derivatives. Those short positions and derivatives will make gold's rise many times more explosive this time. -- The gold price suppression scheme of the central banks is "a big con game" to persuade people to hang on to government currencies. It will end in a "wild ride" for gold and commodities. -- Even with the rising price of gold, rising fuel prices lately have been ruining open-pit gold miners and thus sharply reducing worldwide gold production. (Of course this decline in production forces the central banks to cough up more gold from their reserves to contain the price.) Gold -- sharefin, 23:16:24 10/06/05 Thu Argentina Explains: Why Gold? Recent comments by the Central Bank of Argentina's head of operations Juan Basco suggesting the country along with other South American nations may be looking at increasing their gold holdings have contributed to renewed positive investor sentiment towards gold. More important for the longer-term outlook for the gold market, however, is why Argentina and other nations have reverted to considering such moves. At a recent speech hosted by GFMS, a metals industry consulting firm, Argentina's Basco outlined what had changed in the marketplace to give the country's central bankers the option of again investing in gold. ~~~ Basco also believes holding gold as an investment reduces the volatility of international reserves in a country's portfolio as it provides diversification. This is of growing importance for Argentina, as the country now holds 30% of its international reserves in non-US dollar assets. Basco suggests external shocks such as terrorism are likely to increase volatility in financial markets, thus assets such as gold that reduce volatility become increasingly attractive. In summary, Argentina is considering increasing its gold holdings and with other South American nations experiencing similar economic transformations, Basco's suggestion they also may lift their investment in gold has now become a genuine realistic scenario. Fiat -- sharefin, 23:47:57 09/29/05 Thu THE WIZARD OF BUBBLELAND Central banks in desperate times would look to hyper-inflation to "provide what essentially amounts to catastrophic financial insurance coverage", as Greenspan suggested in a November 19, 2002, address on "International Financial Risk Management" to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington. Greenspan noted that since February 2000, the draining impact of a loss of $8 trillion of stock-market wealth (80% of GDP), and of the financial losses associated with September 11, 2001, has had a highly destabilizing effect on the aggregate debt-equity ratio in the US financial system, and has pushed the ratio below levels conventionally required for sound finance. This private debt in 2000 of $22 trillion was backed by $8 trillion less equity, an amount in excess of one-third of the debt. Greenspan attributed the system's ability to sustain such a sudden rise of debt-to-equity ratio to debt securitization and the hedging effect of financial derivatives, which transfer risk throughout the entire system. "Obviously, this market is still too new to have been tested in a widespread down-cycle for credit," Greenspan allowed. Total debt in the US economy now runs to $40 trillion as of March 2005, of which $31 trillion is private-sector debt, 66% ($21 trillion) of which has been added since 1990 under Greenspan's watch. That is 20% of 2004 GDP. This figure is consistent with the fact that it now takes 25% more money in the money supply to support a given GDP than 25 years ago. ~~~~ Greenspan acknowledged that derivatives, by construction, are highly leveraged, a condition that is both a large benefit and an oversized Achilles' heel. It appeared that the benefit had been reaped in the past decade, leading to a wishful declaration of the end of the business cycle. Now we are faced with the oversized Achilles' heel, with "the possibility of a chain reaction, a cascading sequence of defaults that will culminate in financial implosion if it proceeds unchecked". According to Greenspan, "only a central bank, with its unlimited power to create money, can with a high probability thwart such a process before it becomes destructive. Hence central banks have, of necessity, been drawn into becoming lenders of last resort." Greenspan asserted that such "catastrophic financial insurance coverage" by the central bank should be reserved for only the rarest of occasions to avoid moral hazard. He observed correctly that in competitive financial markets, the greater the leverage, the higher must be the rate of return on the invested capital before adjustment for higher risk. Yet there is no evidence that higher risk in financial manipulation leads to higher return for investment in the real economy, as recent defaults by Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Tyco and Conseco have shown. Higher risks in finance engineering merely provide higher returns from speculation temporarily, until the day of reckoning, at which point the high returns can suddenly turn in equally high losses. ~~~ Enron lost 80% of its market capitalization value in 12 months, wiping out $50 billion of wealth (share prices dropped from $89.63 on September18, 2000, to $15.4 on October 26, 2001), finally and suddenly attracting much attention in the media. It faced serious cash-flow problems not from the fall of energy prices alone, but from its role as a major trader of energy futures, leading to a $618 million third-quarter loss, not to mention a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation on creative accounting and financial reporting that resulted in a $1.2 billion equity dilution. If Enron were to go under, and all the smart money was betting on it if market forces were allowed to govern, the counterparty risk fallout threatened to dwarf the LTCM crisis. Enron received $250 million from Congress's stimulative package that failed to save it from its multibillion-dollar debt exposure and trading losses. Enron then bought back $2 billion of its commercial papers, depleting its $3.3 billion bank credit, because commercial papers were traded in the open credit market and Enron might not have been able to roll them over. Its bank loans were only tradable in the private debt market. Corporate credit lines were generally not expected to be drawn down without signaling to the market that the borrower was in serious trouble. The higher resultant cost of higher interest payments from this desperate move only added to Enron's cash-flow problem. The press reported that the company was negotiating with its banks for $2 billion in new credit. Enron's connection to Texas and the Bush political network was well known. Enron was hoping to be bailed out by the "too big to fail" principle, until criminal indictments foreclosed the option. No doubt there was criminality in the Enron affair, but whether the criminality was the cause of its collapse or merely convenient cover for a flawed market is another question (see Capitalism's bad apples: It's the barrel that's rotten, August 1, '02). The equity markets since the September 11 terrorist attacks are no longer free markets. They are now a scam operated in the name of patriotism to transfer through managed volatility by the Plunge Prevention Team, of which the Fed is a charter member, the losses that have already occurred but are yet hidden to unsuspecting small investors who were too patriotic to sell immediately. The new financial normalcy is a totally new system. The United States has entered a new phase of state capitalism, with the government deciding who survives and who fails. The US system is being attacked by both terrorism and the "war on terrorism". Gold -- Sharefin, 22:38:40 09/27/05 Tue Gold & Silver Wallpaper Charts Lots of new charts lately & why I've not been posting much - too busy coding charts.(:-))) Gold -- Sharefin, 22:37:08 09/27/05 Tue Gold analysts see "petrodollars" fueling gains Much of the strong demand driving a recent rally in gold prices has been powered by purchases in "petrodollars" from oil-rich countries, analysts at the Denver Gold Forum said this week. Indeed, fresh diversification into gold and investment from the Middle East, in addition to recent robust Asian demand for the metal, should continue lifting prices, perhaps to $500 an ounce by year-end, the market watchers said. ~~~ "There are a lot of countries in the Middle East, and China, that want to have 1 to 2 percent of their U.S. dollars in a program to own gold," he said. "So, with oil at $69 or $70 a barrel, they have made a ton of money and they are diversifying." ~~~ "(For OPEC countries), the dollar is not exactly the most attractive currency and not just for economic reasons," he said, adding that this was bullish for gold in the precious metal's role as the "neutral" currency. Murenbeeld noted that OPEC current account balances are in huge surplus again on the back of higher oil prices. "Last time OPEC had significant surplus "petrodollars", gold spiked to an all-time high in 1980" at around $850 an ounce, he said. Murenbeeld said OPEC would need to buy some 50 million ounces of gold to bring its gold reserves up to 15 percent of its holdings, a level last seen in 1980. "This would not appear to be a hardship now that OPEC's foreign exchange reserves exceed $200 billion," he said.  Fiat -- Sharefin, 21:47:53 09/10/05 Sat Underestimating the Loss of a City While the damage to the port itself may be less than originally thought, the lack of a city to support it may turn out to be the more enduring problem. In Friedman's words, “The displacement of the population is the crisis New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. The physical and business processes cannot occur in a ghost town, and right now, that is what New Orleans is. It is not about facilities, and it is not about the oil. It is about the loss of a city's population and the paralysis of the largest port in the United States…the United States has lost not only its biggest port complex, but also the utility of its river transportation system—the foundation of the entire American transport system. There are some substitutes, but none with sufficient capacity to solve the problem.” Gold -- Sharefin, 13:55:09 09/08/05 Thu Gold price soars to year high Renewed fund interest kicked gold prices out of a tight $3 range that had held since the start of the week, taking the precious metal to its highest since early December 2004, traders said. Euro-denominated gold rallied above €360 to a near-three-week high. In afternoon trade, spot gold was at $447.80/448.50 a troy ounce, up from late trading levels in New York on Wednesday of $444.80/445.50. It peaked at $449.40, the highest so far this year. The latest rally came despite a broadly steady dollar, which could signal further strength ahead for the metal. Traders said one fund that had been an active player since mid-August bought gold as the euro picked up, triggering automatic buy signals that attracted more fund buying. ~~~ Gold has rallied as fund investors have bought in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane which caused oil prices to hit a new record high and the dollar to slide. Good physical demand into recent price dips has also bolstered the market. A supportive report was released on Wednesday by the World Gold Council, an industry funded body, saying global gold demand rose 14 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2005, bolstered by purchases from the jewellery sector. Although the market usually takes its lead more from macro-economic issues, traders do monitor supply and demand. "In an environment where mine supply is broadly static, central bank sales effectively constrained and scrap supply declining, strong physical demand is genuinely important," John Reade, analyst at UBS Investment Bank, said in a note. Reade added that strong demand was the reason why gold held above $400 during the two large speculative liquidations earlier in the year. ~~~ One trader attributed the rise to physical demand, notably from India. Charts -- Sharefin, 13:50:18 09/08/05 Thu Sorry for being slack in posting of late but have been busy on charts. Some of the new additions of late have been the COTs analyser: COTs ANALYSER And the Barron's Confidence Index: Barron's Confidence Index And now the BGMI - Barron's Gold Mining Index: BGMI - Barron's Gold Mining Index Lots more charts to develop so will be busy for a while. Sharefin Gold -- Sharefin, 07:15:20 08/28/05 Sun Australia could lose gold producer title Australia's reputation as the world's second largest gold producer is under threat after total gold production fell in the last year, and the future looks uncertain. Gold output in 2004/05 dropped by eight tonnes to 265 tonnes, with the June quarter, the worst of the year according to Melbourne-based mining consultants Surbiton Associates. "It's a pretty dismal result," Surbiton managing director Dr Sandra Close said. "Despite increased production from start-ups, many operations produced less gold this (June) quarter." Gold -- Sharefin, 03:09:54 08/15/05 Mon Remarks by Chris Powell Secretary/Treasurer, Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. at Gold Rush 21 Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada Tuesday, August 8, 2005 What are we to do here at Gold Rush 21? We're here to show you that, far from being a quaint antique, gold remains central to the world economic system. That is why the gold coin I hold here, an ordinary British sovereign from about 80 years ago, is packed into the survival kits of U.S. military pilots -- because at all time and in all circumstances gold is money. We're also here to show you that, far from being a speculation that is interesting at best and paranoid at worst, the suppression of the gold price by Western central banks is a matter of public record. How does the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee know that central banks are working with bullion banks and other financial houses to suppress the price of gold? We know because of the painstaking research of our consultants -- Reg Howe, James Turk, Andrew Hepburn, Mike Bolser, and Bob Landis. and others. They have gone through the official reports and the footnotes of the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Treasury Department, central banks and government agencies, mining companies, and financial houses, and have amassed enormous evidence. But that's the complicated stuff, and we also know for a very simple reason. We know that the central banks and their intermediaries are working together to suppress the price of gold because time and again they have TOLD us so. After all, what was the Washington Agreement of September 1999 if not a proclamation that the 15 participating central banks were colluding to regulate the gold price? Of course in the Washington Agreement the central banks affected to be SUPPORTING the gold price; they pledged to limit their gold sales to 400 tonnes per year for five years -- lest, they said, the gold market be flooded with metal and the gold price collapse, taking with it the economies of gold-producing countries. Of course GATA has put a different construction on the Washington Agreement. We consider it the device by which central bank gold LOANS are written off as SALES at discounted prices, rather than be called back and cause a short squeeze in gold. That is, far from supporting the gold price, the Washington Agreement was how the central banks kept gold from rising and prevented the bankruptcy of the financial houses that, at the invitation of the central banks, eagerly joined the gold carry trade of the 1990s. In that carry trade gold was, in effect, loaned by the central banks for next to nothing and sold by the financial houses to depress its price, strengthen the U.S. dollar, reduce interest rates, and inflate the price of paper assets, which were purchased with the proceeds of the gold sales. But no matter how you want to construe it, the Washington Agreement was admittedly a co-ordinated action by the central banks to regulate the gold price. That central banks get together to discuss and unify their policy toward gold is a matter of ordinary public record. Anyone who really believes that this collusion is always benign, in the public interest, and without ulterior motives shouldn't go even grocery shopping alone. The Washington Agreement wasn't the first coordinated intervention of the central banks in regard to gold. It was at least the second and probably much more belated than that. How do we know? Because Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told us. In fact, he told Congress too. As usual, no one in the financial press seems to have been paying attention. But on July 24, 1998, Greenspan told the House Banking Committee: "Central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise." He repeated that statement a few days later to the Senate Agriculture Committee. Of course, like the central banks that participated in the Washington Agreement, Greenspan was disguising the true purposes of the policy he described. He was explaining why he didn't think that the derivatives market needed federal regulation, and suggested that central bank gold leasing was a safeguard against a private corner on the gold market, a safeguard that made derivatives regulation unnecessary. GATA maintains that, as with the Washington Agreement, the purposes of the central banks were the opposite of what Greenspan was suggesting. Far from working together to prevent a private corner on the gold market, the central banks were using gold leasing to maintain a corner on the gold market themselves. Construe Greenspan's testimony as you will, but there it is again -- central banks admitting that they work together to regulate the price of gold. And, more than that, Greenspan told Congress, if inadvertently, that the purpose of gold leasing was not really the purpose long maintained by the central banks involved in it -- to extract a little income from a supposedly dead asset -- but rather to keep the gold price down. Central bankers aren't the only ones in the gold business who acknowledge collusion to control the gold price. The biggest hedger among the gold-mining companies, Barrick Gold, has gone so far as to confess, in federal court in New Orleans, to participation in this scheme. Sued along with its bullion bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, by Blanchard & Co., the New Orleans coin and bullion dealer, Barrick filed a surprisingly candid motion in court on February 28, 2003. Barrick moved for dismissal of Blanchard's lawsuit on grounds of sovereign immunity. That is, Barrick claimed that, in borrowing gold from central banks through Morgan Chase, Barrick became the agent for central bank gold policy; that, as the agent of central banks, the company could not properly be sued without also suing the real parties in interest, the central banks, as well; and that, since the central banks, as the agencies of sovereign governments, have immunity and could not be made party to the Blanchard suit, the suit should be dismissed. Fortunately Judge Helen Berrigan dismissed Barrick's motion, and so Blanchard's lawsuit has gone to the evidence-collecting phase. The suit is similar to Reg Howe's federal lawsuit, which was brought in U.S. District Court in Boston, underwritten financially by GATA, included government defendants, and failed on the very issue of sovereign immunity -- the issue that is now out of the way so that, in the Blanchard case, the world yet might get a close look at how the gold market really works. Just as the true purpose of gold leasing is to suppress the gold price rather than earn a little interest on a "dead asset," some central banks even acknowledge that the only purpose of holding gold reserves at all now, in the absence of any currency's formal convertibility, is to rig markets. Here is the admission made by the Reserve Bank of Australia in its annual report for 2003: "Foreign currency reserve assets and gold are held primarily to support intervention in the foreign exchange market." All this shows that while the formal convertibility of currencies into gold has been ended by the articles of the International Monetary Fund, gold continues in its nature and function as money and as the independent international currency, the competitor of the dollar and the euro -- and that central banks recognize as much, however grudgingly. Central banks often acknowledge intervention in currency markets -- direct intervention, as with the Bank of Japan's printing yen to buy dollars and the People's Bank of China's enforcing a fixed exchange rate with the dollar; and indirect intervention, as by the heavy purchases by many central banks of U.S. government bonds. Meanwhile the Federal Reserve intervenes in and supports the U.S. bond and equity markets every week through the strategic purchase and sale of U.S. government bonds. Maybe you've heard the joke about the lawyer who, asked by a potential client, "How much is 2 and 2?," replied, "How much do you WANT it to be?" These days that is even more the premise of central banking than of the practice of law. What do the markets say? What do you WANT them to say? Far from being the mechanisms of steady development and democracy we tout to the developing world, markets now, in the eyes of central banking, are considered to be usually INEFFICIENT and WRONG. And so bailouts and interventions and the issuance of price-capping derivatives have followed constantly on each other's heels so that no big financial interest might ever suffer the consequences of its mistakes or venality. National and even world economic objectives are now set by unelected overlords, gods of the market whose power is almost completely undemocratic. Amid all this intervention, why should it be so hard to accept that central banks might be more involved in the gold market than they make plain? Indeed, to believe that central banks are NOT deeply involved in the gold market, one almost has to believe that it is the ONLY market they are not deeply involved in. GATA is in the free-market advocacy business, not the investment advice business. But we can draw a few conclusions. First, because of gold leasing and the deceptive accounting for it, central bank gold reserves are far less than what is claimed. Second, amid worldwide currency debasement, the gold price will be largely a matter of how much more gold the central banks are ready to lease and then sell, a matter of how far down the central banks are willing to run their gold reserves and whether they think they may need gold again to restore confidence someday when currency debasement gets out of hand. The evidence of the gold price of the last few years -- rising steadily despite constant selling or talk of selling by the central banks -- suggests that the central banks are attempting a controlled retreat with gold. The increase in official anti-gold propaganda supports suspicion that the central banks are running out of golden ammunition. And third, and most important, far from being Keynes' "barbarous relic" or a quaint antique, gold remains not just basic to the world economic system but, in fact, the secret knowledge of the universe -- the substance and mechanism by which everything else financial can be revealed and measured. If gold ever escapes the distortions that so laboriously have been imposed on it, we may see how everything we have considered normal has actually been distorted grotesquely -- may see, to our shock, that, as Kipling wrote in "The Gods of the Copybook Headings": "... all is not gold that glitters, and two and two make four." When that day comes and the real world reasserts itself with a vengeance, people will need the real thing -- or the real things, ANYTHING that is real. Kipling foresaw it this way: ... Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, ...... and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew, ... And the hearts of the meanest were humbled ...... and began to believe it was true ... That All is not Gold that Glitters, ...... and Two and Two make Four -- ... And the Gods of the Copybook Headings ...... limped up to explain it once more. ... As it will be in the future, ...... it was at the birth of Man -- ... There are only four things certain ...... since Social Progress began: -- ... That the Dog returns to his Vomit ...... and the Sow returns to her Mire, ... And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger ...... goes wabbling back to the Fire; ... And that after this is accomplished, ...... and the brave new world begins ... When all men are paid for existing ...... and no man must pay for his sins, ... As surely as Water will wet us, ...... as surely as Fire will burn, ... The Gods of the Copybook Headings ...... with terror and slaughter return! But we don't have to be quite as apocalyptic as Kipling. We still have some options, and you will hear about them at this conference, hear about putting gold and silver back to work in monetary roles. Among others, you'll hear from James Turk, founder of GoldMoney, the gold depository and electronic payments system, who is, from the standpoint of the central banks, probably the most dangerous man in the world. You'll hear from Hugo Salinas Price about his proposal to reintroduce silver as circulating currency in Mexico side by side with the peso. You'll be able to talk with John Resing of the Producers Gold Exchange, a plan for giving the physical gold market more influence against the paper gold market of the commodities exchanges. And you'll hear ideas for helping GATA grow. So thanks for coming all this way, and welcome to Gold Rush 21. Gold -- Sharefin, 03:07:53 08/15/05 Mon THREE REVOLUTIONS Remarks by Ferdinand Lips at the Gold Rush 21 conference of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada Monday, August 8, 2005 It is an honor and a pleasure for me to talk to you at the site of the greatest gold discovery in history. We are in Dawson City, the place of the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896. As a young man I spent two years of my life in Toronto. So almost 50 years later I made a visit this legendary country of the Yukon. In this wild place destiny played unbelievably dramatic roles in many thousands of lives. There is no fever like gold fever. This June gold bullion posted a dramatic rise against all major currencies. Another cycle in this bull market seems to be beginning. The curtain of this present-day drama is soon going to lifted as investors all over the world start to notice what is going on. Let me talk about how I see the gold and the world situation from Dawson City. In short: Because the world has forgotten the monetary role of gold, our world is in serious trouble. That is the one major reason for the worrisome state of the world. The abandonment of gold as money, of the discipline of gold, is the major reason if not the only reason why our world has become a very dangerous place. In my opinion, it is the biggest tragedy in world history. Some years ago I heard that the Mayan calendar will end on the 23rd of December 2012. There is no more Mayan calendar afterwards. That is only about seven years away. The Mayans were a people of great culture and they loved gold. They have to be taken seriously. What could that mean? What is going to happen? Is it the end of the world? No, it can't be that. We hope not. However, we are facing an economic situation that could easily end in a debacle of epic proportions. Will there be another world war? Well, that is quite possible. There are so many wars already. In the 20th century there have been two world wars, thousands of smaller wars, even gold wars and currency wars. They would never have happened under a gold standard. Impossible. What else could it be, then? I have come to several conclusions. Conclusions usually come at the end of a speech. But I won't keep you waiting. George Bernard Shaw said: "It's difficult to make forecasts, especially about the future." But I will try anyway. I'll tell you my conclusions right now. First conclusion: There will be no more Federal Reserve. Yes, there will be no more Fed. Believe me. It may come as a surprise to some of you to hear that the Federal Reserve System is already America's fourth central bank. There were three others before that and the result was always the same -- a disaster. We have had nearly a hundred years of the Fed and that is enough. Why? Because this organization has tragically failed. It was set up to keep the dollar strong and the financial system sound. It was founded by powerful and supposedly very intelligent men. Within a hundred years they have succeeded in running the dollar down to 5 percent of its 1913 value. Maybe even below that. The Fed has created stock market bubbles. Right now it is creating the biggest housing bubble in history. This may lead to economic collapse. I expect that a revolution will one day take place against the Fed. It must be abolished. After all, its founders were not that intelligent but rather stupid men. Or they were devils. It is a tragedy. Not only that: It is the biggest tragedy in world history, even worse than wars. Yes, worse than wars. It made most people poor. It damaged America. It caused wars and then helped to finance them. Second conclusion: Most other central banks will go too. The central banks invented this terrible monster of "the lender of last resort," which allows irresponsible banks and the wealthy financial folk to speculate without real risk of their own. It led to an incredible buildup of financial leverage. And at the end it leaves ordinary people holding the bag. None of this would occur if we had an honest monetary structure. We don't need central banks. The once mighty Bundesbank, the bank that ruled Europe, has already lost all its power. All central banks must and will be abolished. Why? Because they were so stupid and fraudulently sold their citizens' gold and bought paper money instead, mostly U.S. dollars. You know -- those dollars that lost 95 percent of their value over 100 years. Yes, there is now the euro. But is that currency cocktail any better? Somebody called it the Esperanto currency, meaning the hopeful currency. Before the creation of the euro all the central banks of the world held all their monetary reserves in U.S. dollars, a currency backed by nothing. After the dollar crashed in recent years, they shifted their paper dollars into euros. How clever -- they sold gold at the bottom and then they sold dollars at the bottom. I hope all is not lost. I suspect that some central bankers are beginning to find out that gold is the only real money -- the only alternative to worthless paper money reserves. My forecast: Beginning in 2006 the same central bankers who dumped gold at much lower prices will repurchase that gold at much higher prices. Third conclusion: The United States will have Latin American conditions but without Latin charm. I am extremely worried about the future of the United States. Its manufacturing industry is dying. The United States is bleeding to death with these endless wars. As far as I know, America has no enemies from outside that threaten it. In my view, the enemy comes from inside. The United States will face economic collapse and destruction of its currency. But people are not informed about what is going on. I also hear that U.S. citizens are losing their freedom. That is, of course, the consequence. Americans should remember their heritage. They should remember the principles of their founding fathers. These wonderful men created a great and successful country that was admired by the whole world. This is all gone. The leaders of the U.S. government are thinking only about teaching everybody what democracy is. The leaders of the U.S. government want to rule a world they don't understand. They want to manage the markets they no longer dominate and then go to war when nothing helps. Fourth conclusion: China will probably become the biggest economy in the world. China has a long history. The timeless value of the wisdom of a Confucius, almost 3,000 years old, is again remembered. Believe me, this is far superior to Disneyland. China will become the most important country. China will have a great future as long as it can master the speed at which it is changing and growing. That will be difficult. China's economic progress creates not only wealth but also tensions. It should not be built on the American consumer, who consumes that much only because he thinks the housing boom makes him rich. So China and the other Asian countries will one day need to have their own integrated markets. They will no longer depend so heavily on an American consumer drowning in debt. If political tensions become too tense, the country could split up in three Chinas. It has happened before. That would not be too bad. Smaller countries can be better managed. In the case of China, these three countries would still be big enough. Fifth conclusion: India will get wealthier and more successful. But I wonder if a country is really successful if it has that many poor people. Most important insight: In spite of all the forecasts, India will buy more and more gold. The Indians will never change. They have lots of history and experience with paper money. In the Middle Ages there was a "silk road" going from Turkey to Kazakhstan. Now we are seeing the building of the "gold road." It starts in Dubai. Dubai is building the biggest gold refineries in the world. They buy and refine the gold that flows over the "gold road" to India and all of Asia. Sixth conclusion: Russia could become the greatest power. Russia may have the biggest gold reserves. In 1917 under the tsar the Bank of Russia had the biggest gold stock of all central banks, including the Bank of England. Russia has many well-educated, hard-working, and decent people. They just need to abolish their enormous bureaucracy, forget their Marxist nightmare, and learn the principles of a free-market economy. Russia is a fabulously rich country with enormous resources, a lot of good people, and a lot of culture. Seventh conclusion: Together with Russia, Europe could again be the center of the world. But this is far from sure. It can be achieved only if we drop socialism and the welfare state. We should learn from the Chinese. Hard work and little welfare state. But in order to succeed, the euro needs a link to gold. The miracle can be accomplished only if Europeans replace Keynes with the thinking of men like Röpke, von Mises, von Hayek, et al. Röpke, Eucken, and Erhard were the fathers of the German miracle. These policies could again be the source of a European miracle. The European Union of Brussels, the European Union in its present form, should be abolished. The Brussels bureaucracy of unelected officials is a monster. The French and the Dutch just voted against it. The EU in its present form will fail and maybe the euro will fail as well. That would not be the end of Europe. As General Charles de Gaulle recommended, the ideal would be the Europe of the Nations, a Europe where the individuality of every nation and region is respected. A Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. A bit more religion would also help. The word "God" was not even included in this new European constitution. The unelected masters of Europe wanted to do it without God. They are destined to fail. Eighth conclusion: Gold and Silver prices will be much, much higher. Oil prices too. There is not enough gold. Who wants to produce gold and silver as long as prices are held artificially low? This whole manipulation of the gold market has to end. It will end like the London Gold Pool in 1968. Just collapse. The gold pool was created in 1960 by the central banks to keep the price of gold at $35. It could not last. Gold was stronger than the central banks. And gold will also be stronger than the hedge fund boys who are criminally borrowing and shorting stocks of small gold-rich exploration companies just to bring them to their knees. Only this time the explosion of prices will be more spectacular. The prices will go to the moon. And the manipulators will be hit by a real boomerang. Also, the central banks will start buying in 2006. Nobody will be able to stop that future gold rush. Gold will take its revenge. Ninth conclusion: If the price of gold and silver were left to free- market forces, nearly everybody would benefit. South America. Most countries of Africa. South Africa would benefit most. Even the United States would greatly benefit because it is the No. 3 producer of gold. There could be a renaissance of mining generally, with all the beneficial effects on national economies. Tenth conclusion: My most important forecast is the following: I forecast a return to the gold standard. Without a return to the gold standard, you can forget it. I repeat: Forget everything. Then the calendar of the Mayans and their wisdom will have proved to be greater than that of Nostradamus. If we go back to the gold standard I could see the best scenario for the future of mankind. Everybody would benefit from sound money. The United States again could become a great economic power and nation. Gold-rich Asia may benefit most. The world economy would run on its full potential. There would be full employment everywhere. The young could again find jobs. Peace would return to the world. How can this be achieved? By three revolutions. 1. The GATA revolution. 2. The education revolution. 3. The mining revolution. ... The GATA revolution. I came to this historic place to tell you how we Europeans admire the work of GATA. For seven years now GATA, under the leadership of Bill Murphy and Chris Powell, has been fighting for free markets, for a free gold market. Bill's courage is without example. It is a fight of David against Goliath. Day after day Bill is hammering out his message for transparency through honesty. Day after day he informs us how honest people are robbed by arrogant governments, bureaucrats, useless central banks, and an almighty banking system. It is a total crime if you manipulate markets, depress the price of assets of other people, destroy the economies of whole nations (primarily in Africa), and drive hundreds of millions of people into poverty. It is a crime. GATA courageously fights for free markets, better markets, honesty, and a better world. GATA therefore deserves our full support. The mining industry has often been criticized by GATA and rightly so. GATA criticized it for not protesting against the obvious manipulation. The mining people do not realize what is happening to their product, to them and to their shareholders. The mining industry is mostly engineers and they don't understand what some dark, obscure characters on commodities exchange are doing to them. Or else they are just closing their eyes. If you realize how much effort it takes to get a few grams of gold out of the ground, then it is obvious that this manipulation is a major crime. It can only be in the interest of mining people to support GATA. Actually the defense of the mining industry was the job of the World Gold Council. But they failed. That is one of the strangest organizations I ever met. In any case the World Gold Council is not the friend of the gold-mining industry. Rather it is serving its biggest sponsors, who incidentally were also the biggest gold hedgers. Those sponsors are dictating the World Gold Council's policy. All gold and silver mines should voluntarily give GATA an annual contribution, not based on ounces produced but what they think is right. All investors, but primarily those with interests in gold and silver mines, must subscribe to GATA's dispatches. Each day they will get high-class and honest information. GATA is the only organization that is fighting for miners and investors. Fighting for their rights and their money. GATA and Bill Murphy's own Internet site, LeMetropoleCafe.com, should now be put on a broader basis. A group of friends should meet with them and work out a plan for how GATA can be institutionalized and structured. It should become a structured business corporation. The benefits for everybody will be enormous, not just for a few stock market gains but for the whole economy, countries, mines, shareholders, workers, and for freedom. Can it be done? Yes, it can. It is needed because the gold cabal cannot endlessly steal our money. GATA must live and grow. Let's build GATA into to a powerful organization. Bill deserves it. He is a pioneer. GATA has to become a viable business corporation. This reminds me in a way of the foundation of Switzerland. In 1291, 30 men from the Swiss mountains assembled one night in a meadow near the Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. They wanted to be free. At that time Europe was ruled by kings and princes and other nobles who were not always nice to the common man. The common man had to pay taxes and had to fight on the battlefields for the glory of the kings. They had to fight and die for the feudal system. The mountain farmers decided that they could manage their own destiny. They were determined not to bow to any oppressor but rather to die than live in chains. And they had to go to war. In three decisive battles they beat the army of the Austrian Hapsburg empire. But before they went into the battle, the farmers went down on their knees and prayed to God Almighty for help. Other cantons joined the original three cantons. Today Switzerland, a country without natural resources, is the country with the highest per capita income in the world. Switzerland is still the only direct democracy in the world. This, my friends, is my first message. Now to the second message: ... The education revolution. If we want to change the monetary non-system, then we must have a plan. We need a plan to inform people about sound money. For a century people have been brainwashed that gold is finished and fiat paper money will rule. The politicians are full of lies and the media is full of lies. There is not one university in the world where monetary history and science are taught. From history we know how fiat money systems end. Look at the American Continental and the John Law experiment. They all finished badly. The present paper money experiment is even worse. It's the worst because it is worldwide. For the first time in history all the currencies of the world are backed by nothing. It is the worst system ever invented. It is the Tower of Babel of irredeemable money. Let me cite Professor Antal Fekete from my book "Gold Wars." Fekete said: "This book is much more than a chronicle of gold wars. It is also an account of the historic failure of 'Esperanto money.' Over a hundred years ago a Polish physician by the name of Ludovik Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917) created a synthetic language in the hope of removing the curse of Babel from mankind. According to the Bible, man had become so conceited as to challenge God by proposing to build a tower that was to reach high heaven. The tower could never be completed because of failures of communication due to the confusion of different languages. Zamenhof called his new language 'Esperanto,' meaning 'the hopeful.' However, the hope was in vain as other synthetic languages, such as 'Ido,' sprang up. The confusion of tongues and the curse of Babel have remained." Calling irredeemable currency "Esperanto money" is apt. The Biblical story may be interpreted allegorically as an admonition not to challenge God by attempting to build a tower of irredeemable debt that is to reach high heaven. But the admonition fell upon deaf ears. Now God's wrath is upon us. Currencies of nations have been confused. The tower of Babel is in vain. Other synthetic currencies spring up such as the Special Drawing Right, the euro, and so on. The confusion of currencies, and the curse of Babel, remain. How could this tower of irredeemable money come into existence? Because there is no gold standard. Because people do not know what money is, what sound money is and means. The lessons of history are forgotten. In the 19th century every peasant knew what money is. So you have to educate people again. How can it be done? You create a worldwide monetary institute. We organize conferences but with a system. You invite the young people and everybody who wants to learn. You have three-year courses about monetary history, about mining, about the influence of sound money on the economy, in history and in the future. An organization such as FAME (www.Fame.org) could play an enormous role. I am a trustee of this organization and a friend of its director, Dr. Larry Parks. You do not need a building for this. You may organize it at various places, in various countries: Switzerland to begin with, Toronto, Singapore, Dubai, Kyoto, Shanghai, Cape Town, Buenos Aires -- any place you can think of. In a few years millions of people will know what sound money is, and millions of people will want to go back to the gold standard. And millions of people will want to buy gold. The free market will overwhelm the manipulators. The free market will decide the right price for gold. Thanks to the wonderful instrument of the Internet, the message will spread rapidly. I tell you that within three years the world will be ready for a new gold standard, for sound money, law and order, freedom, and no wars. Maybe it will take more than three years, maybe it will take seven years, until 2012 when the Mayan calendar ends and a new calendar starts. How can this be achieved? This reminds me of another example in history, the victory of Christendom over the Roman Empire. The missionaries did it without money, without the Internet. They travelled on donkeys and spoke to the crowds, told them about God, convinced them of the importance of love and peace. And they won. It was the Judeo-Christian philosophy that there is only one God that defeated the Roman Empire without weapons. That is why I tell you it can be done. It can be done fast. We have the Internet. My daughter Barbara and I have worked out a plan for a monetary institute. It was easy. I sent the plan to 10 people I thought would be receptive. When I asked their opinion, they found it excellent. For now it is still in the drawer in Switzerland, waiting to be put in practice for the benefit of mankind. But who will do this? Who has enough enthusiasm to create such a monetary institute? It cannot be Ferdi Lips. I am over 74. But there should be plenty of candidates. In May I was in the Middle East, in Dubai, where I had spoke at the Gulf Research Center. Last year I was in Bahrain. I spoke at a university. They were so interested they wanted me to help them work out a program for universities in all other Arabic-speaking countries taking "Gold Wars" as a basis. Today it is easy to spread the message with the help of the computer. ... The Mining Revolution Before closing I am going to speak to you as a representative of the gold-mining industry. The gold-mining industry is in a big squeeze. It is in big trouble. It is a miracle that it still exists. Actually it should make huge profits and pay rich dividends. Thirty years ago gold-mining companies paid dividends to their shareholders because gold in the ground is a wasting asset. Today they do not and cannot pay dividends. Why? Because the low price of gold does not allow them to. We need a healthy mining industry. It is good for the world economy. Today the price of gold should be 50 percent higher. The mines, the shareholders, and the workers would prosper. But it is not only the low price of gold that hurts them. There is also a currency war going on, producing huge currency fluctuations, while energy costs are rising, prices of commodities are rising, labor costs are increasing, and in many cases gold grades are declining. The conclusion is that the gold mining industry needs a higher gold price. I have been active for 10 years in the gold-mining industry in South Africa and Canada, and never have I seen an industry that does so little for marketing its own product. Nor does the South African government or its finance minister ever raise their voice. They just watch how their mining industry is criminally destroyed. And the unions actually think that the mining companies are doing a bad job. Of course, if you think it over, they ARE doing a bad job. Why? Well, they just watch how their product is destroyed. The shareholders of the mining companies should make their respective managements responsible for selling gold for $300 or more below its right price and thus squandering their precious assets. Unfortunately most shareholders also don't know what is going on either. Most mining executives are engineers. Most of them do not even know that the price of gold is managed. It is irresponsible. Every cheese manufacturer does more for his product. But what can the miners do? Well, they have done enough cost cutting, closing down unprofitable mines and firing workers. What they should do is simply withhold 10 percent of their production from the market. That is about 200 tonnes per year. It is only one half of what the central banks are selling each year under the Washington Agreement. It is only one half of what the central banks are selling in order to keep the price low. If the central banks are allowed to do everything to destroy the mining industry, then the mining industry has the right to fight back. Now is the time to stand up and withhold 200 tonnes of production. Two hundred tonnes are not much but it would help immediately. So we finally come to the conclusions: 1. We need a strong, powerful GATA. It is a necessity -- a GATA that is structured, organized, and institutionalized. It has to become a going corporation. 2. We need to teach the people of the world what gold is. Gold is money, the only money and the best money. It insures that our world will again be prosperous. We need a monetary institute on a worldwide basis. 3. The mining industry must prosper again. It must withhold gold from the market until the central banks end their gold sales. 4. It is of the utmost importance to get rid of the restriction that the International Monetary Fund has placed in its articles of agreement that prohibits member countries from linking their currencies to gold. Or else the countries have to quit the IMF. 5. In his essay "Can Gold Producers Survive By Promoting Jewelry?," Larry Parks of FAME said: "At the end of the day, to revive the fortunes of the gold producers, it is necessary and sufficient to restore gold as the choice of free markets and free people all over the world as money that doesn't depreciate at home or abroad; as money that is as steady as the stars; as money that is as faithful as the tides or, as the American Federation of Labor put it at the turn of the last century: 'Gold is the standard of every great civilization.'" That is the salvation of the gold-mining industry: Gold as the standard of every great civilization! This is my message. Conquer the fiat money non-system with knowledge, just as Christendom conquered the pagan Roman Empire. Conquer it with gold. If we do this, then by the 23rd of December 2012 a new golden Mayan calendar will be born and the world will experience a renaissance and prosperity for all. But if we don't do it, the calendar of the Mayans will have truly been prophetic. We will face global economic collapse and believe me -- the end of the world as we know it. Gold -- Sharefin, 03:07:05 08/15/05 Mon By Wistar Holt Sunday, August 14, 2005 In July 1897 the small steamship Excelsior docked in San Francisco with well-worn but enthusiastic miners returning from the Klondike region, 1,500 miles to the north. As they disembarked carrying large quantities of gold, word spread like wildfire. When another steamship, the Portland, arrived a couple of days later in Seattle with 68 miners carrying nearly 32,000 ounces of gold, the word "Klondike" grabbed the headlines. Within days thousands left their homes to head north and a gold rush was born. Another gold rush began on August 7, 2005, as a hundred gold proponents ascended into the Klondike town of Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada, for Gold Rush 21. What these people sought was not gold but the truth -- truth about the central banks; truth about bullion banks; truth about liquidated, leased, and physical gold; and truth about derivatives, the U.S. dollar, and gold and silver price suppression. Representing 14 countries, some of these delegates sought answers and evidence, while the veterans among them strived for exposure for their message. Fueling the gold rush of 1897-98 were the nation's dire economic conditions, as bread lines were common and opportunities scarce. The grounds of Gold Rush 21 were fertilized by questionable U.S. government reports on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, underreported inflation, "hedonic" economic statistics, and a Federal Reserve chairman who claims that asset bubbles cannot be identified before it is too late. The purpose of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee in calling this conference was to disclose to the financial world that the precious metals have been manipulated and suppressed for years. This suppression of their prices allows asset bubbles to occur, causing consequences for all markets, so it is important that something be done about it. Much of the evidence of this manipulation was initially supported with a discussion of GATA's original findings in 1999, including the extensive research of market analyst Frank Venerosa, who concluded that more than half the supposed 30,000 tons of central bank gold holdings had surreptitiously been sold or leased out. Further evidence of manipulation was documented in the unraveling of traditional relationships between gold, oil, and the CRB (commodity price) index. The inexplicable fact that gold never seems to be able to rise more than $6-7 per day while double-digit declines occur periodically lends suspicion. The frequent rout of the price of gold for no apparent reason upon the opening of the Comex paper derivative gold market is also peculiar. Additionally, it was pointed out that European central banks appear to target a certain gold price -- $440 per ounce -- to limit gold's upward momentum. From a macro standpoint, the rationale for the suppression of gold and silver was discussed. Central banks and bullion banks have a vested interest in keeping gold as low as possible. To the central banks, gold is a barometer, a lightning rod, or as one top international money manager describes it, "the canary in a coal mine." If or when gold takes off to the upside, the fear is that investors will begin to worry about the general health of the financial system. Since there has been such enormous liquidity created in our system, asset bubbles have developed in stocks, bonds, real estate, and credit. A rise in gold may cause investors to worry and retrench, whereby these assets may deflate as the technology bubble did in 2000. This could do enormous damage to the U.S. and global economies. On the other hand, the bullion banks are interested in maintaining a low gold price for other reasons. Collectively they are massively short millions of ounces of gold, going back to the early 1990s. While prospering enormously for many years from the carry trade in which they shorted gold and invested the proceeds in higher interest- bearing instruments, they are extremely vulnerable, because of their short positions, to large losses should gold rise much higher. In addition, since gold competes with traditional asset classes like stocks and bonds, bullion banks stand to lose a lot of revenue should investors become concerned and reduce their exposure to those assets. There was much discussion at Gold Rush 21 about the vulnerability of the U.S. dollar. The worsening trade, current account, and budget deficits, as well as rising debt levels, are expected to wreak havoc on the U.S. economy and its fiat currency. The days of the dollar as the world reserve currency are unwinding. This vulnerability, as pointed out by many speakers, is why gold and silver are so important today. The metals provide intrinsic value independent of governments because they are no one's liability. Speakers made proposals to restore economic stability, reaching out to individuals as well as governments. These suggestions ranged from protecting oneself via a high degree of ownership in the metals (and/or mining stocks), to having governments introduce precious metal coinage along with their fiat money, to a far-reaching cry for an international gold standard that would provide stability to all global currency values. Notably absent from Gold Rush 21 were most major mining companies, many of which I had personally invited. Giving credit to Agnico- Eagle Mines Ltd. as well as several junior miners who supported the conference and GATA, I am convinced that management of most of these absent companies privately believes that the precious metal markets are indeed manipulated. But I suspect that they fear retaliation from both governments and the bullion banks. Governments frequently are asked to approve mining projects while bullion banks are often solicited to finance them. Thus, unfortunately, many of these companies probably feel a need to maintain a low profile. Nevertheless, GATA will continue to seek their moral and financial support, since this battle is very much their own. Specifically, a DVD of the conference will be delivered to all major mining companies and followed up on. To stress the point further, on August 4, just prior to my departure for Gold Rush 21, I e-mailed the following letter to an executive at Hecla Mining: * * * Dear Vicki: Seeing your stock down 32 cents today (7 percent), more than negating the industry-led rally yesterday, makes me disgusted. Perhaps your problem is not really attributed to labor problems in Mexico or cost overruns in Venezuela. Rather, in my opinion, it is related to the suppression of the price of silver (and gold). This is why GATA has launched Gold Rush 21. Yet your company's management and many others in the industry have chosen to ignore the obvious. * * * The optimism among gold supporters at Gold Rush 21 was high. Many feel that before year's end gold will break out to multi-year highs of $500 per ounce. Longer-term targets over the next couple of years are significantly higher. The feeling was that fundamentals such as the escalating price of oil and other commodities, as well as weakness in the U.S. economy and the dollar, will continue to strengthen the physical gold market. Strong demand in international markets such as India, China, Turkey, Russia, and the Middle East will continue. Foreign markets may continue to provide the greatest opportunity for GATA to help investors realize how cheap gold is. At the same time, certain bullion banks may be forced to limit their losses, cover their shorts, and cease their suppressive activity. In addition, as the dollar continues to weaken, certain central banks may convert their large dollar holdings into gold in order to protect their reserves. This would make it harder for the suppression activity to continue. Perhaps ironic or not, gold rallied nearly $10 per ounce on Thursday, August 11, the day after the conference ended. It was the largest increase in a single day since I initiated my gold equity positions in January 2001. Is it possible that GATA's Gold Rush 21 has already made a difference? Time will tell. But when I heard conference attendee Andrey Bykov, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, say, "This is the finest conference I have ever been to," it seemed that the message about gold was getting out. After all, Russia is one of the major gold producers and its central bank has been adding to its gold reserves. Let there be no mistake: It will take time for gold to reach its appropriate value. It will require patience on the part of the investment community as we continue to battle the oppressive forces. Four and half years ago I considered gold to be the absolute best investment opportunity of my (then) 21-year asset management career. Today nothing has changed. The fundamentals are even more compelling. Those with patience will be well rewarded. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 19:21:52 08/14/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,156.9 + Dow 10,600.31 = 12,757.21 divide by 2 = 6,378.60 Ponzi Up 10.63 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 01:06:31 08/12/05 Fri Russia's Gold, Forex Reserves To Double: Finance Minister 05.08.2005 11:24 Russia's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Thursday that Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves could reach $200 billion by the end of this year. Gold and forex reserves will grow by $80 billion this year, up from the previous forecast of $50. According to statistics, Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves stood at $124.5 billion on Jan. 1, and increased to $151.8 billion as of July 1. Gold -- Sharefin, 20:54:30 08/09/05 Tue Gold could hit $US725 on China demand China's growing demand for gold jewellery will drive up global prices of the metal in the next five years, boosting the shares of producers such as Newmont Mining, AngloGold Ashanti and Australia's Newcrest. Prices may reach $US725 an ounce by 2010 from the current level of $US437 and China may overtake India as the world's largest consumer of gold jewellery, said Graham Birch of Merrill Lynch in London. Five other analysts and traders surveyed by Bloomberg said Chinese demand would bolster prices. Jewellery demand in China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, rose 13 per cent in the first quarter and investment demand rose 36 per cent, according to the World Gold Council, a producer-funded group. Chinese incomes in urban areas rose 9.5 per cent in the first half and are forecast to surge further by the end of the decade. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 20:40:33 08/07/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,177.91 + Dow 10,558.03 = 12,735.94 divide by 2 = 6,367.97 Ponzi Down 44.90 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 08:03:04 08/01/05 Mon A cautionary tale and a 'classic script' A be-on-alert view on the greenback comes from the respected Bridgewater Daily Observations, an institutional service put out by Connecticut-based money managers Bridgewater Associates. Bridgewater emphasizes that "this is a regime change, not just an exchange-rate change." It argues that "due to the Chinese peg, Asian monetary policy has basically been locked into a dollar system. No Asian country wants to lose competitiveness to China." China's official removal of the dollar-peg system in favor of a basket of currencies "means that the Asian dollar-based monetary system is about to collapse," Bridgewater warns. ~~~ "The flip side of this is that the U.S. is moving toward a balance-of-payment crisis that is quite similar in its dynamic (although the imbalances are now greater in degree) to the dollar/debt crisis of the early '70s. ... While this process has been, so far, playing out in slow motion, the dollar crisis is unfolding entirely according to the classic script of a pegged currency falling apart." ~~ On Friday, Russell said: "The U.S. is losing control of its money. The control is gradually and subtly switching to our creditors, the Chinese and the Asians. The direction of the yuan in terms of dollars or dollars in terms of yuan may be the 'next big thing.' " Because the downside is huge, any risk of the dollar becoming undermined is worth noting. Indeed, Growth Stock Outlook's Charles Allmon said again last week that he thinks price of gold and the Dow Industrials could cross again -- say, in the 2,500 range. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 20:00:06 07/31/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,184.83 + Dow 10,640.91 = 12,825.74 divide by 2 = 6,412.87 Ponzi Down 2.59 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 23:00:50 07/24/05 Sun Gold liberalisation measures are key to India India is sitting on a 'gold' mine and it has the potential to be world's largest gold trading center. Everybody acknowledges this, the finance and commerce ministries, the Reserve Bank Of India (RBI), the commodity exchanges, so on and so forth. Not to mention the bullion traders and jewelers. India has unsatiable penchant for gold. It has been proved time and again. Every quarter the GFMs and World Gold Council reports have been substantiating the facts. Gold -- Sharefin, 22:57:46 07/24/05 Sun Govt to authorise more entities for gold imports THE Government has finally made up its mind on further liberalising gold imports by authorising more entities to import in addition to the current list of some 17 agencies that include Government parastatals, star trading houses, and banks. The Ministry of Finance has decided to expand the number of authorised importers of gold beyond the current designated agencies. For this purpose it is seeking to develop a set of criteria for those persons, agencies and entities who would be authorised to import gold. The decision is sought to be justified on the ground that it would ensure adequate supply in the market for the benefit of consumers. Early last year, ahead of the general elections, the then Finance Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, announced the Government's decision to make gold imports free, subject to guidelines to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India. Mr Singh had asserted that unrestricted imports would help jewellery makers and others to access the yellow metal freely without having to go through intermediaries. Gold -- Sharefin, 22:53:24 07/24/05 Sun Post/wire say Barrick, others like ring of $725 gold The Financial Post reports in a Bloomberg dispatch that the price of gold may rise to $725 an ounce by 2010 as surging economic growth turns China into the world's biggest jewellery consumer ~~~ Fat Prophets, a privately owned financial-advisory company in Sydney, said Wednesday gold may rise to $850 an ounce in as little as three years. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 21:01:27 07/24/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,179.74 + Dow 10,651.18 = 12,830.92 divide by 2 = 6,415.46 Ponzi Up 16.66 from last week . Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 22:01:02 07/21/05 Thu China Cuts Currency Link to U.S. Dollar BEIJING - After months of lobbying by its trading partners, China on Thursday cut its currency's link to the U.S. dollar and raised its value by about 2 percent in a move that could make Chinese exports more expensive and make foreign assets cheaper for China to buy. The government's increase of the state-set exchange rate of the yuan could give a respite to foreign companies that are trying to compete with an avalanche of low-cost Chinese goods. But Chinese companies also could get a break as prices of imported oil and other raw materials fall. And a stronger currency could prompt more takeover bids by China like those launched recently for U.S. oil company Unocal Corp. and appliance maker Maytag Corp. The U.S. government welcomed the move but said it would closely watch the changes. The small increase in the yuan's value isn't likely to be enough on its own to satisfy trading partners who have said Chinese exporters had an unfair price advantage because the currency was undervalued by up to 40 percent. But by dropping the U.S. dollar link and switching to a more flexible system based on a basket of foreign currencies, the Chinese have opened the door to a further, gradual rise in the yuan's value. The government announced the change to an exchange rate of 8.11 yuan to the dollar in a surprise announcement on state television's evening news. That raised the value of one yuan by about one-quarter of one U.S. cent to 12.33 cents. The effect on U.S. financial markets was immediate: The dollar fell against other major currencies and yields on U.S. Treasury securities rose. If that rise in interest rates is sustained, it could make it more expensive for U.S. consumers to finance purchases of new cars, homes and other big-ticket items Gold -- Sharefin, 21:58:01 07/21/05 Thu Dollar sags as China scraps currency peg NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dollar slumped against the yen in heavy trading on Thursday after China abandoned its dollar peg in favor of a basket of currencies to manage the yuan. The yen's rise accelerated and other Asian currencies firmed after Malaysia said it has changed the ringgit peg to a managed float, fueling further gains in the Japanese currency. Traders had expected the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Monetary Authority of Singapore to revise their currency regime as well. However, both said on Thursday that they are maintaining their current foreign exchange policy. Gold -- Sharefin, 21:56:41 07/21/05 Thu Commodity Prices Could Soar as China Ends Its Dollar Peg NEW YORK, July 21 /PRNewswire/ -- China's decision to revalue the yuan has started small, but one analyst predicts it could be just the beginning - eventually putting a powder peg to commodity prices. On Wednesday the Chinese government ended its decade-long practice of pegging the value of its currency to the U.S. dollar. Starting today the value of the yuan will be tied to a basket of currencies. The move pushed the yuan up 2.1% against the dollar. But Daily Reckoning contributor Eric Fry, an expert in emerging markets and international diversification, says it won't stay there for long. "Currencies in motion tend to continue in motion, even when they are 'managed,'" Fry says. "So I'd say the odds are pretty good that the yuan continues to strengthen over the months ahead." Fry predicts one of the biggest beneficiaries will be the commodities market. "Even with their undervalued currency, the Chinese had become voracious buyers of commodities. A strengthening currency, therefore, should help to boost their commodity consumption somewhat." He adds that the increased demand will only push prices higher. "If you liked resource stocks before today's yuan revaluation, you've got to love them now." Gold -- Sharefin, 08:20:45 07/19/05 Tue New COT charts to view: Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 23:48:41 07/17/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,156.78 + Dow 10,640.83 = 12,797.61 divide by 2 = 6,398.80 Ponzi Up 117.79 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 20:33:44 07/10/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,112..88 + Dow 10,449.14 = 12,562.02 divide by 2 = 6,281.01 Ponzi Up 100.61 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 06:09:42 07/07/05 Thu China allows commercial banks to sell gold bars SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China has allowed four major commercial banks to sell gold bars to their customers in the near future, dealers said on Wednesday, in the latest move to boost demand in the world's most populous nation. The prospect of growing consumption in main buyers India and China and the launch of exchange-traded funds (ETF) in bullion trading cities are among the supporting factors for gold -- a symbol of wealth and good fortune in China. Currently, individuals are only allowed to buy gold-backed certificates from the Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, dealers said. Account holders use the certificates to trade in gold instead of buying or selling real bullion. ~~~ "The China Banking Regulatory Commission has given an approval for these banks to start the business. The four major banks are preparing to launch gold bars for their customers in the near future," said one regional dealer who covers the Chinese market. "This is the reason why I think China's gold consumption may rise by 10 percent this year. This is related to an increase in investment demand," he said. ~~~ China is both the world's fourth-largest gold consumer and producer. It produced a record 212.35 tonnes of gold in 2004, up 5.86 percent from the previous year and well above 90 tonnes in 1994. ~~~~ The industry-backed World Gold Council said consumption in mainland China rose to 234 tonnes in 2004 from 207.6 tonnes in 2003, driven by Beijing's move to liberalise the bullion market and the growing popularity of 18-carat gold. Gold -- Sharefin, 06:06:51 07/07/05 Thu Missing Gold A King's Ransom in Precious Metals Seems to have Disappeared There are rumors that $160 billion in gold bullion was stored under the World Trade Center. Yet the only published articles about recovered gold mention only around $200 million worth of gold. All of the reports of recovered precious metals appear to refer to a removal operation conducted in late October of 2001. On Nov. 1, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced that "more than $230 million" worth of gold and silver bars that had been stored in a bomb-proof vault had been recovered. Two Brinks trucks were at ground zero on Wednesday to start hauling away the $200 million in gold and silver that the Bank of Nova Scotia had stored in a vault under the trade center ... A team of 30 firefighters and police officers are helping to move the metals, a task that can be measured practically down to the flake but that has been rounded off at 379,036 ounces of gold and 29,942,619 ounces of silver .. Another article gave a figure of $650 million to the value of gold in the 4 WTC vault. Unknown to most people at the time, $650 million in gold and silver was being kept in a special vault four floors beneath Four World Trade Center. The gold and silver were recently recovered. An article in the TimesOnline gives the following rundown of precious metals that were being stored in WTC vaults belonging to Comex. 2 Comex metals trading - 3,800 gold bars weighing 12 tonnes and worth more than $100 million Comex clients - 800,000 ounces of gold with a value of about $220 million Comex clients - 102 million ounces of silver, worth $430 million Bank of Nova Scotia - $200 million of gold That totals $950 million. There appear to be no reports of precious metals discovered between November of 2001 and the completion of excavation several months later. It would seem that at least the better part of a billion dollars worth of precious metals went missing. It is not plausible that whatever destroyed the towers vaporized gold and silver, which are dense, inert metals that are extremely unlikely to participate in chemical reactions with other materials. The circumstances surrounding part of the gold that was recovered offer clues to what may have happened to the unrecovered gold. According to reports, two truckloads of gold were found in a delivery tunnel under 5 World Trade Center in a 10-wheel lorry which had been crushed by falling steel. The vault was under 4 World Trade Center, which was closer to the South Tower, and more heavily damaged. There were no bodies discovered with the lorry, suggesting that whoever was removing the gold was warned of the imminent collapse of the South Tower. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 00:31:00 07/04/05 Mon Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,057.37 + Dow 10,303.44 = 12,360.81 divide by 2 = 6,180.40 Ponzi Up 4.85 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 23:07:36 06/27/05 Mon Gold detaches itself from the euro Since 2002 gold has been locked in a range of 315-350 euros to the ounce, and has only risen in value on dollar weakness against the euro. But in the past weeks this umbilical cord has been torn apart, and both the dollar and gold have strengthened against the euro. The euro is suffering for several reasons: the growth outlook in the euro-zone is poor; the rejection of the European Union constitution by French and Dutch voters leaves the EU in a state of paralysis; and there have been hints that euro-zone interest rates will be cut soon. Now for central banks or fund managers looking to diversify risk this has made the euro less attractive, and with the dollar also not without its own problems, gold is an alternative store of value. Gold is an alternative 'currency' to the dollar, although it has to be admitted that gold has a zero yield and is a far less liquid asset. However, gold does have one fundamental feature that other currencies lack. Its supply is limited, and can not be expanded by the printing of money by central bankers. In a world where deficits and debts hang over economies like the grim reaper, gold shines as a bastion of immortality. For their will be no deflation of gold due to a rising supply of paper money. On the contrary the more money is printed the higher gold will rise in price. As the ultimate hedge against financial insecurity gold is still unmatched, except by other precious metals like silver and platinum. But its recent role as a proxy for the euro has kept the yellow metal from sharing in the recent global upturn in commodity prices. This significant undervaluation of gold as an asset is now likely to come under focus, and accelerate movement into what is already an increasingly obvious safe haven. If gold were to resume its old role as a proxy for oil, then speculators would certainly take renewed interest. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 23:56:51 06/26/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,053.27 + Dow 10,297.84 = 12,351.11 divide by 2 = 6,175.55 Ponzi Down 181.04 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Silver -- Sharefin, 22:10:09 06/20/05 Mon First silver ETF filed Global Investors filed an initial prospectus for the first exchange-traded fund to reflect the price of silver bullion. If approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the ETF's shares would trade on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol "SLV." Each share of the ETF would be equivalent to 10 ounces of silver, according to the filing made late Friday by Barclays ~~~ Bank of New York is named as the trustee for the silver ETF and the London branch of J.P. Morgan Chase Bank is the custodian, according to the Barclays filing. The sponsor's fee is 0.5% of the adjusted net asset value of the trust, according to the filing. The trust may sell of some of its silver to cover expenses, meaning the amount of silver per share may vary over time. Gold -- Sharefin, 22:06:38 06/20/05 Mon Barrick Gold Strikes Opposition in South America “Barrick! Listen! Chile will not surrender!, No to Pascua Lama!,” roared a crowd of protestors as they paraded through the streets of Santiago, Chile. The crowd was addressing Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold, in response to the company's proposed bi-national “Pascua Lama” open-pit mine on the border of Chile and Argentina. ~~~ Barrick Gold, a powerful multinational already notorious for its dealings in North America, Australia and Africa, plans to extract an estimated 500,000 kilograms of gold (along with silver, copper and mercury) from the site over a 20 year period. Before doing so, however, the company will relocate significant parts of the Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza, three giant Andean glaciers. Barrick hopes to transfer the three glaciers to an area with similar surface characteristics and elevation by merging the three into the larger Guanaco glacier. The anticipated environmental impact, coupled with the removal of a major source of water for surrounding communities, has local Chileans up in arms. But Barrick Gold appears un-phased by the opposition. After all, Pascua Lama is one of the largest foreign investments in Chile in recent years, totaling US$1.5 billion. As with many gold mines, the Pasuca Lama mine would employ cyanide leaching for on-site processing of the ore. Cyanide is a chemical compound which, even in very small quantities, is extremely toxic to humans and other life forms. If leaked from a mine site or spilt during transportation, it can quickly cause massive toxicity problems for an entire ecosystem, while mobilizing other persistent and toxic heavy metals, as well. ~~~ These fierce accusations of corporate irresponsibility and greed are certainly not the first the massive mining company has had to handle. In the past they have been accused of burying alive 50 miners in Tanzania (through a company they now own), of playing a heavy-handed role in attempting to silence opposition through expensive libel cases, and of blatantly disregarding community and environmental concerns all over, from the US, to Latin America, Africa and Australia. George W Bush Sr. also appears in the long list of grievances about the company. From 1995 to 1999 he was the "Honorary Chairman" of Barrick's "International Advisory Board," during which time he was said to have forced laws favourable to the company. Gold -- Sharefin, 22:00:49 06/20/05 Mon Are gold and oil due a 20-year boom? Analysts say China's industrialisation may spur a long bull run, but there are echoes of the tech bubble. COMMODITY prices are heading back to record highs after the spring's sell-off and the City is once again talking of a 20-year bull run in the sector. Brent crude oil has surged by 14% over the past month to $57.51 a barrel, not far off its high of $57.83 in early April. Copper hit a record high on Thursday after China, the world's biggest importer of many commodities, reported that industrial output had leapt by 16.6% in the year to May. ~~ Even analysts who believe that commodities are in the midst of a long-term bull cycle accept that there are signs of a bubble in some parts of the market, especially among small oil and mining stocks quoted on the Alternative Investment Market. ~~~ Despite the risks, he believes that the commodity market is in the midst of a “supercycle” — a 20-year bull market fuelled by the industrialisation of China and India. Richards said: “If you look at history, there have always been supercycles in demand for commodities. There was a super- cycle during the British industrial revolution, during America's huge period of growth before and after the second world war and during Japan's industrialisation in the 1970s.” Now it is the turn of China. Its economy has expanded by 9.5% over the past 12 months and has grown by an average of 9.4% a year since economic reforms began in the 1970s, according to Capital Economics, a consultancy. As China's economy expands, it is sucking in raw materials to build up its infrastructure, including roads, power stations and factories. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 19:27:18 06/19/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,090.11 + Dow 10,623.07 = 12,713.18 divide by 2 = 6,356.59 Ponzi Up 68.78 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 23:20:20 06/18/05 Sat Excellent Reading!!! In Denial Of Crisis - part I In Denial Of Crisis - part II In Denial Of Crisis - part III Gold -- Sharefin, 23:18:40 06/16/05 Thu Yawns greet gold's euro move What does it mean when gold gives a Euro party and nobody comes? Late last week the price of gold expressed in Euros, the European common currency, broke above E350 an ounce. Early this week it went on to make a high never seen since the currency was invented five years ago. It creates a remarkable chart, and was an excitedly- anticipated event. ~~~ Early this week gold was restrained by heavy liquidation of Tokyo Commodities Exchange futures positions by Japanese speculators, happily taking profits as gold reached a 13-year high in yen. But these speculators are now out. Physical market premiums from India and the Far East suggest these markets are still buying. Intriguingly, the European Central Bank's flock of subordinate central banks have ramped up their gold selling to what appears to be an unsustainable pace: over 12 tonnes a week for the last three weeks. Under the Central Bank agreement on gold sales, only another 100 tonnes is permissible up to the end of September -- less than several tonnes a week. Skeptics feel Central Banks can evade these restrictions. But bulls suggest that an apparent termination of these sales, or perhaps a touch more progress on the eurogold chart, will catch the attention the attention of Europe's recently much enlarged hedge fund community -- and surprise gold's long-standing but currently timid friends. Gold -- Sharefin, 23:14:26 06/16/05 Thu Gold emerges as currency of choice as euro buckles NEW YORK, June 16 (Reuters) - Collapsing confidence in the euro has become one of the principal factors behind the breakdown in the close correlation between gold prices and the dollar, suggesting gold may become something of a currency of choice this summer. The euro's 2005 decline has accelerated in the last three weeks after voters in France and the Netherlands rejected a proposed European Union constitution, which has raised question marks over the drive for broader European political unity. The resulting political crisis in Europe has been one of the main factors driving the dollar higher, normally a condition of lower dollar-denominated gold prices, and decoupling the relationship between the euro and gold. Yet gold, whether priced in dollars, euros or yen, has strengthened markedly in the past few weeks leading some analysts to say that it may now be emerging as a genuine investment alternative in its own right. ~~~ The inverse correlation between the dollar and gold prices, or seen another way, the remarkably close link between gold and the euro, that has held steady for at least three years appears to be cracking. "We've seen a de-coupling, mainly because of what's going on in the euro," said a senior bullion dealer at a bank in New York. This decoupling is "a little bit of a new phenomenon," certainly not seen since the dollar started to weaken and gold ticked steadily higher in early 2002, he said. Indeed, the close relationship between the euro, dollar and gold in recent years wasn't just confined to prices and charts on a computer screen. Until a couple of weeks ago, many banks traded gold from their foreign exchange desks, the dealer said. Now, however, the moves in gold and currencies have unnerved many traders, leading to a decrease in banks' proprietary gold trading and increase in investment fund activity. "People are unwinding large (euro) positions," and gold is benefiting, the dealer said Periodic Ponzi Update PPU 6/10/05 -- $hifty, 00:18:16 06/16/05 Thu Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,063.0 + Dow 10,512.63 = 12,575.63 divide by 2 = 6,287.81 Ponzi Up 21.61 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 06:29:41 06/14/05 Tue Newmont sees $525 gold price by Jan The price of gold should rise to $525 an ounce by the start of 2006, a top executive of gold giant Newmont Mining Corp. said on Thursday. Pierre Lassonde, president of the world's largest gold mining company, cited an expected decline in the U.S. dollar by another 15 per cent against a basket of currencies, world economic growth strong enough to keep physical demand buoyant and a continuing gradual decline in gold output. Speaking at the Reuters Mining Summit, Lassonde said consumer and investor demand for gold is tenacious at current prices and world production is in a decline, which should hoist gold out of a current $400 to $475 range. Gold -- Sharefin, 00:01:10 06/11/05 Sat Gold up, dollar up: what does that tell you? For the past couple of years the fall of the US dollar has been matched almost exactly by the advance in the gold price which has mirrored the devaluation of the US dollar against the euro. But in the past few weeks this umbilical cord appears to have broken down. The US dollar has advanced to $1.21 to the euro from just below $1.25 and gold has pivoted upwards from an initial decline to $413 an ounce to $427 an ounce. If this new relationship holds true then we could well see the yellow metal advancing back to the $455-an-ounce highs of late last year, and possibly onwards and upwards to the $500 barrier suggested by gold bugs. Yet at the same time the US dollar could continue to rally against the euro, or even begin to fall in value again. ~~~ The US economy is not in a sound condition. It is $24 trillion in debt, and still spending hard. Gold is the ultimate safe haven, arguably even safer than US treasury bonds, and that is another very good reason for gold prices to be rising. For in a financial crash there would be very few assets that would escape unscathed, and indeed rally on chaos. Gold is the one sure bet against a global financial crash, and whether or not it actually happens, that is becoming more and more of a worry to investors, who will therefore buy more and more gold. Hence the end to the euro-gold price relationship probably signals an important breakout in the gold price which will now rise to reflect recent general commodity price rises and significant caution in the investment community about the true global economic outlook. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 21:00:04 06/05/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,071.43 + Dow 10,460.97 = 12,532.40 divide by 2 = 6,266.20 Ponzi Down 42.94 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 18:36:17 05/31/05 Tue Hallmarking gold If there is one item of mass consumption where third-party quality assurance is vital, it is without doubt gold. Unfortunately, the infrastructure for providing such a guarantee through the assaying and hallmarking of gold is hopelessly inadequate. India is one of the world's largest consumers of gold and cheating at the retail level is rampant. Notably, of the country's annual gold consumption of a massive 800 tonnes, as much as 80 per cent goes into jewellery fabrication for sale in the domestic and export markets. Most surveys, including those commissioned by the consumer affairs department, have borne out the impression that much of the jewellery palmed off on unwary consumers as being of 22 carats purity is actually of far lower quality. Gold -- Sharefin, 23:44:29 05/30/05 Mon S.African Q1 gold output falls 12.8 pct on rand JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Gold output in South Africa, the world's biggest producer, extended its decline in the first quarter, falling 12.8 percent year-on-year, the Chamber of Mines said on Monday. Production fell to 73.8 tonnes (2.37 million ounces) during the first three months of 2005 from 84.6 tonnes in the same period last year, mainly as a strong rand made some shafts uneconomical, it said. "In a similar vein to 2004 the South African gold mining sector remained under pressure due to falling rand revenues and rising production costs," a statement from the chamber, an industry group, said. In late March, the country's fourth largest gold producer DRDGOLD closed its loss-making North West mines, which been hard hit by the buoyant rand, slashing output by a third. Harmony Gold, the world's sixth biggest gold producer, has also struggled with loss-making mines and posted its seventh consecutive quarterly headline loss for the three months to March. South Africa's other main gold producers are AngloGold Ashanti, which ranks second in the world, and fourth place Gold Fields Ltd. The domestic gold price in the first quarter fell 7.7 percent year-on-year to 82,206 rand per kg while total production costs rose 5.2 percent to 88,012 rand/kg, the chamber said. ~~~ Adding to the pressure have been higher costs for water, steel, rail tariffs and wages, the chamber added. ~~~ Gold production last year was the weakest since 1931. Fiat -- Sharefin, 22:58:26 05/30/05 Mon Bank of Canada governor warns of global economic imbalances, US deficit MONTREAL (CP) - A growing imbalance in the global economy, exacerbated by a rampant U.S. deficit as the rest of the world records surpluses, needs to be addressed soon before it gets resolved "in an abrupt, disorderly way," the governor of the Bank of Canada said Monday. ~~~ "The concern is that the longer these imbalances remain unresolved, the greater the chances that the ultimate resolution will be disorderly," Dodge said. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 21:27:22 05/29/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,075.73 + Dow 10,542.55 = 12,618.28 divide by 2 = 6,309.14 Ponzi Up 49.98 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 19:30:42 05/25/05 Wed China Demands Place at BIS Dinners Where Global Plans Are Laid May 25 (Bloomberg) -- With $659 billion in foreign-exchange reserves, the People's Bank of China helps determine the fate of the world financial markets as it, along with other Asian central banks, buys U.S. Treasury bonds and finances America's fiscal deficit, which was a record $412.5 billion last year. If the Chinese government stopped buying American debt, it might trigger a surge in U.S. interest rates and a collapse in housing, equity and bond markets, says New York University economist Nouriel Roubini. Even so, the People's Bank of China doesn't have a seat on the board of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, the place where central bankers from all over the world come together to confront threats to global markets. Japan is the only Asian country with a seat on the board, and officials at the Chinese bank, which is a BIS member, say the situation doesn't reflect economic realities. ~~~ The BIS, adds He, plays a very positive role in promoting cooperation among central banks. The BIS, housed in an 18-story, bronze metallic, cylindrical tower, was set up in 1930 by the central banks of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and the U.K., with the participation of Japan and the U.S., to administer Germany's World War I war reparations. It soon became an exclusive central bankers' club that operated out of public view; until the 1970s, it was housed in a nondescript former hotel near the Basel train station. ~~~ Governors of the 55 central banks that are BIS members gather at BIS headquarters for bimonthly weekend meetings. ~~~ Propping Up the Dollar The group's decisions included propping up the dollar, the British pound and French franc when their countries threatened to break out of the Bretton Woods system of fixed-exchange rates, as well as the creation of a gold pool in which eight central banks intervened together in the gold markets. Gold -- Sharefin, 18:43:05 05/25/05 Wed Gold output takes centre stage in poorest nations LONDON (Reuters) - Gold mining is becoming increasingly important to the world's heavily indebted poor countries, with a steep rise in output seen over the last 10 years, a report from the World Gold Council showed on Wednesday. The industry-backed group's report said developing countries accounted for 72 percent of global bullion output last year. Stripping out world number one producer South Africa, gold output from developing countries rose by more than 50 percent over the last decade, it added. The strongest rise in output was seen in Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs), whose gold production rose 84 percent between 1994 and 2004. Global gold mine output was 2,464 tonnes in 2004, figures from consultants GFMS show. "Gold is generally associated with the rich and yet this latest report proves that, in relative terms, it is actually much more important to the poor," WGC CEO James Burton said in a statement launching the report. Due to rising output, HIPC's dependence on gold exports has also increased significantly, with the precious metal now one of the most important exports, accounting for nearly eight percent of goods exports in 2003. Gold -- Sharefin, 18:41:28 05/25/05 Wed Urban Youth, Investors Boost China Gold Demand NEW DELHI (Dow Jones)--China's consumption of gold has started rising after lower growth in the past several years, because of the popularity of 18-carat gold and the liberalization of bullion investment. "Gold offtake in China started to pick up last year. A crucial step was the promotion of 18-carat gold, branded as K-gold by the WGC," said Jill Leyland, economic adviser to the World Gold Council, or WGC. ~~~ "Gold demand in China is expected to keep rising with a rising yuppie culture among 20- and 30-year-olds, where gold becomes a way to show off newfound wealth," said James Moore, analyst with TheBullionDesk.com. According to WGC, China's gold demand is expected to rise 10% in 2005, from 234 tons a year ago. Easy Investment Rules, Likely Yuan Revaluation To Help While demand for gold jewelry is rising among younger Chinese, investment in bullion has been boosted buy the government's 2004 decision to allow major state-run Chinese banks such as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China and Agricultural Bank of China to market investment products in bullion. "Liberalization of the investment (market) has just happened. Demand is rising already, though the real impact may come in only later this year," said WGC's Leyland. Another likely catalyst is the anticipated revaluation of the Chinese currency. According to analysts, whenever the yuan is revalued, Chinese gold demand will rise as imports will likely become cheaper. "This will enable Chinese people and institutions to import more gold," said Mark O'Byrne, director of Gold and Silver Investments Ltd, a Dublin-based investment company. Many analysts believe China's total gold demand may equal Indian demand in 10-20 years. Gold -- Sharefin, 07:19:41 05/23/05 Mon Intervention against Gold Rising Sharply, GATA Says, Citing New Derivatives Report DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 2005--Government intervention against the gold price has risen sharply since the middle of last year, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee reported today. The increase in intervention, GATA said, was disclosed last week in the Bank for International Settlements' semi-annual report on the issuance of derivatives by major banks and dealers in G-10 countries. The report was studied by GATA's consultants -- James Turk, founder of GoldMoney and editor of the Freemarket Gold & Money Report; Michael Bolser, editor of the Interventional Analysis newsletter; and Reginald H. Howe, gold market analyst and principal of Golden Sextant Advisers. The new derivatives numbers from the BIS are "stunning" in regard to gold, Turk said, summarizing GATA's research. "In major banks and dealers in the G-10 countries, the total notional value of gold derivatives rose from $318 billion at mid-year 2004 to $369 billion at year-end. "That $51 billion increase -- a 32-percent annual rate of growth -- occurred while gold miners were reducing their hedge positions. "The reduction in hedge positions by mining companies should have resulted in a decrease in the aggregate position in the BIS report. That it didn't happen suggests that the international economist Frank Veneroso is right. Here's what Veneroso had to say in the March issue of Gold Newsletter: There is only one possible explanation for why purchases of thousands of tonnes of gold in the futures and forwards markets do not blow the price of gold sky-high: The official sector must step in on gold price rallies as an offsetting forward seller. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 22:11:20 05/22/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,046.42 + Dow 10,471.91 = 12,518.33 divide by 2 = 6,259.16 Ponzi Up 199.71 from last week ! Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 00:19:56 05/14/05 Sat Govt. decides to sell surplus gold and sliver New Delhi, May. 13 (PTI): The Government today said it has decided to sell surplus gold and silver lying in its mints. There is about five tonnes of surplus gold and 1670 tonnes of silver lying in Indian Government mints, Minister of State for Finance S S Palanimanickam, said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha. Fiat -- Sharefin, 21:05:07 05/11/05 Wed The Sky Darkens for Bondholders Backfiring Bets on Derivatives, Corporate Executives' Allegiances Are Among Worries Raising Risk ~~~~ As hedge funds book losses and the prices of corporate securities and the derivatives based on them move in unusual ways, investors are waking up to troubling questions. One is whether the hedge funds, some of which have made big bets on complex trades involving credit derivatives, could spark a larger contagion that would affect all markets. Another is whether the risk of lending to corporate America is worth the return, which until recently had been at historical lows. There are other clouds hanging over bondholders' heads, such as the risk that executives, goaded by low stock prices, will take actions that favor shareholders over bondholders. Or that private-equity firms will continue to pile debt onto the companies they own. "We are entering into an 'adult-swim-only' environment now for corporate bonds," says Mark Kiesel, a portfolio manager at Pimco, an asset-management firm based in Newport Beach, Calif. ~~~ More important, though, bond and stock prices haven't moved in sync with credit-default swaps -- or with one another. "Over the last year, these credit-derivative indexes have been viewed as a life preserver when we're in risky waters," said Geoffrey Gwin, a portfolio manager at Group G Capital Partners, a hedge fund in New York. "What we've seen is that when you're actually in the water, these things don't float very well." ~~~~ Exactly how much money hedge funds are losing isn't known. Since credit derivatives don't trade on public exchanges, those who bet wrong can find it costly to unwind their bets. Hedge funds could lose clients, especially if they have a poor performance in May, forcing the funds to increase their sales of other assets to pay exiting investors. "We expect a rush to the door to be painful," Merrill Lynch analysts warn. Fiat -- Sharefin, 23:33:44 05/09/05 Mon JAPAN'S MONETARY ALCHEMY MAY NOT YIELD GOLD The most aggressive experiment in monetary policy ever conducted is now under way. Japan is printing yen in order to buy dollars in such extraordinary amounts that global interest rates are being held at much lower levels than would have prevailed otherwise. In essence, the Bank of Japan is carrying out the unorthodox monetary policy that the US Federal Reserve intimated it was considering in mid-2003. In other words, the BoJ is creating money and buying US Treasury bonds, which is helping to drive down US interest rates and underwrite US economic growth - and, by extension, global growth. It is inconceivable that economic policymakers in Tokyo and Washington do not understand the impact that this unprecedented act of money creation is having on global interest rates and economic output. The amounts involved are staggering. Since the beginning of 2003, monetary authorities in Japan have created Y27,000bn with which they have acquired approximately $250bn - that amount is equivalent to more than 4 per cent of Japan's gross domestic product. It also represents $2,000 for every person in Japan. In fact, it would amount to $40 per person if divided among the entire population of the world. Most importantly, it is also enough to finance almost half of America's $520bn budget deficit this year. The amount of new yen that Japan "printed" and converted into dollars during January 2004 alone was enough to finance 13 per cent of the US budget deficit. The investment of those dollars into dollar-denominated debt instruments clearly explains why the yield on the 10-year US Treasury bond fell last month in spite of the 10 per cent upward revision in the Bush administration's budget deficit projections. By accident or by design, Japan is carrying out the most audacious endeavour to conjure wealth out of nothing since John Law sold shares in the Mississippi Company in 1720. So far, the results have been impressive. Japan's monetary alchemy has been the most important factor in allowing the US government to finance a $700bn deterioration in its budget over the past three years without pushing up US interest rates to levels that would pop the wealth-creating property bubble there. US tax cuts have fuelled domestic consumption. In turn, growing US consumption has shifted Asia's export-oriented economies into overdrive. China has played an important part in this process. With a trade surplus vis-à-vis the US of $125bn, equivalent to 9 per cent of its 2003 GDP, China has become a regional economic growth engine in its own right. China has used its large trade surpluses with the US to pay for its trade deficits with most of its Asian neighbours, including Japan. This recycling of China's US dollar export earnings explains the incredibly rapid "reflation" now under way across Asia. Even Japan's moribund economy has begun to show signs of export-oriented growth. These developments highlight a fundamental question that has been debated over centuries: can governments create money and make the population richer without setting in motion a chain of events that ultimately ends in monetary chaos? We may be about to find out as Japan tests the hypothesis on an unprecedented and global scale. If this experiment in unorthodox monetary policy succeeds, then we have arrived at a new international monetary paradigm. Governments will have discovered how to finance limitless deficits through the creation of paper money, and we all can look forward to an age of great prosperity. If it fails - as have all past attempts to create wealth from thin air - then the world may not be able to avoid a severe and protracted economic slump as the extraordinary imbalances in the global economy ( caused by the explosion of fiat money in recent years ) begin to unwind. In mid-2003, economists at the US Federal Reserve published a paper explaining why the Fed was not "out of bullets" despite having cut short-term interest rates to 1 per cent. That paper stated that "the Fed could even implement what is essentially the classic textbook policy of dropping freshly printed money from a helicopter," if necessary, to stimulate the economy. Today, that helicopter is in the air. But, strangely, it is not the Stars and Stripes that is painted on its side, but rather the Rising Sun. That much is clear. What still is not quite discernible, however, is who is actually in the pilot's seat. Silver -- Sharefin, 19:15:55 05/08/05 Sun Digital photos might not sink silver EVER SINCE SONY unveiled its Mavica digital camera in 1981, the prevailing opinion has been that the silver market would fall on hard times as consumers ditch their clunky old film cameras for the exciting new world of digital photography. But according to recent market studies, a very different picture is developing for silver, one in which traditional and digital photography will likely coexist for years to come, with digital both hurting and contributing to silver demand. According to a J.P. Morgan report, the photo industry gobbled up 6,428 metric tons of silver in 2002, but demand from this sector is expected to come to only 5,492 metric tons in 2005 as the digital-camera boom takes its toll. Ted Butler, Florida-based independent silver market analyst, avers that the worst may be over for the metal. He argues traditional silver-halide-based photography will be around for some time as costly digital applications fail to make big inroads in the high-growth, heavily populated countries like India and China. Keep in mind that digital-camera users typically use personal computers, printers, battery packs, memory cards and other accessories to produce photos. This can run to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, while a disposable camera will only set you back about $10. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:14:04 05/08/05 Sun Gold buying set to hit a high this festival season Akshaya Tritiya is one of the four most auspicious days of the Vedic calender (the others being Ugadi, Dasara and Balipadyami). Akshaya means never-diminishing and stands for prosperity in any new venture or investments made that day. Gold and gold jewellery bought and worn on this day signify never diminishing good fortune. With all these attached to the festival it has become a day when gold buying hits a peak predominantly in south India is now set to appeal to a pan Indian audience, thanks to the initiatives of the World Gold Council (WGC) in India. ~~~ Last year about 15 tonnes were sold on Akshya Tritiya and according to WGC estimates this is set to increase by 20 per cent this season. For Akshya Tritiya, a host of jewellers both branded and traditional jewellers are leaving no stone unturned to reap the Akshya Tritiya harvest. ~~~ For the season, the company has come out with wide-ranging options in traditional and contemporary designs in pure 22k gold and diamond jewellery that reflect the essence of prosperity. Indian gold jewellery industry, estimated to be a 800 tonne market, is growing at 15 per cent to 17 per cent. South India's share is estimated around 45 per cent. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 18:44:09 05/08/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 1,967.35 + Dow 10,345.4 + 12,312.75 divide by 2 = 6,156.37 Ponzi Up 99.29 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Fiat -- Sharefin, 00:32:31 05/04/05 Wed India seen cutting its dollar reserves Fears of a weakening appetite for dollars among Asian central banks were re-ignited on Tuesday when India became the latest nation to talk of reserve diversification. India is secretive about the composition of its reserves, which have ballooned by $13.5bn since January to a record $142.6bn, the sixth largest in the world. But S.S. Palanimanickam, the junior finance minister, said in a written reply to a question about New Delhi's exposure to the dollar: “Appropriate adjustments are made in the currency composition of foreign exchange reserves from time to time depending on various considerations like benefits from diversification of currency risk.” ~~~ Asian reserve diversification could be disastrous for the dollar – with the US needing to attract $2bn a day to fund its current account deficit – if central banks were to stop buying Treasuries and actively sell dollars instead. Mr Redeker predicts this, with the dollar's share of global reserves likely to fall back from 64 per cent at present to the 53 per cent level of the early 1990s. Silver -- Sharefin, 00:29:46 05/04/05 Wed Samsung Introduces Sliver Nano Technology for Home Appliances in India - Silver Anti-bacteria Technology in over 55 new models of washing machines, refrigerators and air conditioners to offer consumers a more healthy lifestyle choice Silver Nano "naturally" kills 99.9% of bacteria, mold and germs for washing machines and air-conditioners Patented Silver Wash for washing machines first technology to keep clothes bacteria-free for up to 30 days after washing Benefits families and asthmatics with healthy living environment --- Samsung has coated key components inside appliances with silver that directly affect the health and well being of its users. The belief that only a clean air conditioner supplies clean air, a clean refrigerator keeps food fresh longer and a dirty washer cannot clean clothes properly, spurred this development. Samsung chose to use silver because it is a safe and healthy method of sanitizing and deodorizing surfaces that come in contact with food and skin. "Silver Nano technology will help prevent bacteria from growing in your washing machines, refrigerators and air conditioners," said H. C. Ryu, Director – Sales and Marketing, Samsung South West Asia. "The interior of Samsung refrigerators and filters of air conditioners are now coated with nano-size silver that brings anti-bacterial and deodorization benefits, ensuring that the clothes you wear, the air you breathe and food you eat are fresh and safe for your health and the environment," Mr. Ryu added. Gold -- Sharefin, 18:58:47 05/02/05 Mon Gold investment analyst to be a new profession Providing professional advice about investment in gold is set to be approved as another new profession in China, a country with deeply rooted tradition of gold worship. The China Gold Association (CGA) announced recently in Shanghai that the vocation of gold investment analyst had passed examination of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security and will become an authorized job shortly. According to CGA Deputy Secretary-General Zhang Yongtao, his organization will draft relevant professional criteria and set forth certification specifics. By the end of 2004, there were more 1,200 gold mines employing some 400,000 people and more than 300 large and middle-sized gold processing enterprises hiring more than 200,000 workers in China. About 700,000 people are working in approximately 10,000 gold ornaments shops across the country, constituting another footnote for the rapid growth of the industry. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 19:17:27 05/01/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 1,921.65 + Dow 10,192.51 = 12,114.16 divide by 2 = 6,057.08 Ponzi Up 12.13 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 23:40:42 04/24/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 1,932.19 + Dow 10,157.71 = 12,089.90 divide by 2 = 6,044.95 Ponzi Up 47.12 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Oil -- Sharefin, 23:34:58 04/20/05 Wed Will oil strike $380 a barrel by 2015? A report prepared by energy economists at the French investment bank Ixis-CIB has warned crude oil prices could touch $380 a barrel by 2015. Analysts Patrick Artus and Moncef Kaabi said in the next 10 years demand for oil will outstrip supply by around 8 million barrels per day (mbpd). "If one takes into account the level of previous oil shocks such as in the 1970's, we don't think a price level of $380 per barrel is out of the question," they said. The analysts argued that the shortfall in energy needs will not be made up by alternatives as they were not developed as yet. "Thus the world will still need to rely upon traditional fossil fuels," their report said. !!!!!! Now how much will that ounce of gold cost to extract out of the ground. High oil costs are highly inflationary for mining expenses. Dan -- Sharefin, 23:33:26 04/20/05 Wed I think that their takeover company is excellent buying at the moment. SBM have been a class act through the years & they appear an excellent buy with their low market cap & potential to bring SGW's production back online. Do your own due diligence though. Nick Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 23:09:08 04/17/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 1,908.15 + Dow 10,087.51 = 11,995.66 divide by 2 = 5,997.83 Ponzi Down 232.51 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Mining shares: a non-expiring call option... -- dan, 16:17:37 04/16/05 Sat ..on investors, snip:"dan Subject: lurker(7's?) taking your pick ssri, let's look.Number: 10708 :: Date/Time: 04-16-2005 :: 16:12 http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SSRI&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c= this share had a good move and traded sideways in what appears to be distribution(Wyckoff) and now looks poised to decline. Should you stay or should you go? I'd take the money and run. The general market performance influences most shares and the general market as reflected by the capitalisation weighted indexes usually declines last. So with the broad market poised to dive, liquidity does not favor periphery shares like pennystocks speculatives and miners and the like. Ask some hard questions like does the company make money? Pay dividends? Note, I've been faded in stocks like JBM.ax that pays 10% dividend yield that I bought around $4.50aud when nickle was below 11,000tonne and although nickle rallied and jubilee was unhedged they sold that share down to just above $3aud raising the yield to near 15%. Was it naked shorting or what because it didn't make sense except on the basis of fading people that bought the stock on a zero-sum basis. ask yourself what dividend yield the Us shares generate or if they even breakeven or mine anything other than investors(mining shares: a non-expiring call option on investors). Anyway, given inside trading, manipulation and naked shorting, the phony system is just a general fraud and plague on investors." http://os2eagle.net/SSL/forum/index.php Sharefin, Thanks for warning me out of SGW years ago. -- dan, 07:05:37 04/16/05 Sat Years ago JBWere that was being paid good commissions reccomended sons of gwalia in the $9.60 area and you discussed that with me and used the word perchance" they were overvalued. Now why they couldn't have reccomended kingsgate that was being run with highgrade/lowgrade market scam mike diemar made out like a bandit on is a good question. Anyway, the lesson here is markets are largely fraud with little merit especialy in the area of holes in the ground with liars on top and the market fraud and manipulation on the part of companies, central banks, etc and then of course no accountability with naked shorting etc. Thanks for honestly discussing SGW with me years ago. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 18:34:37 04/10/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 1,999.35 + Dow 10,461.34 = 12,460.69 divide by 2 = 6,230.34 Ponzi Up 35.79 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 18:00:16 04/05/05 Tue From the Horses Mouth JESSICA CROSS: But what we're seeing at the moment is actual phenomenal demand, physical demand in gold, very, very supportive, which is extremely encouraging. And on the supply side, obviously, you know, we have talked about the contraction of the hedge book, and this has been continuing. So, you know, the market actually looks fairly robust and the moment and we are fairly happy with it. Gold -- Sharefin, 17:15:08 04/05/05 Tue IMF Gold Sales Will Be Blocked WASHINGTON -- Any movement by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) toward gold sales will be stopped by Congress and the Bush administration, Chairman Jim Saxton of the Joint Economic Committee predicted today. The IMF is considering gold sales as a way of covering bad loans it has made to impoverished borrowers now unable or unwilling to repay, but congressional approval would be required. Chairman Saxton has long favored IMF debt relief through writeoffs financed out of the IMF's other resources, and he released the following statement today: "A recent IMF report has recommended gold sales as a sound way of financing the loans the IMF has extended to overburdened poor countries that are not now in a position to repay," Saxton said. "This is an especially attractive option for the IMF because the gold on its balance sheet is greatly undervalued. "However, the potential profits on IMF gold sales rightfully belong to the original donor countries and their taxpayers. Thus, these IMF gold sales would amount to a hidden appropriation from the donor countries that were the original source of the gold. "I believe Congress has an obligation to protect the taxpayers and reject any proposed IMF gold sales. The Bush administration has taken the right position in not supporting IMF gold sales and deserves congressional support. There are better ways of financing debt relief than drilling the taxpayers yet again. "For nearly its entire history, the IMF failed to have lending safeguards and accounting controls in place. Not surprisingly, some of its loans have gone bad, and the consequences should not be papered over. As a former IMF research director has noted, 'The IMF would serve better if it made no loans.' The IMF's mistaken forays into development lending have proven counterproductive and should not be repeated," Saxton concluded. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:13:21 04/03/05 Sun European Central Bank gold sales further undermine euro credibility No sooner had this Market Update featuring a report on official sector gold sales been posted last week that the European Central Bank (ECB) announced a surprise: It had sold 47 tonnes of gold. The sales occurred between February 1 and March 11. It also stated that its sales were now complete for the year. One wonders in this era of supposed transparency in the official sector, why the primary central bank in Europe, and the most powerful signatory in the European Central Bank Gold Agreement, would conduct a sale clandestinely and then announce it after the fact. The bigger question is why it felt compelled to sell gold at all when there is seemingly no reason for it. Europe doesn't have a huge balance of payments problem like the United States. It's not at war. It doesn't have a lack of currency reserves to tap for foreign payments. So why liquidate gold at a time when the dollar is in severe trouble and gold is on the rise? 47 tonnes is a large amount to liquidate over so small a stretch of time (less than 45 days) and it no doubt damaged the price even though the intent of the CBGA is to keep such gold market stealth attacks from occurring. The London Times in fact linked the sales "to sharp drops and recoveries" in the gold price over the period. To most observers, the gold price seemed no worse for wear. It started February in the low $420s and reached its high for the period in the mid $440s in March at about the time the ECB was winding up gold sales program. One is left to wonder though what the gold price might have done had the ECB chosen to keep its 47 tonnes in the vault. Would gold have gone through the important $450 figure? $460? Even $500 if it got on a roll?? Not knowing what prompted the ECB to suddenly sell, we can only speculate as to what might have been going on behind the scenes. Was some bullion bank in trouble? Was there a severe gold shortage in the upper reaches of the gold market that had to be filled on a moment's notice? Just prior to the sales,Germany announced its refusal to sell; Switzerland had concluded its sales; and, France was supplying far less to the market than it had hoped for. Was the ECB moving to fill the breach? Leaving aside the ECB's agenda, the sales are not without repercussions. They send the wrong message at the wrong time. Europe and the euro are already reeling under significant alterations to the stability pact which restricted budget deficits and created the impression that the various member states were willing to make sacrifices for the economic stability of the union. Gold was originally added as a component of ECB reserves to give credibility to the new currency and substance to the claim it would become an international rival to the dollar. By selling off gold reserves, the ECB calls that commitment to question and fuels critics who see the euro and the ECB as no better than the dollar and the Federal Reserve. This past Saturday the Financial Times went so far as to say in an editorial that "the euro does not have much to recommend it, other than not being the dollar." Mysterious, ungrounded, seemingly inexplicable and unnecessary gold sales are not likely to alter that assessment. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 18:28:00 04/03/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 1,984.81 + Dow 10,404.3 = 12,389.11 divide by 2 = 6,194.55 Ponzi Down 22.41 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 17:32:34 04/03/05 Sun Ways to Liquefy Gold The 'Financialisation' of Gold and Real Estate is Important Among real assets of any statistical significance, gold and real estate have a lot of similarities. Both are difficult to track accurately — non-reporting of gold imports and under-reporting of real estate deals turn any tracking machinery off track. Both are the end products, if not the key drivers, of black money — while a large chunk of gold purchases is not reported, up to half the real estate deals are unaccounted for. Both are widely held as assets by households — from gold bangles and cups for infants to the fruition of a life-long dream house. Both are what economists classify as “unproductive assets”, that is, assets that can't be leveraged the way financial assets can. And both are slated to change. ~~~ Why is the “financialisation” of gold and real estate important? Two reasons:At the household level, it allows individuals with small investible sums to get an exposure to these two asset classes. While gold is easy to buy and is highly liquid (second only to stocks), ensuring its authenticity is virtually impossible and storing it risky. Real estate is not only one of the most illiquid investments but one that is loaded against a small investor in terms of very high ticket sizes and transaction costs, and its complex legality. Getting access to both these asset classes, in small Rs 100 sized units (as Chidambaram proposed in Budget 2005 for gold ETFs), would allow households to diversify into an inflation-hedging instrument (gold) and a medium to high-growth instrument (real estate), without the ills that accompany the underlying assets. At a macro-level, these two finacial products could help bring unaccounted money into the economy and turn unproductive assets productive. A unit of gold ETF, for instance, could be lent to traders at a marginal interest rate (around 50 basis points) and allow for a marginally higher return for investors compared to it lying in some underground vault. The numbers are huge. According to WGC, Indian individuals hold about 15,000 tonnes of gold (7 per cent of global stocks) worth around Rs 950,000 crore; they buy Rs 40,000 crore of gold jewellery and investments every year. Though no data is available, I suspect the numbers for real estate would be a multiple of this. -------------------- They want Westerners to buy electronic gold with no visible physical backing & now they want the same with the rest of the world. WHY So that the deficit between supply & demand can be filled without squeezing the price of gold higher. Buying all this fiat gold paper means that physical gold is not needed & hence the supply side of the equation backs off. Westerners are dumb enough to buy fiat gold GLD but will the Indians do the same - I doubt it. Gold -- Sharefin, 17:25:34 04/03/05 Sun Germany backs sale of IMF gold reserves BERLIN : German Finance Minister Hans Eichel is pushing the International Monetary Fund to sell gold reserves to help ease the debt of the world's poorest nations, the weekly Der Spiegel says in its edition due for publication on Monday. The report, quoting an aide to Eichel, said by selling the gold the IMF would ease the debt of the world's poorest nations under a so-called Marshall Plan put forward by British finance chief Gordon Brown. Last week IMF boss Rodrigo Rato said the IMF's undervalued gold should be used in an "efficient way", and this would be to sell it on the market. He said it could mark a vital breakthrough for the poorest nations. Gold -- Sharefin, 04:01:05 04/02/05 Sat Bob Chapman on GLD We ran into two subscribers this week that told us that their brokers said not to buy gold and silver coins and shares, but to buy the gold ETF, Exchange Traded Fund, listed as GLD on the NYSE. This vehicle is not an alterative to owning physical bullion, coins or shares. Rather, it is just another paper alternative promising to deliver gold – but from where? It will be interesting to see how this bait and switch operation prepares its financial statements, given that the prospectus discloses that gold stored in its subcustodians, and sub-custodians (which could be all of GLD's gold) are not audited, or even inspected. It says in their 10Q “investment in gold”, which can mean any form of gold for audit purposes. It can be nearly anything gold related, such as gold certificates or other promises to pay in gold. If they declared their assets to be gold they would have to substantiate to their auditors that the gold really exists, which GLD cannot do because of the inability to audit or even inspect gold stored in subcustodians and sub-custodians. GLD is just another paper scheme; it should not be considered as an alternative to physical ownership or shares. GLD is just another form of derivative. This scam, sanctioned by the crooks at the NYSE an SEC, has drawn in $2 billion. Its sponsors, the World Gold Fantasy Council, whose new CEO is Pierre Lassonde, would have us believe that $2 billion in real gold was purchased, when in all probability, none was purchased. This is just another elitist scam because gold is down $40 since the $2 billion was put in the fund. That is impossible. It should have risen $40. You don't buy GLD; you buy bullion, coins and shares. You also tell your brokers, who are deceiving you, that they and their managements are liars. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:39:58 03/31/05 Thu Thirty thousand workers join Gold Fields strike About 30,000 workers at the world's fourth-largest gold miner joined a strike by more than 20,000 of their colleagues at another giant in South Africa on Thursday to demand decent housing facilities. "About 30,000 workers at Gold Fields have joined the strike," Moferefere Lekorotsoane, spokesman for National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) told AFP, adding that the protest was aimed at obtaining better housing conditions. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:38:08 03/31/05 Thu Gold from central China Deregulation of China's gold industry extends not only to the increasing liberalisation of private purchases and the formation of the Shanghai Gold Exchange, but also covers the mining sector. China has taken ages to open up to foreign investment and has tended in the past to allow foreign interests only on the more-testing deposits. But this too is changing. Central China Goldfields, a new company managed by directors with “on-site” experience in China, is looking to take advantage of this evolution. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:35:58 03/31/05 Thu AngloGold asks IMF to go easy on gold sale ANGLOGOLD Ashanti, SA's largest gold producer, said yesterday it would be “perverse” for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to sell part of its gold reserves to help write off the debt of poor countries. Instead the gold producer called for more imaginative ways to use the IMF's gold stocks to help poor nations. ~~~ Such a scheme was previously proposed in 1999; then it seemed to us perverse that an international body such as the IMF should act in a way that would negatively affect gold markets in order to reduce the debt burden of certain developing countries, many of which are significant gold producers.” Edey and Motlatsi said that leading figures in the US congress opposed the IMF gold sales “and without the support of the United States at the IMF, such a sale would not be permitted.” They said ways had been found in the past to mobilise resources for debt relief without disrupting the international bullion market. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:34:02 03/31/05 Thu S Africa Gold Companies Pushed Into Survival Mode Drilling deep underground in dark, hot and wet conditions, South Africa's gold miners may have little idea their industry is facing its biggest challenge yet miles above their heads. While rival companies with dollar-based costs bask in a high gold price - in December it reached a 16-year peak - South Africa's gold miners have been hit by the rand's strength against the dollar and rising costs. Taking into account all their costs, half of South Africa's gold mines are currently unprofitable. As a result, gold industry executives are taking some drastic steps to give their business a future. Consolidation, diversification, cost-cutting, mining higher grades, and closures are all on the menu. "We're all playing a sort of game of last man standing," said Mark Wellesley-Wood, chairman of DRDGold Ltd. (DROOY), a Johannesburg-based junior gold miner with assets in South Africa, Papua New Guinea and Fiji. The South African gold industry is in terminal decline. In 1970 it produced 70% of the world's gold, but by 2003 it accounted for just 14.5% of global output. Now, although South Africa is still the world's largest producer of gold - the industry contributes 2% of the country's gross domestic product - the prevailing economic environment is leaving its key businesses scrambling to survive. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:31:28 03/31/05 Thu Trade sheen in new gold policy New Delhi, March 28: The government will announce a comprehensive, liberalised and user-friendly gold policy next month, commerce secretary S. N. Menon said here today. The policy is likely to help mutual funds and banks invest in gold and hedge in the commodity futures market. This is a significant step in developing the domestic gold market, which was opened up in a limited way in 2003. ~~~ Finance minister P. Chidambaram had announced in the budget that he would be asking the market regulator to permit, in consultation with the RBI, mutual funds to introduce gold exchange traded funds with the precious metal as the underlying asset. This will enable any person to buy and sell gold in units as low as Rs 100. Such units could be traded in the same manner as mutual funds. India is the world's largest user of gold and silver. It utilises 800 tonnes of gold annually, or about a third of the total supply mined in the world. The country has private hoards of 13,000 tonnes of gold. India allowed futures trading in both gold and silver in 2003, after more than four decades. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:29:57 03/31/05 Thu Barrick, Blanchard didn't settle gold plot suit Barrick Gold Corp. and Blanchard, the New Orleans bullion and coin dealer that accuses the miner of manipulating the gold price, did not settle their lawsuit on Wednesday, Blanchard said on Thursday. Blanchard launched an antitrust lawsuit against Barrick in December 2002. In it, it alleges that the Canadian gold producer, in league with U.S. financial giant J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. , made $2 billion in short-selling profits by suppressing the gold price. ~~~ Blanchard wants the court to force Barrick and J.P. Morgan, as well as other bullion banks, to stop borrowing gold from central banks and selling it into the market -- a practice the dealer says depresses the price and has hurt other investors. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:27:51 03/31/05 Thu Markets shrug off gold sales by ECB The European Central Bank revealed yesterday that it had quietly sold 47 tonnes of gold over recent months, but said it planned no further sales before September. The gold markets shrugged off the surprise announcement, which marks the first time the ECB has joined national central banks in cutting bullion reserves. ~~~ Analysts said that Asian central banks are most likely to be snapping up the European sales to balance their own holdings. The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean central banks collectively hold just 2pc of foreign reserves in gold. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:25:31 03/31/05 Thu ECB sells 47 tonnes of gold The European Central Bank declared on Thursday it had sold 47 tonnes of gold, the first disposal of any of its official reserves since its creation in 1999. ~~~ The ECB gave no explanation for its unexpected decision, except to point out that it was entitled to sell the gold under the Central Bank Gold Agreement, renewed in 2004 for another five years. “We are a signatory of this agreement and that is why the ECB could also be a gold seller,” said the ECB. The bank did not specify what it intended to do with the proceeds, estimated at $650m (€500m, £345m) based on current prices of $428 a troy ounce. The sale leaves the bank, whose gold reserves were provided by its members, with 719 tonnes. Although the ECB said it did not intend to sell more gold in the first year of the agreement, which ends on September 26, it refused to say whether it might sell gold after that date. One central banker said the ECB planned further sales. The World Gold Council, an industry lobby group, estimates that about 290 tonnes of the pact's annual 500-tonne target has been sold this year. The central banker said further gold sales were allocated for the next four years still to run under the central bank agreement. This would make it difficult for the IMF to sell gold if it were to join the accord. Gold -- Sharefin, 20:54:47 03/30/05 Wed Debt relief gold sale ‘would not hit market' The International Monetary Fund could sell part of its gold reserves to pay for its share of debt relief to poor countries without destabilising the market or hurting gold producing countries, according to its managing director. The IMF's store of 3,217 tonnes of gold has a market value of $45bn (€34.7bn, £23.9bn) but is on the fund's books at just $9bn. Rodrigo Rato told the Financial Times in an interview that if member countries wanted to use the IMF's undervalued gold reserves for debt relief they should do so through sales, rather than revaluation, to free real resources. Gold sales are favoured by a number of European countries, notably the UK, but board approval would require US support and the US Treasury is sceptical about the approach, not least because it would require congressional approval. ~~~ Pointing to recent sales by central banks, including the UK and Switzerland, the analysis said the fund could sell 13m-16m ounces over a period without disrupting the market. That would amount to up to 16 per cent of IMF holdings and would raise up to $7bn. The report, prepared by the IMF's finance depart ment, stressed the need to avoid gold market disrup tions, including by making clear that a sale would not be the first stage in an ongo ing disposal of the IMF's gold and that it would retain large holdings for prudential reasons. Gold -- Sharefin, 20:42:40 03/29/05 Tue High costs take shine off gold price The cost of producing gold has increased faster than its price, discouraging the handful of producers from increasing supply. "You're not going to see any substantial production increase until 2008 or 2009," says Pierre Lassonde, president of Newmont Mining. "Gold prices are going to continue to go up." Johannesburg-based DRDGold, South Africa's fourth-largest gold producer, will be closing two unprofitable mines and shedding 6000 jobs. View Resources, based in Perth, abandoned an Australian gold venture on March 2, and Cumberland Resources in Vancouver has delayed a project in Canada by a year. Profits for gold companies are slumping as the cost of labour, equipment and materials outpaces gains in bullion. Global output last year fell the most since 1943, helping boost prices that are up 20 per cent in two years to about $US425 an ounce. Earnings at AngloGold Ashanti and Gold Fields, both based in Johannesburg, have plunged 60per cent since the end of 2001 ~~~ Costs are rising for everything from fuel to truck tyres. Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of earthmoving equipment, raised prices in January and plans more increases by June. Bema Gold, a Vancouver-based producer, has said the start of its Refugio mine in Chile has been delayed by six months by a lack of equipment. "Across the board, we've seen costs go up between 10 per cent and 20 per cent," Sean Delaney, chief financial officer of Croesus Mining in Kalgoorlie, said last week. "We haven't enjoyed any of the benefits of the so-called boom." Croesus shares have plunged 26per cent since the start of 2004. The decline in the US dollar is partly to blame, Delaney says. Mining companies in South Africa, the world's largest producer, and Australia, the third-biggest, pay wages and most other costs in local currency. The US currency's three-year slide, driven by record trade deficits, has shrunk profits from sales of metals that are in US dollars. ~~ "As costs increase, your pay limit increases, and that reduces the mineable reserves," a Gold Fields spokesman, Willie Jacobsz, says. "A lot of marginal production gets closed down." DRDGold said last week it would shut two mines in South Africa and add to the 7000 jobs that were lost earlier. South Africa's production fell 8per cent to 344 tonnes last year, reducing its share of worldwide production to 14 per cent from 30per cent in 1989, GFMS says. Output also fell in North America and will drop this year in Australia, says JPMorgan Chase analyst Jon Bergtheil, who is head of global metals strategy. "The gap between mine supply and jewellery and fabrication demand, which was 700tons in 2004, will grow larger and larger each year as mine supply growth ceases." Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 18:26:47 03/27/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 1,991.06 + Dow 10,442.87 = 12,433.93 divide by 2 = 6,216.96 Ponzi Down 101.77 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Fiat -- Sharefin, 21:13:03 03/21/05 Mon US, GERMANY, FRANCE AND UK FACE JUNK DEBT STATUS Päivi Munter London -- Rapidly rising pension and healthcare spending will reduce the debt status of the world's richest industrialised countries to junk within 30 years unless their governments move quickly to balance budgets and reduce outgoings, a report published on Monday warns. Standard & Poor's, the credit ratings agency, says if fiscal trends prevail, the cost of ageing populations will fuel downgrades of France, the US, Germany and the UK from investment grade to speculative, or junk, category -- France by the early 2020s, the US and Germany before 2030 and the UK before 2035. They are currently in the top Triple A category, ensuring they can borrow at low rates. The debt ratios of these countries are set to reach levels not seen since the second world war, S&P says. Moritz Kraemer, credit analyst at S&P, says: "Without further adjustment either to current fiscal stance or to social and healthcare costs, the general government debt ratios of France, Germany and the US will surpass 200 per cent. This will result in deficits more akin to those associated with speculative grade sovereigns." All big industrialised nations face the problem of large unfunded pension liabilities and rising healthcare costs as populations age. Most have responded with limited moves to make benefits less generous. But S&P's projections already factor in the reductions in public sector pensions made by Germany and Italy last year. The agency estimates that according to current trends US general government debt will soar to 239 per cent of gross domestic product by 2050, against 65 per cent today. France's will reach 235 per cent against 66 per cent, Germany's 221 per cent against 68 per cent, and the UK's 160 per cent against 42 per cent. Italy, which has run more disciplined budgets because of its already-high debt burden, will see its ratio fall to 91 per cent from 104 per cent, assuming it maintains the current trend. S&P said last year the debt ratio of Japan, the most heavily indebted industrialised country, was set to surpass 700 per cent of GDP by 2050. The agency's model shows countries can ease the impact of ageing by running tight budgets before demographic pressures peak. The US has healthier demographic trends than Europe but its budget deficit will add to the pain when population ageing accelerates about 2020. Financial Times -- 21 March 2005 Gold -- Sharefin, 20:53:47 03/20/05 Sun India hopes to wean citizens from gold The Indian government is placing a long-range wager that an increasingly prosperous population can be coaxed to part - at least physically - with its boundless hoards of gold. A policy floated recently would allow Indians to buy virtual, or "paper," gold in denominations as low as $2, instead of investing in necklaces, bangles and coins. It is a step, analysts say, toward bringing millions of poor Indians into the banking system and unlocking the untapped investment potential of more than $200 billion worth of privately held gold in India. Indians are the world's biggest gold consumers, with more than half the country's savings tied up in physical assets. Particularly among the very poorest, Indians are prone to spending much of their income to acquire the metal, locking up their assets in the resulting hoards. ~~~~ By effecting the above changes the Fiat world would be able to sell more paper gold & have the demand for real gold pull back. Targeting India (being the largest consumer) is a logical ploy in reducing physical demand for a commodity where the deficit is ever growing whilst the hoard in the cupboards of the Central Banks is ever falling. Another typical Western mindset fix to a problem they have little control over. Thankfully most Indian people have the commonsense & distrust of fiat to avoid this scheme at all costs. Now if only the Westerners would think the same way. Westerners should stop holding their assets in fiat gold stocks & instead put these monies into physical gold. Do you support a mining company by buying it's fiat issuance or by buying it's product. Too many goldbugs seek higher gains through fiat stocks rather than through physical gold. If they gave up one for the other & started to buy the shiny metal we all know how the price would respond. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 16:55:10 03/20/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,007.79 + Dow 10,629.67 = 12,637.46 divide by 2 = 6,318.73 Ponzi Down 89.25 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Silver -- Sharefin, 18:34:37 03/13/05 Sun Central bank intervention keeps gold prices lower: GATA MUMBAI, MARCH 13: The price history of the last boom in commodities suggests that gold now should be priced between $591 and $647 per ounce even without adjusting for the dollar's loss of purchasing power in the last 25 years. According to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), considering the price comparison of gold with the Commodities Research Bureau (CRB) Index the gold price is much lower than it should actually be. Gold's failure to keep up with exploding commodity prices, as it did during the last commodities boom in 1980, is more powerful evidence of surreptitious intervention by central banks in the gold market, it said in a press release. Drawing on the work of its consultant, Dan Norcini, a futures trader in Houston, GATA compared 1980 monthly closing levels of the Commodity Research Bureau Index with the monthly closing spot gold price at the time. The last five months of 1980 were the only times prior to this year when the CRB Index was above 300, GATA said. The lowest gold price during these months was $591.30, and that price was registered as the CRB Index and was falling in response to an increase in interest rates arranged by the Federal Reserve Board to attack inflation. Silver -- Sharefin, 18:32:48 03/13/05 Sun Mexico Mulls Silver Lining Against Currency Crash MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - An influential Mexican businessman wants to reintroduce silver coins as legal currency -- as in Mexico's 16th century heyday -- and, far-fetched as it may sound, the idea is winning support. The Senate has already passed the initiative, and the lower house is expected to vote soon on the bill, which has struck a nerve in a country where decades of financial crisis have fomented a deep distrust of paper currency. The central bank opposes the plan as anachronistic. Hugo Salinas Price, founder of the specialty retailer Elektra, says silver could be the shield to protect Mexicans' savings from another currency collapse. Gold -- Sharefin, 18:29:23 03/13/05 Sun American troops stole millions from Holocaust 'Gold Train' Lifting the veil on one of the least advertised and least edifying scandals of the Second World War, the US government has settled a complaint that American army officers requisitioned an entire train loaded with valuables seized by the Nazis from Jewish families in Hungary and then kept much of the contents for themselves. The US Justice Department confirmed that it will pay $25.5m (£13.3m) to the Hungarian Jewish community in America to make up for the confiscation of the contents of what has been dubbed the "Gold Train", which left Hungary on 30 March 1945 but - as the war ended - was seized by the US army. To be paid mostly to Jewish charitable causes, the money amounts to a "symbolic acknowledgement of an isolated and unfortunate chapter of the Americans' role in the Holocaust," said Gideon Taylor of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York-based group that was involved in negotiating the settlement. The sum may represent only a fraction of the true value of the contents of the train, made up of 29 box cars crammed with treasures handed over to the Nazis by hundreds of Hungarian Jews, many of whom died in concentration camps before the war's end. They included diamonds, art works, suitcases of gold dust, silverware, fine china, porcelain and religious artefacts. When the Americans took control of the train it was on the understanding that they would keep its priceless contents in secure storage and arrange for their return, item by item, to the families, many of whom had receipts provided by the Nazis. That, however, is not what happened. According to the complaint filed in the lawsuit, US army officers not only failed to secure the goods, most of which went into a warehouse in Salzburg, Austria, but turned a blind eye when US soldiers made off with many of the items. It was also alleged that the US government auctioned off remaining treasures in New York in 1947 to help cover some of the refugee costs at the end of the war. The legal filings in the case offered startling snapshots of what transpired and of the shamelessness of some of the looting. It described, for instance, one US general making a virtual shopping list of valuables he wanted to take back home to America. moneybookers -- moneybookers, 12:00:43 03/10/05 Thu auto E-currency exchange service paypal to e-gold ,moneybookers to e-gold, e-Bullion, moneybookers http://www.emoney-exchange.net Gold -- Sharefin, 20:09:51 03/08/05 Tue Size seen pinching world's biggest gold miners The world's biggest gold producers won't be able to sustain the millions of ounces mined every year, according to an industry consultant, because discoveries are not keeping pace with output and building new mines takes a long time. Over the past 15 years, a spate of mergers and acquisitions has created a clutch of mega-sized gold miners, with the top five each pulling between 3.5 million and 7 million ounces out of the ground every year. Mined-out reserves need to be replaced through exploration if miners want to keep producing at these rates over the medium to long-term. "The drive for increasing size in annual production has resulted in very large gold producers. But they are unlikely to survive at current extraction rates over the ... next five to 10 years," Gold -- Sharefin, 21:29:10 03/06/05 Sun Shortages hit mining CRITICAL shortages of mining equipment - everything from tyres to replacement vehicle parts - are fuelling fears the commodities boom is placing unsustainable strains on the Australian mining industry. Soaring materials prices and contractor rates, coupled with a dearth of skilled workers in areas such as engineering and geology, are already starting to derail projects at the junior end. But senior industry figures are saying privately that some of the biggest upcoming projects and expansions could be jeopardised because they will not be able to find the people, the machinery and the construction supplies to build new mines. ~~~ View called off its Bronzewing mine development last week, after learning that a 30 per cent hike in earthmoving costs would have added $50 million to the project over four years. This, added to shortages of skilled workers, made it financially unjustifiable. But the shortages have spread to mining equipment. ~~~ Steel prices have also doubled since 2003, and diesel costs have skyrocketed. ~~~ The contracting company had one senior manager who was offered a 60 per cent pay hike to change sides. Super contributions of up to 15 per cent of salary and more weeks off were other enticements used by the big miners. The executive said this trend was fuelling a huge inflationary surge in mining costs. Gold -- Sharefin, 21:23:43 03/06/05 Sun Dip in gold output A DECLINING gold industry - with production at its lowest for a decade - is costing Australia dearly in export earnings at a time when the country is facing a mounting current account deficit crisis. Gold production last year was 50 tonnes lower than in the peak output year of 1997. That missing 50 tonnes means a loss of $900 million to our balance of payments, according to Surbiton Associates, which tracks the gold industry. Production last year of 261 tonnes was the lowest since 1995. Surbiton blamed the decline on a mix of bad weather, closures of exhausted mines and the legacy of a dive in exploration spending during the dog days of the late 1990s when gold fell to about $US250 an ounce. ~~~ >b?Australia's decline is in step with a looming global gold shortage. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 20:50:09 03/06/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,070.61 + Dow 10,940.55 = 13,011.16 divide by 2 = 6,505.58 Ponzi Up 52.08 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Market action that would make Charles Ponzi proud ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 19:08:25 03/03/05 Thu Dubai Study Endorses GATA's Findings on Gold Market Rigging, Warns Oil Producers A study published by a research foundation in Dubai has endorsed the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee's findings that Western central and commercial banks have rigged the gold market but have much less gold than they claim to have and so are vulnerable to rising demand for gold. The study recommends that the oil-producing countries of the Middle East diversify their ever-depreciating U.S. dollar holdings into gold. ~~~ GATA believes that the study is likely to have a profound influence on governments, banks, and investors in the Middle East and may accomplish there what the similar report by Sprott Asset Management of Toronto -- "Not Free, Not Fair: The Long-Term Manipulation of the Gold Price" -- is accomplishing in the West. The Middle East's oil-producing countries are especially obliged to heed the Gulf Research Center's study because their economies are based on a wasting asset, oil, whose depletion will leave them with little more than sand if the payment they receive is substantially depreciated or defaulted upon. In exchanging a real asset for paper assets that represent only unpayable debts, oil-producing countries are at imminent risk of massive expropriation. The study can be found here: The Role of Gold Digital Gold -- Sharefin, 19:05:31 03/03/05 Thu Skills shortage sinks gold mine PLANS to reopen one of Australia's largest goldmines have been abandoned because of acute labour shortages that are threatening to delay mining projects worth billions of dollars. As the Howard Government considers a dramatic increase in the nation's migrant intake in a bid to remedy a national skills shortage threatening economic growth, the owner of Western Australia's Bronzewing goldmine said it was now mothballing the project. The mine, north of Kalgoorlie, would have produced up to 140,000 ounces of gold a year and generated revenues in excess of $80 million annually, based on current commodity prices. View Resources chief executive Derek Lenartowicz said wages were soaring as mining companies competed for the scarce pool of skilled workers available. Fitters, electricians, even truck drivers were hard to find. "We have letters from earthmoving contractors that they can't guarantee they'll be able to supply labour, tyres or explosives," Mr Lenartowicz said. He said many people had left the industry in the bad years of the late 1990s. "We just don't have the infrastructure to support a resources boom," he said. Gold -- Sharefin, 19:02:44 03/03/05 Thu South Africa backs IMF gold sales for debt relief CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South Africa's Treasury supports the proposed use of IMF gold sales to finance debt relief for poor countries -- a process which need not disrupt the market, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said on Thursday. In a written reply to a question from parliament, Manuel said he favoured including 5-year quotas for gold sales allocated to central banks in 2004 for the process. "The National Treasury supports the use of IMF gold sales to finance debt relief for poor countries," he said. "The sale of IMF gold when done in a managed manner that is transparent, clearly communicated to the market and ideally along the central bank gold agreement, will mean that the market can price in the IMF gold sales and thus cause no disruptions to the market price of gold," he said. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 20:25:15 02/27/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,065.4 + Dow 10,841.6 = 12,907.0 divide by 2 = 6,453.50 Ponzi Up 31.58 from last week . Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 21:09:56 02/25/05 Fri Most G7 favour IMF gold sales for debt relief - paper FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A majority of Group of Seven members favour selling some of the International Monetary Fund's gold reserves to finance debt relief, a German newspaper on Friday reported G7 sources as saying. But an outright sale from the IMF, the world's third largest gold holder, is not the only option under consideration, according to the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) article. Options could include a sale to an interested central bank or a revaluation of IMF gold reserves to current market prices, which would generate a paper profit that could be used to offset losses from debt write-off, it said. ~~~ IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato said on Wednesday the IMF was studying all proposals, including the revaluation or sale of the IMF's gold stocks. According to the FTD, IMF sources say the fund is sceptical of using gold for debt relief but is aware that it will be a political decision so is focusing on the technical aspects . Additionally, the G7 would not want to disrupt the gold market, it quoted sources as saying. If the IMF decides on sales, then those sales could count towards quotas allocated under the International Gold Agreement, the FTD said. Fifteen European central banks signed the second gold agreement, limiting total sales to 2,500 tonnes over five years ending in 2009. Gold -- Sharefin, 21:04:01 02/25/05 Fri Indians buy more gold for profit Rising bullion prices was no deterrent to the Indian gold jewellery segment in India as as sales soared in the third quarter of the current fiscal (Q3). The World Gold Council (WGC) said good economic growth pushed up demand in India for both jewellery and retail investment by 49 per cent and 32 per cent in tonnage terms respectively in Q3. In 2004, total consumer demand rose 17 per cent. WGC said consumers became comfortable with gold prices in excess of $400/oz. and in fact increasingly expected prices to rise further, and therefore bought gold driven by anticipation of a price rise. ~~ Fiat -- Sharefin, 03:21:59 02/22/05 Tue Dollar Declines on Report Korea to Diversify Currency Reserves The dollar fell almost a cent against the euro and dropped versus the yen on a report that South Korea's central bank will diversify its currency reserves. The central bank, which has $200 billion in reserves, will ``diversify the currencies in which it invests,'' Reuters said yesterday, citing a Bank of Korea spokesman in a parliamentary report. Byun Jai Yung, head of the bank's planning department, told Bloomberg in a telephone interview that he can't comment. ``People are taking the Bank of Korea story a bit more seriously and there's some talk other central banks are backing away as well,'' said David Mozina, a currency strategist at ABN Amro Holding NV in Sydney. The dollar's decline triggered some automatic orders to sell the currency, he said. Gold -- Sharefin, 03:20:13 02/22/05 Tue Gold jewellery sales slipping worldwide DUBAI — Gold jewellery sales are slipping across most regions of the world and marketing must be boosted to compete with threats to the precious metal, industry experts said yesterday. “The mainstay of gold demand has been under pressure,” Philip Olden, World Gold Council (WGC) managing director for marketing and jewellery, told the opening of the Third Dubai City of Gold Conference. “More recently, the gold jewellery market has been on the decline,” he said. “Marketing investment in gold has been weak and volatile,” Olden added, listing the main rivals to gold as “leisure, electronics, accessories and lifestyle brands” rather than other jewellery categories. Gold -- Sharefin, 03:18:05 02/22/05 Tue Dubai-based gold exchange aims to rank among world's top five The Dubai Gold and Commodity Exchange (DGCX), a Dubai-India venture due to be operational later this year, could rank among the world's top exchanges within five years, an official said Monday. "Within three to five years, the DGCX can become among the first five exchanges in the world," Jignesh Shah, managing director of Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd (MCX), told AFP. "MCX was launched 15 months back and has become the third largest exchange in the world in bullion," said Shah, speaking on the sidelines of the Third Dubai City of Gold Conference. ~~~ Dubai, the self-styled "City of Gold," is a trading hub for 10 percent of the world's gold, which the authorities are hoping to increase to 50 percent. Gold -- Sharefin, 03:11:57 02/22/05 Tue Gold dehedging continues Dehedging in the fourth quarter of 2004 (Q4) maintained its elevated levels, touching 3,64-million oz, although it fell short of the totals recorded in the previous two quarters, the Global Gold Hedge Book Analysis reported this week. The analysis is a quarterly report which provides a timely and comprehensive analysis of the global producer hedge book and is produced by GFMS and Investec Bank. The report said that the 6% quarter-on-quarter cut in the global position left the delta-adjusted book at end-December at 57,13-million oz. The 14,3-million oz year-on-year decline represents the biggest annual reduction in outstanding producer positions since the de-hedging cycle began in 2000, the report said. Gold -- Sharefin, 03:11:03 02/22/05 Tue Chancellor urged: sell gold to the Chinese Gordon Brown should use his trip to China this week to urge Beijing on a gold-buying spree if he wants to achieve his debt relief plans, analysts say. A buyer with deep pockets, suggests Kamal Naqvi, precious metals analyst at Barclays, could be the best route to persuading Washington to back the Chancellor's proposal for an IMF gold reserves sale to help the world's poorest countries. 'If you can find a big buyer, you can do the sale without affecting the market. China and Japan are the potential white knights, because their gold reserves are so small,' said Naqvi. Fears that a sell-off could send the gold price plunging have provoked fury among US senators, 20 of whom last week wrote to the Treasury Secretary, John Snow, urging him to reject the plan, which the IMF had been asked to investigate following a summit meeting of G7 finance ministers in London earlier this month. But Naqvi says a sale could aid gold prices if Brown could drum up rich, new customers. The Chinese government holds only 1 per cent of its vast reserves in gold, compared to a global average of around 10 per cent. 'The basic feeling is that they need to diversify out of dollars, and the full 3,000 tonnes of IMF reserves allows them a one-time opportunity to do that.' Gold -- Sharefin, 03:09:06 02/22/05 Tue India eyes foreign gold refiners NEW DELHI: The demand is gaining momentum in India to allow international gold refining companies to set up their shops in a bid to recycle huge stocks of gold jewellery and scrap, estimated over Rs9,000 billion. Taking a lead in the campaign, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) has also suggested opening up gold retailing to overseas jewellers. A "White Paper on Gold Industry in India," brought out by the Chamber today, advocated the need for removal of restrictions for overseas business on gold and silver mining, pointing out that even if India produces roughly five tonnes of gold and silver, however, has huge and insatiable demand for bullion. "Allowing entry of foreign companies in gold and silver mining will facilitate huge international investments as various multinational gold miners are showing interest in technical tie ups with units in gold mining in India, Assocham President Mahendra K Sanghi pointed out here today, while releasing the paper. The paper says nearly 15,000 tonnes of gold stocks are lying idle with Indian households, the value of which in terms of rupee has been measured at 9,000 billion. In addition, the gold business in India is presently estimated at Rs400 billion per annum. Such huge reserves strongly make a case for opening up of gold business to foreign refining companies for recycling old gold jewellery. "The idle gold reserves can be made available at low interest for all infrastructure related projects like power, roads, irrigation etc rather than borrowing from international aid agencies. This will ensure a rate of reurn for gold investors as well as help develop the infrastructure. These can be called IGR Infrastructure Bonds (IGRIB), the paper suggests. Gold -- Sharefin, 03:05:47 02/22/05 Tue Allow gold backed saving products: WGC The Reserve Bank of India should allow banks to offer gold backed savings products so that part of these investments can be channelised through the more regulated banking sector. "It is imperative that banks be allowed to offer gold backed savings and investment products so that part of the flow of savings into physical gold remain in the more regulated banking sector,'' said Sanjeev Agarwal, Managing Director, Indian Subcontinent, World Gold Council, while enumerating the pre-budget recommendations for the gold industry. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 21:54:35 02/20/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,058.62 + Dow 10,785.22 = 12,843.84 divide by 2 = 6,421.92 Ponzi Down 14.41 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 20:56:33 02/14/05 Mon Young girl wins 100 kilos of gold Kerala girl strikes gold and taxi driver wins DH 10 million DUBAI — Nine-year-old Shakiba has had the same recurring dream many times before. Surrounded by all the chocolates she could buy, the nine-year-old would taste each and every one of them at her leisure and would delight in her make-believe world of kit kats and milky ways. Her dream has now become a reality. The winner of the DSF's most ambitious and richest draw, Shakiba Asif, from Kerala, India, has won herself a whopping 100 kilos of gold making her the richest person in this festival's history. ~~~ As for Shakiba, she has successfully found that elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow which everyone can only dream of. Periodic Ponzi Update PPU -- $hifty, 21:53:40 02/13/05 Sun Ponzi Chart Periodic Ponzi Update PPU Nasdaq 2,076.66 + Dow 10,796.01 = 12,872.67 divide by 2 = 6,436.33 Ponzi Up 34.94 from last week. Thanks for the link RossL ! Go GATA ! Go GOLD ! Hi Ho SILVER ! $hifty Gold -- Sharefin, 21:30:38 02/13/05 Sun Rising price brings new outbreak of gold fever across the West It isn't a gold rush yet; mining can be a pricey, risky proposition. But with an ounce of gold in the $420 range, people are revisiting the West's historic gold-producing regions. Gold -- Sharefin, 21:23:56 02/13/05 Sun Gold: Using It In Imaginative Ways. Reuters News service reports this morning that Gold producers aim to boost industrial demand for the precious metal by more than 50 percent within a decade through developing new uses in gas masks, air-cleaning devices and as a superconductor in electrical gadgets. Currently the bulk of gold is used for jewelery, accounting for 80 percent of the 4,142 tons consumed in 2003, with industrial applications such as electronics and dental fillings taking up only 12 percent or 500 tons. New uses for gold discovered by South African research group Autek are expected to lead to an extra demand of 280 tons in 10 years, Thompson said. The first new commercial product developed by Autek, formed by South Africa's AngloGold Ashanti in 2000, is a catalyst to be used in gas masks. ~~~ SUPERCONDUCTORS The other main new industrial use for gold would be in as a layer in high-temperature superconductors for use in electricity transmission and electrical devices. Autek is also busy working on a host of other applications for gold, including biomedical uses as an anti-cancer treatment. Gold -- Sharefin, 21:22:21 02/13/05 Sun Gold market wary of big IMF sales but demand remains Gold sales by the International Monetary Fund for third-world debt relief could weaken bullion prices over the longer run but any dip could be temporary because of strong demand at lower price levels from Asian buyers. Ministers from the Group of Seven industrialised nations said over the weekend the IMF would consider using its gold reserves to cut the debt of the world's poorest nations. The fund is the world's third-largest gold holder with reserves of around 3,217 tonnes. ~~~ Yukuji Sonoda, a precious metals analyst at Daiichi Commodities in Tokyo, believes gold is nearing its bottom at around $410 and would soon rebound because of buying interest from India, the world's largest gold consumer. "The market is over reacting. The outcome of the G7 meeting is not surprising," said Sonoda. "End-users in Japan, China and also India are very comfortable with this price level," he added. ~~~ British Finance Minister Gordon Brown, the host of the G7 meeting, is a strong proponent of the plan to use gold reserves to help eradicate the $12 billion debt owed by the world's poorest nations. He first proposed revaluing IMF gold stocks with off-market sales in 2004. Under a 1971 agreement, most IMF gold is valued at $40 to $50 an ounce, or about one-tenth of current market prices. But the United States, the world's largest holder of gold bullion, is not keen on the plan and the country as a de facto veto power on IMF gold sales because of its voting weight at the fund. Gold -- Sharefin, 21:18:30 02/13/05 Sun Japan '04 gold imports up, investment key this year Japan's gold imports soared in 2004 as low domestic output made it necessary to buy the precious metal from abroad to meet brisk demand from the country's industrial sector and private investors, industry officials say. The strength of Japan's gold imports in 2005 is likely to be shaped by the robustness of private investor demand, which will be closely linked to the yen's strength, some officials say. Japan imported about 73.84 t of gold in 2004, a hefty 67.7% rise from the year before, preliminary data from the Finance Ministry showed last week. ~~~ Japan's production of copper fell last year due to a shortage in raw material, and this also cut output of gold, a by-product. A landslide at the Grasberg mine in Indonesia in December 2003 disrupted shipments of copper's raw material last year, but high-grade production at Asia's largest mine, owned by Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, has since restarted. Japan's gold production in 2004 amounted to about 137 t, down some 18% from the previous year's 161 t, believed to be an all-time high, the Japan Mining Industry Association said. At Tanaka Kikinzoku, Japan's top bullion house, industrial demand for gold rose 15% in 2004, followed by jewellery demand, which increased by 7%, Ikeda said. Investor demand for gold was up some 1,7%. Tanaka Kikinzoku does not release figures in volumes. Itsuo Toshima, the World Gold Council's regional director for Japan and Korea, said demand for gold from the industrial sector and investors probably rose 30%, respectively, last year, although final figures were not yet available. Industrial demand typically accounts for the largest share of Japan's consumption of gold, followed by investor demand. Jewellery demand, which has mostly been on a long-term slide since the bubble years of the late 1980s, follows in third place. In 2005, Japan's industrial demand for gold, used mainly in the semiconductor and high-tech sectors, is expected to be flat to firm, industry officials say. ~~~ Private investors began actively to buy gold before the Japanese government introduced a guarantee cap on term deposits in April 2002, as many turned to the precious metal as a means to diversify their portfolio. Since then gold has become a common investment tool, and officials say it is no longer rare to see regular purchases of 2-3 kg, roughly 24-42-million yen at the current market price. The WGC's Toshima said the yen's strength against the US dollar would be a major factor determining how much gold buying takes place this year. A stronger yen has the effect of reducing yen-based gold prices. "We are likely to see some concentrated buying of gold should the Japanese currency strengthen and breach 100 yen (against the dollar)," he said. Gold -- Sharefin, 21:02:29 02/13/05 Sun The End of The Oil Standard Few commentators have recognized the significance of OPEC's January 30 decision to temporarily suspend their price band mechanism. If the suspension is indeed temporary, it may not be that important. If it isn't, there are some interesting parallels to the suspension of the U.S. gold standard in 1968 to 1971. The gold standard was maintained by fixing the dollar price of gold and by federal stockpiling of gold. This was the means by which most currencies had maintained their value since ancient times. By the late nineteenth century, the growth in international trade had made the system difficult to maintain, but it continued for lack of an alternative. The Bretton Woods agreements at the end of the Second World War reduced the importance of precious metals in the international financial system and the United States government suspended purchases of newly-mined gold in 1968. The United States gold market was fully deregulated in 1971. Oil was sold at fixed prices under long-term contracts until the nationalizations of the mid-seventies, when oil traders began to play an important role. Oil prices became more transparent in 1983 when crude oil futures began to be traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange. From 1979 to 1985, OPEC tried to defend too high a price target and lost market share. ~~~ Viewed from a different angle, an oil price ceiling is a dollar floor. Oil is traded in greater dollar volumes than any other commodity so the oil standard had more liquidity than gold ever did. The value of OPEC's oil production is more than a billion dollars per day. The oil equivalent of Fort Knox was not the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; it was the combined oil reserves of OPEC, three orders of magnitude greater and much larger in value than all the gold mined since the dawn of history. According to the December 20, 2004 issue of the Oil and Gas Journal, the oil reserves of OPEC at yearend 2004 are estimated to be 885 billion barrels. According to the United States Geological Survey, the total gold ever mined in the world is about 3.4 billion troy ounces. At $42 per barrel for oil and $420 per troy ounce for gold, the value of Opec's reserves is 26 times the value of all gold ever mined. Gold -- Sharefin, 20:55:22 02/13/05 Sun Gold firms oppose IMF gold sale, citing price fall JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The world's biggest gold firms are banding together against proposals to sell gold from International Monetary Fund stockpiles, fearing tumbling gold prices. ~~~ On Thursday, the world's leading gold miner, U.S. Newmont Mining Corp. said it would lobby U.S. officials against the sale of IMF gold reserves to fund debt relief for the world's poorest countries. Mining companies argue that sales of some of the IMF's 103 million ounces of gold reserves would hurt developing countries that depend on export revenue. South Africa's Harmony Gold urged officials to take a quick decision on IMF gold reserves, the third biggest in the world, since uncertainty was hitting prices. Gold -- Sharefin, 20:52:39 02/13/05 Sun Newmont Opposes IMF Gold Sale Plan Newmont Mining, the world's biggest gold producer, is lobbying US congressmen to block any proposal to sell a portion of International Monetary Fund gold reserves to fund debt relief for some of the world's poorest countries. Noting that a number of the developing countries' 41 most heavily- indebted nations are gold producers, a company spokesman argued that "the sale of IMF gold would impose a hardship on the very nations that they're trying to help." Gold fell to a four-month low yesterday of $410.20 a troy ounce, and has dropped $10 since IMF sales were first mooted at the weekend. Newmont, based in Denver, Colorado, also pointed to potential job losses in the western US, where most of the country's gold mines are located. Gold -- Sharefin, 20:51:22 02/13/05 Sun Soft prices, demand squeeze gold supplies in India BOMBAY (Reuters) - A sharp drop in gold prices have boosted demand in India, the world's largest market, and have caused a supply crunch, traders said on Wednesday. The delivery time has risen to more than a week, compared with the normal two days and some agencies have raised their premiums on world prices, they said. India, which buys more than two-thirds of its annual demand of 700 to 800 tonnes a year, only allows about two dozen agencies -- mainly banks and state-run trading houses -- to import gold. "Banks are not ready to take new orders. Deliveries of some bookings done a week ago are still pending," said Prithvi Raj Kothari, a dealer in Bombay, India's financial capital. One foreign bank, which has been selling 7 to 8 tonnes of gold a week against a normal 2 to 3 tonnes, is finding it difficult to cope with the demand, a dealer at the bank said. Gold -- Sharefin, 00:49:00 02/07/05 Mon Halting the rush against gold Big mining and its increasingly radical opponents A PLEASANT town in a broad green valley in northern Peru, Cajamarca is the site of one of history's great betrayals. Some 200 yards from the main square, through a Spanish colonial doorway, stands a stone building known as the “Ransom Room”. Though this particular building may in fact have been his prison, in 1532 Atahualpa, the Inca ruler, offered to fill such a room with gold artefacts in order to win freedom from his conquistador captors. He kept his side of the bargain—but was murdered anyway. Now, once again, some people in Cajamarca complain that Peru's gold is being carried off by foreigners—and they are trying to stop it. Astride the Andean watershed an hour north of Cajamarca is Yanacocha, one of the world's biggest and most profitable gold mines. Run by Newmont, a Denver-based company which owns it with Peru's Buenaventura, Yanacocha is a world away from the dark and dangerous gold mines of the past. At five separate sites, giant scoops slice the sides from mountains, loading 300,000 tonnes of rock a day into 250-tonne trucks, each the height of a four-storey building. The rock is laid out in terraces, sealed in black plastic, and injected with cyanide solution. This process yields an ounce of gold from each tonne of rock. So successful has Yanacocha been that its output has soared from 81,000 ounces of gold in 1993 to 3m ounces last year. This headlong expansion has injected wealth into Cajamarca, though it is still one of Peru's poorest departments. The mine has produced fears and resentment too. For a fortnight last September, thousands of protesters blocked the road to the mine; supplies and staff had to be ferried to and fro by helicopter. The protest was against Newmont's decision to prospect on Cerro Quilish, a mountain which locals say feeds streams that supply the city with drinking water. The protesters won hands down. Humbled, Yanacocha agreed to stop prospecting, asked the government to revoke its licence to do so, and issued an unprecedented public apology. Fiat -- Sharefin, 00:42:22 02/07/05 Mon Billionaire Bill Gates is betting against U.S. dollar Bill Gates, whose net worth of $46.6-billion (U.S.) makes him the world's richest person, is betting against the U.S. dollar. "I'm short the dollar," Mr. Gates, chairman of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp., said during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "The ol' dollar, it's gonna go down." Mr. Gates's concern that widening U.S. budget and trade deficits are undermining the greenback was echoed in Davos by policy makers including European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Gold -- Sharefin, 00:39:57 02/07/05 Mon Fannie, Freddie regulator seeks power to close companies WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The federal office that regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is seeking authority to close the giant mortgage finance companies in the event of a financial crisis, as legislation toughening rules on the firms begins to make its way through Congress. "Receivership is a valuable thing," Patrick Lawler, chief economist of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, ~~~ Receivership refers to the ability of a regulator to settle the affairs of a business or to manage a corporation during reorganization. Lawmakers and the Bush administration have their sights set on both Fannie and Freddie as the legislative year begins. Both companies, which pump millions of dollars into the mortgage market, have weathered accounting scandals recently, with two of Fannie's top executives resigning over a massive earnings restatement. The company may have to record a loss of $9 billion and it is still being investigated by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Meanwhile, legislation is beginning to move through Congress. Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and John Sununu of New Hampshire have co-authored a bill that would create a receiver for Fannie and Freddie, as well as allow for higher levels of capital at both institutions. ~~~ Meanwhile, a coalition of 37 federal, state and local groups urged the federal government and Congress to cut ties with Fannie and Freddie Thursday. Warning that Americans are threatened by a potential taxpayer bailout of the two companies, the groups recommended privatizing both. Gold -- Sharefin, 00:04:12 02/07/05 Mon Gold is back - 25 years after it peaked About 20 years ago the US dollar suffered a massive fall, which swept away Lm88 million of Malta's reserves. The very next day Malta's reserves were re-organised to mask this tragedy. Government carried out a perfectly legal operation, which revalued Malta's gold reserves according to the market price prevalent at the time. A few years before that date, that is almost 25 years ago, gold had hit its all-time high of $850 an ounce, and people were storming the jewellery shops at Hatton Garden trying to realise family heirlooms in hard currency. Malta's gold revaluation story, which is widely known by all those who care for the money of their country, is yet another illustration of how gold can come to the rescue of investors to save them from difficulty, and sometimes from disaster. Malta had to keep gold as part of its international reserves as a requirement of the International Monetary Fund. This proved to be a great godsend in the mid-Eighties. Malta's investment in gold was the most lucrative investment the Central Bank was made to perform by the IMF and the one which proved to be the most useful in a highly embarrassing situation. Malta bought gold at $32 an ounce in the Sixties and revalued it in the mid-Eighties at a multiple of that price. Does Malta's dramatic Central Bank experience with gold carry any significance for the small Maltese investor? It certainly does. It is an experience which can easily be translated into the organisation of any portfolio, however small it may be. An investor would be foolhardy not to include one or two per cent of precious metals into his portfolio. Such a percentage, however, fluctuates with the character of one's particular situation, and it is a matter which every investor must discuss with his stockbroker. What is being pointed out in this instance is that gold has always been regarded as the best safeguard against disaster, and Malta is a country over which the scythe of the angel of death has hovered more than once, whether through wars or close encounters with natural disasters. Why gold is back The big reason why gold is back after 25 years is not because people are afraid that what happened in the Indian Ocean could very well happen under their very houses. The reason is back is because American President George W. Bush is carrying out a war in Iraq and he could very possibly carry out another in Iran. There is also the American twin deficit, the sinking dollar could put the world into a skid, as David Smith of the London Sunday Times said in a recent article. He was talking straight from the Davos Meeting of Microsoft where Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the greatest investors in America, made strong statements against the dollar's decline. Gates called the dollar decline "scary" while Buffett said he would be betting against the dollar. The dollar and gold have over recent years acted like the opposite ends of a see-saw. |
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