Gold Editorials & Commentary

The purpose of this report is to correlate the inter-relationship between Gold, Interest Rates and Commodities.

Look out, gold bugs! The attack upon the precious metal is going to escalate. Your metal mettle will be tested.

The headline in my January 2000 issue, which is scheduled to go to press this coming Monday is " Enjoying the Party and Getting Home Safely".

1999 was a successful year for the Tocqueville Gold Fund, which produced a return of 20.6% compared to a negative 7.8% for the benchmark Philadelphia Stock Exchange Gold/Silver Index, an outperformance of 28.4%.

Snapback behavior could not be sustained . .

The extraordinary two-tiered market we have witnessed for the past three months continues to astound market neophytes and long-time observers alike. We ourselves must confess we've never seen anything quite like this.

GENERAL COMMENTS: A decade ago most Russians would have regarded all KGB agents as thugs. Now it looks as though one of them, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, hand-picked by Boris Yeltsin as his successor, is about to ascend to the presidency.

Today was day 43 in what continues to be an historic period of absolutely destructive speculation.

It would seem appropriate for a review, at this, the dawn of a new calendar age.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in Economics

Sector shifting from the NYSE to the NASDAQ market . .

The 4th quarter market action was simply amazing. Despite some of the most aggressive valuations in financial history the popular high-tech stocks and indices rose in breathtaking fashion. It's hard to know what to make of something like this.

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.

Murphy's Law will be at full strength when the clock strikes midnight on Friday. For the guidance of investors and market-watchers, here are my predictions of the top U.S. news stories in 2000 as Millennial insanity threatens to lurch into high gear:

Holiday focuses . .

I would like to dedicate my end of the millennium crystal gazing to the Gold-Eagle Forum, its managers and faithful contributors, to Harry Schultz, Frank Veneroso, Bill Murphy, Ted Butler and the many others, who are doing so much to bring present on-goings in

Introduction

The manipulation continues unabated. The Dutch central bank has announced it intends to sell 300 tons of its gold reserves over the next five years. Nederlandsche Bank will sell 100 tons initially and then 200 tons over five years.

In the 1970's a very courageous gentleman named Edward Durrell claimed that substantially all of the US Gold Reserve being stored at Ft. Knox was gone. Only 1,000 tonnes or so of the 8,500 tonnes supposedly being stored there remained.

Huge, almost neurotic, volume and swings . . . are in harmony with our call for Wednesday's action, but belie the underlying nervousness that increasingly is prevailing in the stock markets.

Dear Chairman Greenspan and Secretary Summers:

We assume all you readers are well aware of the September actions of the European Central bankers in regard to future gold sales, leasing, futures or options.

By definition, a market bubble is not a very obvious affair. If the man on the street begins to see what by all accounts is a bubbly market, he will act rationally, or so the academics believe, and find a safer haven for his savings.

In my last article, I publicly accused at least six financial firms of fraud and manipulation, for their dealings in the precious metals derivatives arena. I'm still here.

Overweight "discipline" and recognizing building risk . .

Western central banks are in panic mode. No other interpretation can be put on the announcement yesterday of further Dutch gold sales of 300 metric tons.

Come January the biggest post-holiday markdowns in the retail sector may be on Wall Street, not Main Street.

Studies addressing the occurrence and causes of cycles in the financial markets in recent years have tended to place a strong emphasis on the supposed causative effect of mass psychology.

Just when gold stock investors thought they were dealt a winning hand, we get blood in the streets instead. As of this December 3rd writing we find POG at around $282, still up from the $255 area of last summer.