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To: lorne who wrote (61517)	11/30/2000 8:41:43 AM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 116944

re: IMF & US soft landing they had to put a sof face on it, they have a country in full economic collapse: News Brief No. 00/107 November 26, 2000 International Monetary Fund 700 19th Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20431 USA IMF's Fischer Says Turkey Program on Track IMF First Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer said today that Turkey's IMF-supported economic program was on track and noted that the IMF's Executive Board is expected to consider in the third week of December the strengthened package of measures recently agreed by the Turkish authorities and IMF staff.1 ... imf.org

To: lorne who wrote (61517)	11/30/2000 11:09:17 AM
From: Gary H	Respond to of 116944

Does anyone else see an inverse head & shoulders on the Dow charts?

To: lorne who wrote (61517)	11/30/2000 11:47:25 AM
From: Alex	Respond to of 116944

Safe money to seek gold, writer says By Thom Calandra, FT MarketWatch.com 1:43:00 PM GMT Nov 30, 2000 NEW YORK (FTMW) - If the worsening tech tumble moves investors to flee the dollar, gold will become a shelter from the storm, says the editor of the Safe Money Report. Mind you, Larry Edelson is not saying gold will surge if the Nasdaq Composite continues to hurtle lower. The Florida-based writer, who has been following markets for 23 years, says the gold price first must break above $276 an ounce. It sells for about $267 an ounce in futures markets. "I expect gold to break out soon. But I wouldn't' be surprised if it fell to $250 an ounce one day and ran to $300 the next," says Edelson. A sharp drop in the dollar, which is showing signs of weakness against the Swiss franc and even the lowly euro this week, could be the spark. "If the dollar continues to decline, yes, gold will break out," says Edelson, who sees gold trading in a tight trading range for now. "Gold's fate is much more entwined with the dollar than anything else." Gold prices are largely denominated in dollars. A falling dollar could encourage overseas investors to buy the depressed metal. Out of tech, into gold Gold will benefit from the slide in technology stocks, "but when people least expect it," says Edelson, whose reports are found at www.safemoneyreport.com. Edelson bills himself as a bullion veteran. In the early 1980s, he says he became the largest gold arbitrage trader in the world by trading an average of $175 million worth of bullion each day. He started International Commodity Services, a brokerage that operated from Germany and Japan. His reasoning on the dollar is simple. Several weeks ago, the tech turmoil sent investors into the dollar. Bond prices benefited. That is changing. The slowing U.S. economy is "a bad omen for the dollar." A runaway trade deficit eventually will weaken the dollar, which trades near 15-year highs against many currencies. Edelson's killer argument is the tech tumble. Falling tech stocks will force overseas investors to liquidate their positions. That means more pressure on the dollar. Gold may shine, not silver Edelson has other views that stir opinions. One is that the coming gold rally won't necessarily benefit silver. "People who say silver is an industrial metal in short supply are missing the point," he says. "Digital cameras are killing silver. Plus, Comex (futures market) stockpiles are just a fraction of the world's silver." Edelson sees about 500 million ounces of silver in India, about 300 million ounces in Bahrain, Dubai and Thailand and another 500 million ounces in London and Zurich, which are centers for silver storage. Silver sells for about $4.60 an ounce. Edelson also says not all gold mining companies will benefit from a higher gold price. Companies such as Barrick Gold [US:ABX] that hedge their production by using derivatives contracts to lock in higher prices ultimately will suffer when gold prices surge. "I wouldn't be surprised to see Barrick and other companies fall in a rally," he says, pointing to Ashanti Goldfields' [US:ASL] drop last year when gold prices staged a brief rally. His favorites are companies that do little or no hedging. These include Homestake Mining [US:HM] , Franco-Nevada, Glamis Gold [US:GLG] and Placer Dome [US:PDG]. Thom Calandra is editor-in-chief of FTMarketWatch.com and CBS MarketWatch.com.

To: lorne who wrote (61517)	2/23/2001 4:18:45 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116944

OK, Great, Japan can start getting better soon!: Thursday February 22, 10:13 pm Eastern Time Japanese banks gird for losses to tackle bad debt By Shun Watanabe TOKYO, Feb 23 (Reuters) - In what would be a radical departure, the chances are growing that Japanese banks will report losses this year in response to mounting pressure for bolder action to write off bad loans, analysts say. Talk of a quicker balance sheet clean-up has lit a fire under bank stocks, which extended their winning streak into a fourth day on Friday. Tokyo's banking index gained 1.95 percent on Friday morning, taking its advance since February 8, the eve of an announcement by the Bank of Japan of steps to boost liquidity in the banking system, to more than 10 percent. The benchmark Nikkei 225 average has marked time over the same period. ``Hopes for an end to the bad loan woes coupled with a possible credit easing were behind the buying,'' said Masatoshi Sato, a manager in the equity division of Mizuho Investors Securities. Japanese banks in recent years have stayed in the black by meeting credit costs -- write-offs and loan loss provisions -- out of operating profits and sales of their equity holdings. But with core profits weak and the stock market sagging, their room for manoeuvre is narrowing. At the same time, ministers increasingly recognise the need to accelerate the disposal of bad loans to strengthen banks' balance sheets and try to reverse a long decline in bank lending. The upshot, reflected in a string of official comments this week, is a possible deal whereby the authorities would relax the conditions attached to a 1998/99 bail-out and encourage the banks to step-up write-offs even if that means posting losses. ``Those comments are the message from the government saying they want banks to deal with debt problems even at the expense of lowering net profits,'' said Hideyasu Ban, an analyst with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. LOOSENING THE RULES In return for an infusion of 9.5 trillion yen ($81 billion) in public money two years ago, the banks issued preferred shares to the government that it can convert into common stock under various conditions. These include a failure to meet agreed net profit targets -- hence the importance of securing waivers should the banks decide to go into the red. ``What they (the authorities) are tacitly saying is they are willing to loosen the rule,'' Ban said. The government has moved up a gear in its efforts to persuade banks to tackle their sour loans since Japan's partners in the Group of Seven industrial nations called on Tokyo at the weekend to do more to strengthen its financial system. The head of Japan's Financial Services Agency, Shoji Mori, said on Monday that financial markets were unlikely to lose faith with banks if they incurred losses as a result of dealing decisively with their bad loans. The next day Financial Services Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa went further by promising a package of measures by the end of March to help banks purge bad debts from their balance sheets. Yoshifumi Nishikawa, chairman of the Japanese Bankers' Association, promptly agreed that the problem of sour loans left over from the bursting of Japan's bubble economy a decade ago would not be resolved until banks wiped them off their books once and for all. ``The likelihood of major banks electing to post a net loss in March has increased,'' Yoshinobu Yamada, a senior analyst at Merrill Lynch, concluded. Nishikawa said it would be up to individual banks to decide what financial results to report, but analysts expect the industry, as in the past, to work out a common approach. ``I expect banks would let themselves go into the red only once they have agreed to do so together,'' said Naoto Odagiri, an analyst at BNP Paribas. BOJ PLAYS ALONG Even if banks do bite the bullet on profits to write off more loans, they would still face daunting challenges because of Japan's economies woes. ``Fears over potential further bad debts are unlikely to be completely dispelled merely by the banks' posting a loss in the current fiscal year,'' Merrill's Yamada said. Standard and Poor's on Thursday cited slow progress in reducing non-performing loans as a reason for stripping Japan of its top-notch AAA sovereign credit rating. Despite writing off 67 trillion yen of loans, banks last September still had 31 trillion yen of non-performing loans on their books, equivalent to six percent of GDP. And if international loan classifications are used, S&P said the total would be twice as high. Analysts welcomed the growing pressure for loan write-offs, which has been accompanied by steps from the Bank of Japan to ensure banks can borrow all they need from the central bank to avert any cash crunch at the end of the fiscal year on March 31. Indeed, a member of the BOJ's policy board, Teizo Taya, said on Thursday it might be willing to ease further if banks take aggressive measures to get rid of their non-performing loans. Frank Packer of Nikko Salomon Smith Barney said it was far from clear that the government, with an election for the Upper House of parliament due in July, has the political will to stomach the large bankruptcies that would result from a faster pace of write-offs. Nor was it clear that banks can afford the write-offs and still meet their internationally mandated capital requirements. ``However, it is clear that strong measures to clean up bank balance sheets would have to be accompanied by a looser monetary policy, in order to avoid an intensification of deflation,'' Packer said in a report. biz.yahoo.com