Today - unable to get through from Denver to San Francisco.

Unable to get through to SEVERAL goldbug sites...

TRY GETTING YOUR MONEY WHEN THE BIG FAT LADY WARBLES...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), September 23, 1999

Answers

Andy, you sound somewhat cheerful. Don't suppose your 50 zillion ounces of gold have anything to do with it?...

99 days.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), September 23, 1999.

Hey Jack!

You are such a laugh, I'd love to buy you a pint or three. :)

Problemo is you old coot we are approching meltdown - quote me on that.

C'mon Jack - expose y'rself fer once, ??? :) y'old bugger!

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), September 23, 1999.

Andy

I was wondering where you were while the news was being made. Took the time to put a few links together on the thread below you maybe interested in looking at.

Market crash starting today?

The BOE gold sale seemed to have the opposite effect than desired. The Yen going up, 99 days till y2k, Dow dropping, we seem to be living in interesting times. Now the Japan Stockmarket is taking a beating. 5% drop as we speak. Will this reflect on Wall Street tomorow? Stay tuned.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), September 23, 1999.

Ops! that should be a 3.4% drop in Japan

-- Brian (imager@home.com), September 23, 1999.

Oh, yeah, I see why you are so doggone "cheerful" -- I just got off the www.gold-eagle.com forum, and ran into one of your peachy posts, where you describe your two days of drunken debauchery in celebration of the price of gold shooting through the roof. Oh, well, the goldbugs of the world (and I guess I gotta include myself, thanks to Y2K) deserve a break, looks like we may have it.

99 days.

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.net), September 23, 1999.

Andy

Can you believe this??

 Brown sees G7, IMF backing new gold-for-debt-relief plan

LONDON, Sept 23 (AFP) - IMF and G7 officials will this weekend throw their weight behind fresh proposals to revalue International Monetary Fund gold reserves to release billions of dollars of debt relief to poor countries, British Chancellor Gordon Brown said Thursday.

Speaking to journalists ahead of a trip to Washington for key G7 and IMF meetings, Brown said he anticipated "general agreement" on the new idea to use the gold for debt relief but not actually sell it on the open market.

The Group of Seven leading industrialised nations (G7) approved in June a plan to allow the IMF to sell a tenth of its reserves to drum up some two billion dollars for debt relief.

But the proposals, which compounded a slump in the gold price, sparked outrage from gold producers -- many of them are in the very countries which the initiative seeked to help.

"The proposal is not to sell the gold on the open market," Brown said. "It has yet to be finally agreed but I do expect there will be general agreement this weekend.

"The whole aim of the exercise was to make it possible for the IMF to finance its multilateral contributions to the relief of international debt." he said.

"To release the value of the gold achieves exactly the same results and that is why I think there will be general support for this," he added.

'Releasing' the value of the gold would involve a reassessment of the gold reserves in IMF vaults, which are currently valued at less than 50 dollars an ounce, although the current market price is above 260 dollars.

The basic idea is that a central bank would buy some gold from the IMF for cash, paying the market price, and thus enabling the IMF to spend the difference between the book value and the selling price.

Brown said that the Washington meetings could finally ratify proposals for cutting another 70 billion dollars in nominal terms from the 214- billion-dollar stock of debt shackling the 41 so-called Highly Indebted Poor Countries.

"If we are successful it will not be a matter of years or months but weeks before the first country could benefit from the new debt relief initiative," Brown said.

He stressed that major world economies were "determined that what is given in debt relief to HIPC countries goes to ... education and health and into the relief of poverty."

Debt relief activists however have argued that the G7 and IMF plan is too little too late.

The plans "will give a little to a few countries and nothing to many others," said the Jubilee 2000 pressure group, which wants all unpayable debts to be written off by the start of the new millennium.

"Once again, creditors have failed to grasp the nettle and cancel enough debt to free resources for poverty reduction."

-- Brian (imager@home.com), September 23, 1999.

Jubilee 2000???

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), September 24, 1999.

yep, Jubilee 2000. They might just get their wish, a few months late though.

Andy, I thought you'd maybe wait on celebrating the gold price-rise until you're actually in-the-black.? Still a long way to go numerically, if not temporally. I can't talk, I'm currently getting sloshed on the pretext of a pinched sciatic nerve plus a football- related religious festival; - footy grand final, biggest day of the year down under.

As for hefty songstressees, the only money you'd want to have in the markets would be gambling money on ultra-bearish thingys, leaps puts mostly, maybe platinum calls. After she sings, we'll wait and see just how "all over" it is. Depends on the definition of "it", I guess. Gambling some money on y2k=just-a-depression,-not-a-total- collapse is a sensible prep measure, because the potential return is sooo$ooo high, and you'll probably be needing money in such circumstances, but might not be needing other survivalist thingys.

Is everybody busy yet??? Not long to go now.

-- number six (iam_not_a_numnut@hotmail.com), September 24, 1999.