Erewhon888

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/northern-ireland-town-records-biggest-property-price-plunge-in-uk-16254707.html Factfile UK towns with biggest falls in average house prices: Craigavon down 18.4% (to £91,530) Wishaw 12.5% (£87,410) Chorley 9.4% (£125,156) Carlisle 9.3% (£123,100) Wirral 9.3% (£160,375) Hamilton 8.9% (£96,478) Ayr 8.2% (£116,352)

http://www.slideshare.net/Ramseconomics/northern-ireland-housing-market-december-2012#btnNext Despite being initially an analysis of the N.I. situation, there are more general aspects of the housing trends in the UK covered later in the presentation.

David Fuller's analysis: http://www.fullermoney.com

a decline of 2.2% in Scotland and 11.7% in Northern Ireland."

http://www.nytimes.c...-why.html?_r=4 An Afghan Mystery: Why Are Large Shipments of Gold Leaving the Country? KABUL, Afghanistan — Packed into hand luggage and tucked into jacket pockets, roughly hewed bars of gold are being flown out of Kabul with increasing regularity, confounding Afghan and American officials who fear money launderers have found a new way to spirit funds from the country. Most of the gold is being carried on commercial flights destined for Dubai, according to airport security reports and officials. The amounts carried by single couriers are often heavy enough that passengers flying from Kabul to the Persian Gulf emirate would be well advised to heed warnings about the danger of bags falling from overhead compartments. One courier, for instance, carried nearly 60 pounds of gold bars, each about the size of an iPhone, aboard an early morning flight in mid-October, according to an airport security report. The load was worth more than $1.5 million. The gold is fully declared and legal to fly. Some, if not most, is legitimately being sent by gold dealers seeking to have old and damaged jewelry refashioned into new pieces by skilled craftsmen in the Persian Gulf, said Afghan officials and gold dealers. But gold dealers in Kabul and current and former Kabul airport officials say there has been a surge in shipments since early summer. The talk of a growing exodus of gold from Afghanistan has been spreading among the business community here, and in recent weeks has caught the attention of Afghan and American officials. The officials are now puzzling over the origin of the gold — very little is mined in Afghanistan, although larger mines are planned — and why so much appears to be heading for Dubai. “We are investigating it, and if we find this is a way of laundering money, we will intervene,” said Noorullah Delawari, the governor of Afghanistan’s central bank. Yet he acknowledged that there were more questions than answers at this point. “I don’t know where so much gold would come from, unless you can tell me something about it,” he said in an interview. Or, as a European official who tracks the Afghan economy put it, “new mysteries abound” as the war appears to be drawing to a close. Figuring out what precisely is happening in the Afghan economy remains as confounding as ever. Nearly 90 percent of the financial activity takes place outside formal banks. Written contracts are the exception, receipts are rare and statistics are often unreliable. Money laundering is commonplace, say Western and Afghan officials. As a result, with the gold, “right now you’re stuck in that situation we usually are: is there something bad going on here or is this just the Afghan way of commerce?” said a senior American official who tracks illicit financial networks. There is reason to be suspicious: the gold shipments track with the far larger problem of cash smuggling. For years, flights have left Kabul almost every day carrying thick wads of bank notes — dollars, euros, Norwegian kroner, Saudi Arabian riyals and other currencies — stuffed into suitcases, packed into boxes and shrink-wrapped onto pallets. At one point, cash was even being hidden in food trays aboard now-defunct Pamir Airways flights to Dubai. Last year alone, Afghanistan’s central bank says, roughly $4.5 billion in cash was spirited out through the airport. Efforts to stanch the flow have had limited impact, and concerns about money laundering persist, according to a report released last week by the United States Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. The unimpeded “bulk cash flows raise the risk of money laundering and bulk cash smuggling — tools often used to finance terrorist, narcotics and other illicit operations,” the report said. The cash, and now the gold, is most often taken to Dubai, where officials are known for asking few questions. Many wealthy Afghans park their money and families in the emirate, and gold dealers say more middle-class Afghans are sending money and gold — seen as a safeguard against economic ruin — to Dubai as talk of a postwar economic collapse grows louder. But given Dubai’s reputation as a haven for laundered money, an Afghan official said that the “obvious suspicion” is that at least some of the apparent growth in gold shipments to Dubai is tied to the myriad illicit activities — opium smuggling, corruption, Taliban taxation schemes — that have come to define Afghanistan’s economy. There are also indications that Iran could be dipping into the Afghan gold trade. It is already buying up dollars and euros here to circumvent American and European sanctions, and it may be using gold for the same purpose. Yahya, a dealer in Kabul, said other gold traders were helping Iran buy the precious metal here. Payment was being made in oil or with Iranian rials, which readily circulate in western Afghanistan. The Afghan dealers are then taking it to Dubai, where the gold is sold for dollars. The money is then moved to China, where it was used to buy needed goods or simply funneled back to Iran, said Yahya, who like many Afghans uses a single name. He declined to name those involved in aiding Iran. But Western officials said his description of how the process worked tracked with their knowledge of money laundering networks that operate in Afghanistan and the surrounding region. Before officials can say whether the gold shipments are part of an illicit financial scheme, though, they first have to figure out how much gold is going out — or, for that matter, coming in. It is a task easier said than done. The Finance Ministry, which is supposed to collect taxes on each shipment, did not have figures, said Wahidullah Tawhidi, a spokesman for the ministry. He suggested that the Commerce Ministry would know. The Commerce Ministry did not, and officials there said it would be best to contact airport customs officials. At the airport, a reluctant customs official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, brushed aside concerns that there had been an uptick in gold shipments out of Afghanistan. He then ended the conversation with the cryptic promise to one day share “the real story of what is happening to the gold.” M.Y. Rassuli, the president of the airport, said shipments had begun increasing over the summer. He said that he could not offer specifics because he deals with operations, not customs. But he expressed frustration about the problem. “If it’s 5 kilograms or 500 kilograms, that’s not a normal thing to transfer,” he said in an interview. “This is why Afghanistan is No. 1 in corruption.” Without knowledge of how much gold is leaving, it is impossible to calculate the value of the trade. But airport security forms that cover the last two weeks of October indicate about 560 pounds, worth about $14 million, were carried by hand out of Afghanistan during that period. That is a princely sum in one of the world’s 10 poorest countries. But it is perhaps a measure of the current state of affairs in Afghanistan that seemingly no one — not Afghan bank regulators, not American investigators of illicit financing, not European economic experts — found it particularly surprising that gold appears to have joined bank notes in the skies over Afghanistan. The addition of gold to the flight of cash from the country, the Afghan official said, only proves that “if it is a thing that has value and we can put it in our pocket, some of us are going to fly away with it.”

http://www.telegraph...ng-service.html

Read more: http://www.belfastte...l#ixzz2AysunkKA

http://www.dfpni.gov.uk/lps/lps-nisra-residential-property-price-index-methodology-report-may-2012-126kb.pdf

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an 87 per cent drop in price

Any chance of someone reporting from this event? Event link Monday, March 19, 12:00pm Gold and Commodities Panel *Erik Wytenus Executive Director and Head of Foreign Exchange and Commodities J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Asia * Owen Hegarty, Executive Vice Chairman, G-Resources Group Ltd. and Executive Vice Chairman, CST Mining Group Ltd Hosted by the Financial Services Committee The World Gold Council, the global voice of authority on gold, concluded in its latest annual report last month that global demand for gold in 2011 rose to 4,067.1 tonnes (t) worth an estimated US$205.5 billion - the first time that global demand has exceeded US$200billion and the highest tonnage level since 1997. The report highlighted that China and India remain heartlands for gold, generating 55% of global jewellery demand and 49% of global demand. This informative luncheon discussion will also provide the latest views on global central banks’ unprecedented engagement of markets, historic liquidity provisions, impacts for the U.S. dollar, diversification, and other key market themes. Other topics discussed will be oil, Iran, and the geopolitical factors that abound in markets. Erik Wytenus is an Executive Director and Head of Foreign Exchange and Commodities of J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Asia. He joined the Private Bank in 2007 and is now based in Hong Kong. While based in New York, Mr. Wytenus was responsible for developing and executing FX and commodity solutions for private clients. Prior to that, Mr. Wytenus worked at the Investment Bank's currency trading desk where he was responsible for managing client orders and risk, and trading currencies in both market making and proprietary strategies. Before joining J.P. Morgan, Erik worked in Profit and Loss and Risk Analysis for Hess Energy Trading Company in New York. Mr. Wytenus holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Ithaca College. Upon graduation, he also spent time playing and coaching lacrosse for a sporting club in Melbourne, Australia. Owen Hegarty has some 40 years experience in the global mining industry. He had 25 years with the Rio Tinto group where he was Managing Director of Rio Tinto Asia and Managing Director of the Group’s Australian copper and gold business. He was the founder and CEO of the Oxiana Ltd Group which grew from a small exploration company to a multi-billion dollar Australia, Asia and Pacific focused base and precious metals producer, developer and explorer. Oxiana became OZ Minerals Ltd. For his achievements and leadership in the mining industry, Mr. Hegarty was awarded the AusIMM Institute Medal in 2006 and the G.J. Stokes Memorial Award in 2008. Mr. Hegarty is presently Executive Vice Chairman of Hong Kong listed G-Resources Group Ltd, a gold mining company; and Executive Vice Chairman of CST Mining Group Ltd, a Hong Kong listed copper mining company. He is also a Director of the AusIMM, and a member of a number of Government and Industry advisory groups. Mr. Hegarty is Chairman of Tigers Realm Group, a private Melbourne based mining company. He is a Non-Executive Director of Australia listed Fortescue Metals Group Ltd, and a Non-Executive Director of Australia listed Tigers Realm Coal Ltd. Date: Monday, March 19 Time: 12:00pm Registration/Networking 12:30pm Lunch 1:10pm Remarks 2:00pm Close Fee(s): Member Fee: HK$420 [Login Now | Enjoy special member rates ] Non Member Fee: HK$520 Venue: Club Lusitano, 27/F, 16 Ice House Street, Central, Hong Kong [MAP] Inquiries: Ms. Katherine Lau - kalau@amcham.org.hk (please use the following subject line for your email: "Date of event / Speaker name(s) or event title") Media: CLOSED TO MEDIA The American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong 1904 Bank of America Tower, 12 Harcourt Road, Central, Hong Kong T: 852 2530 6900 | F: 852 2810 1289 | E: amcham@amcham.org.hk

Don't forget that when the new site is attacked, TF and posters revert to the old site. Alternative tfmetalsreport site

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evnIE-qahI& 06:29 We get to the level of crisis within two years. 06:44 there is no way out of this mess 07:16 Casey: The elephant in the room is China. 07:30 China is at the peak of a bubble primarily driven by real estate. That Chinese real estate market is a huge accident waiting to happen, bigger than what happened here in the United States. And when that bubble breaks it's going to bring down the Chinese banks and all those prudent Chinese that have been saving 50% of their income are going to wind up with nothing and be really really unhappy. Then what's going to happen? 08:45 Casey: All of the currencies of the world are likely to be destroyed over the next decade and this is a catastrophe of the first order. This is almost as bad as World War III. 09:15 It's just starting and my reference to WW3 wasn't just a toss away because when things start getting bad, governments in particular like to blame somebody else. I think we're sitting on a military powder keg around the world too so batten down the hatches. 00:10:12 Casey: "You need to abolish all these government agencies. You need to cut military spending, not by 20% or 30%. You need to cut it by 90%. You can abolish the income tax. You certainly need to abolish the federal reserve and commodity should be used as money again. The trouble is there's nobody talking about principles, they're all talking about suggestions on the margins. This is serious enough that you've got to talk about basic philosophical principles. 00:13:45 Galland "there's actually no hope of a solution"

The following may be helpful for general discussions requiring critical thinking. http://www.fallacies.ca/toc.htm The contents at the above link include hyperlinks to expansion of each term summarised below. Table of Contents Fallacies of Distraction .....False Dilemma: two choices are given when in fact there are three options .....From Ignorance: because something is not known to be true, it is assumed to be false .....Slippery Slope: a series of increasingly unacceptable consequences is drawn .....Complex Question: two unrelated points are conjoined as a single proposition Appeals to Motives in Place of Support .....Appeal to Force: the reader is persuaded to agree by force .....Appeal to Pity: the reader is persuaded to agree by sympathy .....Consequences: the reader is warned of unacceptable consequences .....Prejudicial Language: value or moral goodness is attached to believing the author .....Popularity: a proposition is argued to be true because it is widely held to be true Changing the Subject .....Attacking the Person: ..........the person's character is attacked ..........the person's circumstances are noted ..........the person does not practise what is preached .....Appeal to Authority: ..........the authority is not an expert in the field ..........experts in the field disagree ..........the authority was joking, drunk, or in some other way not being serious .....Anonymous Authority: the authority in question is not named .....Style Over Substance: the manner in which an argument (or arguer) is presented is felt to affect the truth of the conclusion Inductive Fallacies .....Hasty Generalization: the sample is too small to support an inductive generalization about a population .....Unrepresentative Sample: the sample is unrepresentative of the sample as a whole .....False Analogy: the two objects or events being compared are relevantly dissimilar .....Slothful Induction: the conclusion of a strong inductive argument is denied despite the evidence to the contrary .....Fallacy of Exclusion: evidence which would change the outcome of an inductive argument is excluded from consideration Fallacies Involving Statistical Syllogisms .....Accident: a generalization is applied when circumstances suggest that there should be an exception .....Converse Accident : an exception is applied in circumstances where a generalization should apply Causal Fallacies .....Post Hoc: because one thing follows another, it is held to cause the other .....Joint effect: one thing is held to cause another when in fact they are both the joint effects of an underlying cause .....Insignificant: one thing is held to cause another, and it does, but it is insignificant compared to other causes of the effect .....Wrong Direction: the direction between cause and effect is reversed .....Complex Cause: the cause identified is only a part of the entire cause of the effect Missing the Point .....Begging the Question: the truth of the conclusion is assumed by the premises .....Irrelevant Conclusion: an argument in defense of one conclusion instead proves a different conclusion .....Straw Man: the author attacks an argument different from (and weaker than) the opposition's best argument Fallacies of Ambiguity .....Equivocation: the same term is used with two different meanings .....Amphiboly: the structure of a sentence allows two different interpretations .....Accent: the emphasis on a word or phrase suggests a meaning contrary to what the sentence actually says Category Errors .....Composition: because the attributes of the parts of a whole have a certain property, it is argued that the whole has that property .....Division: because the whole has a certain property, it is argued that the parts have that property Non Sequitur .....Affirming the Consequent: any argument of the form: If A then B, B, therefore A .....Denying the Antecedent: any argument of the form: If A then B, Not A, thus Not B .....Inconsistency: asserting that contrary or contradictory statements are both true Syllogistic Errors .....Fallacy of Four Terms: a syllogism has four terms .....Undistributed Middle: two separate categories are said to be connected because they share a common property .....Illicit Major: the predicate of the conclusion talks about all of something, but the premises only mention some cases of the term in the predicate .....Illicit Minor: the subject of the conclusion talks about all of something, but the premises only mention some cases of the term in the subject .....Fallacy of Exclusive Premises: a syllogism has two negative premises .....Fallacy of Drawing an Affirmative Conclusion From a Negative Premise: as the name implies .....Existential Fallacy: a particular conclusion is drawn from universal premises Fallacies of Explanation .....Subverted Support (The phenomenon being explained doesn't exist) .....Non-support (Evidence for the phenomenon being explained is biased) .....Untestability (The theory which explains cannot be tested) .....Limited Scope (The theory which explains can only explain one thing) .....Limited Depth (The theory which explains does not appeal to underlying causes) .....Fallacies of Definition .....Too Broad (The definition includes items which should not be included) .....Too Narrow (The definition does not include all the items which shouls be included) .....Failure to Elucidate (The definition is more difficult to understand than the word or concept being defined) .....Circular Definition (The definition includes the term being defined as a part of the definition) .....Conflicting Conditions (The definition is self-contradictory) Logic Resources References For Educators Copyright Notice

duplicate due to GEI crash 0825 Fri 2 Sep 2011

Just noticed that two posts above your HPC reply to _w_ there is this: I didn't see those posts but assume someone made the connection to GEI and made the mistake of putting a link or making a reference with a GEI interpretation?

Yes, normally I do that but my understanding is that HPC delete any comment with a link back to GEI so I put the link to HPC in the first GEI post ("here") and gave enough context in the HPC post to enable a Google search back to "here". With less sensitive protection of the differing sites of interest we could have better hyperlinked discussion. I find interesting research on GEI, 24knews, HPC, tfmetalsreport and many other sites. Having used "the Internet" since the late 70s I don't have this concept of "here" and "there" with communities protecting their "members" who might be tempted to stray off to "the other places". It's actually more interesting than that if you look at the precedent setting legal cases and the interpretation of the intention of hyperlinking but that is a very long discussion.

The developments in China will also need to be accommodated in any theory with better explanatory and predictive power. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d9WbjEmfQY

I posted this at HPC soliciting comment in regard to a statement made by _w_ that most newsletter writers and providers of subscription research were playing their clients for "suckers". HPC link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnZGgrXicQU The reply from "_w_" Can anyone provide pointers to further discussion of "these two theories"?

Mineweb podcast Interviewer: Alec Hogg Posted: Wednesday , 20 Jul 2011 Paul Walker, chief executive of GFMS, joins us. Well, Paul, a regular contributor to the Moneyweb cause over the years and man, it's been good news all the while, better news still today with the gold price getting through USD1600 an ounce, one wonders where it's going to end? PAUL WALKER: Well, the case for gold has been a strong one, an increasingly strong one for a number of years now and we've been the cheerleaders of this, in spite of what a lot of people out there would say about my apparent bearishness in this market. Yes, I just think what we've seen in the last couple of weeks in the European zone, in the US and elsewhere, just talks to a very strong investment case for gold. The primary driver, if you like, the underlying current that's been supportive of this for the better part of eight or nine years now, has been an environment of negative real interest rates. So, you've got this common glue that holds the story together in the interest rate space and then layer on top of this the uncertainty about debt. They're all manifestations, in many respects, of the same thing. But what's transpiring in the States at the moment, the standoff in Congress, the standoff in Europe, just speaks very strongly to a bull market for gold continuing for some time. ALEC HOGG: Let's go back a little, let's try and get some longer-term perspective, it was in early 2001 that with hindsight the gold price, in fact, bottomed out round about USD250 an ounce. If you'd bought then, you would have made a handsome return on your money, not many people did but, in fact, if you'd bought pretty much any time in the ten years thereafter, you'd be sitting pretty. PAUL WALKER: Well, it's true and I would remind your readers that GFMS went bullish on gold in 2002 and it's there in the public record if you care to dig it out. Part of the reason for this is we'd watched that period from 1998, 1999 through to that time where gold really hadn't moved much; it had gone from USD270 up to about USD300 or so. The catalyst for our change of view and I've said this many times before is a research meeting that Phillip Klapwijk, my business partner, did to Switzerland, where for the first time in 25 years, one of the banks reported a large family office had bought a chunk of gold. I remember at the time being a little perplexed by this, I had probably bought into the great moderation argument at the time that we were in a period of low interest rates and low inflation and what a load of bunkum that's turned out to be. As we started to really analyse the underlying trends in this market at that time, we became increasingly bullish. I'll be the first one to admit when gold is at 300 bucks, to talk about USD700, USD800, USD900 gold seemed hell of a long way away and at the time I would have probably said it's quite difficult to imagine gold getting there. But the steady incremental growth in the gold price has just built a solid platform, changes expectations in markets like India and elsewhere and generated a very solid platform for gold to grow on. I don't think even the gold bulls back in 2003 would have been saying 1600 bucks, so I'm not in good or bad company when I say that I wouldn't have anticipated us getting to where we are back then but have a look at what we've been saying consistently for the last couple of years, we've said USD1600 is very much on the cards. I said it in Johannesburg a couple of months ago and we said it when we did the update in January. So, all the conditions are there for continued growth as far as we see it. ALEC HOGG: Paul, just looking between 2001 and 2005, it was a steady upward drift from around USD250 to USD400 and then mid-way or towards the end of 2005, something happened and thereafter from USD400 it's just rocketed to where it is today, in under six years. What's caused that? Has that been the continued fears about fiat currencies and so on? PAUL WALKER: I'm not sure this is all about fiat currencies, I think this has also got a lot to do with the search for yield. My recurrent theme that I talk to our clients about is that if you actually deconstruct the last ten years in the gold market, the one underlying common denominator has been the search for yield in a world of negative real interest rates. If you look at the real interest rate environment in the US and the euro and elsewhere, effectively it's either been zero or negative for much of the last ten years. This is played to a theme of people searching out yield and initially the yield was sought in places like equity markets, in housing and other asset classes, where in a sense it was familiar territory and what's happened, I think, since 2005 is the creation of the ETF, creation of vehicles and let's just say a greater degree of publicity. You and I didn't talk that often back in 2003, 2004, certainly not as often as we have in the last few years. As gold has gained currency in the popular imagination, so you've seen this more rapid appreciation of the gold price but the common underlying theme here has been low interest rates and back in 2004, 2005, I think the really astute investors, and I take my hat of to them, were guys who were saying there's something unsustainable here. The primary focus at that time was the US trade deficit and that this was unsustainable and that the dollar would weaken. That was the kind of primary argument and as we've moved on from then, still against the backdrop of negative real interest rates, we've had people saying, well, not only do we have these imbalances, which will lead to a weaker dollar but we've got systemic problems and then, of course, all hell broke loose in 2008 and we're picking up the pieces now. Well, trying to and very ineffectively picking up the pieces both fiscally and in the monetary arena and this is why investors are moving back into gold. ALEC HOGG: It's interesting you brought up 2008 because that was an interesting year, that was the year that the gold price first hit USD1000 an ounce and then came all the way back to USD700 before really catapulting. PAUL WALKER: Well, this speaks to a very important theme here and it's something I repeat regularly, if you believe that gold is an asset of last resort, which is often the argument one hears about gold, I ask people repeatedly try and explain to me then what happened in 2008. We hit above a thousand bucks and then before we knew it we were down USD200. If gold, in the collective psyche, is an asset of last resort; why on earth did that happen in 2008? I think the answer to this is that, in fact, it's been the search for yield that has underpinned gold and on top of that you can layer on, at periods of time, heightened uncertainty and so on and so forth. But what happened in 2008 speaks to a very...the data is there, it's irrefutable that gold prices went down. It's all very well saying, well, people were getting out, it was a complex period. I'm saying if it were an asset of last resort, why on earth did it fall? It does suggest that gold has a much broader underpinning and my view here is that the search for yield was the primary thing. Then people went to safety in the dollar and let's be honest about it, it was the dollar at the time and gold suffered on the back of that. Now what we're seeing is, again, the bedrock of negative real interest rates underpinning gold and layering on top of that is occasionally a risk argument, sovereign debt issues and so on and so forth. I'm not underplaying those as important drivers but I don't think one should lose sight of the fact that the reason we are where we are today is because of negative real interest rates and how that's manifested itself across the entire range of asset classes and 2008 does speak to the idea. This is not an asset of ultimate last resort but everybody views it that way, otherwise gold prices should have gone significantly north of where they were at the time. Indeed, they went down. ALEC HOGG: Paul, July has been a golden July, the gold price was round about USD1475 as we started the month and now above USD1600 an ounce, what in the ultra short-term has caused this? PAUL WALKER: Well, I would argue that it may appear somewhat in contradiction of what I've just said but I think the rising debt crisis has focused people's minds in the last month and a half. What's happened to Italy suddenly coming on to the radar screen, yields starting to move up in Italy, that really has heightened people's sense of risk, regarding both the euro and, of course, we've been playing out this debacle in Congress where there isn't a resolution yet to the US debt ceiling. So, I think that short-term data flow has played out very well against the bedrock of USD1470 gold, which the only reason we're there, the primary reason, I'll remind you and your readers, is it's about negative real interest rates globally and the demand and the search for yield. That has provided the bedrock and then you get this flurry of activity on the back of the news flow that we've had for the last five or six weeks and quite rightly so. If you are sat there as an investor worrying where to put your cash at the moment, I'm certainly getting out of equities. We have a policy here at GFMS of not holding physical positions in the metals markets, so we can look our clients in the eye and say we're not players in this market. But where you're sat today, looking for yield, looking for security, gold looks very attractive. ALEC HOGG: Where to from here? There are the theorists who say that because of QE1, QE2, possibly QE3, quantitative easing and, really, the printing of money, we are building up to a tipping point where gold could absolutely explode. Do you go along with that? PAUL WALKER: Look, I think there's a possibility of this. It certainly wouldn't be my base case. Those who've been following my pronouncements over the years, I've been on the record as saying, I just believe the monetary and fiscal authorities, sooner or later, have to grasp the nettle here. I think the catalyst for this is not necessarily going to come from them but from the bond market just deciding they won't fund debt at these rates and it will force all of the corrections that should have been allowed to take place, post 2008, balance sheets and so on and so forth. I think this will be forced upon the market by the bond market. That is really the thing that is going to underpin attitudes to gold going forward, is where the yields are. If we see a blowout on yields, that's going to be the turning point for gold but it will take a long time for that to play out. So, the possibility that the fiscal and monetary authorities don't do anything about this, one has to countenance that this is a possibility. Economic history is replete with examples of governments and monetary authorities not grasping the nettle when it's required and then you have Armageddon. In that case, yes, USD2000 gold, USD3000 gold, you wouldn't say it's an impossibility. But one has to, and I still have, belief in the institutions that are out there that sooner or later they are going to have to grasp the nettle and that will start to signal the end of the gold bull rally. ALEC HOGG: But not in the immediate future? PAUL WALKER: Well, looking at what's happening in the United States and Europe at the moment, definitely not in the immediate future. I would've argued that 2012 was the turning point but the longer this debacle plays out, the longer you've got a bull market in gold, USD1700, USD1800, you just can't write that off at the moment, until the authorities actually make the hard decisions. The bottom line of all of this, Alec, is something I've repeated countless times over the last few years, you have to have one of the key economic variables that normalises and keeps us all sane and rewards savers, investors and everything, is to have an environment of positive interest rates. Have a look at any period in economic history where you've had a dislocation, where there's been extended periods of low or negative real interest rates and you start to generate problems, inflationary problems, balance sheet problems, asset bubbles, the whole lot and that's where we are today. ALEC HOGG: Paul Walker is the chief executive of GFMS.

Or for a tenth of that you could have Hong Kong style living in pollution-free N.I. Still overpriced property links

Quarterly House Price Index

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Actual date of delivery: 14 April

Thank you, your order has been placed. We've sent you an e-mail confirmation. Order Number: 1 item will be delivered from Amazon EU Sàrl. Estimated delivery 23 April 2011 - 27 April 2011