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To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (21270)	10/9/1998 1:48:00 PM
From: C Hudson	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 116834

No comments here? I am one depressed goldbug. I'm beginning to believe Don Green is right (I'm not buying RAMBUS though) The dollar is sharply down, T-bond yields rising, the whole world is in a financial panic and gold is down. It appears the manipulation and the campaign against it have won.

To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (21270)	10/9/1998 2:07:00 PM
From: Alex	Respond to of 116834

Talks Stall, Serbia Warned Of 'Destruction' <Picture: Reuters Photo> Reuters Photo BELGRADE (Reuters) - NATO's top general warned Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic Friday that he risked ''the destruction of his own country,'' as diplomatic efforts to end the Kosovo crisis appeared deadlocked. With NATO threatening imminent air strikes, Milosevic resumed talks with U.S. mediator Richard Holbrooke, but an official Yugoslav statement gave no hint of a breakthrough. Diplomatic sources said President Clinton wanted the NATO allies to sign an ''activation order'' by the end of the week, authorizing military intervention. Greek Prime Minister Coastas Simitis said Monday and Tuesday could be the final days for diplomacy. General Wesley Clark, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe said the alliance was militarily in ''a heightened state'' and Milosevic was dicing with destruction. ''The whole world is asking: 'Why would a single man want to risk the ravages of armed conflict and the destruction of his own country in order to maintain a regime of repression which has turned a political problem into a severe and growing humanitarian tragedy?''' Clark said. Troubleshooter Holbrooke held his fourth meeting with Milosevic this week, seeking agreement to pull back Serbian troops and end a seven-month crackdown on majority ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. But the official Tanjug news agency, quoting a presidency account of the meeting, said Milosevic was sure that Yugoslavia's ''arguments ... will prevail over warlike intentions.'' Holbrooke made no immediate comment and returned to the U.S. embassy to consult Washington by telephone, a U.S. source said. Before the talks, the envoy called the situation ''extremely serious'' and said NATO was intensifying its preparations for military action. ''This has to be resolved certainly within a week. Some resolution has to take place because time is running out as far as the people who are up in the hills,'' said Defense Secretary William Cohen, referring to an estimated 300,000 refugees in Kosovo. NATO issued its threat of air strikes in response to months of fighting in which between 800 and 1,500 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, have been killed. It was finally spurred to act by the massacres of several dozen Albanian villagers last month, allegedly by Serbian police and soldiers. Milosevic has described the NATO threats as ''criminal aggression.'' British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said NATO plans involved possible ''successive coordinated attacks'' against Yugoslavia, not just a one-off air strike. But French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said in Paris that an initial strike would not be on a large scale, and would be followed by a pause for further negotiations. NATO member Italy, host to key airbases from which any NATO action would be launched, plunged into political limbo as Prime Minister Romano Prodi lost a vote of confidence and the president accepted his resignation. Russia, China and India all stepped up their warnings against any NATO action not explicitly licensed by the Security Council. Holbrooke's mission comes after the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), waging a guerrilla war for the independence of predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo, announced conditionally it would exercise ''self-restraint'' from Friday in response to a United Nations call to stop fighting. But Kosovo Albanian leaders defied efforts to water down their demand for outright secession. ''The best solution is independence, with guarantees for local (Kosovo) Serbs, in some kind of international protectorate,'' Ibrahim Rugova, the main ethnic Albanian political leader, told a news conference. At the same time, an exodus gathered pace of embassy staff, their dependants, and aid workers from Yugoslavia. Relief agency Medecins sans Frontieres said the threat of Serb reprisals would force it to pull out of Kosovo altogether if NATO went ahead with air strikes. It said tens of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees had ''no chance'' of surviving the coming winter unless they were allowed to return to their villages. Cook said after a ministerial meeting of the six-nation Contact Group on Yugoslavia in London Thursday night that Holbrooke would put six demands to Milosevic for a full end to the Serbian crackdown. He listed them as an end to all violence in Kosovo, withdrawal of Serbian security forces and heavy artillery to pre-March levels, free access for relief agencies, full cooperation with an international war crimes tribunal, the return of refugees and a start to negotiations on self-rule with Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. Cook stressed the use of force was a matter for NATO and Russia would not be invited to approve it. Moscow warned of ''dire consequences'' if the West tried to bypass the U.N. Security Council, where it wields the right of veto. dailynews.yahoo.com

To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (21270)	10/9/1998 6:37:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116834

Secret deal on $US-yen dive By Tony Boyd, Tokyo A secret agreement between the world's two economic superpowers, Japan and the US, lay behind the sudden dumping of the US dollar. The 15 per cent free-fall in the dollar against the Japanese yen over the past week has opened the way for the Bank of Japan to begin a massive money-printing exercise to rescue the nearly insolvent Japanese banking system. But it is a high-risk strategy that could threaten the US role as the engine of economic growth and kill any chance of a recovery in the Japanese economy. It may also threaten a new wave of financial contagion triggered by the sudden dramatic unwinding of highly leveraged positions in world capital markets by hedge funds. Currency strategists are convinced that the week's movements in the dollar have never been seen before in 25 years of floating exchange rates, and that this will inevitably produce big winners and big losers. Japanese exporters are being butchered in the Tokyo stockmarket, which on Friday fell to its lowest closing level since December 1985. Japanese retail investors who pumped an estimated 30 trillion yen into US dollar bond funds have suffered severe losses, and Japanese life insurers and pension funds also have heavy exposure to higher-yielding US dollar assets. Asia is a winner, as shown by movements in regional stockmarkets on Friday, with the Hang Seng Index up nearly 4 per cent, Seoul up 6 per cent, Jakarta up 7 per cent in early trade and Manila up 4 per cent. The Australian market was quiet, losing 12 points to 2491.30, while the Australian dollar maintained its relationship with the higher yen, trading around US61.70¢. A strong yen is good for Japanese banks because every Y1 fall in the currency's value against the $US forces Japanese banks to cut their assets by Y1 trillion to maintain their capital adequacy ratios at the minimum level demanded by the Bank for International Settlements. Even those who doubt that there was a US-Japan plot to strengthen the yen believe that the latest foreign exchange movements will enable the BoJ to monetise Japan's bad loans without risking a free-fall in the yen. "The US has abandoned its strong dollar policy in favour of rescuing the Japanese banking system, which it sees as the biggest problem in the global financial system," said Mr Ken Landon, currency strategist at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell. "The Japanese Government knows they have to recapitalise the banks, and to do that the BoJ has to start the printing presses. "If they tried to do it at 130 or 140 yen to the dollar there would be a run on the currency and the yen could free-fall to 180 or 200 yen." Mr Landon said the comments on Friday by US Treasury officials in Washington and officials from the Ministry of Finance in Tokyo supported the view that both countries want a weaker dollar. He believes the deal between the US and Japan was agreed in September, when the first signs emerged of an end to the bull trend in the dollar. During the week, US Treasury Secretary Mr Robert Rubin refused to confirm that the strong dollar policy remained, and Japanese Finance Minister Mr Kiichi Miyazawa said he was worried about volatility but did not comment on the yen's sudden strength. Mr Ravi Bulchandani, chief currency strategist at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, said: "The Ministry of Finance is modestly approving yen strength because it knows the amount that will have to be injected into the Japanese economy will open the risk of a yen free-fall, and they are trying to start it as high as possible. Because they are so concerned that any attempts to inject liquidity into Japan will just leak overseas, they are making it very uncomfortable for Japanese investors to send money abroad." Mr Bulchandani said the change in the strong US policy was bad news for the world economy because a falling dollar made it less likely that the US could continue to be the growth locomotive for a faltering world economy. Deutsche Morgan Grenfell's Mr Landon said the strong yen strategy carried high risks, but it fitted well with the desire of industrialised nations, especially Japan, to punish highly leveraged hedge funds which are the main source of the world's speculative capital flows. Financial markets are fearful that the sudden yen movements, including a ¥12 movement on Wednesday and ¥10 movements up and down on Thursday and Friday, will lead to more huge losses at hedge funds. The extraordinary leverage of the hedge funds was revealed when the rescued New York-based LTCM admitted it had borrowed $US50 billion in funds for each $US1 billion in capital. afr.com.au