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To: Ken Benes who wrote (52700)	5/14/2000 8:35:00 AM
From: Rarebird	Respond to of 116758

<Investors prefer the opportunities in technology> What they have gotten lately is a gusher of margin calls and some big losses. I'm looking at the beginning of a high tech bear market that may last a good couple of years at least. If the dollar heads lower, the POG will head higher whether the CB's like it or not.

To: Ken Benes who wrote (52700)	5/14/2000 12:20:00 PM
From: Alex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116758

Good God. More supply :)............ <<Dave Overton also may have been the most trusting man in Austin. He believed a 9 1/2-foot, bald extraterrestrial named Hatonn would beam him to a spaceship and whisk him to immortality. He cut down the towering ash tree in his front yard to give space aliens room to land. To make sure his house could be spotted from outer space, he looped a web of wires through other trees and circled his yard with a necklace of orange traffic cones. Friends and neighbors on West 30th Street accepted the retired University of Texas math instructor in all his peculiar glory. When Overton died in 1996 at age 81, the neighborhood lost part of its soul. They mourned his death -- and his depth of gullibility. For before he died, the man who pinched pennies so hard his wallet could have been sewn shut secretly gave more than $500,000 to a California group claiming to be in contact with Hatonn, whom followers call "Commander in Chief of the Pleiades Flight Sector." Today, nine years after Overton gave nearly $390,000 in gold coins to Hatonn's followers, the fight over claim to the golden treasure continues. The gold, which at one point was taken from Hatonn's followers and buried in a back yard, is expected to be divided up this week by Travis County Probate Court Judge Guy Herman. Despite Overton's wish to disappear from earthbound life by being beamed into outer space, he died of prostate cancer in an Austin nursing home on Feb. 10, 1996. Overton, who had an astonishing ability to fix or create electrical gadgets, had always been "Neighbor Dave," the quirky genius-in-residence. To neighbors, he was a sweet, old recluse living like a pauper in a home sagging under a lifetime hoard of spare parts, tools, books, magazines, gadgets and boxes of rubber bands, thumbtacks, plastic foam balls and other oddball you-name-its. He even had maps of where to find objects in the jungle of junk cleaved only by a narrow footpath through the house. But then Overton hit his Golden Years. Literally. The giving begins He began giving away the fortune that friends and neighbors didn't even know he owned. Before he died, Overton gave away 1,800 gold coins worth almost $390,000 at the time and $170,000 in cash to the Phoenix Institute for Research and Education, which mailed out publications with speeches typed by a Phoenix Institute member who claimed Hatonn spoke to her on a special radio wave frequency. "He was just convinced that giving that money was essential to show his faith so he would get a ride on the spaceship," said Laird Palmer, a local lawyer who tried to get Overton to change his mind. "To get on the spaceship, you had to buy a ticket. And that's where that money went." For nine years, various parties have staked a claim to Overton's gold. Hatonn's followers at the Phoenix Institute said it was theirs. A rebel Phoenix Institute member took the gold and buried it in his back yard, claiming it was his alone. And, after Overton died, Austin lawyers representing his estate claimed it for Overton's friends named in his 1995 will. At Monday's hearing, Herman will be asked to approve a division of the 1,800 gold coins as a settlement agreement proposed by lawyers for the Phoenix Institute and Overton's estate. Up for grabs are 59 ounces of Hungarian Koronas, 706 ounces of Austrian Coronae, 232 ounces of British Sovereigns and 50 ounces of South African Krugerrands -- nearly 1,050 ounces of gold.>> austin360.com

To: Ken Benes who wrote (52700)	5/17/2000 6:28:00 AM
From: Alex	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116758

Barrick lashes out at critics of its hedging program TORONTO, May 16, 2000 (The Canadian Press via COMTEX) -- Canada's largest gold producer, Barrick Gold Corp., says ``ridiculous'' comparisons of its hedging program are weighing down the company's stock price despite profits that are the industry's best. Top executives of Barrick took turns during the annual meeting Tuesday to defend the policy -- in which the company sells a percentage of production on futures markets thereby protecting it from sharp downturns in the world price of gold. ``The program was designed to be able to take advantage of higher gold prices and withstand changes in the financial markets,'' president Randall Oliphant said after the meeting. ``The use of the word `hedging' by other gold companies is an abuse of the term,'' he said. ``When you're selling more gold in a period of time than you can deliver, that's speculation and it's got nothing to do with hedging.'' Oliphant said Barrick's hedging program was designed to reduce the company's risk. ``To put us in the same category as those other ones, people now realize that it's totally ridiculous.'' Barrick is the world's fourth-largest gold producer, but is the most valuable gold company in the world in terms of stock market capitalization, said Barry Cooper with CIBC World Markets in Toronto. ``And when you're top dog, you're liable to get the puck thrown at you now and then ... as a result of envy more than anything else,'' said Cooper. With its principal mines in the United States and Peru, Barrick was able to boost its production to more than 3.6 million ounces in 1999. And with new mines being built in Nevada, Argentina and Tanzania, the company expects to push production up to five million ounces by 2003. Barrick's economic fundamentals remain bright. ``We are again the world's most profitable gold producer,'' Oliphant told shareholders. ``We achieved record performance with higher production, greater reserves and new levels of earnings and cash flow. And he told a shareholder at the meeting that Barrick's stock price -- which has risen about $4 in the last month -- should continue to profit now that ``the hedging cloud'' is no longer hanging over the company. Gold prices continued to languish -- closing Tuesday at $275.50 US on the New York Mercantile Exchange -- while Barrick shares gained 30 cents on the Toronto stock market to $27.60. The debate over hedging programs in the gold sector has been raging since late last year when soaring gold prices crippled two gold producers who had been betting on bullion prices falling rather than climbing. Instead of profiting from the unexpected hike of 30 per cent in less than two weeks, Montreal-based Cambior Inc., and Ashanti Goldfields Co. of Ghana, were caught having to buy gold on the market and sell it at lower prices to satisfy their futures contracts. Both companies have since been forced to sell assets or put themselves up for sale. But Barrick -- which was one of the primary architects of the hedging program in the gold industry -- has seen only the positives. Over the last decade, the company has been able to deliver gold at an average of $66 US an ounce higher than the spot market price. Barrick chairman and founder Peter Munk told shareholders this ``massive additional income'' has become the ``distinguishing feature of this company.'' And he criticized the media and others in the gold sector for labelling hedging as a bad idea for the industry. Cooper said part of the problem is there are few general investors involved in gold stocks these days, leaving the purists -- usually gold fund managers -- who invest solely in the gold sector. ``If they're investing only in gold, they look on hedging as a situation that in the past has not benefited them or their portfolio because of companies like Ashanti and Cambior,'' he said. ``The fund investors don't trust hedging for the most part.'' Copyright (c) 2000 The Canadian Press (CP), All rights reserved. -0- By James Stevenson