Centennial Precious Metals, Inc: Serving Gold Coin & Bullion Investors Since 1973
(Home Page)	(How to Buy Gold)	(Gold Coin Images)	(Daily Market Report)	(Live Gold Price)
(First-time Buyers)	(News & Views)	(ABCs of Gold Book)	(Gold IRA)	(Buy Gold Coins Online)
(European Clientele)	Online Information Packet			(About Us)

Welcome to the USAGOLD Gold Discussion Archives. The archives of this gold discussion forum are a treasure trove of information to educate investors about protecting their wealth through portfolio diversification with private gold ownership. The discussion forum also covers the wider issues of the past, present, and future role of gold in international monetary policy and the dynamics of the modern gold markets...

The opinions posted by all guests are expressly their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the management or staff of USAGOLD - Centennial Precious Metals. The hosting of the public discussion shall therefore not be construed as an endorsement by USAGOLD - Centennial Precious Metals of any of the opinions posted here.

ARCHIVED DISCUSSION FROM 12/27/1999
All times are U.S. Mountain Time

View Yesterday's Discussion.

Number Six (12/27/99; 23:54:42MDT - Msg ID:21721)
@Number One
That sucks. Do you have a commodities board in OZ?

Number Six (12/27/99; 23:53:46MDT - Msg ID:21720)
Words Of Wisdom
Date: Mon Dec 27 1999 23:24
permabear (kapex said of the gold markets) ID#170184:
Copyright © 1999 permabear/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved
Just don't be manipulated OUT!

Please read the above comment by kapex over and over for the
next few months. Better yet, write it down and put copies of this
around your house or post a copy on your refrigerator if need be.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! I've been shaken out of markets in the
past due to great fear that overtook me when a sharp pullback
occurred. Gold moves fast and if you try to be too cute trading
it you'll end up being shaken out; you'll be too afraid to
chase it after it blasts off.

Gold is near 20 year lows and that is FACT. Furthermore, there is
no way it would have got this low in the absence of heavy short
selling; this means it is priced at an extreme bargain level and
you ability to make a REAL PROFIT is derived from this
undervaluation.

It is no wonder most of us are not able to buy stocks, bonds or
commodities when they reach historic lows. The story is never
a pretty one when deep oversold conditions develop. Just about
all the news you read on deeply undervalued markets induces you
to sell out.

I'll share my own "dumb shi%%" trading story on how I made a fool
of myself trying to be too cute trading. In 1983, I bought 200
shares of compaq ( CPQ ) at $11 and promptly sold out at $9 a
few months later; I was scared out. To make a long story short
my $2200 investment would have been worth several hundred thousand dollars if only I had hung on.

Gold is probably going to at least $1500 to $1700 upon completion
of this new bull market. If the rumor is true regarding LBJ
having sold our 8500 tonnes of gold down to 1000 tonnes in 1968
then we have expect a gold peak between $12000 and $15000 an
ounce. DO NOT MISS THIS HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY.


Number Six (12/27/99; 23:01:38MDT - Msg ID:21719)
Anyone have any inkling on this one? Dr. Jonathan Coleman.
Date: Mon Dec 27 1999 11:52
Gianni Dioro (Dr. John Coleman on Gold) ID#437218:
-
A few weeks ago I posted some comments by Dr. Coleman. I was speaking to him on the phone and was cut off and thus what I had posted was somewhat incomplete. His comments were coming from what he had wrote in a special report. What the report said regarding the Bank of England gold sales was more or less this:

Several Arab OPEC states, being large holders of gold, didn't like what the central bankers had been doing to the gold price with their leasing and selling, especially the BoE sales.

Coleman said that these OPEC states went to several countries - France, Germany, and Italy - and said that unless they stopped their attack on gold, OPEC would push the price of oil to $45 per barrel, which would in turn hurt Europe's precarious economies.

Moreover, to show their disastisfaction, these OPEC states bought up nearly the entire lot at the BoE gold auction ( the one at gold's $253 low ) . A couple of days later in order to appease the Arab states, came the notorious announcement by the European central banks that they would limit their sales and leasing plans.

- This comes from his 84 page special report, "The Coming Disasters..."

Zenidea (12/27/99; 23:01:38MDT - Msg ID:21718)
:) Number one
Number One , now I am not sure I can say specifically ,because I am not 100% sure of the guidelines in this forum. or legalities of naming
companies etc . but I will say that I live in Western Australia. Its just that I get irked that its seems sometimes I am only allowed to purchase and sell when it seems to suit them. Surely there must be principles and laws governing this kind of practice ?.
Sounds like the fox being the jury at a gooses trial to me. It frustrates me .



YGM (12/27/99; 22:53:53MDT - Msg ID:21717)
Dec. 27th Golden Sextant/ Mr. Howe par excellance.....
http://www.goldensextant.com

CURRENT MPEG COMMENTARY

December 27, 1999. Interest Rates: The Golden Connection

The absence of an international monetary order rooted in gold makes the century now ending unique. Professor Robert H. Mundell emphasized this point in accepting the 1999 Nobel Prize in Economics a couple of weeks ago. See R. L. Bartley, "Money: The Century's Agony," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 10, 1999, p. A18. Cf. A. Swoboda, "Robert Mundell and the Theoretical Foundation for the European Monetary Union," IMF Views and Commentaries for 1999, www.imf.org/external/np/vc/1999/121399.HTM.

Gold's propensity to retain over long periods of time a reasonably constant purchasing power is widely recognized. Less widely appreciated but just as significant is the long term stability of gold interest rates. Both together are the defining attributes of gold money, features which governments have heretofore proven incapable of replicating with their fiat money substitutes.

Relatively low and stable interest rates under the gold standard were the product of measuring economic value by a shared and real international yardstick. Money -- dollars, pounds, francs, etc. -- was a certain weight of gold, not an artifice of bankers or governments. A lawful dollar had a real cost of manufacture, related to the cost of producing gold. Seigniorage was close to zero, not virtually 100%. Money was not simply a means to facilitate exchanges; it was both a store and standard of value.

Because international balances were settled in gold, small countries could trade on relatively equal terms with larger ones. Trade deficits could be offset by capital flows, but no country was required to hold large amounts of another's paper in its reserves. Any country, small as well as large, could achieve monetary sovereignty and a sound currency simply by following the prudential rules imposed by gold. Quality of monetary policy and banking practices mattered more than economic size, permitting Switzerland, one of Europe's smaller countries, to become a banking and financial powerhouse.

Of course, the gold standard was not perfect, and some of today's monetary problems were also issues a century ago. For example, excessive credit inflation was always a potential problem under the gold standard, and many were the panics resulting from over-exuberance in this regard. So too, in the area of productivity, whether the gold supply could grow sufficiently to provide adequate increases in the monetary base remained a constant concern, particularly for expanding industrial economies.

As it turned out, gold discoveries in California, Alaska, and later South Africa were adequate to the task, enabling most major countries to maintain substantially unchanged gold parities from the early eighteenth century to the outbreak of World War I. Indeed, the gold discoveries in South Africa were large enough to cause a short but unusual period of U.S. peacetime wholesale price inflation averaging 2.5% annually from 1897-1914. See M. Friedman et al., Monetary History of the United States (Princeton Univ. Press, 1963), p. 135.

World War I so shaped the history of the twentieth century that it is hard to imagine what it would have been like without this almost inadvertent cataclysm. The classical gold standard could not accommodate at existing gold parities the wartime financing requirements of the principal belligerents. Considerable gold flowed to the United States, swelling its money supply and raising the general price level. After the war, the British made a critical error in trying to return to gold at the prewar parity, effectively forcing a severe deflation. France, which devalued after the war, faired somewhat better.

The gold standard, in a sense, fell victim after the war to its own earlier success, for a century of largely stable gold parities rendered the notion of a "good" or "necessary" devaluation anathema to many. Economists who assign major blame for the Great Depression to the effort to stay on gold are partly correct. But it was not so much the effort to stay on gold as Anglo-American policies aimed at preserving prewar parities that lay at the root of the difficulty. The enormous credit expansion associated with World War I was beyond remedy by a mere panic; it simply could not be handled other than by severe deflation or devaluation.

Although the gold standard could not prevent excessive credit expansions or even fix permanently appropriate gold exchange rates, it did effectively set interest rates within a rather narrow range. Under the classical gold standard prior to World War I, short term interest rates in both the United States and Britain tended to cycle between 2% and 5%. Very rarely and never for long did they breach these limits. S. Homer et al., A History of Interest Rates (Rutgers Univ. Press, 3d ed., 1996), pp. 207, 321, 357, 364-365.

Under the gold standard, business and credit expansions were typically associated with higher interest rates. Panics normally brought lower rates as fear reduced both willingness to lend and demand for credit. Prior to the stock market crash in 1929, short term rates moved over 5% as they had prior to the Panic of 1907 and during the war years. What was different in the 1930's was that short rates not only fell, but also remained stuck under 1% for several years. Central banking under the Fed, exacerbated by the monetary excesses of World War I, managed to accomplish what free banking and the Civil War never could: a severe multi-year national bust.

Today what was once simply banking is "gold" banking. Interest rates on gold are now "lease" rates. Yet their levels cycle within substantially the same range as before. Last fall's gold banking crisis demonstrated 5% gold lease rates to be as much a harbinger of trouble as 5% short term interest rates under the gold standard. Both signaled too much paper gold -- too much gold credit -- relative to available physical gold.

The question now is whether the recent gold banking panic will prove a relatively brief episode caused largely by temporary factors, or whether more fundamental distortions were at work. In the latter event, the 1929 experience suggests that gold lending and gold interest rates could remain depressed for a considerable period of time, and that a fundamental revaluation of gold may be necessary before the gold credit market can fully recover.

As the millennium turns, U.S. economists hail the "Goldilocks" economy. The Fed, originally formed to stabilize the gold value of the dollar, instead wages an undeclared hidden war on the discipline of gold. And for now, at least, relegated to the realm of quaint ideas from long ago is John Stuart Mill's admonition (Principles of Political Economy (orig. ed. 1848, 5th ed. 1877), Bk. III, Ch. XIII, s. 3):



Although no doctrine in political economy rests on more obvious grounds than the mischief of a paper currency not maintained at the same value with a metallic, either by convertibility, or by some principle of limitation equivalent to it; and although, accordingly, this doctrine has, though not till after the discussions of many years, been tolerably effectually drummed into the public mind; yet dissentients are still numerous, and projectors every now and then start up, with plans for curing all the economical evils of society by means of an unlimited issue of inconvertible paper. There is, in truth, a great charm to the idea. To be able to pay off the national debt, defray the expenses of government without taxation, and in fine, to make the fortunes of the whole community, is a brilliant prospect, when once a man is capable of believing that printing a few characters on bits of paper will do it. The philosopher's stone could not be expected to do more.



For almost 70 years, the United States -- contrary to its own Constitution and the most deeply held beliefs of its Founding Fathers -- has led the world down the path of unlimited fiat money. Its paper dollar has become the de facto international monetary standard; its debt the world's principal international reserve asset; and its trade deficits the world's main source of international liquidity. As a result, some 40% of outstanding U.S. marketable debt securities are now held by foreigners, up from 20% just five years ago. See M. M. Phillips, "Foreigners' Share of Treasurys Is Growing," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 20, 1999, p. A2. And the U.S. trade deficit is now running at an annual rate exceeding $300 billion, a level previously quite unimaginable.

This situation would be dangerous under any circumstances. An historic U.S. stock market bubble fueled in large part by an out-of-control domestic credit expansion makes it explosive. Why? Because a simultaneous decline in the stock market and the dollar could cause interest rates to rise sharply rather than decline. The Fed cannot simultaneously support the domestic financial structure with lower rates and defend the dollar with higher ones. Its vaunted domestic powers could be checkmated by international demands, heightened by the dollar's role as the world's main reserve currency.

Under the severest strains, a system of unlimited paper money backed by a lender of last resort behaves quite differently from a system based on gold -- the money of last resort. Ultimately neither system can save imprudent lenders or borrowers from the consequences of their acts. But whereas the latter will stabilize at lower interest rates with the underlying monetary system still intact, a system based on unlimited paper will tend toward hyperinflation unless checked by very high interest rates, themselves business killers which will prolong and intensify the economic downturn.

In recent years many small countries have learned this lesson the hard way as international capital fled their currencies and financial markets. Boom has turned to bust, often quite suddenly. Few illusions are as dangerous as: "It's different this time." Except, perhaps: "It can't happen here."

Number Six (12/27/99; 22:46:30MDT - Msg ID:21716)
@Zenidea
Where do you live?

Which bank/dealer?

schippi (12/27/99; 22:36:18MDT - Msg ID:21715)
Gold Sectors Moving Up
http://www.SelectSectors.com/agpm70.gif
FSAGX & FDPMX hourly chart

Zenidea (12/27/99; 22:19:38MDT - Msg ID:21714)
Suspicious
Well it has happened again , the last time Palladium went to the moon I went to a certain Australian mint to sell it and was told that they were told the (staff) that they were not allowed to purchase
it, so after some hoo hah and ca-fuffle managed the next day to load it off at a princely profit.
Now today I staggered down there and after all the
curtesy and niceties and after suggesting that I was after a certain sum of Au. I was told that they have been instructed not to sell one ounce!, That they had a certain quota of sales to adhere to for the day and that that quota had been met. Try buying Platinum and Palladium !, well for kick offs the palladium just is not there and for seconds the only Platinum on the shelves are one ounces and below. Try buying singular greater quantities i.e 2 oz and 10 inter-alia . The prospects are bleak to say the least and today cannot purchase GOLD !? not even a gram . Is the writing on the wall ? any comments ?.

Number Six (12/27/99; 21:38:25MDT - Msg ID:21713)
Edward Yardeni, chief economist for Deutsche Bank ...
New York--The Y2K rollover date - January 1, 2000 - is just days ahead, and one major economist remains steadfastly pessimistic.

Edward Yardeni, chief economist for Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box" last week to say that the "alarms" were not heeded for Y2K and there is no use sounding them now.

He believes, as he has argued for the past year, that Y2K will cause "major" problems world-wide, and will be more than a "bump in the road" - as many Y2K pundits have suggested.

Yardeni says that Y2K will adversely effect the economy during the first six months of 2000 and it is sure to be a Dow-buster.

In an interview with Entrepreneur magazine, published this month, Yardeni explained why his is a Y2K skeptic:

*The federal government has stated most of their mission critical systems have been tested and compliant. But Yardeni complains there is no standard as to "what 'mission critical' means." He says the feds have yet to do testing on 40 major programs, and he can't believe, for instance the FAA can be compliant in time.

*He chafes at the idea that Y2K problems will just be "local." Yardeni responds to such brush offs: "My response is that that's where we live!" Too many local problems add up to a "national hurricane," he said.

*Yardeni has done some research and he doesn't like what he finds. "My surveys among IT professional have found something disturbing. Software patches from third party vendors for so-called mission-critical programs hadn't been provided in 20 percent of cases as of September."

*Internationally Y2K could spell disaster. "I'm concerned about the state of oil companies in Mexico and Venezuela, since they got a very late start. Kuwait didn't seem to know it even had a problem until last year. The Japanese got a very late start but claim they'll be ready. I'm skeptical. The rest of Asia doesn't look like it's in good shape. China is at the top of everyone's list of countries likely to have Y2K failures …"

Short-term Yardeni is a bear. He advises investors to "overweight government bonds, underweight stocks, and accumulate cash in the portfolio." After the Y2K problems pass in 6 months Yardeni believes such investors will be in a better position to get back into the bull market. On CNBC, Yardeni cautioned that Y2K problems may not be apparent in the waking hours of the New Year, but may surface in the days and weeks after as supply, shipping and communications problems related to Y2K surface.


canamami (12/27/99; 21:21:12MDT - Msg ID:21712)
Reply to SteveH -post#21701
I agree: I suspect Emerson may be going to the Supreme Court, eventually.

I have only a surface knowledge of US constitutional law. However, the US Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) was designed to limit Congress as part of states' rights more so than to protect individual rights. Thus, the theory that the Second Amendment was designed to protect the states' right to possess a militia (i.e., the National Guard) makes sense. Further, there were provisions in the Constitution concerning the right to bring the militia under federal control in a time of emergency (the "militia" being contrasted with the "standing army" raised by Congress). However, the Fourteenth Amendment was interpreted early on as extending the application of the Bill of Rights to the states. The Second Amendment was never repealed. Thus, it must now arguably be read as extending to the states as well as the federal government, which means it must contemplate an individual right. Otherwise, the long line of jurisprudence interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment as extending the Bill of Rights to the states may be subject to being revisited.

An example of a people without a right to bear arms: The Acadians were expelled from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick just prior to and during the Seven Years War. The British had seized the Acadians' firearms during discussions concerning the swearing of an unconditional oath of allegiance to Britain. There are petitions from the Acadians to the authorities in Halifax, seeking their weapons back because of predations by wild animals, and difficulties in dealing with the local aboriginals. The Acadians did not possess a right to hold firearms as they were Roman Catholic, and the right to possess firearms under the English Bill of Rights extends only to Protestants. Eventually, the Acadians were expelled, generally to the American Colonies (i.e., prior to American independence). The expulsion of the Acadians was well known to the drafters of the US Constitution, as were the provisions of the English Bill of Rights, upon which the US Bill of Rights is substantially based.

Number Six (12/27/99; 20:52:58MDT - Msg ID:21711)
y2k economic outlook - seems reasonable to me...
The heavy stuff doesn't even hit the fan in the first 3 days.


Week 1 Dec 31st-Jan 8th primary embedded failures (some water/sewer, chemical plants, manufacturing) - Unknown level of impact...could be a 1 (unlikely but possible) or a 7-10 (unlikely but possible) figure a general 2-3 in most areas but a 10 in others.

Week 2-14 The unraveling of the economy-JIT failures, processing, accounting glitches. Fuel goes through the roof... rationing is probable. Stock market contracts, puffs then implodes for 2 qtrs. minimum. Longer if fail scenarios in production facilities remain troubled. This will be a 5-9 on the scale. Oil and chemical plants hold the key here. 40% of small businesses have done nothing for y2k. 10% of these will fail outright within 6-12 weeks. 7-26 million will be added to the unemployment rolls by June 2000. Govt. steps in but can't stem the tide. National emergency declared in most states by mid Feb.

Week 15-52 Slow then moderate recovery mixed with new fail scenarios keep anxiety very high. Level drops some to 4-7. Market starts back on recovery but will take yrs to recover fully.

from tb2k



canamami (12/27/99; 20:43:53MDT - Msg ID:21710)
Reply/Apologies to Town Crier
Town Crier,

It looks like I over-reacted and misunderstood your post. My apologies. Your point about a poster earning the "benefit of the doubt", so to speak, is well-taken. Your past posts certainly have earned you the benefit of the doubt, and I perhaps ought not to have adopted a defensive posture to your post.

SteveH (12/27/99; 20:25:50MDT - Msg ID:21709)
Take it for what it is worth
I neither agree nor disagree with this. Interesting though. How much of this applies to the gold market currently?

Fake Terrorism - The Road To Dictatorship By Michael Rivero
http://24.142.63.193/perl/profile?op=show&user=Michael%20Rivero

It's the oldest trick in the book, dating back to Roman times;
creating the enemies you need.

In 70 BC, an ambitious minor politician and extremely wealthy man,
Marcus Licineus Crassus, wanted to rule Rome. Just to give you an idea
of what sort of man Crassus really was, he is credited with invention
of the fire brigade. But in Crassus' version, his fire-fighting slaves
would race to the scene of a burning building whereupon Crassus would
offer to buy it on the spot for a tiny fraction of it's worth. If the
owner sold, Crassus' slaves would put out the fire. If the owner
refused to sell, Crassus allowed the building to burn to the ground.
By means of this device, Crassus eventually came to be the largest
single private landholder in Rome, and used some of his wealth to help
back Julius Caesar against Cicero.

In 70 BC Rome was still a Republic, which placed very strict limits on
what Rulers could do, and more importantly NOT do. But Crassus had no
intentions of enduring such limits to his personal power, and
contrived a plan.

Crassus seized upon the slave revolt led by Sparticus in order to
strike terror into the hearts of Rome, whose garrison Sparticus had
already defeated in battle. But Sparticus had no intention of marching
on Rome itself, a move he knew to be suicidal. Sparticus and his band
wanted nothing to do with the Roman empire and had planned from the
start merely to loot enough money from their former owners in the
Italian countryside to hire a mercenary fleet in which to sail to
freedom.

Sailing away was the last thing Crassus wanted Sparticus to do. He
needed a convenient enemy with which to terrorize Rome itself for his
personal political gain. So Crassus bribed the mercenary fleet to sail
without Sparticus, then positioned two Roman legions in such a way
that Sparticus had no choice but to march on Rome.

Terrified of the impending arrival of the much-feared army of
gladiators, Rome declared Crassus Praetor. Crassus then crushed
Sparticus' army and even though Pompeii took the credit, Crassus was
elected Consul of Rome the following year.

With this maneuver, the Romans surrendered their Republican form of
government. Soon would follow the first Triumvirate, consisting of
Crassus, Pompeii, and Julius Caesar, followed by the reign of the god-
like Emperors of Rome.

The Romans were hoaxed into surrendering their Republic, and accepting
the rule of Emperors.

Julius Caesar's political opponent, Cicero, for all his literary
accomplishments, played the same games in his campaign against Julius
Caesar, claiming that Rome was falling victim to an internal "vast
right wing" conspiracy in which any expressed desire for legislative
limits no government was treated as suspicious behavior. Cicero, in
order to demonstrate to the Romans just how unsafe Rome has become
hired thugs to cause as much disturbance as possible, and campaigned
on a promise to end the internal strife if elected and granted
extraordinary powers.

What Cicero only dreamed of, Adolph Hitler succeeded in doing. Elected
Chancellor of Germany, Hitler, like Crassus, had no intention of
living with the strict limits to his power imposed by German law.
Unlike Cicero, Hitler's thugs were easy to recognize; they all wore
the same brown shirts. But their actions were no different than those
of their Roman predecessors. They staged beatings, set fires, caused
as much trouble as they could, while Hitler made speeches promising
that he could end the crime wave of subversives and terrorism if he
was granted extraordinary powers.

The Germans were hoaxed into surrendering their Republic, and
accepting the rule of Der Fuhrer.

The state-sponsored schools will never tell you this, but governments
routinely rely on hoaxes to sell their agendas to an otherwise
reluctant public. The Romans accepted the Emperors and the Germans
accepted Hitler not because they wanted to, but because the carefully
crafted illusions of threat appeared to leave no other choice.

Our government too uses hoaxes to create the illusion that We The
People have no choice but the direction the government wishes us to go
in.

In 1898, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph
Hearst's New York Journal were arguing for American intervention in
Cuba. Hearst is reported to have dispatched a photographer to Cuba to
photograph the coming war with Spain. When the photographer asked just
what war that might be, Hearst is reported to have replied, "You take
the photographs, and I will provide the war". Hearst was true to his
word, as his newspaper published stories of great atrocities being
committed against the Cuban people, most of which turned out to be
complete fabrications.

On the night of February 15, 1898, the USS Main, lying in Havana
harbor in a show of US resolve to protect her interests, exploded
violently. Captain Sigsbee, the commander of the Maine, urged that no
assumptions of enemy attack be made until there was a full
investigation of the cause of the explosion. For this, Captain Sigsbee
was excoriated in the press for "refusing to see the obvious". The
Atlantic Monthly declared flat out that to suppose the explosion to be
anything other than a deliberate act by Spain was "completely at
defiance of the laws of probability".

Under the slogan "Remember the Maine", Americans went to war with
Spain, wresting from that nation ownership of what is now much of the
American southwest.

In 1975, an investigation led by Admiral Hyman Rickover examined the
data recovered from a 1911 examination of the wreck and concluded that
there had been no evidence of an external explosion. The most likely
cause of the sinking was a coal dust explosion in a coal bunker
imprudently located next to the ship's magazines. Captain Sigsbee's
caution had been well founded.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt needed a war. He needed the fever
of a major war to mask the symptoms of a still deathly ill economy
struggling back from the Great Depression. Roosevelt wanted a war with
Germany to stop Hitler, but despite several provocations in the
Atlantic, the American people, still struggling with that troublesome
economy, were opposed to any wars.

Roosevelt needed an enemy, and if America would not willingly attack
that enemy, then one would have to be maneuvered into attacking
America, much as Marcus Licinius Crassus has maneuvered Sparticus into
attacking Rome.

The way open to war was created when Japan signed the tripartite
agreement with Italy and Germany, with all parties pledging mutual
defense to each other. Whereas Hitler would never declare war on the
United States no matter the provocation, the means to force Japan to
do so were readily at hand.

The first step was to place oil and steel embargoes on Japan, using
Japan's wars on the Asian mainland as a reason. This forced Japan to
consider seizing the oil and mineral rich regions in Indonesia. With
the European powers militarily exhausted by the war in Europe, the
United States was the only power in the Pacific able to stop Japan
from invading the Dutch East Indies, and by moving the Pacific fleet
from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Roosevelt made a pre-emptive
strike on that fleet the mandatory first step in any Japanese plan to
extend it's empire into the "southern resource area".

Roosevelt boxed in Japan just as completely as Crassus had boxed in
Sparticus. Japan needed oil. They had to invade Indonesia to get it,
and to do that they had to remove the threat of the American fleet at
Pearl Harbor. There never really was any other course open to them.

To enrage the American people as much as possible, Roosevelt needed
the first overt attack by Japan to be as bloody as possible, appearing
as a sneak attack much as the Japanese had done to the Russians. From
that moment up until the attack on Pearl Harbor itself, Roosevelt and
his associates made sure that the commanders in Hawaii, General Short
and Admiral Kimmel, were kept in the dark as much as possible about
the location of the Japanese fleet and it's intentions, then later
scapegoated for the attack. (Congress recently exonerated both Short
and Kimmel, posthumously restoring them to their former ranks).

But as the Army board had concluded at the time, and subsequent de-
classified documents confirmed, Washington DC knew the attack was
coming, knew exactly where the fleet was, and knew where it was
headed.

On November 29th, Secretary of State Hull showed United Press reporter
Joe Leib a message with the time and place of the attack, and the New
York Times in it's special 12/8/41 Pearl Harbor edition, on page 13,
reported that the time and place of the attack had been known in
advance!

The much repeated claim that the Japanese fleet maintained radio
silence on it's way to Hawaii was a lie. Among other intercepts still
held in the Archives of the NSA is the UNCODED message sent by the
Japanese tanker Shirya stating, "proceeding to a position 30.00 N,
154.20 E. Expect to arrive at that point on 3 December." (near HI)

President Lyndon Johnson wanted a war in Vietnam. He wanted it to help
his friends who owned defense companies to do a little business. He
needed it to get the Pentagon and CIA to quit trying to invade Cuba.
And most of all, he needed a provocation to convince the American
people that there was really "no other choice".

On August 5, 1964, newspapers across America reported "renewed
attacks" against American destroyers operating in Vietnamese waters,
specifically the Gulf of Tonkin. The official story was that North
Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" on the USS
Maddox while it was on "routine patrol".

The truth is that USS Maddox was involved in aggressive intelligence
gathering in coordination with actual attacks by South Vietnam and the
Laotian Air Force against targets in North Vietnam. The truth is also
that there was no attack by torpedo boats against the USS Maddox.
Captain John J. Herrick, the task force commander in the Gulf, cabled
Washington DC that the report was the result of an "over-eager"
sonarman who had picked up the sounds of his own ship's screws and
panicked. But even with this knowledge that the report was false,
Lyndon Johnson went on national TV that night to announce the
commencement of air strikes against North Vietnam, "retaliation" for
an attack that had never occurred.

President George Bush wanted a war in Iraq. Like Crassus, George Bush
is motivated by money. Specifically oil money. But with the OPEC
alliance failing to keep limits on oil production in the Mideast, the
market was being glutted with oil pumped from underneath Iraq, which
sat over roughly 1/3 of the oil reserves of the entire region.

George wanted a war to stop that flow of oil, to keep prices (and
profits) from falling any further than they already had. But like
Roosevelt, he needed the "other side" to make the first move.

Iraq had long been trying to acquire greater access to the Persian
Gulf, and felt limited confined a narrow strip of land along Kuwait's
northern border, which placed Iraqi interests in close proximity with
hostile Iran. George Bush, who had been covertly arming Iraq during
its war with Iran, sent word via Jean Kirkpatrick that the United
States would not intervene if Saddam Hussein grabbed a larger part of
Kuwait. Saddam fell for the bait and invaded.

Of course, Americans were not about to send their sons and daughters
to risk their lives for petroleum products. So George Bush arranged a
hoax, using public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which has grown
rich on taxpayer money by being most industrious and creative liars!
Hill & Knowlton concocted a monumental fraud in which the daughter of
the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States, went on TV pretending to
be a nurse, and related a horror story in which Iraqi troops looted
the incubators from a Kuwaiti hospital, leaving the premature babies
on the cold floor to die. The media, part of the swindle from the
start, never bothered asking why the "nurse" didn't just pick the
babies up and wrap them in blankets or something.

Enraged by the incubator story, Americans supported operation Desert
Storm, which never removed Saddam Hussein from power but which did
take Kuwait's oil off of the market for almost 2 years and limited
Iraq's oil exports to this very day. That our sons and daughters came
home with serious and lingering medical illnesses was apparently not
too great a price to pay for increased oil profits.

Following the victory in Iraq, yet another war appeared to be in the
offering in the mineral rich regions of Bosnia. Yet again, a hoax was
used to create support for military action.

The above photo of Fikret Alic, a Muslim, staring through a barbed
wire fence, was used to "prove" that the Bosnians were running modern
day "Concentration Camps". As the headline of "Belsen 92" indicates,
all possible associations with the Nazi horrors were made to sell the
necessity of sending yet more American troops into someone else's
nation.

But when German Journalists went to Trnopolje, the site of the
supposed Bosnian Concentration Camp. to film a documentary, they
discovered that the photo was a fake! The camp at Trnopolje was not a
concentration camp but a refugee center. Nor was it surrounded by
barbed wire. Careful examination of the original photo revealed that
the photographer had shot the photo through a broken section of fence
surrounding a tool shed. It was the photographer who was on the
inside, shooting out at the refugees.

Once again, Americans had been hoaxed into support of actions they
might otherwise not have agreed with.

While several American Presidents have willingly started wars for
personal purposes, perhaps no President has ever carried it to the
extreme that Bill Clinton has.

Coincident with the expected public statement of Monica Lewinsky
following her testimony, Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack
on Sudan and Afghanistan, claiming to have had irrefutable proof that
bogeyman extraordinaire (and former Afghani ally) Osama Bin Ladin was
creating terrorist chemical weapons there.

Examination of the photos of the debris revealed none of the expected
structures one would find in a laboratory that handled lethal weapons-
grade materials. Assurances from the CIA that they had a positive soil
test for biological weapons fell on their face when it was revealed
that there had been no open soil anywhere near the pre-bombed
facility. Sudan requested that international observers come test the
remains of the factory for any signs of the nerve gas Clinton had
insisted was there. None was found. The Sudanese plant was a harmless
aspirin factory, and the owner has sued for damages.

Later examination of the site hit in Afghanistan revealed it to be a
mosque.

<http://www.accessone.com/~rivero/LIE/fake-mig.gifclick for larger
image

Meanwhile, back in Kosovo, stories about genocide and atrocities were
flooding the media (in time to distract from the Sudanese
embarrassments), just as lurid and sensational and as it turns out
often just as fictional as most of William Randolph Hearst's stories
of atrocities against the Cubans.

Again, the government and the media were hoaxing Americans. The above
photo was shown on all the American networks, claiming to be one of
Slobodan Milosovic's Migs, shot down while attacking civilians. Closer
examination (click on the photo) shows it to be stenciled in English!

Like Germany under Chancellor Hitler, there have been events in our
nation which strike fear into the hearts of the citizens, such as the
New York World Trade Tower bombing, the OK City Federal Building, and
the Olympic Park bomb (nicely timed to divert the media from witnesses
to the TWA 800 shoot down). The media has been very quick to blame
such events on "radicals", "subversives", "vast right wing
conspiracies", and other "enemies in our midst", no different than the
lies used by Cicero and Hitler.

But on closer examination, such "domestic terrorist" events do not
appear to be what they are made out to be. The FBI had an informant
inside the World Trade Tower bombers, Emad Salam, <http:
file://www.accessone.com/~rivero/POLITICS/OK/wtcbomb.html who offered to
sabotage the bomb. The FBI told him "no". The so-called "hot bed" of
white separatism at Elohim City, occasional home to Tim McVeigh in the
weeks prior to the OK City bombing, was founded and is being run by an
FBI informant!

<http://www.accessone.com/~rivero/POLITICS/OK/TRUCK/TRUCK2.gifclick
for larger image

And nobody has ever really explained what this second Ryder truck was
doing in a secret camp half way from Elohim City to Oklahoma City two
weeks before the bombing.

So, here we are today. Like the Romans of Crassus' and Cicero's time,
or the Germans under a newly elected Hitler, we are being warned that
a dangerous enemy threatens us, implacable, invisible, omnipresent,
and invulnerable as long as our government is hamstrung by that silly
old Bill of Rights. Already there have appeared articles debating
whether or not "extraordinary measures" (i.e. torture) are not fully
justified under certain circumstances such as those we are purported
to face.

As was the case in Rome and Germany, the government continues to plead
with the public for an expansion of its power and authority, to "deal
with the crisis".

However, as Casio watch timers are paraded before the cameras, to the
stentorian tones of the talking heads' constant dire warnings, it is
legitimate to question just how real the crises is, and how much is
the result of political machinations by our own leaders.

Are the terrorists really a threat, or just hired actors with bombs
and Casio watches, paid for by Cicero and given brown shirts to wear
by Hitler?

Is terrorism inside the United States really from outside, or is it a
stage managed production, designed to cause Americans to believe they
have no choice but to surrender the Republic and accept the
totalitarian rule of a new emperor, or a new Fuhrer?

Once lost, the Romans never got their Republic back. Once lost, the
Germans never got their Republic back. In both cases, the nation had
to totally collapse before freedom was restored to the people.

Remember that when Crassus tells you that Sparticus approaches.

Remember that when thugs in the streets act in a manner clearly
designed to provoke the public fear.

Remember that when the Reichstagg burns down.


SHIFTY (12/27/99; 20:14:17MDT - Msg ID:21708)
y2k / humor/???
T'was the week after Christmas and all through the house, not one pc was working not even a mouse. I turned on the power but nothing was working, I grabbed the computer and started banging and jerking. I layed out three grand for this big wad of spit, on January 1st the damn thing turned to Sh-t. When I threw it out the window it made such a clatter, my neighbor just called to see what's the matter. I turned on the TV the cable is down, my microwave oven is making a weird sound. My new VCR is as dead as a rock, not one light is blinking not even the clock! It's twenty below, the peak of snow-season, the furnace won't work the pipes are all freezing. This couldn't have happened at a worse time. I think I have frost bite on my behind. I laughed for a second and thought it all funny, then a call from my bank in regards to my money. "We managed your pension and savings with care, but for some odd reason your money's not there. We were Y2K ready we'd thought we'd be heroes, but regret to inform you your balance is .. zero!" I dropped the receiver to the bathroom I rush, I push down the handle the toilet won't flush. I turned on the faucet not one drop hits the sink, I head out the door to the pub for a drink. I jump in the car turn the key in the switch, It only goes "click" I scream "son of a b-tch" A computerized ignition has just sealed my fate, not set up for the 2000 date. I twitch like a madman this cannot be true, no car, heat, or money, what the hell can I do? Shouting obscenities as I ran out of sight, Happy Y2K to all, it's been one hell of a night.

This ditty sent to me by a friend, thought you might enjoy.

TownCrier (12/27/99; 18:15:21MDT - Msg ID:21707)
The GOLDEN VIEW from The Tower
Gold and oil were the big gainers of the day, although the Nasdaq erased steep losses of nearly 70 points at mid-day to end with another record on a gain of less than 6 additional points. Would be profit-takers on stocks are possibly reluctant to sell due to the tax implications in a few short months. It is quite possible that a number of traders are holding on these few days to sell in the new tax year.

The 30-yr bond saw its yield relax by two basis points on trade that was only half of typical volume. Traders are dismissing the bond's 10/32 gain today after a long string of losses as no fundamental change, but rather a product of a short-term oversold condition...and possible Y2K positioning. Traders are increasingly anticipating higher interest rates to come early in 2000, with ever more looking for the Fed to perhaps utilize a 0.50% rate hike at the FOMC's next meeting in February.

London financial markets of all types (currency, metal, stocks) are closed Monday and Tuesday for the Christmas holiday, creating very thin trading in all markets, even as American traders returned today to their desks. Spot gold was last traded in NY at $287.50, up $1.50 over the previous close in NY last Thursday. COMEX traders lifted the price of February gold futures by $1.30 to $289.80, within 20¢ of the top of its two-dollar range. Trading volume is not expected to pick up significantly until London resumes business on Wednesday, though the U.S. will close early on Thursay for the New Year holiday. Thin trading could lend itself to sharper than usual price swings--most likely to the upside, all things considered.

Speaking of COMEX trading, tomorrow (Tuesday) marks the termination of trading of the December futures contracts, Wednesday is the final notice day for delivery, and Thurday marks the delivery deadline. In the previous trading session, last minute gambling through this particular derivative added a net 29 positions to the remaining open interest, to begin today's trade at 73 contracts. Delivery intentions announced this morning totaled 56, bringing the number of 100 oz. contracts slated for physical settlement on or before this Thursday to 8,284 (828,400 ounces) on or before this coming Thursday.

There was no visible movement of gold today at the official COMEX depositories.

PAPER

As mentioned earlier, currency trading was subdued due to the holidays in general, and to the closed London markets in particular. There was little notable net movement among the major currencies, but there was some notable activity...you may recall our Christmas Eve post of the Foreign Exchange intervention by the bank of Japan buying dollars for yen (check your archives if you missed this moderately important commentary from midday on Dec. 24.) We'll turn the latest currency commentary over to Bridge News, particularly to capture the essence of their humorous concluding statement on the Bank of Japan. In the meanwhile, imagine what would be your own reaction as a citizen under a government that openly endeavored to weaken the currency you held in savings for a rainy day...

"In Asia, traders shrugged off Japanese Ministry of Finance officials'
attempts to prolong yen's weakness. International Bureau Chief Zembei Mizoguchi
reiterated that the yen's current strength is undesirable, Vice Minister for
International Affairs Haruhiko Kuroda noted yet again that the current yen is
excessively strong against the dollar and euro, while Administrative Finance
Minister Nobuaki Usui said the ministry would closely watch the market ahead of
the year-end.
But none of them explained why the BOJ intervened in a steady market after
repeatedly saying in the past that the central bank would intervene only if the
markets moved too quickly. Given the limited reaction to their FX action, it is
apparent that the BOJ managed in the end only to chip away at the little
credibility it had left."
---
Reprinted at USAGOLD by permission of Bridge news. No further reproduction permitted without permission. For more information see: http://www.crbindex.com/

OIL

Feb crude ended up in what one trader described to Bridge News as the path of least resistance. Oil climbed 46¢ to finish at $26.36 per barrel on talk of OPEC extending supply cuts beyond the end of March, and on news of production problems at a large field in Iraq. An FWN report quoted Iranian Petroleum Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh saying, "If market conditions call for it, OPEC will extend its production ceiling to be effective even after the month of March," adding that compliance with production cut agreeements among the 10 OPEC members (excluding Iraq) has been near 90 percent.

Thin NYMEX trade amid the end-of-year holidays is expected to continue to exaggerate any price movements.

And that's the view from here...after the close.

TownCrier (12/27/99; 18:13:10MDT - Msg ID:21706)
Sorry for causing unwarranted anxiety, canamami!
The purpose of the (12/27/99; 14:05) post was simply to further a theme discussed by The Tower last week on the issue of propaganda and the various motives of the media. The point being that the reader must be ever vigilant, not passive in their absorption of news and editorials--as evidenced by one popular example. (You may recall a quote we posted by Thomas Jefferson to the effect that the nearest one might come to finding the truth in a newspaper would be within the advertisements, not the articles.)

You are absolutely correct in your assessment (12/27/99; 16:08) of the article you posted earlier, and I shall thank you again for the original posting of it. Where we have suggested a general guideline that as a media outlet is scrutinized over time for their ability to deliver unspun news, you have demonstrated yourself to be in agreement with this advice. You said: "There are a number of sources I follow, and my reposts tend to reflect those writers whom I follow. Peter Cook has written some of the best stuff I've seen on the Euro in the past year, and I believe his analyses possess a great deal of merit."

Unfortunately, my comments following your article were not as well-structured as they should have been in order to convey the essence of the idea that was intended. Neither you nor Peter Cook nor the merits of the article were being either called into question or disparaged. My reply tried to point out (and obviously failed miserably, judging from your reaction,) that it was only seizing the specific example of the falling euro/dollar exchange statistic as conveniently provided by this article as is cited by so many others. The article on a whole was left to stand up under earlier comments we offered as: "this isn't to say that all media has evil intentions, but rather that nobody should readily absorb all they they read or are told without giving it a little thought to see how it compares against common sense and already established facts or truths." As you say, canamami, on the whole, this article and Peter Cook stand up rather well. I'm certain that our misunderstanding arose out of the distance in my text between these vital phrases meant to deliver the proper message (as reiterated above). Consider these excerpts as the essence of the original comments, and you will hopefully see your anxiety fade.

"Thanks for posting the euro article from the Globe and Mail, canamami. It provides a perfect example of how the media can present present a greatly skewed picture without printing outright falsehoods. ... This article states "Moreover, given the record of the past year...why on earth link yourself to a currency that has plummeted 14 per cent against the U.S. dollar?" By istself, that statistic is correct, but it is also misleading. It is not much different than naysayers focusing only on the decline of the gold price since $850 in 1980 whithout mentioning that it was only $35 as recently at 1971....Using $1.08 makes for a more objective reference point, and we can see that in a two year span it has first climbed 13¢ above this mark, and most recently finds itself about 7¢ below this reference mark. Had we chosen some other reference point over some other span of time, we might paint nearly any picture we might choose. However, in the interest of objectivity, as is our wont, we feel the above example [i.e. selecting $1.08 as a reference level] is a fair one."

Just as we establish a "track record" for any given media corporation, so too do we form expectations for our physical and internet acquaintances. If a post seems ambiguous under analysis, we should turn to the track record for assistence. I would hope that ours is such that you didn't feel immediately compelled to become defensive. Again, sorry for providing a post that was less clear than was possible.

Netking (12/27/99; 17:46:46MDT - Msg ID:21705)
@R Powell
http://egoli.atwww.com.au/newsandviews/archives/1027.html
Still working on exact date of a formal vote but the two links (above & below) give a review of background info.

http://www.gold.org/Gra/Pr/Gf990412.htm

R Powell (12/27/99; 17:07:09MDT - Msg ID:21704)
Swiss gold sale decision?
R Powell
To anyone

Does anyone know when the lower house of the Swiss parliment votes to okay or not the 1300 ton gold sale due to begin next year? Is passage a foregone conclusion?



nickel62 (12/27/99; 16:32:09MDT - Msg ID:21703)
A thoughtful Satire of the Idiocy of this Internet IPO market.Worth the read and a chuckle.
http://www.ft.com/nbearchive/email-ftibwcq31008e.htm
The above URL story from the Financial Times skillfully skewers the pomposity of most of todays investment bankers and gives a warm Christmas toast to all of us who still believe in gravity.

canamami (12/27/99; 16:08:31MDT - Msg ID:21702)
Reply to Town Crier
I confess I'm a little confused and startled by your response to the article I reposted from the Globe and Mail. First, I actually thought the article was quite pro-Euro, in that it posits that all the current and putative EU members are eager to adopt the Euro, except for the UK. If anything, the repost represented an article from a mainstream non-US source, generally in accord with the positions favoured by posters to the Forum.

Second, if I understand your position correctly, you are suggesting (1) that I "passively" reposted the article, without "engaging my brain", (2) and that I should exercise greater caution in reposting in the future, because the specific pro-gold positions favoured on the Forum are somewhat akin to a 2+2=4 proposition.

My reply: I've been posting on this Forum for about, I guess, 15 to 18 months. I would think the majority of posters would agree that my posts are serious and aim legitimately to contribute to, and to provoke, discussion. There are a number of sources I follow, and my reposts tend to reflect those writers whom I follow. Peter Cook has written some of the best stuff I've seen on the Euro in the past year, and I believe his analyses possess a great deal of merit. His reference to the 14% drop in the Euro's value relative to the dollar is accurate, and would still be accurate even if he were "attacking" the Euro; in fact, the sentence you referenced was used to set out a "British" position which Cook argues is not shared by the majority in any other present or putative EU country.

My next point: No position on this or any other Forum concerning political economy even approaches a "2+2=4" certainty. It appears that you were saying that the "house positions" are to be taken as a given, and that contrary views may be tolerated to an extent, but not too much, so watch what one posts or reposts. I apologize in advance if I have miscategorized your position. Moreover, even if that were your position, that would be "fine with me" given that the owners of the Forum can do what they please, presumably subject to the laws concerning the giving of investment advice in the US, with which I am not conversant. I would only ask that if certain views are not welcome, that such an editorial position be made clear and explicit, so that the content of anything posted on this Forum can be appropriately and accordingly discounted by an objective reader, and so that "unwelcome" contributors won't waste their time posting "unwelcome" contributions.

Thank You.

SteveH (12/27/99; 15:53:26MDT - Msg ID:21701)
Important
Emerson is up for review at the Federal Appellate level. Why is Emerson important to gold? Because it is about a right guaranteed by the Constitution. My opinion is that Emerson will win on the Second and loose on the fifth. To find out who Emerson is and why it is important to protecting gold, please read below:

repost:

It is reposted here for educational purposes only. Please visit
http://www.usatoday.com for more
information on acquiring a back copy or visit your local library.

USA Today: Nation
08/27/99- Updated 12:35 AM ET

Case could shape future of gun
control

The Second Amendment establishes a right to possess firearms.
The question is: Is it an individual right or a military
necessity?


By Richard Willing, USA TODAY

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of
the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. - Second
Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution, 1791

Tucked inside this famous paragraph, amid the multiple clauses, odd
punctuation
and 18th-century syntax, lies the right that Americans both cherish
and fear: the
right to have a gun.

But whose right is it anyway? Is there an individual right to own a
gun, like the
individual right to freedom of speech or religion? Or does the
Second Amendment
mean only that Americans can defend themselves collectively through
state militias,
like the modern-day National Guard?

The debate over what the Second Amendment actually means has filled
a forest of
law review articles and scholarly papers over the past 10 years.
Now it is about to
spill out of the ivory tower and into the real world of guns and
gun control.

For the first time, a federal judge has ruled that the Second
Amendment guarantees
an individual's right to own a gun. In the process, the judge
invalidated a 1994
federal law that denies guns to anyone who is under a restraining
order to prevent
him or her from harassing a spouse. The law was part of a measure
aimed at
reducing domestic violence by limiting access to guns.

If the decision by a federal district court judge last April in
Texas is upheld on
appeal, it could be a huge setback for gun control advocates,
placing perhaps
hundreds of laws in danger of being struck down. And it would be a
victory for gun
control opponents such as the National Rifle Association, which has
consistently
argued that an individual's right to a gun is protected by the
Second Amendment.

An appeal of the case, U.S. v. Emerson, begins with the filing of
briefs in the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans Friday.

The case, which is likely to be argued next January or February, is
unfolding as
liberal scholars such as Harvard's Laurence Tribe, who has long
been hostile to the
individual-rights argument, have begun to move toward the NRA's
position.

"The real-world consequences (of the Texas case) could be
enormous," says Carl
Bogus, a specialist on the Second Amendment at Roger Williams Law
School in
Bristol, R.I.

If the lower-court ruling is upheld, "it would stand the law on its
head," Bogus says.
It would destroy Congress' ability to create gun control laws.
Anyone arrested
under current (gun control) laws could argue they're
unconstitutional. This is not just
an academic exercise."

The renewed debate over the Second Amendment's meaning comes as
recent
shootings in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Littleton, Colo., have
increased pressure for
new gun control laws. This week, authorities in Los Angeles took
the
unprecedented step of banning sales of guns from the nation's
largest gun show.

The very fact that there is a debate is likely to surprise many
Americans, many of
whom assume that the Second Amendment already guarantees them the
right to
own a gun. A CBS News poll Aug. 15 found that 48% of adults believe
there is an
individual right to a gun, while 38% do not.

Case began as domestic dispute

The case began last August when Sacha Emerson, 26, a nurse from San
Angelo,
Texas, filed for divorce. The local court placed a restraining
order on her husband,
physician Timothy Joe Emerson, 41, after she complained that he had
verbally
threatened her boyfriend.

Timothy Emerson owned a handgun, which automatically put him at
odds with the
federal law barring gun ownership by people under state restraining
orders in
domestic disputes. A federal grand jury indicted Emerson, who was
"greatly
surprised" to learn that he may have violated any law, according to
his lawyer,
David Guinn.

The case never got to trial. In April, U.S. District Court Judge
Sam Cummings
found that the law denying guns to those under a restraining order
was an
unconstitutional infringement of the "individual right to bear
arms."

The federal law, Cummings wrote, "is unconstitutional because it
allows a state
court divorce proceeding, without particularized findings of the
threat of future
violence, to automatically deprive a citizen of his Second
Amendment rights."

The decision took gun control advocates and opponents by surprise.
Cummings,
54, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Reagan, had
a reputation
as a middle-of-the-road jurist who seldom set aside an indictment.
And Emerson's
lawyer, assistant federal public defender David Guinn, had raised
the Second
Amendment argument almost as an afterthought.

Both sides are taking the appeal very seriously. The National
Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers and the NRA plan to file briefs supporting
Emerson and
his argument that there is an individual right. A consortium of 45
law professors and
legal historians has filed on behalf of the other side.

The solicitor general's office in Washington, which handles appeals
for the federal
government, is helping federal prosecutor William Mateja with his
argument that the
domestic violence law should be upheld and the indictment
reinstated.

Amendment is open to interpretation

Arguments about the meaning of the Second Amendment can be murky,
because
both sides rely on the amendment's wording to reach radically
different conclusions.

Proponents of the theory that the Second Amendment confers only a
collective
right to bear arms focus on the mention of "militia" in the
amendment's opening
clause.

"Clearly, the reference to 'militia' is there for a reason," Bogus
says. If the
Amendment's drafters had "wanted an individual right, they wouldn't
have needed
to qualify it. That first (clause) is all-important. They're
saying, 'Because there's a
need for a militia, we're bringing up the subject of arms.'"

These theorists say that history, too, is in their favor. James
Madison's original draft
of the Second Amendment, the theorists note, exempted the
"religiously scrupulous"
- conscientious objectors - from bearing arms, indicating that the
right protected
only arms related to militia service.

"If the Second Amendment had been adopted as originally drafted by
Madison,
there'd be no question that its scope is limited to the possession
of weapons for use
in the militia," says David Yassky, a Brooklyn Law School professor
who has filed
a brief supporting the collective view in the Texas case.

Supporters of the militia interpretation also say that to accept an
individual right to
arms is to endorse anarchy.

"The Second Amendment can't mean that you have the right to form a
private
army," says Dennis Henigan, legal director of the Center to Prevent
Handgun
Violence.

"That's the logic of (Oklahoma City bomber) Timothy McVeigh,"
Henigan says.
The framers of the Constitution "couldn't have intended to bestow a
right to armed
insurrection. That would have destroyed what they were trying to
build."

Those who advocate the right of the individual to bear arms say
their adversaries
are misreading the Second Amendment.

"You've got to understand: The militia at the time (the amendment)
was written was
basically all able-bodied men," says Stephen Halbrook, a lawyer in
Fairfax, Va.,
who has filed a pro-gun-rights brief in the Texas case.

When the framers "are talking about the 'militia,' they are talking
about the 'people.'
They'd be shocked if anybody thought they meant something
different."

Both sides say history supports them

Those in the individual-rights group also say history supports
them, not their
opponents.

"When the amendment was written and through most of the 19th
century and into
the 20th, it was assumed that the individual right (to a weapon)
existed," says
Robert Cottrol, a Second Amendment specialist at George Washington
University
law school and author of Gun Control and the Constitution.

"It wasn't until federal (gun control) laws were enacted, during
Prohibition and later
during the 1960s, that it even became an issue."

Akhil Reed Amar, a Yale University law professor and scholar of the
Bill of Rights,
says the right is neither collective nor individual but something
in between: the right
of a small community of family and friends to defend their homes,
as the Minutemen
had done during the American Revolution.

"They weren't thinking of establishing a right for the National
Guard or for the
Michigan militia," Amar says. "They were thinking about Lexington
and Concord,
where they stood with their families and friends to resist an
imperial army. If you get
Lexington and Concord, you get the Second Amendment."

America's courts have had little to say about the debate. When they
have weighed
in, it has been on the side of those who says there's no individual
right.

During Prohibition, Arkansas bootlegger Jack Miller was indicted
under the first
national gun control law for carrying a sawed-off shotgun across
state lines.

Miller argued that the Second Amendment gave him the right to carry
the weapon
and that the charge should be dismissed. But the Supreme Court
disagreed, saying
in a unanimous 1939 decision that the shotgun had no "reasonable
relationship to
the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia" and was
thus not protected
by the amendment.

U.S. v. Miller was the first and so far the only Supreme Court case
to address the
issue. Since then, the U.S. Courts of Appeal have used the case's
reasoning to
uphold gun restrictions in at least 21 separate cases.

"As long as a (gun control) law exempts the National Guard or
police, it has passed
muster," says Dennis Henigan of the Center to Prevent Handgun
Violence. "The
law has been all our way."

But liberal scholars, after backing the militia theorists for
years, have begun to side
with individual-rights proponents.

Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas law school began the
trend 10 years
ago with an influential law journal article that compared the
Second Amendment to
an "embarrassing relative, whose mention brings a quick change of
subject."

"This will no longer do," Levinson wrote, concluding that the
individual-rights
argument had a historical basis.

Others picked up on that argument.

"If you're going to look at (the Second Amendment) fairly, you have
conclude that
it means a lot more than its critics say," Amar of Yale says. "It's
there in the middle
of the Bill of Rights for a reason."

In a striking departure, Harvard University's Tribe now concludes
that the Second
Amendment guarantees more than a militia right and includes an
individual right to
own firearms. Tribe's new view is included in an updated version of
his treatise
American Constitutional Law, which is out this month.

"Some very serious scholars are concluding that it is too
simplistic to say that the
Second Amendment only protects the militia," Tribe says. "It's not
just the 'hired
guns' for the NRA."

The stakes are large. If the Fifth Circuit upholds the individual
right to own guns, it
would conflict with decisions in other appeals courts over the
years. This probably
would prompt a review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

And if the individual-right theory is upheld there, state and
federal legislatures could
have a much harder time passing gun control laws. Current laws,
too, would be
open to challenge. Courts probably would impose a "balancing test"
to determine
whether a proposed gun control law unduly restricts an individual's
rights.
Essentially, courts would weigh the justification for the gun
control statute against
the restriction imposed on the individual citizen.

"To date, any restriction short of prohibition (of private gun
ownership) has been
deemed acceptable by the courts," George Washington University's
Cottrol says.
"If a right is involved, presumably the whole picture changes. Any
law impacting on
that right might have to pass a much stricter test."

No one is making book on how the Fifth Circuit will rule. Mateja
says he'll argue
that the militia rights view is "well settled" in law and that
Judge Cummings' decision
was "flat wrong."

Guinn says he'll fall back on the language of the Second Amendment
and its
promise of the "right of the people to keep and bear arms."

"The 'people' means the people," he says. "What else could it
mean?"


USAGOLD (12/27/99; 15:49:15MDT - Msg ID:21700)
***MY TOP FIVE EVENTS for GOLD MARKET 1999***
In a very active year for gold, here's my top five gold related events for 1999 in order of importance:

1. The Washington Agreement (of course)

2. The movement in Congress to block the International Monetary Fund gold sales

3. The purchase of 40% of the gold offered at the second Bank of England auction by Goldfields, Ltd.

4. The public pressure exerted by N.M.Rothschild/London to make official sector gold activity more "transparent" (their word)

5. The change in accounting standards for mid year 2000 that will make it mandatory for public firms (now including Goldman Sachs)to mark their derivative positions to market and include them in public balance sheets.

As has been said here so many times before, gold is a political metal and at least the first four of my top gold events were essentially political acts. When you put the first four together, the clear message in these events is that a strong opposition has crystallized against the anti-gold factions in the financial markets, the political sector and the media. It is not gold that lost its lustre, as these institutions have so often claimed, but the wild eyed and erroneous claims about it that have dominated the rhetoric from those institutions.

This incipient opposition to the anti-gold status quo will have an important effect in the 21st century. It will cause gold opponents to think twice about the privileged trading strategies they have practiced for years and gotten away with at the expense of gold owners (including the central banks and mining companies), particularly the gold carry trade which is winding down as you read this post.

Essentially, gold's opponents didn't know we were out here, or they didn't think we could (or would) oppose them. They made the classical strategic blunder of underestimating their opposition. They were wrong on all counts: We could oppose them and we did. As the year drew to a close, for once it was gold's long time opponents who were howling in pain financial and otherwise, not its advocates.

All in all that crystallization of gold advocacy, my fellow meisters, was the most important event of the year now closing. It will have a profound impact on the year we are about to enter. It will show itself in the way we read and react to the mainstream press’ treatment of gold. It will show itself in the way we address management at the various gold mining companies as the year 2000 unfolds. It will show itself in the way the U.S. Congress and other democratic institutions in the world react to gold issues. It will show itself in the way the world's most powerful central banks devise their policies with respect to gold.

You see, my friends, gold's opponents were never able to kill gold though they labored mightily. They could only stymie it. Before too long, they won't be able to do that either.

TownCrier (12/27/99; 14:05:09MDT - Msg ID:21699)
Gathering news from media should not be a passive activity...you must engage your brain
Thanks for posting the euro article from the Globe and Mail, canamami. It provides a perfect example of how the media can present present a greatly skewed picture without printing outright falsehoods. It's all about carefully choosing which portions of the data to pass along to the readers, and which portions to exclude. This isn't to say that all media has evil intentions, but rather that nobody should readily absorb all they they read or are told without giving it a little thought to see how it compares against common sense and already established facts or truths. (ALL people try to paint things in a more favorable light for their benefit...even dear ol' Mom when she admits that the holiday pudding might be touch overcooked--when actually reduced to elemental carbon.)

The more consistently an outlet of the media is seen to represent or favor one side over another, the more care you must exercise in the future when drawing upon their information to form your own reliable conclusions on the subject matter in question. And while it is true that a preponderance of news coming from The Tower here is favorable to gold over the fiat currency alternatives, the reason is little different than the reason a preponderance of math books proclaim that 2+2=4. The reason to belabor the point is the overwhelming vested interest of the media (reflecting the vested interest of big business/advertisers) to maintain the illusion to the contrary...that somehow two plus two is more than four.

Not only is gold a threat to the status quo of those with inside advantage, but the euro could be seen as offering a similar threat. This is where we gain gain some insight into a possible agenda of the particular media outlet in question. To restrict this commentary to a specific example, we will choose one element of this article that gets frequent attention--the decline of the euro since it's introdution at the start of 1999.

This article states "Moreover, given the record of the past year...why on earth link yourself to a currency that has plummeted 14 per cent against the U.S. dollar?"

By istself, that statistic is correct, but it is also misleading. It is not much different than naysayers focusing only on the decline of the gold price since $850 in 1980 whithout mentioning that it was only $35 as recently at 1971.

While prior to January of 1999 there was no "euro" per se, we can nonetheless track its historical performance through it's near equivalent ancestor, the "European Currency Unit" (ecu). What these various anti-euro articles fail to mention is that there was a great deal of hype and (excessive?) optimism surrounding the imminent launch of the euro. The ecu had been in a downtrend against the dollar since mid-1995, but had stabilized at a value of $1.08 in the Spring of 1998. Then, optimistic currency traders drove the price (exchange rate) up to its pre-introduction high of $1.21 in October, 1998 at which the arrival of the official euro introduction a couple months later saw it still priced quite high (for that time) on the currency markets at $1.18.

Using $1.08 makes for a more objective reference point, and we can see that in a two year span it has first climbed 13¢ above this mark, and most recently finds itself about 7¢ below this reference mark.

Had we chosen some other reference point over some other span of time, we might paint nearly any picture we might choose. However, in the interest of objectivity, as is our wont, we feel the above example is a fair one.

Netking (12/27/99; 12:16:41MDT - Msg ID:21698)
The most important US business leader of the 20th century...
The most important USA business leader of the 20th century, as chosen in a CBS news poll of Americans is...Mr Bill Gates. Bill was selected by 34% of respondents & garnered almost four times the support of the second choice Mr Henry Ford (aka "They can have any colour car they want as long as it's black")

Also in the poll... 94% of Americans thought Coca-Cola would last through the 21st Century, 78% thought General Electric would be around in 2099 & yes only 41% thought Amazon would be around the next Century.(My own guess is the last will be gone within 3)


canamami (12/27/99; 11:05:50MDT - Msg ID:21697)
Interesting Article on the Euro
http://archives.theglobeandmail.com/
Britain's the odd nation out in euro's sure-to-expand circle, Peter Cooks says

Peter Cook

Monday, December 20, 1999


Brussels -- The British, in a reflective mood, have been deciding that a year outside the euro has been no bad thing.

A report by the Bank of England last week showed London's share of the market for euro-denominated bonds has been rising and is well ahead of Frankfurt's. The big investment banks have been increasingly centring their operations in London. And the city's share of foreign-exchange trading remains the largest in the world. In addition, Britain continues to pull in foreign companies that are looking for a base of operations in Europe. The euro it may not have, but it has low taxes, liberal regulation, modest wages and the English language.

Then, there is the other consideration. Why join a euro club that is judged by how Germany does and lose control of your own destiny? Moreover, given the record of the past year -- a bad one for Germany -- why on earth link yourself to a currency that has plummeted 14 per cent against the U.S. dollar?

Plus, there are diverse other matters that are part of Britain's current disgruntled outlook toward its European partners: France's refusal to abide by European law and permit the sale of British beef; Germany's wish to solve its problem of tax evasion by getting the rest of Europe to impose a withholding tax on foreign bond purchases; new rules governing art royalties that would, according to Prime Minister Tony Blair, hit London's auction market.

Wherever you look, it seems as if British enterprise is under attack by capricious continentals, and that these same continentals are a long way from recognizing that free markets matter and it is wiser for politicians not to interfere. When cellphone giant Vodafone of Britain goes after Mannesmann of Germany, its gets raspberries blown in its direction from the office of the German chancellor.

Unsurprisingly, when polls are taken, just 21 per cent of Britons say it would be a good idea to join the euro. That fact, plus all the extraneous fuss that has surfaced on European matters, is said to be persuading Mr. Blair and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, to stage the next election without mentioning the euro and only move toward a referendum on the issue very cautiously after that. If Britain, by far the most prominent holdout, is to come into the euro zone, it will almost certainly not be before January, 2004, at the earliest.

So, does that mean that the slumping euro is winning no friends and is out of favour among those out of the zone?

The answer is a firm "No." It is not Europe's experiment with an 11-nation currency that is failing. Instead, it is Britain that is the odd man out.

Among those who were left at the starting gate on Jan. 1 this year, Greece looks like it will be the first to get in. Its inflation is down; its budget is in check; and it is slated to make an application in March that will allow entry on Jan 1, 2001. Denmark, the other country apart from Britain with an opt-out, has swung around. Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, is actively campaigning for a "yes" in a referendum to be held next year, and the polls say he has 50 per cent of Danes in favour, versus 34 per cent against. Sweden is more circumspect, but still, "yes" votes lead "no" votes 41 per cent to 34. Both are likely to make it in time for the arrival of euro banknotes and coins by joining in 2002.

Of the current 15 EU members, that will leave only Britain outside. But it won't stop there. For many of the new nations negotiating entry into the EU club, adopting the euro is a priority. The fact that it is weak hardly matters since foreign trade is as small a share of the total EU economy as it is for the United States -- and Washington has not greatly cared about where the U.S. dollar stands against other currencies for years. The attraction for the newcomers is that inside the zone they will get exchange-rate stability and low interest rates, while outside it they get neither.

Supposedly, any prospective euro member has to undergo a two-year probation period before entry. Slovenia and Estonia have already said they don't need it, while economists in Poland advocate linking the zloty to the euro even before it joins the EU. According to economists at Goldman Sachs in London, another six countries -- Estonia, Cyprus, Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovenia -- will be in the euro zone by 2006-2007.

All of which is a counterpoint to worries about a weak euro and the British habit of signing up for any major European initiative too late to have an influence on its outcome. While London furiously debates the need to defend the pound and British sovereignty over the next several years, the rest of Europe has declared no contest. They want the euro.

Peter Cook can be reached by E-mail at pcook@globeandmail.ca


TownCrier (12/27/99; 10:28:28MDT - Msg ID:21696)
The Fed is not putting out small fires these days...nearly $9 billion added to banking system
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/991227/hi.html
Through 17-day fixed system repurchase agreements the Fed shovelled $8.98 billion into the yawning hole that is the banking system's cache of required reserves. These "repos" are the primary means for private banks and the Fed to adjust levels during the banks' successive two-week reserve-maintenance periods.

(Anyone new to the Forum and unfamiliar with the Fed's use of repurchase agreements may quickly learn more about it from the Hall of Fame link near the top of this Forum webpage.)

SteveH (12/27/99; 9:47:43MDT - Msg ID:21695)
SDR
www.kitco.com
food for thought from SDR:

Date: Mon Dec 27 1999 09:01
SDRer (Good morning. EU accounting regs--a refresher {:-))) ID#290174:
Copyright © 1999 SDRer/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved
5.29. Transactions in monetary gold consist predominantly of sales and purchases of monetary gold among monetary authorities. Purchases of monetary gold are recorded in the financial accounts of the domestic monetary authorities as increases in financial assets. The counterpart entries are decreases in financial assets of the rest of the world.
5.30. Transactions in non-monetary gold, that is in gold other than monetary gold, are treated as acquisitions less disposals of valuables ( if the sole purpose is to provide a store of wealth ) and otherwise as final or intermediate consumption and/or change in inventories. Transactions in non-monetary gold include transactions by the monetary authorities in gold that is not a component of their foreign reserves.
5.31. If monetary authorities add non-monetary gold to their holdings of monetary gold or release monetary gold from their holdings for non-monetary purposes, they are deemed to have monetized or demonetized gold, respectively. Monetization or demonetization of gold does not give rise to entries in the financial accounts; instead, the change in balance sheet positions is accounted for by entries in the other changes in the volume of assets account as a reclassification, i.e. the reclassification of gold as valuables ( AN.13 ) to monetary gold ( AF.11 ) ( see paragraph 6.32 ) . Demonetization of gold is recorded symmetrically.
5.32. Deposits, securities and loans denominated in gold are treated as financial assets other than monetary gold and are classified along with similar financial assets in foreign currency in the appropriate category.
Non-monetary gold swaps, that is arrangements involving the temporary exchange of non-monetary gold for deposits, are treated as collateralized loans ( see paragraph 5.81. e ) .

ACQUISITIONS LESS DISPOSALS OF VALUABLES ( P.53 )
3.125. Definition: Valuables are non-financial goods that are not used primarily for production or consumption, do not deteriorate ( physically ) over time under normal conditions and that are acquired and held primarily as stores of value.
3.126. Valuables encompass the following types of goods:
( a ) precious stones and metals, such as diamonds, non-monetary gold, platinum, silver, etc.;
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/lif/dat/1996/en_396R2223.html


USAGOLD (12/27/99; 9:26:18MDT - Msg ID:21694)
Today's Gold Market Report: Gold Higher, Ashanti Back in News
Market Report (12/27/99) Gold bumped higher in early New York trade in
a trend that began in Europe overnight. One possible reason for the move
upward is the news over the weekend that Ghana's Ashanti, which almost
collapsed when gold rose in early October, had fallen back into crisis
mode. It was revealed that the company has been unable to meet the
"restructuring" criteria built into the rescue agreement at the behest
of Ashanti's lenders, Goldman Sachs incuded. If Ashanti is going back
into the cool waters of bankruptcy proceedings, it could touch off
another wave of short-covering that could make the year end gold market
a little more interesting than in years past. The London gold market was
closed today due to an extended British holiday in the financial sector.

The currency markets failed to co-operate with Japanese economic
policy-makers again this morning as the yen rose against the dollar.
Japan sold between $2 and $3 billion in yen last week to stem the
currency's rise seemingly to no avail. Bloomberg is reporting this
morning that both the European and U.S. central banks are poised to
raise interest rates "early in the new year."

Whether the contemplated increases will be enough to dampen stock market
speculation remains to be seen. So far these attempts by the central
banks to deflate the equities balloon have led to little more than
bemused luncheon conversation among money managers who are used to
central bankers talking tight and acting loose. It used to be that a
statement of Fed intentions to raise interest rates would put the fear
of God in Wall Street's money men. Now the speculators hold the belief
that nothing can stop the Wall Street juggernaut -- not even the most
powerful central banker in the world -- who is essentially seen as
impotent -- a man who talks the talk but can no longer deliver on the
field of play. In the end this will be viewed as the worst aspect of the
BubbleMania, but now the Fed's failure to act is seen simply as more
fodder for the ever-growing stock market monster. Will it end with a
bang or a whimper? As gold investors, we can afford to sit and watch
with interest.

That's it for today, fellow goldmeisters. See you here tomorrow.

Mr Gresham (12/27/99; 7:44:57MDT - Msg ID:21693)
Banks -- FDIC info
http://192.147.69.50/ID/
Just had some "fun" looking up all of the banks I've been involved with -- getting familiar with their scales of operations, sources of funds, performance and asset/liability ratios. Figures are as of 9/30. Future charge-offs and nonperforming loans will be fun to watch in the coming year.


elevator guy (12/27/99; 7:20:31MDT - Msg ID:21692)
Qualifier
http://quote.lycos.com/quotecom/livecharts/default.asp?symbols=
Of course, I'm talking paper gold here, GCG0, not anything that could stand the test of fire, you know.

Here's the link.

elevator guy (12/27/99; 7:16:54MDT - Msg ID:21691)
Spike with London closed!
Gold at 290 now, as reported on Quote.com

I hope its ok to post that URL.

Number Six (12/27/99; 5:55:16MDT - Msg ID:21690)
Thanks Harry...
Par for the course - nobody has any guts any more - the whore press/media are probably the worst - they've all missed the story of the Century - actually, what I've heard from reliable sources is that they have been gagged by this "administration."

I'm hoping Vronsky only pulled the oil debacle piece from GE because he wanted the authors permission to publish - this despite the fact I already have the authors' express permission...

aye aye aye

RossL (12/27/99; 5:48:44MDT - Msg ID:21689)
Weekly FED reserve data from the WSJ

Changes in week ending Dec. 23 in millions of dollars:

US Govt securities bought outright: +41486

Total borrowings from FED: +90222

Currency in circulation: +90890


HLime (12/27/99; 5:45:40MDT - Msg ID:21688)
Number Six and censorship
Let me tell you a little bit about censorship. I read a happy face article in
the local rag last October. I sent the following email to the reporter, they
still have not published anything. They did however contact the people
I mentioned and they confirmed the story.

Mr. Cole,

I read your Sunday column on Y2K and would like to make a few comments.
First a little background. My name is xxx and I was a Data Base
Specialist
with the University for six and a half years. It was my job to maintain
the academic
and administrative data bases. I have over 20 years in programming and
data
base administration on large mainframe systems.

As I write this I know for a fact that the University is not Y2K
compliant for their
academic or administrative systems. I am going to quote two University
employees
that are working on Y2K. These quotes are off the record and not for
publication
unless these individuals give you permission.

I worked with Mr. Dave and still keep in regular contact. He called me
after he
gave the interview to the University publication that you quote from.
They are
under orders not to give pessimistic or alarmist interviews. I asked
him what the
current status of the systems were. The University does not have a Y2K
compliant
operating system installed and will not install it till mid December in
production.
The academic/admistrative system is a vendor supplied package called
Banner,
supplied by SCT corporation. As of two weeks ago there has been no end
user testing of the Y2K compliant version by end users in a test
environment.
Mr. Dave had recommended that the University not had the system up for
the first week of January. His management had already advertised to the
users
that the system will be up on Monday 3 January. He thinks this is
stupid and
that they need that week to debug.

Mr. Russ is a data base specialist with the University (the same
title I
had). I bumped into him a week ago and asked how Y2K was going. His
response
was that they discovered a date problem with the data base. The current
(non Y2K
compliant) Banner system had placed a value of 57 for the month portion
of a
date field. This caused a data replication package to abend.

While I was working at the University I ran a utility to scan the data
base field
definitions for columns that did not use the date field type for fields
that have
a date/time name. Banner had 2700 columns that did not use this Y2K
compliant
data base definition in the current version and when I reran it on their
Y2K
version it rose to 3100 columns. That is a lot of internal code that
must be fixed
because they did not use the data base (Oracle) Y2K compliant
definitions. An
example is employee_aniversary_date which is defined as 2 digits
numeric. If
Banner had defined it as an Oracle date format there would be no
programming
tricks to get it to work after the first of the year. Do you get the
picture yet?
3100 date fields with the wrong format and they have yet to test the
"Y2K" Banner
version.

Mr. Cole I do not know what your editorial policy is concerning Y2K
reporting.
I hope that you have the latitude to investigate this further. The only
tangible
product of the University is academic records. With less than 90 days
to go the
University should be sitting on tested compliant software. Will you
wait till the
lines at registration before giving you readers a heads up? I would
suggest that
the students register in November and not after the first of the year.
A hard copy
of their hard earned academic records would also be prudent.

If you would like to talk further you can reach me at 474-xxxx

Thanx
xxx

I sent the following followup email:

"Dermot Cole, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner" wrote:

> Thanks for your note. I will see what I can do.
> Dermot Cole

Mr. Cole,

I sent a copy of what I wrote you to both people I quoted. This is the
response
that I received from Mr. Dave. Although he placed his words in real
quotes,
I do not construe this as explicit permission to publish them. Please
send him
an email and ask what if anything may be published. Mr. Dave makes
reference
to Coffee, that is the name of the Y2K compliant test system. He seems
to end
in mid sentence, perhaps he was called away.

I do not know how much you know about Y2K but it permeates everything.
With malice of intent, I could of not picked a worse time in a given
century
to have created the computer. Twenty years either way and we would of
been
able to skate by. Twenty years later and this would be the equivalent
of 1979,
before chips in process controls, PCs with countless tiny DBs and
spreadsheets,
massive inter computer communications, and most importantly; we would
still
have the people that created the systems around to fix em. Twenty years
earlier
and by now very nearly most of all the old mainframes/PCs with their
software would of been
replaced and we would of been on our third or fourth Y2K
compliant embedded chip versions by now.

The above paragraph should be read by every Fairbanksian and kept in the

back of their mind when reading happy face press releases.

May I suggest that you talk to General Hamilton. While I was at the U I
got
the impression that he is a man of action and will get you the straight
story. The
U should of had their ducks in a row for fall registration. Any
problems and they
could of rolled back to the current version, that is not an option for
winter
registration.

I only get the Sunday paper. Would you give me a heads up if you
publish
anything.

Thanx
xxx

Note: I had to delete the attachment from Mr Dave at his request. The U is
pissed that they talked to me about Y2K and are under a gag order.

Believe what you want for the next six days.
Harry




The Invisible Hand (12/27/99; 4:40:40MDT - Msg ID:21687)
paper market closed? - fireworks start?
The London stock exchange is closed on December 27 and 28.
I suppose this includes the LBME.
Is New York going to use this opportunity to ...?

Number Six (12/27/99; 3:01:52MDT - Msg ID:21686)
@Netking
Yes it is far from written I agree. For example, if there is an oil crunch initially prices may well rise, but then if industry is affected by y2k bugs in other areas worldwide then demand for oil/palladium/ other commodities may well fall causing price collapse.

I guess if one is speculating in commodities and the markets generally timing is of the essence!

Netking (12/27/99; 2:22:02MDT - Msg ID:21685)
No.6
Palladium has been at a price approaching $20 more than platinum in recent days. Platinum it is said can replace any industrial application that palladium is used for so expect the spread to evaporate.
Japan are major consumers of both P's, expect more contracted falls in these two metals as the Yen weakens further.
Russia has only about 15%(I think) of the exports of platinum & has recently resumed exporting again after stopping for the short term. Russia's impact on the white metals (whether they export or not) is only minimal.
The script for January 1st is far from written Number 6 & it gets more interesting by the day to say the least.
This USAGold is a great place to draw wisdom, I have learned much.



Number Six (12/27/99; 1:03:20MDT - Msg ID:21684)
Censorship
Now I know why I like this forum, the oil piece that I just posted was pulled at the gold-eagle site.

Pathetic.

This is important information that deserves the widest audience, right or wrong.

Number Six (12/27/99; 0:42:59MDT - Msg ID:21683)
Hi Netking
Who's GMO?

As for Palladium I read recently that the USA has pretty much sold off it's entire stock of this predominantly industrial metal in order to keep the price in check and prevent the other metals from coattailing... this leaves the ball in Russia's court now, they can pretty much do a De Beers if they want to :o)

Let's check back Feb/Mar on the enrgy situation.

Embedded problems can hit immediately, but many will take time to surface. As for oil, there will be a lot of spin in the early weeks of the ne millennium - should be a rollercoaster...

Netking (12/27/99; 0:08:38MDT - Msg ID:21682)
Oil
http://tfc-charts.w2d.com/chart/CO/30
Greenspuns analysis is an interesting read Sir Number 6. GMO to contrast says; "...On the negative side, platinum, palladium, and crude oil, three commodities which historically
correlate closely with gold, are in the early stages of what is likely to be a substantial collapse for each...until these commodities have bottomed (platinum and palladium
at $340, crude between $18 and $19).The JOC index of commodities remains above important support levels, though it has been faltering somewhat over the past few weeks..."
I guess in the final analysis it depends to what extent "the wells will be well" come January 1.



Click Here to view yesterday's discussion.

Permission to reprint is hereby granted where the USAGOLD name is cited along with our web address, mailing address and phone number. For electronic reproductions, citing the post heading and the http://www.usagold.com/cpmforum/ website address as the source is sufficient.

Centennial Precious Metals Gold coins & bullion since 1973 P.O. Box 460009 Denver, Colorado 80246-0009 We educate first-time investors!

We invite you to contact our trading desk for quotes and purchase information. 1-800-869-5115 00-800-8720-8720 6:00am to 6:00pm MtnTime; Mon-Fri admin@usagold.com

USAGOLD Rated A+