Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Groundhog who wrote (24812)	12/22/1998 6:14:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116759

I hope not...But would be prepared to double if it does...POG held $270 twice this year...eachtime failed to break above $300--that should tell us something...Third time is a charm? (one possible interpretation)

To: Groundhog who wrote (24812)	12/23/1998 4:47:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 116759

US shrugs off any hint of gloom By Eric Ellis, San Francisco Global slowdown? Bah, humbug, if you are American! Happy days are here again! The International Monetary Fund's gloomier prognosis this week for the world economy in 1999 hasn't had much of an impact on Americans as they spend with an abandon that would have Scrooge turning in his grave. With all the bad news of the past week, any armchair pundit could be excused for predicting it might be time for a national squirrel mentality to take hold after eight years of solid growth during an era many economists are calling the US's most prosperous in its history. But as they literally fight each other in shopping malls to snare that most precious (and expensive) of Christmas gifts, the Furby, with their muscular greenbacks, Americans from San Francisco to New York are having nothing of it. Indeed, witness the front page this week on The Wall Street Journal, the corporate American bible: "Joy to the World, America Still Embraces a Culture of Optimism, The Good Feelings Premium." There is an infectious air -- perhaps soon to be a fatal one -- of invincibility about the current US economy, with the September mini-meltdown forgotten and rarely discussed. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that last month it generated almost 300,000 new jobs, bringing the unemployment rate to just 4.4 per cent, just shy of a 30-year record low. Or that the stockmarket has this year shrugged off major calamities in Asia, Latin America and Russia to hover at record levels. Or that inflation is at 30-year lows. It all has the government cock-a-hoop, despite the travails of its colourful and impeached chief executive. "The Grinch hasn't stolen the economy yet," Labor Secretary Alexis Herman said, evoking the well-known American yuletide villain. The absence of the fabled Grinch might also explain why US savings rates are also at historic lows, according to data from the Government's Council of Economic Advisers. The personal savings rate of Americans for September and October has effectively dropped below zero, an eloquent statement of optimism also explained by the fact that there's been a better and faster return in the stockmarket than there is in low-interest bank deposits. If there are dark clouds on the horizon, they are not immediately obvious to most Americans. As 1999 arrives, there is precious little interest or even debate in the economic impact that the new euro might have on the economy, while the obstinate dark economic clouds over the developing world have still failed to impact out there in the heartland. "The central bank has done an excellent job of calming jitters," says Wells Fargo economist Sung Won Sohn, who claims the Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan's well-timed interest rate cuts this year have postponed at worst and prevented at best a severe slowdown. The Christmas buying binge and the present calm beyond American shores, particularly in Latin America where markets have boomed this past week, prompted the Fed to keep interest rates where they were on Wednesday. The Fed's Open Market Committee kept the benchmark rate unchanged at 4.75 per cent, after slicing three quarters of a point on three occasions in the last three months. afr.com.au