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Gold/Mining/Energy : Bema(Bgo) and Arizona Star -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ken Benes who wrote (8602)	12/2/1997 12:01:00 AM
From: Jaakko	Respond to of 10482

Anybody who thinks he will have an effect on the market through an announcement is suspect of being invested in that side of the market (short in this case). The Swiss are close to the gold action for many reasons, and they may know what we don't. E.g. gold will go up long term, but down short term; "the trend is your friend" and "don't fight the trend"...so they go short via put options and futures before their announcement and cash in after gold has tumbled. They can sell their CB gold years later when gold is higher. I read somewhere (Kitco?) that the referendum on selling the gold isn't until 1999!!! Then they have 11 years to dispose it, if I read it correct!!!

To: Ken Benes who wrote (8602)	12/2/1997 2:20:00 AM
From: Terry Swift	Respond to of 10482

Ken: In my opinion, the announcement by the Swiss was for the same purpose as was the announcement by the Australian government, AFTER the sales ended, that it had sold 167 tonnes of gold; and that is to drive down the price of gold, intimidate the market into selling, and attempting to destroy any role gold might play in the world monetary system or as a refuge during a currency crises (a'la the one coming at us from Asia) or any other crises. The Swiss government knows very well that any changes in the backing of its currency or its "announced" gold sales are subject to a referendum vote by the Swiss people. Such a referendum has as much chance of passing in Switzerland as a snowball in hell... and the Swiss government knows it. There is no chance the Swiss will be selling gold or that it will change the backing of its currency as long as the Swiss people have anything to say about it. Knowing that, there is only one reason for the Swiss government to make the announcement it made... to drive down the POG in a futile attempt to de-monetize it. Add to that the comments by the head of England's CB about the EMU holding little, if any gold, and gold being at "the bottom of the pile" and it looks to me like a very coordinated to kill the world's appetite for gold, demonize it, and, they hope, keep the world's investors in worth-less, paper currencies. In my opinion, it won't work in the longer term but it could for a while yet. It looks like Big Al and the IMF are gonna bail out South Korea big time. Japan could be next. They have more off-budget debt in the public and private sector than the US off-budget debt, and that is huge... more than they can possibly pay, even if they sell all their foreign currency reserves and foreign bonds. Asia is devaluing their currencies big time which will mean US consumers will be seeing huge price reductions in everything imported from Japan and Asia; balance of trade deficit will go through the roof; US companies will find it impossible to raise prices or compete with 30-40% reductions in Asian import prices; US exporters won't stand a snowball's chance in hell of competing in Asia; all meaning corporate profits are gonna get hit big time next year. So how does the don't worry-be happy crowd on Wall Street react? With a 190 point increase in the Dow. Unbelievable. The train's comin' at us. When it gets here and how gold will react are the only questions. Terry