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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Charters who wrote (70077)	5/23/2001 9:56:26 AM
From: goldworldnet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116762

Investors race for 'safe haven' gold By George Trefgarne Financial Correspondent The Telegraph, London May 22, 2001 The price of gold leapt 7pc yesterday -- its biggest rise for nearly two years -- as the precious metal dramatically rediscovered its traditional status as a safe haven from inflation and other uncertainties. The price is fixed in London at investment bank NM Rothschild and in the afternoon was fixed at $291.25 an ounce, up $18.10 since Friday. In late trading, it dropped back slightly to close at $290, up $16.85. It was the highest close since June last year. Worries have suddenly emerged that the recent aggressive interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve could have gone too far. There are also rumours that the Bank of China is converting its dollar holdings into gold as a result of worsening relations with America. Fears over inflation gained ground during the day as the price of oil jumped perilously close to the $30 a barrel mark amid heightened tensions in the Middle East. The benchmark Brent oil contract on London's International Petroleum Exchange rose 29 cents to trade as high as $29.68 a barrel. Peter Beaumont, a gold analyst at UBS Warburg, said: "There is no doubt that US inflation is one of the key elements. The investment picture has changed in the last quarter; we have fears of inflation again. I think it's not unreasonable to expect prices above $300 in two to three weeks." The sudden rally in gold will be welcomed by the industry. Since reaching a peak of over $800 in 1981, the metal has been on an almost constant downward trend. However, the metal is prone to dramatic moves. For several years, hedge funds have sold it short in the expectation that prices will fall and occasionally they get caught out. Yesterday, many of these funds were forced to reverse their trading positions rapidly. The same thing happened in September 1999 when the world's leading central banks said they would sell no more of their holdings. Peter Hambro, chief executive of Peter Hambro Mining and an experienced hand in the gold market, said he first noticed big signs of excitement at a conference organised by the World Gold Council last Friday. This caused traders in Asia, where markets were open over the weekend, to drive the price up by more that $22 to $296. * * *

To: E. Charters who wrote (70077)	5/23/2001 1:39:31 PM
From: Tom M	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116762

<There is something going on in the economy alright > EC, having worked with multiple mainframes & OS's & many generations of PCs and their OS's since their inception, I'd like to offer my theory on why it's come down to Wintel in recent years. It's in big brother's best interest, whether one considers big brother to be government or big business or a merger of both. True innovation and productivity gains are too hard to be controlled and directed. Freezing innovation and locking into Wintel and especially what started as an Ascii character based internet protocol had to have been a dream come true for a controlling administration. Gov't has a history of trying to hold back new technology until it has its back door. We've had some pretty significant technologies developed within the last decade involving search capabilities and data mining. The conversion of analog communications to digital offers unlimited unmanned monitoring capabilities. For those in control, the choice of Intel is interesting because Intel has never been known to be an innovator. They were always good at copying and shrinking other's designs. I'm still waiting to see their 64-bit Merced chip which somehow put DEC's mature 3rd generation debugged 64-bit Alpha chip off the map during this last administration, even though it's yet to exist. (BTW, Goldman represented CPQ who eliminated DEC). I believe they could never keep up with what DEC's engineers (for one) could throw at them, so lets get rid of who can stand in our way. Competition the spirit of Clinton era gov't/business - I don't think so. I read years ago that due to the complex design of Merced, development of testing software alone would be a 3 year plus task. I believe we've seen the same kind of lack of innovation from MSFT, a company that exists because they bought their first version of DOS for $50,000 (of course not telling them they were going to resell it to IBM). I don't call innovation buying up a potentially competitive product and just bundling it with your OS. Was the street offering billions to help develop more productive and efficient hardware and OS's? I think they wanted it to stop there, thank you very much: Here's a bunch of billions to go distract yourselves with Dot.Coms that have no business plans that can ever make money. Please also look away while we manipulate the Gold market as we're also feeling a bit threatened by anything representing the will of a free market since we "worked so hard"(Abby) to eliminate it. There is something going on in the economy alright regards, Tom