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

To: Enigma who wrote (96671)	12/9/2003 12:55:56 PM
From: marek_wojna	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116898

Maybe there is no need for the proof. Maybe the whole trial against ABX and JPM is used as the baseball bat over AG head. Young Bush doesn't want to be screwed up by Fed. Res. same way daddy was only on the opposite, daddy went down because AG didn't lower the rates at the proper time now he might raise them at worst time for reelection, bringing unprecendented downturn for the US economy. Senior Bush never hide it who was to blame for losing the election. How the Bushes will look like if two of them were not able to get Saddam who still remain the legitimate president of Iraq as no act of capitulation was ever signed? Never mind Bin Laden - looks like this one is totally out of reach. Conclusion is young one is desperate to have another four years and Greenspan will be forced to do everything to help him, otherwise too many things might be discovered during the trial. Keep in mind that the senior one is on the board of directors, he might leak lots of info without being incriminated himself.

To: Enigma who wrote (96671)	12/9/2003 11:47:45 PM
From: d:oug	Respond to of 116898

Alas, poor Barrick. Hedges can't survive gold's rise. - Dear Friends of gold and GATA: groups.yahoo.com - globeandmail.com By Eric Reguly Globe & Mail, Toronto Thursday, December 4, 2003 - Barrick Gold chairman Peter Munk in 2000 on hedging: "... rock-solid [of] most understandable format." Mr. Munk last month: "The commitment to hedging is gone." ... Barrick [pushed] hedging [down] the mine shaft.... Barrick's hedge book [active] for about 20 years [and] touted as a sure-fire way to make a buck regardless of the gold price... ... forward sales contracts [highly] flexible [to allow] deferred delivery [so] immediate production [be] sold [at] higher spot price. ... Barrick, the anti-Christ [to] unhedged miners... Why did Barrick lose religion so quickly? ... everyone would be smiling: Barrick was protected from the low spot price, the investor would be protected from a high spot price when it came time to settle the trade. For Barrick, rising gold prices were the risk [not] an outright loss, per se; it's an opportunity cost.... "The problem," [Mr. Wilkins] says, "is with financial derivatives" -- that is, investors either don't understand them or, if they do, worry they have the potential to cause a lot of damage. Indeed, stories of about the implosion of Enron [and] Long-Term Capital Management, both liberal users of derivatives, have raised anxiety levels among investors. The unravelling of Cambior and Ashanti Goldfields [hedge books] didn't help. Neither did Warren Buffett's warning this year that derivatives are "financial weapons of mass destruction." ... derivatives doesn't fully explain why Barrick has substantially underperformed its peer group in the past year or so. There is the "grassy knoll" theory, which says a nervous creditor read Barrick the riot act. Why would it do that? Because if Barrick were forced to close out all its hedges -- it has 16.1 million ounces sold forward -- it would cost the company $1.2 billion. Worse, every $1 rise in the price of gold puts Barrick another $16.1 million into the hole.... So let's ask the question again: What went wrong? The answer, simply, is rising gold prices. Mr. Wilkins will admit the tipping point came with the "flip over in the price of gold. Investors want [full exposure] to the run on gold prices." Because of its hedge book, [Barrick] can't... In other words, Barrick was right when it said it could make money at any gold price. That, however, didn't mean investors would stick around when Newmont and other big unhedged mining companies were realizing full value from rising prices, and more. The irony is that Barrick, the industry pariah... Poor Barrick. It might take it years to close and bury the hedge book, and that will put a drag on its shares. Copyright © 2003 Yahoo! Inc.