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

To: scotty who wrote (18800)	9/14/1998 2:58:00 AM
From: Zardoz	Respond to of 116764

And after the meeting, gold may just WHAM down, as the dollar climbs. Pick'em. your odds are 50:50, but the probabilities are: Gold down to $280 by friday. ALL on USD strength. There I'm on the record. What's that -$13.85? Let me expand: MY data says Gold is over valued by $15 +/- $1.00 as of friday close. Since it's expiration week {Triple witching} It has ALWAYS closed on my theoratical value by +/- $2. So I choose $280. Anyone else want to step up, post a reply to this post with your close number for FRIDAY. So let's see. {if you want to save posting space, send a private email} This is reguardless of any meetings. PS: This is more fun than lotteries!

To: scotty who wrote (18800)	9/14/1998 5:40:00 AM
From: Alex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116764

IMF runs into cash crisis By Alex Brummer Financial Editor Monday September 14, 1998 The International Monetary Fund warned last night it is so strapped for cash after record levels of lending that it may be forced to borrow directly from its richer shareholders to deal with future global financial emergencies. A series of calls on the IMF's resources, from South Korea to Russia, has left its resources at a hazardously low level. This has been exacerbated by the failure of the United States Congress to approve a capital increase to the IMF - a move which has won support among all other major economic powers. The fund's liquidity ratio - the amount it can safely lend - is at what one official described as a "historic low" of 29 per cent, against a more comfortable figure in the 60 to 70 per cent range. If the market crisis were to spread from East Asia to Russia and on to Latin America, the IMF would find itself in the embarrassing position of passing the hat around its richer members in order to deal with the situation. Shareholders including the US, faced by the Asian crisis, approved a 45 per cent increase in the IMF's capital from $200 billion to $290 billion in January 1998. Despite repeated appeals America's share of the capital increase has been held up in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which distrusts international financial institutions. In the fund's annual report issued last night, it says, "the Asian financial crisis and its subsequent global reverberations absorbed an unprecedented amount of time" for the fund's board and staff and "also prompted a record level of IMF lending". This, it argued, has "added immediacy to the need to strengthen the financial resources of the institution to enable it to continue playing a fully effective role in the globalised world economy". The IMF said the Asian crisis alone prompted the withdrawal of $25.6 billion from its general resources, nearly four times the level of lending in the previous year. Since the end of the financial year the fund has been instrumental in putting together a further loan package to Moscow worth up to $23 billion (œ13.7 billion) - which has never been disbursed because of the rouble problem and Russia's recent debt moratorium. As well as pointing to the shortages of cash, the IMF's report seeks to address some of the criticism of the fund over its handling of the Asian crisis, for which it is accused of being high-handed and of having applied economic policies unsuited to conditions in those countries concerned. A senior fund official visiting London began the defence of the managing director of the IMF, Michel Camdessus, by pointing to the flexibility which has subsequently been built into IMF programmes with South Korea and Indonesia, and to the new transparancy in its operations. In particular the IMF highlights the issue of public information notices from May 1998 onwards, designed to summarise the IMF staff and executive board's views of the economic prospects of member countries, key information for bankers and businesses planning to conduct commerce in the countries concerned. The fund believes that improved transparency in the emerging market economies is one of the keys to avoiding sudden crises, such as that in Mexico at the end of 1994, and in Thailand in 1997. The IMF acknowledges that the Asian crisis will mean a slight lowering of its estimates for global and western growth when the it issues its world economic outlook report later this month. It is also concerned about recent developments in the capital markets - particularly in Russia and Latin America - and the potential impact of the millennium bug on the world economy. Print version ÿ reports.guardian.co.uk