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To: long-gone who wrote (42547)	10/9/1999 10:20:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116763

North American gold companies with less of an exposure to hedging include Franco-Nevada Mining Corp.; Newmont Mining Corp., the second-biggest gold company; Goldcorp Inc.; Glamis Gold Ltd. and Meridian Gold Inc., analysts said. quote.bloomberg.com

To: long-gone who wrote (42547)	10/9/1999 11:13:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 116763

Richard, In the USA each state had banking laws that limited the number of branches that a bank could have. Usually 5 or less. So there were thousands of banks and one bank could not buy them all up, or even a few. In Canada there are3-4 major banks, coast to coast, all electronically linked and all with debit cards. I can access my account in Vancouver or in nova scotia amd get cash or deposit it. Each Canadian bank is huge compared to the many small state banks(The USA has huge commercial banks, far bigger than Canadian ones) and they had the economy of scale to rollout a national system and the smarts to tie them together in VISA/Master card or interac. European countries are similar, few huge banks. The many small entities in the usa all adopted different standards and would not trust each other to the extent that I could deposit into an account in Dallsa and have it show in my NY account....no, they wanted a wire fee, or it would take days. The USA does have a better federal check clearing law for interstate cheques(3 days) we have no such law and the banks can pull back a check for 30 days. Bill

To: long-gone who wrote (42547)	10/10/1999 12:03:00 AM
From: Don Lloyd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116763

Richard - (Proof "They" just don't get it & never will: Resisting Electronic Payment Systems: Burning Down the House? by Ben Craig Electronic innovations such as smart cards can significantly reduce the cost of payment transactions and increase their accuracy and efficiency ?but only if people use them. This Economic Commentary explores path dependence as a cause of the difficulty in adopting new payment system technologies, even when their advantages are apparent...) I assume that by 'They' you mean the potential and actual regulators and their analysts who presume that they know what is better for consumers than the consumers themselves do. I have never understood why anyone would think that a smart card would have any advantage to a consumer that would outweigh all of its disadvantages. If I lose one twenty dollar bill out of several that I am carrying, or if I lose one of a half dozen credit cards, I can still buy gasoline and food and have limited risk. If a smart card comes up empty, whether accurate or not, or lost, I will be stranded hungry with no warning. Credit cards have significant advantages to the consumer that are the result of competition among the issuers. It is possible that overall system costs would be lower if there was a government mandated system and no competition, but a lack of competition does not ordinarily benefit consumers. Debit cards have considerably less advantages, but still don't try to move critical balance information out into the dangerous real world from the institutionally backed up servers and mainframes. Regards, Don