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To: Sid Turtlman who wrote (480)	12/2/1997 9:11:00 AM
From: Staff	Respond to of 686

US oil companies have done this ( played the same games capping weels) for years with their well reserves. Under $20.00/barrel they import cheaper crude and save their own reserves. If OPEC ever stopped cheating on quota's they could stabalize the price wherever they would choose but its to easy to cheat and they all do. Under $300.00 oz./ gold you'll see a very noticable drop in supply in gold production within the next 30 days. Wait and see... you can set your watch by it! :-D In my view... this is a bottom worth fishing around on. Under $300.00 should turn out to be a good buy in my view. maybe not today! but give it some time and you'll look pretty savey in the long run starting to add up to your gold purchases at htis level.

To: Sid Turtlman who wrote (480)	12/2/1997 12:16:00 PM
From: The Vet	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 686

Sid, your figure on the CB's gold is a little high, even if the banks actually really had the gold that they claim to have. In fact at least 1/3 of the CB gold is already spoken for in the form of leased gold and forward sales. Much of the selling is by producers hedging - selling production that is still in the ground and so most of the trading in gold is not real physical metal but is paper "equivalents". Total Australian production is forward sold for 3.4 years.. If the price of gold goes lower than their production cost they can simply stop mining and buy gold on the spot market to fill their forward contracts. This creates a double squeeze - the gold they have sold forward does not appear in the market place and an equivalent amount is removed. afr.com.au The London Gold Exchange trades over 1/2 the world wide annual production EVERY DAY! While everyone keeps saying that gold is still a commodity, it actually still trades as a currency, and a run on physical gold could be triggered overnight by something as simple as a large option buyer demanding physical delivery rather than cashing out his option for fiat money. There simply is far more "paper gold" in circulation than there is real metal to cover it, so if a crunch comes the holders of real gold will be the winners and the paper worthless! Fiat money is a fact of life but in the current climate, we also have fiat gold as the major form being traded!