Oldtent Archives 2007 - 2008

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The tazer, I think the can would have to have one of their 9 lives left if he would of shot the cat up with that. If not, guessing by his..hum lets try it on the cat..that it was not his cat but his wifes. I can see her now coming home to find her beloved Gracy in frozen state legs permatly out strched carefully placed on her cat bed, with cat hair plastered all over the room, eyes poped out, and husband with tell tale signs of cat scraches all over him, and a obvious futile attempt , put eyes back in  cat and glue back on scatterd cat hair with him saying..look what I got you honey. He would have to fear going to sleep that night with the tazer with in her reach.

i understand that burpa and belcha have gone on a strict diet and exercise plan. seems that burpa is 42-28-36 and belcha is 41-26-35. i understand the other leg is nearly identical.

rno

BURLINGAME, Calif.–In the 50 years since Burt Blumert founded Camino Coin Company, a precious metals dealer in this quiet San Francisco suburb, he’s never witnessed such a frenzy of interest in gold and silver coins.

“There are no gold coins available,” said Blumert, who is now mostly retired after giving the business to a longtime employee last year. “This is just as true of silver, even more so.”

Call it the Great Gold Rush of 2008. Or, more accurately, the Great Gold Shortage of 2008. Like many dealers with physical storefronts, the Internet accounts for a good percentage of Camino Coin’s business, and it and other online retailers have found that economic uncertainty, the stock market crash, and inflation fears have led to a resurgence of interest in all kinds of precious metals–and a sharply reduced supply.

Spikes in demand are not exactly new: in 1991, fears of war in the Middle East caused sales of U.S. Mint-produced American Eagle bullion gold coins to spike. In the stagflation of the 1970s, gold prices increased eightfold in just three years before falling back to earth in the 1980s.

But today’s remarkable flood of demand for gold coins–something tangible, symbolic, and entirely divorced from an increasingly-fragile banking system–has surpassed those other eras.

“In normal times you’re buying as much off the street as you’re selling,” Blumert, 80, said in a weekend interview. “In average times, you don’t go to the mint. All of that has dried up. All of those sources. The mint becomes the only source of merchandise.” The worse news: the U.S. Mint, citing unprecedented demand, has actually halted sales of many gold coins until 2009.

Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, echoed that observation in an earnings-related conference call last week. Varian said there’s been an “obsession” with related search terms among Google users, with “huge increases” in searches for gold, home safes, Libor, and money market funds.

At Blanchard and Company, the self-described “largest and most respected” precious metals retailer in the United States, visits to the firm’s Web site have increased by about 1,000 percent since early September, according to David Beahm, vice president of economic research.

Beahm said that search engine advertising is responsible for attracting about three-quarters of new customers to the New Orleans-based firm. “Quite frankly, we’ve never seen this kind of demand before,” he said. “People are actually just interested in gold. Right now, most people want gold American Eagles, but they’ll take anything they can get.” (The U.S. Mint manufactures American Eagle bullion coins that contain one ounce of gold.)

Precious metals demand “skyrocketed”
Other online retailers report similar experiences. “The demand for precious metals has skyrocketed,” said Mike Maroney, a vice president at Monex of Newport Beach, Calif., which calls itself “America’s premier precious metal dealer” with more than $25 billion in transactions to date. Maroney said Monex’s business has increased by “four to five times” since September, and now customers want to take physical possession of their purchases.

“We’re seeing large net worth customers looking to own some gold as a hedge,” Maroney said. “A lot are worth hundreds of millions. They’re not worried about price. They’re worried about having something in their hands if everything else goes to hell in a hand basket…(In addition), we’re seeing people who have never owned precious metals in the past call up and ask how to start.”

The lack of American Eagle gold coins, coupled with new shortages of Canada’s Maple Leaf coins, has been problematic. “Thankfully, we have a marketing agreement with the Austrians–they’re running their presses around the clock…I typically have somewhere between 60 to 70 delivery products. Now I have seven. Everything else is sold out.” (The Austrian government mints a gold bullion coin called the Vienna Philharmonic.)

Goldmoney.com offers a different, and innovative way to buy gold: Open an account through their Web site, transfer funds from a bank account, and the U.K.-based company will buy bullion for you and hold it in a vault insured by Lloyd’s of London. The benefit is that you don’t have to worry about finding a safe place to store coins; the downside is that in an emergency, you don’t possess them.

In the last month, said James Mitchell, a customer support manager for Goldmoney.com, “business has quadrupled, it’s gone up four to five times. It’s really gone crazy here. We’ve been growing steadily over the last few years but we’ve had a boom in the last month.”

In addition to offering a popular specialty-news aggregation site, Kitco.com lets customers order bullion coins or hold gold in storage accounts.

John Nadler, a senior Kitco analyst, suggests that customers set up a storage account and wait for the current shortage to wane: “If people are going out and paying unreasonable premiums on products, there’s just no reason for that. They could buy a pool account, wait until there is normal production and convert to coins at small fees.”

An alternative to stocks, bonds
Another way to benefit from potential price rises, and own an asset that’s generally not correlated with the performance of the stock market, is to buy an exchange-traded fund through a brokerage like Sharebuilder.com. The amount of gold held in trust by SPDR Gold Shares leapt by about 16 percent in September alone.

The downside–and this applies to buying coins as well–is that the price of gold may fall and investors could lose money. Gold does not pay interest or dividends, and can badly underperform the stock market during an economic boom.

This happened in dramatic fashion in the early 1980s, when gold hit a high of around $850, not adjusted for inflation. Then it plummeted to a fraction of that value and remained there until its gains this decade. A 1999 article in The New York Times expressed the conventional wisdom of the time: “In the nearly two decades since the price of gold peaked, there have not been many good seasons for the precious metal.”

If inflation is increasing, especially with the amazing amount of dollars that the U.S. government has created out of thin air in the last few weeks, gold could continue to shine.

“People are concerned about inflation right now,” said Dana Samuelson, president of American Gold Exchange in Austin, Texas. “I think gold prices will be substantially higher still in the coming years, based on the inflationary forces of all this money they’re printing to continue to lubricate the financial system…People are scared. We’re in uncharted territory.”

CNET News’ Stephanie Condon and Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.

Gold, silver shine in tough times
By Dave Dreeszen

SIOUX CITY — John Jackson has lost track of the number of customers who have left his coin shop here empty handed in recent weeks.

“All day long we have people looking for gold and silver bullion,” said Jackson, owner of J&J Coins & Collectibles, 901 S. Cecelia St. “We’ve turned down a lot of business — five to 10 people per day.”

A global economic crisis, coupled with volatility in the stock market, have spiked demand for precious metals of all kinds, resulting in a super tight supply. That’s made it nearly impossible for dealers like Jackson to restock their depleted inventories without paying a hefty premium for them.

“We are seeing the worst product availability situation that I’ve ever seen, as far as us being able to buy gold from the major distributors around the word,” said Jackson, who has been in the coin business since 1987. “We’re seeing an incredible shortage.”

What’s driving the latest gold and silver rush? Experts say economic uncertainty has prompted a growing number of investors to move their money out of equity markets and bank accounts and into something tangible they can hold and feel.

“It is a hedge against a total collapse,” said Mike Moreland, vice president of investments at Security National Bank. “It’s portable wealth and it has been for centuries.”

Roller coaster ride

Edwin Geels, who turned his childhood love of collecting coins into a hobby and part-time business 35 years ago, said the last time he saw investors running toward gold and silver at such a frenzied pace was in 1980. Back then, with double-digit inflation dragging down the economy, gold prices climbed to about $800 an ounce.

The market went way down after that and was kind of idle until last year, when both gold and silver took off, along with other commodities,” said Geels, a chemistry professor at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa.

After hitting a high of $1,003 an ounce in March, gold prices have zig-zagged downward. Last week, gold futures slumped to the lowest level in 13 months, at around $730 per ounce. Prices for silver and copper also pushed downward, as lower crude prices eased inflation concerns and diminished the metals’ appeal as a hedge against a weak dollar and rising consumer prices.

So far, the falling prices have done little to open up the supply of the metals.

“You can’t get people to sell when the price is going down,” Jackson said. “In my talks with other dealers, we’re all trying to figure out if the price of metals is going to come up dramatically to get products to come out” on the market.

Jackson, who also operates a coin shop in Storm Lake, Iowa, said his stores normally carry one-ounce coins such as American Eagles, Canadian Maple Leaf and South African Krugerrands.

But lately, it’s been next to impossible to get newer bullion, which is purchased strictly for their gold value, not its numismatic value. Citing unprecedented demand, the U.S. Mint, for instance, has halted sales of American Eagles until 2009. As a result, Jackson’s gold and silver inventories has dwindled to rare coins from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Smaller gold and silver pieces also have been few and far between on Internet auction sites like Ebay, said Geels, who regularly buys and sells coins online. What has been available has been going for a steep premium. He cited an Ebay auction last Tuesday in which the winning bidder paid about $100 for a 1985 Mapleleaf coin, which has one tenth of ounce of gold. That amounted to a per-ounce price of about $1,000, a premium of about $260 per ounce over last week’s spot price for the metal.

Too big to handle?

Larger bars of precious metal are more readily available, but cost an arm and a leg. A 400-ounce gold bar, for instance, now costs around $300,000. “Who has that kind of money to buy it?” Geels ask. A 1,000-ounce silver bar, meanwhile, goes for around $10,000, plus it weighs 70 pounds.

“Trying to pick one of those up is really hard on your back,” he said. “A lot of people don’t even want to mess with those.”

Another way to buy gold or silver in a is through an online exchange traded fund. A pool account costs slightly less, but the drawback is you don’t own the metals directly. Typically, a trust holds the metals in a warehouse, and sells shares against them, which are traded on the open market.

To guard against a collapse of those market funds, Geels said he advises potential investors to physically take possession of gold.

“That’s more expensive because you have to pay the shipping,” he said. “You also have to pay to store it (in a bank vault) because you shouldn’t hide it under your mattress.”

Texas beat 2 of 3 division I teams in Okla. I didn’t know there were any Division I teams left in Okla.
I think Okla. is exhibiting a 7 point RPW…But i could be wrong///Bertha graduated from Okla .St. in 1958 I think she said…but she was under the influence the other night .
Gold is going to have a very good week ……

The latest on the physical front from all over the place…

Bill-this just in from my friend in Sonoma County, California

[HE LIVES IN SANTA ROSA AND HIS BOY IS A COMMERCIAL AIRLINE PILOT]

And in the local fish wrap, between last aug 2007 and this aug, 189,000 people has their power turned off because they could not pay the bill, here in Sonoma county,,,,,,,,

my kid just back from asia said that there is not an once of silver or gold to be had, he left again this am, for amsterdam, we will see if he found anything there,,,,,,,,,,,later

***

I guess so…

Hi Bill,
Getting enough sleep lately? Thanks for the great job on LeMeptropole.

This was posted last night on the major English language Bangkok newspaper website. As you know,

Thailand is a major gold and silver jewelry producer.

Yesterday, I had to pick up a few bars from the local Chinese gold shop in Yawaraj avenue (center of gold district and old “chinatown”).

The lines outside gold shops were incredible! I don’t recall seeing anything like this in over 30 yeras of dealing in gold here.
Good luck
Bruce

It’s the same ole story everywhere we turn…

Hi, I always like to read your newsletters everyday.

I must send you some info.

I fell in love with silver this year. I never traded or bought precious metals before.
I tried to buy gold this week. 4 banks I visited in Buenos Aires. No gold. 1 bank had only 24 maples. It seems they are holding back their gold (maybe they don’t want to sell it for a loss) or they have no gold.

1 clerk told me that they experienced more sales and there was no gold. They sent me to the other branch of the same bank a few blocks . This is in Buenos Aires Downtown ( a.k.a. “La City”)

***

I’ve been in the jewelry/diamond business for thirty two years and I have never seen the retail business like this - ever. Last Friday, when gold was $700 I called a very large supplier of parts for the jewelry industry and asked if they had any gold one ounce American Eagles.

They had three left at a cost of $844.00. I asked the owner, “You usually charge 5% over spot, why the change?” He replied that was 5% over what he had to pay.

He also said, “you’re the fifth person to ask me about coins today. I called my coin supplier this morning and my current cost is $904.00.”

I then asked him if he had any one ounce silver American Eagles. He laughed
and said he can’t remember the last time he had any.

Keep up the good work,
Jim Neilson, Pres.
AssayersUSA
Greensboro, NC

Those of us holding bullion in the US have been hurt of late. However, those who own gold in other currencies have fared very well and, if they own enough of it, have weathered the latest financial market meltdown very well. The bid today on 1 OKAZ Maple Leafs in Canada is $939.90 and the offer is $1,007.44.

The disappearance of gold and silver coins all over the world is beyond astonishing. As the financial crisis deepens, more and more investors are going to pour into our tiny market in order to preserve wealth for starters, and to increase their wealth in the months and years ahead.

At the moment, as the gold/silver shares are based on the dollar price of gold/silver, gold/silver shareholders have been crushed … almost beyond belief. As gold and silver prices recover, and then soar, the up move in the shares will be even more breathtaking to the upside … MUCH more!

GATA BE IN IT TO WIN IT!

MIDAS

NEW YORK (AP) — Despite the Wall Street meltdown, the nation’s biggest banks are preparing to pay their workers as much as last year or more, including bonuses tied to personal and company performance.

So far this year, nine of the largest U.S. banks, including some that have cut thousands of jobs, have seen total costs for salaries, benefits and bonuses grow by an average of 3 percent from a year ago, according to an Associated Press review.

“Taxpayers have lost their life savings, and now they are being asked to bail out corporations,” New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said of the AP findings. “It’s adding insult to injury to continue to pay outsized bonuses and exorbitant compensation.”

Banks will decide what to pay out in bonuses in the coming months. Just because they’ve been accruing money for incentive pay doesn’t mean they will pay it out in full.

But some banks are setting aside large amounts. At Citigroup, which has cut 23,000 jobs this year amid the crisis, pay expenses for the first nine months of this year came to $25.9 billion, 4 percent more than the same period last year.

Even if you subtract what the bank has shelled out in severance pay and other costs related to the job cuts, overall pay is only slightly lower this year….

-END-

New York Times…

Talking Business

So When Will Banks Give Loans?

…In point of fact, the dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans. But this executive was the first insider who’s been indiscreet enough to say it within earshot of a journalist….

www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/business/25nocera.
html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

-END-

Jesse on Comrade Paulson:

I didn’t know he was a member of the Nixon White House as his first ‘real job.’

In 1970, fresh from the Masters program of the Harvard Business School, Paulson entered the Nixon administration, working first as staff assistant to the assistant secretary of defense.

In 1972-73, Paulson worked as office assistant to John Erlichman, assistant to the president for domestic affairs. Erlichman was one of the key figures involved in organizing President Richard Nixon’s notorious “plumbers” unit that carried out illegal covert operations against the president’s political opponents, including espionage, blackmail, and revenge. Ehlichman resigned in 1973, and in 1975 he was convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury, and conspiracy, and was imprisoned for 18 months.

Utilizing his connections, Paulson went to work for Goldman Sachs in 1974. In a 2007 feature, the British newspaper the Guardian wrote, “Not only was he well connected enough to get the job [in the Nixon White House], but well connected enough to resign in the thick of the Watergate scandal without ever getting caught up in the fallout. He went straight to Goldman back home in Illinois.”

  He might be on to something there, an awful lot of confluences right around mid - November.

  The action in the Euro and the GBP are absolutely relentless to the downside. When the dollar turns, it is going to be a thing of beauty for gold.

BUSINESS | October 25, 2008
Dollar and Yen Soar as Other Currencies Fall and Stocks Slip
By MARK LANDLER and VIKAS BAJAJ

The flow of cash out of the currencies of countries like Brazil, South Korea and even Britain has prompted talk of a rare intervention.

“This is a panic in the way of the fine 19th-century panics, where we all run around like headless chickens,” said R. Jeremy Grantham, chairman of the Boston-based investment firm GMO, who had predicted stocks would tumble. “I have been in the business for 40 years, and I have never seen anything like this.”

So great are the concerns among policy makers about the turmoil in currency markets that it has prompted talk of a coordinated intervention by the leading industrial countries in coming days, to quell the soaring dollar and put a floor under emerging-market currencies.

Such a move — in which the Federal Reserve and other central banks would sell dollars and yen and buy other currencies — has been used extremely sparingly by the United States in recent years…

-END-

Goldbug, You are dreaming …No Comex default ………Priceless!!!

perhaps Goldtenters interested in uranium stocks and gold stocks might wish to read the same ’smartest man’  article linked at 19:03, October 25, on Goldtent.  Interesting predictions there.  Equiz.

Central banks poised to act

SINGAPORE/LONDON (Reuters) - Central banks are likely to launch new coordinated emergency action this week to calm panic in financial markets, which could be rocked further by data pointing to global recession.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to cut rates sharply following share selloffs and currency collapses in developed economies and the emerging markets of Asia and Latin America.

Advance third-quarter U.S. economic growth data due on Thursday is expected to show a 0.5 percent contraction in gross domestic product after 2.8 percent growth the previous quarter.

“Increasingly, the signs point to a deep and synchronized global
recession,” JPMorgan economist Bruce Kasman said.

“It is still too early to accurately gauge the depth of the downturn, as the outlook depends on how well policy actions contain the financial crisis.”

The likelihood of the Fed slashing interest rates by 50 basis point stood at 74 percent on Sunday and at 26 percent for a cut of 75 basis points to 0.75 percent.

Asian and European leaders closed ranks over the weekend to bolster confidence among investors facing the worst financial crisis in 80 years…

-END-

Bail out everyone time…

AP
Companies start competing for bailout money
Saturday October 25, 2:53 pm ET
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer

Insurance firms, auto companies and foreign banks petition for part of $700 billion bailout

WASHINGTON (AP) — The bailout is now the hottest lobbying game in town.

Insurers, automakers and American subsidiaries of foreign banks all want the Treasury Department to cut them a piece of the largest government rescue in U.S. history.

The betting is that many with their hands out will be successful, especially with financial markets in a stomach-churning dive and predictions the economy is about to tumble into a deep recession.

These groups argue that the credit squeeze is so severe and the risks to the economy so dire that their industries need financial support as well.

The Treasury is considering requests from a variety of industries, but has not decided whether to expand the program, officials said Saturday. Lobbying efforts are intensifying. …

-END-

Adrian, who is on the African continent…

Bill,
This is just a quick alert as I am travelling but the Market Force Analysis of the USD is indicating that the current bear market rally will end before November 10. This is very interesting because the gold MFA is currently at a low and giving signs of a turn which would indicate a coming gold rally.

Many other things are supporting a new gold upleg.

Goldman Sachs is now NET LONG gold on TOCOM after being heavily net short for the better part of 2 ½ years.
All the traditional gold shorts on the TOCOM have reduced their net shorts to very low levels.
The FOMC meeting is Oct 28-29 when they will very likely drop FED funds rate by 0.5%.
There is a massive build up of COMEX gold CALL options in the DEC contract that outnumber PUTS by 1.7 to 1. The option expiry is Nov 20.
There are rumors of such a high delivery demand in the DEC COMEX contract that there is a high risk of default.
There is a G8 summit in New York Nov 15 to discuss plans to reform the international financial/monetary system; references are even being made to having the discipline of Bretton Woods. What ever the outcome it is sure that the dollar will not retain its supremacy. That will mean a lot of countries are holding too many dollars!
It seems that all the stars are aligned! The coming 3 weeks are highly likely to see a top in the dollar and a strong rally in the precious metals which may well be faster and stronger than any we have seen so far.
Cheers
Adrian