To: jocko who wrote (2607) | 3/4/2000 6:45:00 PM | From: jocko | | |
FWIW :-)
By Thom Calandra www.CBSMarketWatch.com Thursday, March 3, 2000
This is a gold story. A South African gold story. In an age when everyone in the world wants to own -- pick one -- biotech stocks, semiconductors, or IPOs -- one very large gold company is betting big on an old- world currency, and making a bold call on the price of the languishing metal.
Chris Thompson is the chairman of Gold Fields, the second-largest gold producer in the world. The stock (GOLD) trades on Nasdaq. And for the past six months, Gold Fields shares have performed better than the company's North American counterparts -- Newmont Mining, Barrick Gold, and Placer Dome.
That's not saying much. Gold prices are depressed for a lot of reasons: central bank selling, a lack of serious inflation, and the fact that no one wants to buy gold as an investment when they can double their money in eight weeks on a hot tech stock.
But Thompson, whom I contacted from London, says gold will get its day in the sun. "Some sort of collapse in the equity market is what is going to be the catalyst for gold," Thompson says boldly. "We have had a secular trend, paper assets going up and hard assets going down, and that can't continue."
Thompson, a 52-year-old Canadian, took over the leadership of Gold Fields 18 month ago. It's his job to talk up the price of gold. But even for an unabashed gold bug, Thompson is making sure everyone knows where he stands on the metal's coming fortune.
Gold Fields has eliminated nearly all of its forward hedging of gold. The company, which produces 4 million ounces a year, reported a 10-fold increase in sequential quarterly earnings at the end of 1999.
Thompson says Gold Fields was the first big gold producer to stop forward-hedging. (Gold Fields has a small amount of forward-sale commitments, like at a gold project in Ghana. Thompson says this is because the lenders backing the project require the hedges to safeguard their loans.)
Hedges help gold companies get a better price. But they also put selling pressure on the metal. Net selling of borrowed gold boosts the world's total supply by about 10 percent. Central banks' selling of gold -- the banks have about 20,000 tons of the metal in their vaults -- also has hurt gold prices.
Thompson believes a stock market crash will spark a rush into gold. "When the bubble bursts, what do you want to own? The big money is going into gold," Thompson says.
Sure, he's outspoken. But he also puts his money where his mouth is. Last autumn he stepped up to the plate and bought gold at the Bank of England gold auction. The purchases back then -- for $258 an ounce -- sparked a wild but very brief rally in gold.
These days, ahead of yet another Bank of England gold auction on March 21, gold prices are on hold. The price of the April gold contract in New York is about $293 an ounce.
The Gold Fields story, if you are one of the 18 or so gold bugs left, is a good one. "South Africa is becoming more friendly to investors," Thompson says. Standard & Poor's recently bestowed an investment grade rating on the nation's debt.
Also helping Gold Fields' stock: "We have led the way in going unhedged, and the community is rewarding us for that. We have had steadily improving operations. We are getting our costs down and production up."
Cash costs in Gold Fields' fourth quarter decreased to $220 an ounce while gold production rose 2.8 percent to 990,000 ounces. (Anglogold of South Africa is the world's largest gold producer.) Thompson told me Gold Fields states its gold reserves conservatively at 74 million ounces.
Gold Fields' shares listed on Nasdaq last May 10 and at one point had doubled before losing value, like all gold stocks in the past four weeks. The company's market valuation is $2.25 billion. Barrick Gold's stock market worth is $6.6 billion.
Thompson, who spent time as a venture capitalist in Denver, says, "I've learned you can't call the price of gold. Still, it has been a long hard winter in the gold business, and it is time for springtime."
Let's hope, for the sake of those few gold bugs out there, that Thompson is on the money.
-END-
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To: DON who wrote () | 3/8/2000 7:02:00 PM | From: jocko | | |
Looks like the WSJ is paying attention :-) 12:20p EST Wednesday, March 8, 2000
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
The Wall Street Journal noticed gold and GATA today, and in the process suggested that the price of gold should be higher. This is largely because of GATA's hectoring the newspaper in recent weeks. We hope the paper will stay interested and begin pressing the U.S. Treasury Department for answers to our questions about the Exchange Stabilization Fund and surreptitious government intervention in the precious metals and equities markets.
Please post this as seems useful.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
* * *
DESPITE JITTERY MARKET, GOLD ISN'T SHINING
By Peter A. McKay The Wall Street Journal March 8, 2000
By most measures, gold ought to be golden again.
Demand for the metal surged 21 percent last year, economists are worried about rising inflation, and other commodity prices -- especially oil -- are increasing, all of which have been bullish signs for gold in the past. Volatile stock markets such as the current one have also historically sent some investors to the haven of gold.
But after a run-up to above $300 an ounce a few weeks ago that had many analysts predicting gold finally had recovered from its long slump, gold prices have fallen and stalled near $290 an ounce.
Why isn't this a golden age?
Two reasons emerge, one having to do with fundamentals, the other with perception. Concerns that there is too much supply in the gold market has hamstrung prices. Meanwhile, psychologically, investors just have been finding other places to put their money, shying away from gold as a haven.
Since the summer, when prices surged from 20-year lows caused by over-supply worries, especially the Bank of England's plan to dump a large amount of gold on the market, the metal has been boosted several times by one-time events. But invariably gold has then given back most of the gains.
As usual in the gold market some conspiracy theories, especially of price manipulation by governments and gold borrowers, are gaining popularity among a portion of investors to explain the moribund gold price. Many industry analysts and traders, on the other hand, explain the price stagnation as simply further evidence of the metal's ever-weakening role as a refuge from inflation.
"Basically, we're right back where we started," says George Gero, a veteran gold trader at Prudential Securities Inc., New York. "There's been some good news (for prices), but we still don't have all the ingredients in place to call this a true bull market" for gold.
That much is clear. The latest rally began Feb. 4 after Canadian mining firm Placer Dome announced that it would halt its gold hedging program, and then several other major producers followed. That meant there would be less metal on the market, since gold producers' hedging usually involves selling the commodity "forward" to lock in the current price in case it takes a downturn later.
Gold futures immediately jumped $22.62 to $310 an ounce. But prices have steadily inched down since, closing at $292.20 yesterday on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, up $4.30 for the day, but down $19 from the peak so far this year of $312.70, on Feb. 7.
An even more extreme "false top" occurred in September, when 15 European government banks announced they would cap their gold sales. The metal leapt $42.25 or 15 percent, climbing to $324.50 in the next few weeks.
No one is expecting the metal to fall back to the $250 levels seen this summer, although some analysts have been forecasting the gold price to increase since at least the European banks' announcement.
The metal is "hitting ascending bottoms right now," said gold-fund manager Harry Bingham, of Van Eck Global in New York. "What it's going to take to really bring up gold is time and a fundamental perception change among investors. Everybody can't get rich by buying stocks, retiring, and becoming a day trader."
So far, though, just the opposite conclusion has been built into gold prices, much to the chagrin of bullish gold bugs.
Traders and analysts mostly shrugged off last month's hedging cutoffs as a industry-specific phenomenon, and then took heart in the dollar's strength overseas and the Federal Reserve's recent interest-rate increases as ample protection against inflation.
The conspiracy theorists are seizing on the time of gold's plateaus as evidence of foul play in the market. Such theorists are given a bit of credence in the gold market, which is less transparent than the stock market.
"Historically, people would tell you that any time gold is trading at a price less than 12-to-1 to the price of oil, it's a bargain," says Bill Murphy, chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, an investor group that communicates online and gets some funding from gold companies. "Right now we're at less than 10-to-1, and no one's saying anything" about the phenomenon.
Mr. Murphy's organization has been lobbying the federal government to investigate whether major gold borrowers, including some gold companies, are manipulating the metal's price so they can use leased gold to make other investments, then repay their loans with cheap metal later.
Most Wall Street gold-industry analysts don't buy into the theory outright, although many say the metal's fundamentals are more positive than its current price might suggest.
World gold demand increased 21 percent to a record 3,278.4 tons in 1999, according to a recent report by the World Gold Council trade group.
And World Gold Council analyst George Milling- Stanley says the industry organization doesn't expect any major production increases in the near future, which would indicate that gold's price should eventually increase.
However, he said recent episodes of producer hedging and central-bank sales cannot entirely explain the latest trends in the metal's price. Rather, he said gold's very identity is undergoing a seismic shift perhaps not seen since the 1970s when the United States stopped pegging the dollar to gold and began allowing private ownership of it.
Mr. Milling-Stanley said the metal's value now is more affected by speculative trading, increasingly complex hedging programs, and foreign-exchange rates in the newly global, electronic economy.
He characterized the fall announcement by the central banks as a step toward eliminating just one specter hanging over the gold market, albeit an important one.
"You have to look at this as a whole set of circumstances," Mr. Milling-Stanley said. "The market had believed that there was going to be a major series of central-bank gold sales, but with that fear eliminated by the September agreement, gold is no longer a one-way bet."
-END-
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To: DON who wrote () | 3/12/2000 2:31:00 PM | From: jocko | | |
Just think how many people would read this if MIQ wuz to "pick up a couple of bucks" :-)
1:30p EST Sunday, March 12, 2000
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Harry J. Clawar has documented the suppression of the gold price in the market in New York after its rise on other markets around the world. Of course this tends to support GATA's contention that hidden forces are at work in the United States to distort the gold market for the benefit of the U.S. dollar. You can read this important article at the Gold-Eagle Internet site:
gold-eagle.com
Please post this as seems useful.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
-END-
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To: DON who wrote () | 3/16/2000 6:21:00 PM | From: jocko | | |
2a EST Thursday, March 16, 2000
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Here's another great essay by Reginald H. Howe, Harvard-trained lawyer and former mining company executive. Please post it as seems useful.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
* * *
Collision Course: Gold and Greenspan
By Reginald H. Howe www.GoldenSextant.com March 14, 2000
Alan Greenspan has not always had as much difficulty defining money and differentiating it from credit as he did in his Humphrey-Hawkins testimony quoted in my prior commentary. In his 1966 essay "Gold and Economic Freedom" (reprinted in A. Rand, "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal"), the future Fed chairman discussed the consequences of the Federal Reserve's decision in 1927 to reduce interest rates in response to a mild U.S. contraction and continuing losses of British gold due to politically inspired lower rates in Britain:
The Fed succeeded: It stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world in the process. The excess credit the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market, triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, the Fed attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late; by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a worldwide series of bank failures. The world plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Today the Fed's critics see wild speculation, particularly in the technology sector, where stock market valuations exceed all historic norms of rationality. But the Fed chairman is among the most influential propagandists for the so-called "new" economy. Cogent commentaries on the new economy by Veneroso Associates (www.venerosoassociates.com) suggest not only that the new economy's claimed productivity increases are greatly exaggerated, but also that no one should be more aware of the shaky statistical foundations that underlie them than Alan Greenspan himself. (See "The Myth of the Productivity Miracle: Part III," Sept. 20, 1999, pp. 2-3.) Indeed, the Fed chairman must know, the United States is the only major country that uses the hedonic price deflator to adjust its gross domestic product statistics for the increased power of computers. (See "The Myth of the Productivity Miracle: Part II," Sept. 20, 1999, p. 7.) While the distortions of GDP resulting from this practice are difficult to quantify precisely, there can be no question but that the result is a significant overstatement of GDP relative to both historic experience and other nations.
Wide availability of high speed computer power has given birth to a huge business in financial derivatives. Indeed, the Black-Scholes option pricing formula in combination with dynamic or so-called "delta" hedging has revolutionized financial markets. Highly complex trading strategies based on these concepts produced the 1998 Long-Term Capital Management debacle (www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stockmarket), which threatened the world payments system enough to scare the Fed into three interest rate reductions when it should have been moving in the other direction. Nevertheless, both Greenspan and the secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department have portrayed financial derivatives as useful financial stabilizers not requiring further regulation by Congress. (See, among others, Statement of Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, House Banking Committee, March 25, 1999, www.house.gov/banking/32599fed.htm.)
Black-Scholes and delta hedging require estimates of volatility based on historic experience and operate properly only in fully liquid markets. Whatever the benefits of financial derivatives in normal markets, unexpected volatility or loss of market liquidity can raise havoc with them, leading not just to large losses but to market destabilizing events. Like LTCM, the problems of Ashanti, Cambior, and certain gold banks brought on by the Washington Agreement illustrate what can happen when financial derivatives crash on wrong assumptions or abnormal conditions. With his usual insight, John Hathaway gives an update on the gold banking situation in his most recent article, "Apocalypse No" (February 2000, www.tocqueville.com/brainstorms/brainstorm0057.shthm).
Similar incidents are possible in interest rate or stock market derivatives, particularly under the unusual conditions that could follow from the Treasury's bond repurchases or an unwinding of current egregious overvaluations in leading NASDAQ tech and net stocks. But far more frightening would be the consequences of a panic flight from the dollar on almost all financial derivatives.
A statistical analysis of recent gold price movements provides further evidence of Anglo-American manipulation of the gold market. (See H. Clawar, "A New Gold War?" (March 13, 2000, www.gold- eagle.com/editorials_00/clawar031300.html). While Greenspan denies that the Fed is trying to control gold, he must know whether the United States and British treasury departments are actively involved in a coordinated scheme to cap the gold price. Indeed, the vehemence of the denial that Greenpsan made in a letter to U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman regarding possible Fed interference in the gold market suggests an effort to distance both the Fed and its chairman from an expected scandal over manipulation of the gold price.
Yet as long as this manipulation takes place sub rosa, gold's usefulness as a monetary indicator is compromised. One result is unwarranted criticism of the Fed's efforts to restrain credit growth. See, among others, J. Wanniski, "The Numeraire" -- Supply-Side University: Spring Semester, Lesson 6, March 10, 2000 (www.polyconomics.com/searchbase/03-10-00.html) ("There can be no 'inflation' or 'deflation' with gold constant," and only a "noodlehead" would think otherwise.)
The Fed chairman acts as if the new economy is the productive miracle that its fans assert, that financial derivatives are the generally benign stabilizers that their promoters claim, and that the gold price is as sensitive as ever to monetary debasement. In the process he has put himself in the same position as his predecessors in 1927-29. Speculative imbalances, fed by grossly excessive credit creation and abetted by dubious financial hedging strategies, are allowed to grow. At the same time, the gold market -- with British connivance -- is rigged. But what is different this time is that the gold standard cannot be made the scapegoat for the Fed's errors.
Domestically, of course, the currency is no longer tied to gold. Going off gold was supposed to give the central bank greater flexibility in managing the nation's money supply. Instead, the result has been to undercut not just its ability to regulate money and credit but also the very foundation of the banking system itself. Banking depends on a workable distinction between money and credit. Without it, the Fed cannot control the growth of the broad monetary and credit aggregates, and banks no longer possess a unique franchise separate and distinct from other financial intermediaries.
Money market funds buying commercial paper, government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitizing loans, and brokerage firms making margin loans all act effectively to expand credit, but they do so outside the constraints of bank reserve and capital requirements. For an interesting discussion of this process and its effects on the monetary aggregates, see D. Noland, "The Credit Bubble Bulletin -- Commercial Paper," March 10, 2000 (www.prudentbear.com/markcomm/markcomm.htm). Banking based on gold is a demanding business that done properly is a public good; banking without gold is a crippled business that, however done, has heretofore always ended in an orgy of paper and national ruin.
Internationally, the euro is poised to assume many if not all of the settlement functions that since 1971 could be performed only by the dollar notwithstanding the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system. What is more, unless the European Central Bank and European Union nations lose their nerve, the days of the United States and Britain dictating international monetary arrangements are over. There is no practical bar today to the euro bloc's declaring full independence from the dollar by linking the euro to gold in some meaningful fashion. Indeed, a simple declaration that henceforth most of the EU's international monetary reserves will be held in gold rather than foreign currencies would likely have major adverse consequences for the dollar and the pound.
Nor is monetary confrontation with the euro the only possible nightmare scenario for the dollar. A problem for any world reserve currency is that major external holders of the currency have a potential weapon they can use against the reserve currency country. The importance of this weapon is magnified when the domestic financial structure of the reserve currency country is overextended or its external accounts are out of balance. Thus today, for example, any major confrontation between the United States and China over Taiwan would inevitably be complicated not only by questions about what China might do with its very substantial dollar reserves, but also by what other large holders of dollar reserves might do to counter any threat to the value of their holdings.
What was once known as the Great War became the First World War largely due to the unwillingness of Western democracies to face hard facts at domestic political cost. What Greenspan was able to call the Great Depression could well become the First World Depression for fundamentally similar reasons. Although another global depression would almost certainly knock the dollar from its reserve currency perch, it would mark not so much the end of a dollar-based financial world as the end of an illusion: that paper can replace gold as permanent, international money.
Just as the Second World War forced a return to greater realism in the conduct of international relations, a Second World Depression should bring about restoration of a more normal gold-based international monetary system. But in this event, Greenspan, having set out to play Winston Churchill, is likely to end in the role of Neville Chamberlain -- the man run over by realities that he could not see or would not admit.
-END-
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To: DON who wrote () | 5/11/2000 12:20:00 PM | From: jocko | | |
Why do I get the feeling ..... nobody's home :-)
1a EDT Thursday, May 10, 2000
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
On Wednesday the GATA delegation to Washington met with high officials of Congress and their staffs to present evidence that the price of gold is being manipulated and that gold loans have reached levels that threaten the U.S. and world banking systems. We presented GATA's new report, "Gold Derivative Banking Crisis," and asked that Congress inquire officially into the gold market.
We had three meetings at the Capitol and were well received at each. We were asked to provide certain additional information and particularly potential questions for various government officials and financial institutions, and to return to Washington soon for additional meetings with some of the people we met Wednesday.
We will have a few more meetings today.
You'll have to forgive my being a little vague here; it wouldn't be right to identify yet those who met with us and who are considering getting involved with the gold issue. Besides, it might expose them to premature intervention or retaliation from gold's enemies. But I hope it will suffice to say that today couldn't have gone better, that we couldn't have met with more important people with more appropriate jurisdiction over the gold issue, that GATA now has brought and will continue to bring the gold issue to the highest levels of the U.S. government, and that we are hopeful and even confident now that much will come from this in the next few months and that our support from the gold industry will grow with our success.
Please post this as seems useful.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
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To: jocko who wrote (2612) | 5/11/2000 10:00:00 PM | From: rohheck | | |
Hey Jocko, you are not alone, take a look at this hit this link to the Slanker Report, he really makes some strong points. He also say some stuff about Silver Eagle. Our day is here, the high flyers are fading slowly and inflation with higher interest rates are here. Gold will rule again.
slanker.com |
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To: jocko who wrote (2612) | 5/11/2000 10:40:00 PM | From: jbr29 | | |
Hi Jocko,
Was that you who posted at LeMetropolecafe about a year and a half or so ago about Mirandor ? I bought a slug of the stock back then and basically just forgot about it. I can see from the stock price that there has been no favorable news.
I recall that there was some kind of agreement with Kinross that Kinross eventually opted out of. What are MIQ's prospects from here ?
Thanks in advance |
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To: jbr29 who wrote (2614) | 5/12/2000 11:00:00 AM | From: jocko | | |
Hi jbr, Probably..... I have been a subscriber/friend of Bill Murphy for quite awhile. Brandon (stokks) provided the effort and info regarding the comparison to early ABX. I still have all my MIQ and if GATA succeeds, and I think they will, then it will have been a long wait but well worth it. If you are interested in gold, you really should check out GATA.org :-) I hear Giles has signed an agreement to negotiate (or something like that) and that there are a couple of other companies waiting in the wings. I still believe Railroad has a lot of gold, if someone can just find it. Thats really all I know so I won't pay much attention..... until gold does it's thing ($600 plus :-)regards j |
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To: rohheck who wrote (2613) | 5/12/2000 11:04:00 AM | From: jocko | | |
Hi rohheck, Thanks. GATA is still in DC and is gaining a lot of support from people who can do something about the MANIPULATION of the gold markets. Regards j |
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To: jocko who wrote (2615) | 5/12/2000 6:08:00 PM | From: jbr29 | | |
Thanks Jocko,
No conversion to GATA/gold needed here. Been a long time supporter of Bill since his "Dutch Sale" thread began on SI a coupla three years ago. Am well connected to GATA/Lemetropole.
My principal concern is the viability of MIQ. I know they are a threadbare organization. How much longer can they continue without an injection of new capital ?
Thanks |
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