Pluto

Please review:

http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_03/stott030803.html

One web site says that gold should be stored in Switzerland! Of all the asinine advice ever given, that takes the cake. You own gold to hedge yourself and protect yourself, correct? Then why would you want to store it any place but in your own home or place of safety and easy access? Gold ten thousand miles away, is an absurdity, just as is gold in some account off shore in the Caribbean or other inaccessible place. If times get rough, as we thought they would with Y2K, would you have stored your food, water, generator or flashlights in a distant city or country? Of course not. If you go out in a boat to catch some fish, do you leave your life preserver on shore? If you go for a swim, do you leave your swim suit at home? Why would you leave your silver in a warehouse, your gold at some distant place, or your food in the grocery store, and especially after you have paid for it? Honestly, I sometimes think I am writing to first graders.

Remember if you are going to Panic - PANIC FIRST!

A message from APMEX.....

I would like to take a few minutes to respond to the comments I have seen on this forum. First, I would like to thank everyone who posted comments on this board about this situation both positive and negative. Let me tell you exactly what happened yesterday afternoon.

As you all know, the stock market was coming off the worst week in its history and on Friday the Dow frantically went up and down in a 1,000 point range. Our phones were ringing off the hook all week, especially on Friday. All of our staff has been working overtime – early mornings, late nights, and weekends – just to process all of the orders and stay ahead. About 12:00PM (CST) on Friday, the traffic on our website was so overwhelming that not only were you unable to get through to us or to purchase what was already in your shopping cart, but it prohibited us from helping with phone orders as well.

I am sure that all of you remember that back in March we had a similar problem. Since then, we upgraded all of our servers, and we considerably increased our bandwidth. This was done to ensure that we didn’t experience the same problems that occurred back in March. However, these past 2 months and yesterday exceeded our wildest expectations in terms of traffic. As our inventory of products continued to shrink, more and more customers dug deeper and deeper into the pages on our website for anything that contained precious metal, including all types of US and world coins. WE literally had thousands of customers wound up opening tens of thousands of pages to find products and to try to order them. For almost 6 hours, our system stopped, started, crawled, and stopped again. Eventually it began to free back up and work efficiently about 5:30 cst. Today, many of our staffers are here processing orders, packaging them, and sorting through the paperwork backlog working to ship out orders for all our customers including the members of the GoldIsMoney forum. Our IT department was here late into the evening last night as well as here early this morning doing what they could to improve website performance.

The bottom line is that we were overloaded with orders and although we were assured that our system could handle any large number of requests, the economic situation has thrown the general public into a panic. People who have never bought precious metals before were clamoring for any products we can deliver. We have opened up more accounts on the past two months than any other period in time. Many of our orders were from people who have never bought precious metals from us before confirming what you all have already known, there is no better asset to own than gold or silver.

Let me state, unequivocally, that we do NOT and HAVE NOT ever shut down our servers when the price of any metal drops! Our entire inventory is completely hedged so we are protected against unforeseen price movements. We are happy to sell you silver when the spot price is $7 or $17 or $27 an ounce. We are happy to sell you gold or platinum or palladium at any market price. We NEVER shut down our servers because of a price movement. Our system is designed to handle very heavy traffic and while it is adequate for us during 363 days a year, there are those 1 or 2 days a year when everyone, including the general public, is trying to buy precious metals at the same time.

Again I would like to thank you for your patience and understanding during this situation and rest assured that we are aggressively looking to purchase and manufacture products for you to invest in. We are also working very hard to make certain that ordering from us is a pleasant experience for you and hope you can understand that we are in unprecedented times.

Thanks for letting me share this with you.

__________________

Scott Thomas

President & CEO

www.APMEX.com

Why can you buy 1,000,000 and above tons of wheat on the futures market (and take delivery) but you cant buy 10ks worth of flour packets without hunting them down?

I dont necessarily see the issue as being too different..

 

Have you tried taking delivery of 1,000,000 on the LME or COMEX?

 

James Turk has (I am assuming he deals with these numbers in GM) and he did not have to hunt them down...

You cannot compare wheat and Gold futures. Gold is a commodity/currency, as such is a political tool used by the state to control the perceived value of their script. Therefore, as in the late 60s, the paper contract price is manipulated for political purposes. This is fine until confidence in government script is questioned. At that point the priceof physical gold will start to exceed the price of paper gold and (as history tells us) the owners of the paper may default leaving you lolly-less.

The state knows this, that is why physical gold is held in Central banks and not wheat or any other commodity.

The paper price must reflect whats going on.

Why can you buy 1,000,000 and above in Gold (EFT:GLD) but you can't buy 10Ks worth of coins without hunting them down and paying a premium over spot.

A similar situation happened in the late 60s which lead to Nixon closing the gold window in '71. Just like then, we have "unlimited" amounts of gold as long you don't want it in your possession.

Paper or pixel gold is not gold. Please review:

http://www.cnbc.com//id/15840232?video=880574352&play=1

Got Gold? The real stuff, not the paper or pixel on a screen variety.

Better hurry up..

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080926/mint_gold_coins.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Mint is temporarily halting sales of its popular American Buffalo 24-karat gold coins because it can't keep up with soaring demand as investors seek the safety of gold amid economic turbulence.

Hmm

 

DOW futures tanking a bit

 

-223

 

lets see if this continues into tomorrow

 

Smart money using the bounce to unload?

No more short covering of financials to cushion the fall this time. Looks like we're heading for that wall at top speed.

Bullion in ones possession has burglary risk...

.....and as Keyenes once said "in the end we are all dead".

I go on a little walk, and what happens?

 

THIS IS IT!

 

The Cartel will be considering what they can do against it RIGHT NOW.

Yep...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7-e6Yhu5SU

Pluto! Good to see you!

AIG wanted 20B last week, then it raised this number to 40B a few days later. The Fed looked at its books over the weekend and realized they need 80B.

The 80B is also wrong.

The final number will make grown men cry.

As an avid reader of the gold thread on HPC and now on here, I'm writing my first post in a state of panic.

 

Just checked my leveraged silver ETC expecting to find a huge increase and found all trading has been suspended. It transpires these are by not backed by physical, but by the ropey, teetering on the verse of bankrupty AIG!

 

Anyone else got ETC's?

Bullion in ones possession has no counterparty risk - all else is fools' gold. Those who ignore this warning and are dazzled by products from the usurers will one day weep at their losses.

This is it folks.

Assume the crash position - and remember - when we hit women and children go first.

I spoke with Paul Tustain some time ago about silver and he said that he has been in huge warehouses packed full of silver and he doesn't see any shortage of the stuff.

I was in a petrol station chocked full of petrol this morning and a supermarket full of food later this afternoon. Fill ya boots with silver as well as gold.

I'm squeezing my shorts just concentrating over it

HI HO SILVER!

If the DOW drops below 12000 again all of this 'strong dollar' nonsense will disappear immediately. I'm still not sure what the Fed and the treasury were trying to achieve with all of those hollow words. As Jim Sinclair said, Bernanke has backed himself into a corner and set himself up to look very foolish indeed.

 

The DOW is on life support and its supposed buddy Bernanke starts talking about cutting off the interest rate power supply that keeps the machine going. What did he expect to happen here? Did he really think the market was now strong enough to go it alone without his bailouts and artificially low rates? If so he is even more of a halfwit than I originally thought he was.

 

I really do hope they talk gold down to $850 now, it will be the buy of the decade as far as I'm concerned.

 

Edit: Chances of $850 diminishing already, gold back over $880 with some strength. Looks like buying the 'v' (or fishing line) has worked again.

They are desperate. I have no doubt. Paulson is not doing anything, that is why Bernanke spoke about the dollar (which the Fed never does) and then the top dog Bush is even parroting on about a strong dollar. Higher interest rates are not an option - at least in the Anglo countries.

The perfect storm is upon us.

i know i remember

 

i think you said you may start covering when it reached 100 though - this was when it was closer to 1000 though

I covered at 90p . What a ride down. I wanted to get out before the stock got suspended and then delisted. Lots of chatter about suspension.

RIP Barretts. You are not alone - many other builders and banks will be joining you in the abyss.

BDEV

 

getting close to 100

 

Pluto will be buying it soon

 

has he eloped with RB

I have been traveling the last month and will be in Europe until the end of August, so my time for posting has been limited. As for BDEV.L, anyone who has read any of my ramblings will know I was short this mega-turd and still am. I don't intend to cover unless there is talk of them being delisted, which is a very real possibility. I see inflation is rampant, and central bankers seem quite content in staving half the world to death. However the world's real superpower (according to Chomsky) is about to unleash its fury. This superpower is the opinion and force of the masses. We are entering a new phase.

Remember the only bullion is the stuff you can touch all else is a promise to deliver.

The future of Wall Street, City of London, and Canary Wharf which is soon to be renamed Albatross Wharf.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2uErWWwQTo

Fair point - we should concentrate on the real fundamentals - bailing out banks, printing money, etc, etc. I certainly intend to remain long and top up on dips as funds become available...

 

 

It is getting very messy.... how much reach would the fed have in the UK - but I suppose a mess in the US is a mess for everybody.. Anyway, I guess we'll just adopt the same policy in 3 months, as usual

 

This is a good point to say thanks to you, GF and the others for all of your advice over the last 12+ months - I feel my family has at least got some security. Still pretty worrying, though.

The Fed is the beast; the dollar is it's legitimate child. Other fiats (especially the GBP) are its bastard children. The Global economy just means the Fed has spurned more children. When Reagan told Gorbachev to tear down this wall, what he meant was let our dollars in, and so did other Communist countries like China. The cold war was about dollars. Those in the West accepted them and those in the East did not.

The CAP verification process on GoldMoney should stop them being used for money laundering, it is more stringent than opening a bank account. Even if the company has government attention, your gold is in your name at the vault and it is insured.

 

What happened in the E-Gold case. Did customers end up losing their gold?

I don't know what ended up happening, but I do know the site was shut down for a while. Just remember what the press release said this weekend about the FED extending its powers into all markets to protect the financial system. This gives them the power to make up the rules as they go along, all in the name of protecting the financial system.

We are heading into unchartered territories. The punters in the casino are starting the realize the tables are rigged, and the owners are scurrying around bolting the doors preventing them from leaving.

This is incorrect. Your gold is held in your name in an insured VIA MAT vault. I can not think off a place I'd like it more, cheap storage and you can sell at the spot price instantly. Better than burying it in your garden.

 

I agree that ETFs could be dodgy, but believe GoldMoney & BullionVault are different. You can even arrange to withdraw your gold in LBMA bars.

I have no axe to grind with either Goldmoney or BV. However, you should be aware that your Gold is still subject to government scrutiny and control as the customers of Egold found out last year.

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2007/April/07_crm_301.html

The four-count indictment, handed down on April 24, 2007, and unsealed today, charges E‑Gold Ltd; Gold & Silver Reserve, Inc.; and their owners Dr. Douglas L. Jackson, of Satellite Beach, Fla.; Reid A. Jackson, of Melbourne, Fla.; and Barry K. Downey, of Woodbine, Md., each with one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business under federal law and one count of money transmission without a license under D.C. law.

Thanks Pluto

 

I think I should have been a bit more simple in my first post ... I still don't really know what the Kitco lease rates are. are they the actual 'interest rate' that you'd pay on the loan, or are they the more complex 'discount from LIBOR'? If they are the latter then the situation would be as you describe here:

 

 

 

Otherwise I guess the same assumption would mean an expectation that the price of gold is going up.

 

 

 

 

I'm struggling to read much from any of the market indicators...!

Most of the market indicators are manipulated. Please read my earlier post about the FED setting up swat teams to go after brokers and all markets. This is the Plunge Protection Team on steroids. We are well on the way to Central Economic Planning or Communism. I always wonder why news like this hits the wires on Friday PM or at the weekend.

Let's assume I have some gold sitting at home not doing anything, and I can earn some extra cash by loaning you my Gold. Let's say the rate I can obtain is 1% for arguments sake. I go ahead and lend you my gold and my balance sheet I still own the gold and also have an income of 1%.

The person who has now borrowed my gold can sell it into the open market if they think the value of Gold is going to go down. As long as the price of Gold decreases by more than 1% then everyone is happy. I am happy because I still own my Gold and am earning 1%, and the borrower because he is showing a paper profit of any decreases below 1%. Now if the borrower is confident the price of Gold is going to go down they are going to want to borrow more to sell into the market, which in turn will force the price I will ask for borrowing go up say now 2%.

Now lets assume the borrower thinks the price of Gold is going to remain flat. They can borrow the gold, sell it for T-Bills yielding more than the 1%, and pocket the difference. This is what is reffered to sometimes as Gold carry trade.

Now, I would not read too much into lease rates. However, sharp movements in lease rates indicates a move is occurring in the price of bullion, which could be up or down. If you look at long term lease rates, you will see lease rates don't really move unless the price of gold starts to shift. Use lease rates as a signal in the market the same as the VIX is used in the S&P.

Stay long and strong.

History repeating itself. Whenever there is a banking crisis the Fed gains more power.

Free markets are dead. Central planning is all the rage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/business...agewanted=print

The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.

Have you protected yourself yet?

The Germans are bracing themselves for a collapse of the financial system:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/busine...-543588,00.html

Germany and other industrialized nations are desperately trying to brace themselves against the threat of a collapse of the global financial system. The crisis has now taken its toll on the German economy, where the weak dollar is putting jobs in jeopardy and the credit crunch is paralyzing many businesses.