Fed concerned about wage inflation. What hypocrisy. They were all in favor of the biggest asset bubble in US history which fabulously enriched the financial class at the expense of those who actually produce.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Gold's day to day movement is unpredictable, but rarebird's year-end target of $310 now looks conservative.
Btw,, here is a story with long term ramifications even more bullish for POG than the ECB announcement.
Paris, Tuesday, September 28, 1999
Russia, China And India: Do Closer Ties Bode U.S.
Ill?
By Tyler Marshall Los Angeles Times Service
WASHINGTON - U.S. specialists in international affairs are closely monitoring signs of
increased cooperation among Russia, China and India, along with a growing sense in all three
countries, especially after NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia this spring, that U.S.
power must somehow be checked.
Although agreeing that the three nations are far from coalescing into a Eurasian anti-NATO axis,
the analysts remain concerned about a potentially grave threat: an alliance that would bring
together about 2.5 billion people, formidable military might and a vast stockpile of nuclear
weapons, all held together by the goal of countering America's global dominance.
''Right now, you have flirting,'' said Charles William Maynes, president of the Eurasia
Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. ''I don't know where this is going to go. If we
play our cards right, it's going to go nowhere.''
But if the relationships progress, Mr. Maynes said, ''then you basically have the world's
heartland - 2 billion people in China and India - allied with a formidable technological power in
Russia. That would be a disaster for the United States.''
The signs include a large and growing trade in arms between Russia and the two other
countries. The trade provides Russia with important arms-export markets and China and India
with sophisticated armaments ranging from advanced combat aircraft to nuclear submarines.
The blossoming relationships are already changing the military equation in Asia. China's
acquisition of Russian SSN-22 anti-ship missiles, for example, could quickly become a worry
for the U.S. 7th Fleet in any confrontation with Beijing.
The political desire for closer cooperation is reflected in high-level rhetoric about the need for
greater cooperation, usually mixed with thinly veiled anti-Western comments or calls for a
''multipolar world'' - which means counterbalancing America's global dominance.
During a visit to India in December, Yevgeni Primakov, then prime minister of Russia, floated
the idea of a ''strategic triangle'' committing the three nations to a policy of regional peace and
stability.
So far, the concept has not been fleshed out. But Western analysts see a series of converging
interests among the nations that, if driven by events, could easily add substance to talk of
strategic partnerships.
The three nations have common interests beyond from their shared discomfort about America's
might. They want a stable Central Asia; they fear the impact of militant Islam; they oppose
theater missile-defense systems; they strenuously back the primacy of the UN Security Council
in dealing with world crises, and they strongly support the principle of nonintervention in the
affairs of sovereign states, a principle overridden by NATO as it bombed to halt ''ethnic
cleansing'' this year in Kosovo Province in Yugoslavia.
All three countries opposed the bombing campaign that the United States led against Yugoslavia
on Kosovo's behalf, but the experience especially traumatized U.S. relations with Russia and
China. Moscow saw an alliance that Westerners had traditionally characterized as purely
defensive wade into a domestic conflict; China, in addition to the threat to the principle of
sovereignty, saw a U.S. B-2 bomber accidentally strike its embassy in the Yugoslav capital.
''Kosovo marks something of a divide that I believe is likely to accelerate the collaboration that
they pursue,'' said Jonathan Pollack, a senior East Asia specialist who tracks China-Russia
relations at Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, California. ''It all has more logic in the aftermath of
Kosovo.''
China's relations with India remain cool. But the two agreed in June to launch a security
dialogue, and they have restarted talks to resolve a decades-old border dispute.
Once-chilly Sino-Soviet relations began to thaw nearly a decade ago and have matured to the
point where President Boris Yeltsin of Russia has declared Russia and China to be ''strategic
partners.'' |
