Thursday, July 26, 2007

Milk, Gold, Rupees and Rubles

This should not be a secret, but it is, to most of the world.

Gold prices fell,

Bid/Ask 661.60 - 662.40

Low/High 659.90 - 677.70

Change -0.70/-0.11%, about $22

even though Russia broke records in Gold vs. Forex Reserves. Russian Central Bank said its gold and foreign exchange reserves reached $413.1 billion as of July 20. The amount is the record one in the histories of both the former USSR and Russia.

Carry traders in Japan and Switzerland have been borrowing money (since this is what carry trade is about) in countries with low interest rates and investing in gold. You can see this in the Japanese yen and Swiss franc. Whatever investments sunk into the trades are adversely affected.

Gold demand dipped today as prices headed up but dealers ported moderate sales taking place late the previous day, when prices dipped to one-week lows. This is almost a mumbo-jumbo according to the cold-hard as gold truth about gold.

Ned Schmidt, the editor of the Value View Gold Report said that it is the “beginning of the demise of paper assets…spilling over into the gold market."

Let these carry traders trade. Instead, watch India, the largest consumer of gold. Watch the weather in India as well. The good monsoon at propitious time will yield good harvest, which will lead to an unusually bustling mid-August wedding season, and that should mean strong gold demand. See, no quiet intergovernmental agencies at work here. Sometimes a secret is not really a secret.

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There are more to this than the Mitrokhin archives, though. Milk jugs in Russian’s cellars should hold entire home movies shot by KGB officers ignorant of the future. While much of these stashes are irretrievably lost to the alcohol-induced amnesia and realigned priorities, there is a lot to be learned just from various officials discussing the subjects, and attempts to recover the jugs. That’s when Echelon and SALWISS come in. As a background reading, here is more on Echelon and SALWISS.

Got milk?

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