Thai Guru's Gold und Silber ... (Informationen und Vermutungen)

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MAY 5, 2004 - 06:00 ET

Aur Resources and Inmet Mining to Merge to Create US $1 Billion Global Mining Company

http://www2.ccnmatthews.com/sc…pl?/current/0505010n.html

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MAY 5, 2004 - 09:02 ET

NovaGold Resources Inc. and SpectrumGold Inc.: Galore Creek High Grade Zones Confirmed and Overall Resource
Expanded

http://www2.ccnmatthews.com/sc…pl?/current/0505041n.html

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Source: GoldSpring, Inc.

GoldSpring Update: GoldSpring Requests Delisting From Berlin Bremen Stock Exchange

http://www.primezone.com/newsr…ws_releases.mhtml?d=56995

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MAY 5, 2004 - 05:00 ET

Tournigan Gold Corporation: Additional Gold
Intersections and Discoveries at Curraghinalt

http://www2.ccnmatthews.com/sc…pl?/current/0505002n.html

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http://www.bday.co.za/bday/con…23,1608480-6094-0,00.html

SA gold bosses must fix humbug' of Christmas

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AngloGold, Harmony's results show the need to reform holiday working practices, analysts say Resources Editor

If Ebenezer Scrooge were to be reincarnated as a local mining boss, he might still have cause to mutter "humbug" at any mention of Christmas.

Not because of any ghostly visitations, but because ghosts are about the only creatures to be seen going down the mines over the Christmas break.

Last week Harmony reported a slump of 16% in output in the quarter to March compared to the December quarter, while AngloGold's output was 11% down .

Due to the strange mathematics of the mining industry, the March quarter includes the Christmas break, while the December quarter does not.

Harmony and AngloGold both blamed the Christmas break for the slump in output.

Unlike working practices in the days of Scrooge, miners traditionally enjoy a Christmas break. Given that many have families in Mozambique, or even further afield, it is understandable that they wish to be with their families .

The problem for the mine managers is that there are years and 2003 was one of them when the Christmas break drags on for 10 days, leading to even more lost shifts than usual.

The problem may also have been compounded by poor management at certain mines, meaning the January start-up took longer than it should have done.

The news that production was down in the March quarter came as no surprise to analysts, although the scale of the fall was unexpected.

"I think all analysts build expectations into their models for a good December quarter and a bad March quarter," said a local gold analyst.

"Getting the quantum of the rise and consequent fall is tricky, and this is where the surprises can come in.

"I have some sympathy for management I don't believe they are trying to fool anyone, and they did try to manage the reality of the holidays as best they can."

However, he did concede that the distortions caused by the Christmas break make valid comparisons between successive quarters difficult "because one is not comparing like with like."

HSBC analyst Allan Cooke said lost production over Christmas "is clearly a problem, as lost production shifts mean lost income, at a time when margins are already under pressure because of the strong rand".

David Hall and Ria Papier of Merrill Lynch were even more outspoken in reports last week on the quarterly results of Harmony and of AngloGold. They described AngloGold's fall in production as "disappointing."

"As AngloGold attempts to display itself as a global player, it cannot afford to let the Christmas break disrupt production.

"It is time SA joined the 21st century and (companies) mine 24/7 and not two shifts, 5½ days per week," they wrote.

With a 16% fall in production, Harmony's performance was "devastated" over the March quarter. However, they did not let management off the hook.

"Harmony did not handle the Christmas break well and the consequences of this reverberate throughout these results", the Merrill Lynch analysts said .

Current talks between Harmony and the unions to move to a 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year structure might be a way forward.

Hotel staff, firemen, broadcasters and armed response gunmen all work over the Christmas break, and SA's mineworkers may soon join them.

With the strong rand hammering SA's mining companies, they may need to adopt a more rigorous working structure.

The unions are likely to show some resistance, but if Ebenezer Scrooge could be converted to the wonders of Christmas, even SA's mining unions and managers might be persuaded to agree on the practicalities of modern working practices.

The time for humbug is over.

May 05 2004 07:25:42:000AM John Fraser Business Day 1st Edition

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http://www.minesite.com/archiv…may-2004/jaguar050504.htm

Date : May 5, 2004

Jaguar Resources Performs Against The Trend Following Encouraging Drilling Results In Brazil.

Interesting to see that Jaguar Resources Corporation was one of the very few Canadian juniors whose share price advanced significantly last week. This is a company Minews has been planning to write about since discovering that Mark Jones 111 was chairman. Mark was previously running Star Resources, a company seeking diamonds in Arkansas, which transmogrified itself into Jaguar and is now exploring for gold in Brazil. He is a former director of Arequipa Resources which was sold to Barrick Gold for $C1 billion four years ago, was founder and vice chairman of Crown Resource Corporation which has been bought by Kinross Gold for $US 120million, and is also chairman of Peru-based Solitario Resources. He is remembered best in the UK as being a friend of the Baring family and contributing some seed corn money to Minesite in its early stsages of life.

Jaguar has assembled a major land position in the prolific Tapajos gold district of Brazil. The Tapajos is a 350-km by 300-km area in the southwest part of Para state, where local artisinal miners started a gold rush in the 1970s that still produces a high percentage of Brazil’s alluvial gold output. The company controls the Tocantinzinho and Mamoal gold projects which cover approximately 38,275 hectares and modern exploration techniques are being brought to bear on them. The Tocantinzinho gold project is located over a zone of pre-existing large open pits hand-dug by local miners into the highly weathered saprolite and laterite primary gold mineralization that underlay eluvial gold-bearing deposits. An initial advanced-stage project area measuring 1,200 metres by 300 metres has already been delineated for drilling with extensive soil and channel sampling and auger drilling.

Having got the Tocantinzinho project under its belt Jaguar then acquired an option to earn a 100 per cent interest in the nearby 10,000-hectare Mamoal gold project which lies directly along the continuing strike length of the Tocantinzinho shear zone, 30 kms to the southeast of the first project area. This zone is a crustal-scale fault that hosts the largest alluvial gold producers within the Tapajos and it has a strike length of at least 2 kms on the Mamoal project. It is said to be comparable to Cadillac Break which controls the largest mines in the Abitibi Belt in Canada. As at Tocantinzinho, Mamoal was one of the largest alluvial gold producers in the Tapajos District from 1980 to 1992, with peak alluvial production greater than 700 gold ounces per week in the late Eighties. What’s more, the Mamoal claim block hosts at least three open pits dug to recover the primary gold deposits underlying the alluvial gold.

As at Tocantinzinho, the primary gold mineralization is hosted in weathered-rock quartz veins and stockwork over 50 to 100 metres wide zones. .Jaguar’s management is now focused on intensive mapping, sampling and auger-drilling of the Mamoal open-pit areas starting late this spring to identify drill targets. As at Tocantinzinho, while the first zones scheduled for systematic exploration are likely to be the primary open pit areas, both projects also host numerous nearby targets for multiple additional potential gold prospects.

The news that excited the market last month was the drilling results from the first four diamond drill holes of the eight holes scheduled in Phase 1 drilling at Tocantinzinho. All four of these holes intersected mineralization with the best intercept of 170.2 metres grading 1.84 g/t gold and the next best was 91.9 metres which assayed 1.01 g/t gold. Both of these holes were still in mineralization at depth and only a small proportion of the strike length is being tested at this stage. In addition two of the holes penetrated tailings left by the garimpeiros and the two intercepts of 19.82 metres and 10.68 metres graded 2.15 g/t gold and 1.36 g/t gold respectively. To obtain such grades out of tailings gives an indication of the rich gold being mined by the garimpeiros and confirms these tailings as an additional resource. A second phase of drilling will start at any moment to target the extension of the mineralized zone along strike and across width.

More results from the first phase have just been announced and the intersections are just as big, if not bigger, and the grades a shade higher than the first four. Mark Jones certainly sounded very confident that Jaguar is onto something big when Minews spoke to him in Texas. He was also very complimentary about the exploration skills of the garimpeiros which led him to these projects. “These modern-day geologists have a whole lot of clever equipment,” he said, “ but for basic expertise, common sense and persistence give me an artisan miner any time.” It is a sentiment that successful explorers in Africa like John Park of African Eagle would echo. Majors such as Rio Tinto, Barrick Gold, Placer Dome, Phelps Dodge and Kinross Gold have all been attracted to the Tapajos area and it will be interesting to watch and compared their progress with that of Jaguar..

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Placer wants Chile tax clarity for mine decision

Reuters, 05.05.04, 1:20 PM ET

http://www.forbes.com/business…004/05/05/rtr1360156.html

*Fiat Money* in Reinkultur!

Toll, noch eine weitere Zentralbank ist nun endgültig Goldfrei!

Bin mal gespannt wie lange es geht, bis die armeninische Drachme ihren inneren Wert erreicht, und Armenien um Finanz Hilfe beim IWF bittet.

Die Begründung der Zentralbank, warum sie das letzte Gold "verkauft" hat, macht Radio Erewan alle Ehre.

Wenigstens lauert hier keine Gefahr mehr von weiteren Goldverkäufen!

Gruss

ThaiGuru

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http://www.rosbaltnews.com/2004/05/06/66533.html

Rosbalt, 05/05/2004, 13:05

At USD 400 an Ounce, Armenia Dispenses with Its Gold Reserve

EREVAN May 5.

Armenia has sold its gold reserve, and the Armenian Central Bank no longer will accumulate gold, Tigran Sarkisian, the bank chief, announced at a press conference here. Sarkisian said the nation's gold reserve of 1.4 tonnes was sold when gold prices reached USD 400 an ounce. The resulting profit, he said, was USD 5.5 million.

'Gold is considered a means of accumulating wealth. At the same time, holding gold offers very little profit,' Sarkisian said. He also explained the drop in the value of the US dollar with respect to the Armenian drachma as a result of a sharp rise in Armenia's gross national product and a consequent increase in demand for drachmas. He also noted last year's sharp rise in transfers from abroad to a total of approximately USD 450 million.

The dollar has fallen 5.3% against the drachma in the past 12 months.

kalle14

Die Geschichte lehrt uns, dass Gewalt nichts bringt, oder zumindest keinen Bestand hat.

Lass bitte Deine Schippe im Schuppen.

Veränderungen an unserem *Fiat Money* System werden zum einen durch Wissen, und danach durch Aufklärung anderer erreicht, und zum anderen werden sie hauptsächlich durch Sachzwänge, fundamentale Gegebenheiten, und den Auswirkungen von über Jahrzehnte begangenen Fehlern, und Missbräuchen unseres *Fiat Money* Systems zwangsläufig früher, oder später eintreten.

Falls Du das ganze System erkennst, hast Du einen riesigen Vorteil gegenüber der grossen Masse von nichts ahnenden Anlegern. Wir haben uns beide anscheinend bereits auf diese meiner Ansicht nach zwangsläufig kommenden Veränderungen finanziell durch den Kauf von Gold, und Silber vorbereitet, und wenn wir andere Mitmenschen ermuntern dies ebenfalls zu tun, leisten wir einen kleinen, aber wichtigen positiven Beitrag dazu, dass unsere Gesellschaft hoffentlich schon bald wieder zu einem ehrlicheren, echten, durch Gold gedeckten Finanzsystem zurückfindet.

Mit der Schippe erreicht man ein solches Ziel nicht.

Gruss

ThaiGuru

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May 5 - Gold $393.20 up $1.70 - Silver $6.09 up 7 cents

Goldman Sachs/Gold Cartel Sit On Gold, Rallies Anyway

Zitat

In the hour of adversity be not without hope / For crystal rain falls from black clouds... Persian Poem

GO GATA!!!

Dear Congressional Staff member (sometime in 2006):

In your efforts to provide information to the Congressional investigating committee about the gold price manipulation scandal, I know you have punched in "Goldman Sachs" in the Café’s Search Function and this has brought you here. Of course, I realize it has taken you to hundreds of other MIDAS commentaries also. You will want to check what you read and compare it with the Comex trading sheets.

When I hit the hay last night, gold was up over $2 in Asian trading. By the time I woke up, it was over $3 higher. Then, for no reason, as has happened so often over the last 5+ years, gold was smashed as we came into the New York trading period:

Hi Bill,

Gold had been trading around $394/$395 most of the morning here in London but ever since about 7:30 am nyt it has been sold down while the euro has remained firm above $1.21. Yesterday at 6pm London the euro was at $ 1.2076 and gold $392.75. Now it is $391.75 and euro is $1.2125!

Rgds
Mario

The reason for gold’s retreat: Goldman Sachs selling on behalf of the cabal. They sat on bullion all day long doing what they could to knock it down before buying a portion of their sales back late in the day, At one point, they managed to take it $1.50 lower on the session. All the while, the euro was strengthening. Oh yes, and critically important oil, the commodity which has affected the price of gold for so many years, was screeching towards $40 per barrel. It closed at $39.57, up another 59 cents. The euro closed at 121.56, up .79 and the dollar fell .55 to 89.50.

Meanwhile, over in the bond pits, the vigilantes were letting the bonds have it, as inflation signs are everywhere. The 30-year June bond finished the day at 106 7/32, down 13/32 and registered a new low close for the move.

Dollar down, oil up, bonds down and the gold physical market very firm – seems like a recipe for a roaring gold day to me, especially since it was battered so much last month. Not so! By day’s end the fundamentals were so powerful even Goldman Sachs’ efforts proved to be only marginally successful. However, they did keep gold from closing near $400, which is what it should have done.

I hope this will be helpful in exposing Goldman Sachs for violating anti-trust laws, whether it be on behalf of a panicked US Government concerned about inflation, or not.

BILL MURPHY
CHAIRMAN
GOLD ANTI-TRUST ACTION COMMITTEE

The gold open interest fell 637 contracts to 246,863.

Word to me is more and more wealthy Americans are turning to gold bullion for portfolio protection. One veteran dealer opened a wave of accounts over the past 10 days from successful 30 to 50 year olds who had never owned physical before. The account size was generally $50,000 to $100,000. As this sort of thinking builds, it will put more and more pressure on the crooks trying to hold the price down.

The gold bullish consensus is only 26%. Silver is 33%. The euro is 28%.

Gold closed above its 200-day moving average, a healthy sign.

Do most of you know how small a market silver is? Only 5 to 7% the size of gold. Thus, it is a market which is easily manipulated, as we well know. I have not had any updates on the silver physical situation. As soon as I do, I will pass on the information.

The silver open interest fell another 3274 contracts to 93,166 in another bout of liquidation. The demoralized specs are running for hills. The set up for a stunning rally gets better by the day.

Copper, battered by the Chinese slowdown stories, has rallied back to $124.35 from the $116 level. Commodities as a group show no signs of going into a major slide.

One of the major bullion dealers told a plugged-in Café member the GOLD PIPELINE IS DRY! There just isn’t enough physical gold out there to satisfy demand at these low prices. With oil on the move, the dollar and bond prices weakening, The Gold Cartel is desperately trying to keep gold from rising sharply, which, as we know, will have the pundits citing the rise as an inflationary sign. The Fed, The Gold Cartel and Bush Administration prefer to keep the truth from the American public any way they can.

Keep your eye on the gold lease rates. If the gold physical market pipeline IS as dry as our camp thinks it is, they could shoot up as the cabal searches for ways to find enough gold to keep it from exploding.

The gold fundamentals continue to improve by THE DAY now, instead of by the week. Gold could soar at any time!

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The John Brimelow Report

Soothing Bianco

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Indian ex-duty premiums: AM $10.11, $9.02, with world gold at $393.95 and $394.05. High: lavish for legal imports. Opinion, previously faltering, now seems to be swinging back to the idea of the pro-business BJP getting an adequate number of seats in India’s very protracted election. This could be significant for gold because it could strengthen the rupee and therefore stimulate gold import demand.

China and Japan remain closed.;

Gold traded 51,230 contracts on Tuesday, with open interest falling only 637 lots to 246,863. The CFTC data on Friday could be market moving. Courageous Refco Research has called a low:

Zitat

"Buy 1 June gold at market. Risk close under 386. Expect 408."

One continues to suspect a substantial, defended, short position on Comex. ScotiaMocatta says of yesterday’s NY trading:

Zitat

"Gold reached a high of 393.50/394.00 where dealer offering capped the price rise. Overseas profit taking then weighed on the price forcing a sell off to 390.60/391.10 before finishing 391.50/392.00".

And Standard London adds:

Zitat

"gold rallied to a high of $393.50 bid with dealers betting on no change in interest rates by the FOMC before a bout of fund selling into the close saw the market end the day with a pared gain of $4.30 at $391.70."

(Of course the FOMC did not change rates.)

Technically, of course, gold looks appalling, and the shares even worse. Typical is the Commonwealth Bank of Australia:

Zitat

"Gold is looking ugly technically. A trend line in the chart opposite would suggest that the medium term price rise has not definitively ended, but we suspect that the metal’s run has passed."

This has to mean every trend-following, "black box", momentum player is at least out, and probably short. Gold has unsurprisingly shown an indifferent performance in NY today.

While waiting for this negativism to run its course, Bianco Research provides some entertainment. In their "News Clips/Daily Commentary" service this morning they juxtapose two WSJ stories on Goldman Sachs, commenting on an adulatory one:

"Under the direction of Mr. Blankfein, the amount of money at risk has been rising steadily. Goldman's last quarterly results indicate that the average sum it could lose on any given day grew to $71 million, up from just $28 million in the fourth quarter of 2000. By contrast, Morgan Stanley, Goldman's main rival in trading and investment banking, estimates that in the third quarter, the last data available, it could lose a much more modest $39 million on a bad trading day"

and following with another reporting an unusually high flow of defections from the firm:

"In recent months, bankers have left the securities firm both …in some cases for jobs at relative upstarts in investment banking that might once have struggled to lure them away given the prestige of the Goldman name."

JB

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CARTEL CAPITULATION WATCH

Another quiet trading session for the US stock market. The DOW lost 6 to 10,310, while the DOG gained 7 to 1957.

Wall Street likes this:

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- An index of U.S. service industries unexpectedly rose to a record in April and more companies were hiring than at any time since November 2000, a private survey showed.

The Institute for Supply Management's index of financial services, construction, retail and other non-manufacturing enterprises that make up the largest share of the economy climbed to 68.4 in April from the previous high of 65.8 in March. Readings greater than 50 indicate expansion.

–END

The oil good news:

OPEC Overproducing, Cartel President Says

Tuesday May 4, 11:06 pm ET

JAKARTA (Reuters) - OPEC (News - Websites) President Purnomo Yusgiantoro said on Wednesday the oil producers' cartel was currently producing 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) more than its official output limit and there was enough fuel in the market. –END-

The oil bad news is the overproduction isn’t stopping the price from moving higher.

If the heinous terrorists ever are successful in taking out a Saudi oil refinery for any length of time, we are going to come in one morning with oil at $50 per barrel. The Gold Cartel will be sucking wind big time if that ever occurs.

GATA’s Mike Bolser:

Hi Bill:

The Fed added $4 Billion in repos and this action rose the repo pool to $23.17 Billion. The continues to keep thew pool's moving average rising and the DOW's moving average continues to smoothly follow the gentle support.

Those that doubt the reality of the Fed's plan to intervene in the DOW and especially the other key commodities such as petroleum and precious metals are simply following their ingrained belief mechanisms, placed and reinforced by experience and the daily flow of government propaganda.

Attempting to sway them at this point is a waste of time and energy our task is to communicate with those whose perceptions have not been frozen in prehistoric amber. We in the gold bug community should not allow the soldiers of the cartel to sap our strength by reacting to their pejorative labels of "conspiracy theorists". The body of evidence is too high for us to bother. If an interested party hasn't got it by now they aren't going to ever get it.

The issue today regarding government intervention is one of apathy. Almost everyone accepts manipulation and even supports it because THEIR paper stock portfolios are "rising", "don't rock the boat", they seem to be saying. Well there ARE a few folks who haven't heard about the truth so we will keep appealing to them to place a reasonable fraction of their wealth in physical precious metal, which is my current recommendation. COMEX traders are playing with fire due to the rising probability of a default at which point the supply will be zero and the demand, infinite, as Professor Antal Fekete has just reminded us

http://www.financialsense.com/…als/fekete/2004/0503.html

In any interventional scheme, the future is known by the interventionists thus they have the prerogative to act based on the known future thus we witnessed Gold Corp down graded just before a downdraft in gold. The smaller gold equities are relatively safe and hold proportionately greater gain potential as gold grinds higher. Goldmoney.com is another wonderful way to participate in physical metal at a ridiculously low "commission" rates.

Even with the knowledge that gold is going higher, there are nevertheless setbacks so gold bugs need to trade a portion of their positions at highs and lows.
Mike

GATA’s Ed Steer, who has a sizeable mailing list, received the following commentary from Ross Beaty, the CEO of Pan American Silver:

Please delete me from receiving your weekly commentary. I get too many unsolicited emails already. Butler's personal criticism of the silver CEOs is quite extraordinary and utterly misguided. But he has a thick skin he says, and so he should not complain when I suggest he is simply nuts. Anyway, I don't want to read any more of this conspiracy-theory drivel. Believe it if you want, it's a free world. I don't.
Ross Beaty

In other words, this Beaty is saying the following are also conspiracy-theory drivelists:

Ferdinand Lips, author of Gold Wars
John Embry, President of Sprott Asset Management
Frank Veneroso, author of The Gold Book
Jim Sinclair, "Mr. Gold"
Don Doyle, President of Blanchard Coin
GATA
The GATA ARMY

I read Beaty’s comment to a very bright Café member who immediately sold his Pan American shares in grave concern for the man’s sanity. Mr. Beaty may be reached at:

rbeaty@panamericansilver.com

This one is a HOOT! JP Morgan is surely qualified to fix the gold price every day in London. They have had years worth of practice:

Barclays and JP Morgan front runners for gold seat

By Katherine Griffiths, Banking Correspondent

04 May 2004

Barclays Capital and JP Morgan are the two front runners in the battle to replace NM Rothschild as one of a handful of financial institutions that fix the gold price every day.........

-END-

On the Buffett-like investment approach:

Bill,

Great commentary, as usual, these last couple of hectic days. Your explanation of the fundamental factors influencing gold's price should be required reading for every PM investor. Sometimes I wonder if all the guys who call themselves advisors ignore GATA's evidence because of the "not invented here" syndrome. They didn't figure the manipulation out themselves, so rather than give somebody else a plug, they just pretend the information isn't important.

I like your recommendation to follow a Buffett-like approach to gold and be patient enough for the fundamentals to overwhelm short-term influences. That also means investors should think hard before buying stocks on margin. How many margin accounts could have survived the mini-crash in shares we just had? I'm guessing that forced sales from margin accounts made the latest plunge a whole lot steeper than it would have been otherwise.

Last night I came across a column by Captain Hook that announced that gold is on its way down to $292. The column includes lots of colorful charts to prove the point. For me, this is an example of how chartists can go off the deep end. Has the Captain never heard of John Brimelow and his research into Asian demand for gold? How can gold reach $292 when there is likely enough demand out there to BUY OUT the Central Banks if they were foolish enough to dump all their holdings at once?

Besides, when will people realize that the gold cartel, as well as the floor specialists, can read, too? These guys must understand charts as well as anyone and use both inside knowledge and manipulation to clean out the accounts of anyone who relies on charts to make decisions. It's not much different than the way insiders back in the 20's used "pools" to fleece the public. That's what the SEC was created to fix. I guess it doesn't count if the government itself IS the pool.
Best wishes,
Peter R.

Derek Van Artsdalen from San Antonio:

Hi again, Bill:

I've been keeping an eye on the S. African Rand for your readers, and I wanted to send along this quick update. It appears we've got a technical breakdown, as I've been expecting for some time now. Have a look at the chart:

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This is the 3-year chart for the Rand, and you can see clearly that the price action has definitely droppedbelow the long-term support line of the uptrend (blue line) as
highlighted by the green arrow. Also, both the Relative Strength and the Moving Average Convergence/Divergence (MACD) indicators are weak and heading down right now (red circles).

I don't know if this is the beginning of a serious weakening of the Rand. This particular breakdown can no doubt be attributed to the recently strong U.S. dollar, but perhaps it's indicative of the beginning phases of general weakening among all the world's fiat currencies. We already know what the price of gold, the world's only real money, has been doing against the greenback, but let's see what's happening to the price of gold in Rands:

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As you can see, the recent 4-month downtrend in the price of gold in Rands (downsloping purple line) has come to an end, at least for now. The trendline was violated to the upside (green arrow) just over the past few days, exactly as I had predicted last week in "Midas." (Ouch! Sorry—I just threw my shoulder out of joint patting myself on the back).

The only resistance left now is the major downtrend ceiling (red line). I don't pretend to know if it will be broken, but it certainly looks like a real possibility now. If gold continues to get more expensive in terms of Rand, it should really begin to show up in the prices of the S. African mining stocks such as DROOY and GFI, both of which had strong closes Monday and Tuesday.

I'll keep watching this for your subscribers and will let you know as soon as there's any substantial change in the situation.
Thanks much,
Derek

The gold shares were creamed in the last half hour. The XAU fell 1.92 to 84.56 and the HUI lost 4.70 to 184.74. Sarge notes:

What a SUPERB job they did (starting at EXACTLY 3:30) of crushing all out gains for the day in the HUI. Relentless non-stop programmed selling. A full 4 points down in 25 minutes. Just wonderful.
So what happened at 3:30?? Why the move back to EXACTLY 185?? Why it busts the bullish technicals from yesterday, that’s why.

The Gold Cartel forces do it again. What a coming mess these scoundrels have created. The good news is we are getting more inklings the physical gold market is drying up. This is their weak link. There will come a time when playing these derivatives paper games to rig the price just won’t work any more. Keep that in mind as we slog along here.

GATA BE IN IT TO WIN IT!

MIDAS

Appendix

From Down Under

As more cases of torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US and UK forces come to light, those that might be held responsible are ducking for cover. The Brigadier in charge of Abu Ghraib prison says she didn't know what was going on; neither did anyone else it seems, at least anyone who could have done anything about it, despite being told about these abuses by US Major-General Antonio Taguba back in February. As usual, those really responsible will probably get away scot-free, while the dispensables, like the halfwits who were only following orders will be left to carry the can. That process has already started - 6 squaddies have been charged, while a handful of officers have been 'reprimanded'. As I write, news is being released of an investigation into 25 deaths of prisoners in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. What a crock. Ranking officers must have known these people died (or as seems likely, were beaten to death under interrogation) so why weren't all their deaths investigated at the time?

The abuses were carried out by military intelligence (such an apt oxymoron that phrase - goons who beat and torture people to death defy the term 'intelligence') and probably the CIA. The CIA won't even cop a slap on the wrist because they're answerable to no one, not even GWB. They have always operated outside the legal parameters that restrict everyone else's activities and will probably continue to do so.

The outrage in the Arab world is huge, far beyond anything that westerners can comprehend. Even Saddam wouldn't have stooped to the use of sexual humiliation as a means of torture. Dhia al-Shweiri, who was beaten and tortured by the Americans at Abu Ghraib, said he was electrocuted, beaten and suspended from the ceiling with his hands tied behind his back, "but that's better than the humiliation of being stripped naked." "Shoot me here," he added, pointing between his eyes," but don't do this to us."

Something else that Americans and the West don't understand is the Muslim and Arab concept of payback. Debts will always be repaid, and wrongs will always be revenged, however long it takes. Many may wonder why Al Qaeda has taken so long to follow up on the 9/11 attacks. Some might be lulled into a false sense of security by believing that defence measures are so efficient that any plots on mainland USA have either been deterred or disrupted. But for Bin Laden and his increasingly huge band of devotees, time is not an issue. The wrongs will be avenged at a time of their choosing, and probably when least expected. And the vengeance will almost certainly make 9/11 look like a picnic - Al Qaeda loves a spectacle.

Easy Al Greenspan was running for cover last night too. His statement on interest rates was just what the market wanted - Al makes sure he never upsets the screen jockeys and the trading banks. Yes, interest rates would eventually have to rise, but not now, and when rises come they will be 'measured' - whatever that means. As usual, nobody can readily decipher the gibberish that Greenspan continually spouts, and no one's any the wiser as to when the first hike will come. But by saying that inflationary pressures are 'contained' Big Al took a humungous sidestep away from reality. Anyone who has to buy just about anything knows that such a statement is pure garbage, especially when they're filling their petrol tank or buying heating oil etc. But Greenspan had no choice other than to talk such drivel because he simply cannot raise rates, either now or in the foreseeable future. He knows, and even the dummies on CNBC are becoming aware, that debt levels of consumers are so high that even a 25bp point hike will do serious damage. That corner that Al and the Fed have painted themselves into by encouraging every man and his dog to borrow and spend is getting smaller by the day.

Greenspan's only hope is that business expenditure picks up and takes the heat off the exhausted, bloated consumer. He also has to hope that some full time jobs appear in the stats on Friday - if they don't we might see a 1% discount rate until well after the November election - or until the whole house of cards comes crashing down, when that 1% is likely to go to zero.

As for George Bush, well he hasn't any hope at all. The world is thoroughly pissed off with Dubya - over Iraq and prisoner torture, and even more over Sharon's now ex-policy on Gaza and the West Bank. Sharon looks like a fool after his own party resoundingly defeated his proposition, and because Bush was so quick to endorse it, he looks pretty damn silly too. Over 50 US ex-diplomats are convinced that George is a prat, so much so that they wrote him a letter and told him.

The damage done to Muslim/US relations is probably irreversible. But George might just mollify some of the more moderate leaders if he were take full responsibilty for the Iraqi debacle, get down on his knees to Kofi Annan and apologise to him for pilloring the UN, beg him to take over peacekeeping duties, apologise to the American people and the families of hundreds of dead US servicemen and women, apologise to the Iraqi people for killing thousands of innocent civilians, apologise to the prisoners his clowns have beaten and tortured, and who have acted as badly if not worse than the dictator and his henchmen Bush removed form power. He should then fire everyone in his administration in any way connected with the plan to invade Iraq, including Powell, Wolfowitz, Armitage and the rest of the neocon nincompoops. He should fire George Tenet and his CIA goons who supplied hopeless information about WMD's. He should then fall on his sword and resign. And oh yes, before doing that he should kick Alan Greenspan out of office for manoeuvering the American economy into a black hole from which it may take years to emerge.

Do all that George, and you might just avert a catastrophe. Fat chance.

The Idle Fellow