-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ---- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Today's Lesson from "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" by Edgar Allan Poe "I may state the system, then, in general terms, as one in which the patients were menages--humored. We contradicted no fantasies which entered the brains of the mad. On the contrary, we not only indulged but encouraged them; and many of our most permanent cures have been thus effected. There is no argument that so touches the feeble reason of the madman as the reductio ad absurdum. We have had men, for example, who fancied themselves chickens. The cure was, to insist upon the thing as a fact--to accuse the patient of stupidity in not sufficiently perceiving it to be a fact--and thus to refuse him any other diet for a week than that which properly appertains to a chicken. In this manner a little corn and gravel were made to perform wonders." ==== Gold Market The Painful Cost of Gold Hedges Gold stocks plunge. Pity the poor gold bugs. Investors in gold stocks ought to be celebrating the explosive rally in gold prices that began last week when 15 European central banks announced plans to cap gold sales. The news touched off a surge in gold prices to $324.50 Wednesday, up 10 cents, from $255 an ounce before the rally began last week. But this week, some gold investors have put away their party hats. After a run-up in price last week when gold prices jumped, gold stocks took a hit on Tuesday and Wednesday. The problem: Some gold-producing companies made financial bets to protect them against further declines in gold prices, and those bets cost them money when gold prices shot up unexpectedly. When gold prices spiked, some of those hedging programs backfired, triggering margin calls, or demands for more collateral. One result: a scramble among some gold producers, as they were forced to come up with gold or sustain losses in their hedging accounts. Wednesday, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange gold index closed at 81.64, down more than 10% from its peak on Sept. 28, the day of the central banks' announcement. Among those hardest hit was Ashanti Goldfields, which has seen its shares plummet from a high of $10.125 on Sept. 28 to $4.125 -- down $1.375, or 25%, Wednesday as word spread of a liquidity crunch at the Ghanaian gold producer. The affair is a reminder to investors of the risks of hedging. While hedging programs by commodities producers can smooth out the companies' earnings by locking in prices of future sales, they can also reduce the producers' gains in the event of a favorable upward price move. Meanwhile, trading desks were buzzing Wednesday with rumors about Wall Street's dealers and their exposure to Ashanti and other producers as trading partners on derivatives contracts. According to numbers provided by Ashanti to its counterparties recently, the Wall Street firms with the largest credit exposures to Ashanti are Goldman Sachs Group, $105 million; Societe Generale, $82 million; Credit Suisse First Boston, $62 million; UBS, $61 million; American International Group, $32 million; and Chase Manhattan Bank, $25 million. Traders said some of the dealers had structured their own side of the transactions to reduce their net exposure. What is more, the size of the dealers' exposures -- which has reached an estimated $500 million or more for the 17 members -- fluctuates daily with the price of gold. Officials of Ashanti said they had signed a standstill agreement Wednesday with its dealers to stave off margin calls. On Tuesday, Ashanti confirmed that it is in merger talks with Lonmin, a United Kingdom mining group. Ironically, Ashanti's short-term cash squeeze comes at a time when its 23 million ounces of gold reserves have actually increased in value; the hedging program only covered about 10.5 million ounces. Some of the gold dealers blame the snafu on the European central banks' recent imposition of restrictions on the growth of gold leasing that had accompanied last week's announcement. The new leasing restrictions have contributed to the tight supply conditions triggering the gold-price rally, because sometimes gold-market participants who need to deliver the metal count on the leasing market to obtain it. Shares of Cambior, a Montreal producer, also took a nose dive Wednesday, falling $1.1875, or 37%, to $2 on fears that the company could be forced to buy large amounts of gold at the current high price to cover a hedge that was arranged before gold's recent surge. Cambior said Wednesday it had sold options on 921,000 ounces of gold, while its production for the first half of the year was only about one-third that amount. In a statement, Cambior said the counterparties to its hedging contracts are international banks and other financial institutions, and the company "will pursue discussions with such financial institutions concerning the management of this situation." Other big gold stocks took a beating Wednesday as well. Newmont Mining fell to $27, down $1.875, or 6.5%; its high Tuesday was $30.3125. Barrick Gold dropped to $21.5625 Wednesday, down 81.25 cents, from a high of $26 on Sept. 28. The irony is, a big jump in the price of gold is supposed to be good for gold stocks, not bad. "As gold investors, we have suffered long," says Caesar Brian, who heads the gold fund at Gabelli & Co. "Now we have a big pop, but we find out there is a dark underside to it," he says. In general terms, producers are being stung by hedges. There were a couple of ways producers were able to do that, including "forward" contracts and options. As the price of gold has spiked, however, those contracts have become liabilities, forcing producers to deliver gold at higher prices, in some cases, and to meet margin calls in other instances, where options losses are an issue. The divergence of gold prices and gold stocks is even more interesting, since it shows how aggressive producers had become recently in their hedging programs. "The knee-jerk reaction was to buy the stocks," says George Gero, senior vice president of investments at Prudential Securities. "But on reflection, people are realizing that the producers were hedged at lower levels and that they ought to think twice about their exposure," he says. In some cases, says Toronto-Dominion analyst David Neuhaus, producers may not have had much of a choice, especially those that were financially pressed as a result of the steep decline in gold prices, which hit a 20-year low before the recent rally. "Some of these producers were looking at problems because of very low gold prices in the last several months. So there was pressure for lenders to try to limit their downside through hedges," he says. The question now is whether there is another shoe to drop. Mr. Neuhaus says he believes gold stocks as a group are being unfairly punished. "These stocks are not reflecting what they should at this gold price," he says. One of the most aggressive users of hedging programs is Barrick Gold, one of the world's largest gold producers. The company has long earned a premium over the gold spot price by selling its gold forward in a unique hedging program. When Chairman Peter Munk started Barrick in 1983, "one of the founding principles of the company was to be conservatively financed and minimize the gold-price risk," spokesman Vince Borg said. Over the past 12 years, Barrick says it has earned a total of about $1.5 billion in added revenue from its hedging program, which is based on "spot deferred contracts." Under such contracts, the producer borrows gold from central banks and sells it in order to earn interest on the proceeds. The company profits the difference between the central banks' "lease rates" and the interest earned. Fortunately for Barrick, the spot price for gold over the past 12 years has always been below the amount the company could earn by hedging. And Barrick earlier this year locked in the lease rates it will pay over the next few years at rates "substantially lower than where they are now," at about 6% or 7% annually, said Barrick Chief Financial Officer Jamie Sokalsky. But now with gold soaring, the prospect that spot prices will rise above Barrick's hedge price is increasing. Currently, Barrick says it has sold forward about 13.3 million ounces of gold at an average price of about $385 per ounce through 2001. However, if the spot price does rise above $385, Mr. Sokalsky said Barrick has the luxury of deferring its forward contracts for as long as 15 years and instead selling its gold production at the spot price. That means the company can wait for spot prices to return to lower levels before returning its borrowed gold to the central banks. The Wall Street Journal, October 7, 1999 Money Laundering Russia Refuses to Cooperate With Audit Hmmm. They must work for the FBI. The disbursement of new International Monetary Fund payments to Russia is being held up by a dispute over an investigation into state-owned Sberbank, the country's biggest banking group, officials close to the negotiations indicated yesterday. Russian and IMF officials have failed to agree on the terms of a wide-ranging audit into the functioning and future strategy of Sberbank, due to have got under way one year ago. The IMF is keen to ensure high quality management at Sberbank, which holds 80 per cent of retail deposits in Russia and is at the centre of the country's fragile banking system. The conflict is the main reason for the delay in the meeting of IMF directors to consider whether to approve a second payment of $640m (�387m) to Russia. No date for the meeting has been set, but the IMF is unlikely to consider new payments at least until November. The delay is placing further strains on Russia's budget, already under pressure from heavy spending on the military campaign in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Recent allegations of corruption and money laundering in Russia, which in the US have given a strong political dimension to the question of new IMF funding, have created a climate of uncertainty about future aid. The immediate delays in the consideration of new IMF payments have been caused by the conflict over Sberbank, as well as the wait for a new inquiry by PwC, the accountancy firm, into the relationship between the Russian central bank and its foreign commercial banking subsidiaries. The Russian government originally agreed last October to begin a "due diligence" audit into Sberbank, 53 per cent owned by the Russian central bank, which was designed to analyse its profitability and method of operations. A second study was supposed to consider Sberbank's future strategy. Both have been delayed by disputes over exact terms of reference, including Russian concerns about confidentiality. Separately, IMF officials are waiting for the findings in the next few days of a new examination by PwC into the connections between the central bank and its five European commercial bank subsidiaries: Eurobank, Moscow Narodny, East-West, Ost-West and Donau. The Financial Times, October 8, 1999 Something's Fishy Nevadans Defy Feds With Picks and Shovels The road to somewhere. RENO, Nev. (AP) - State and federal officials are fearing violence this weekend when hundreds of citizens with pickaxes and shovels try to reopen a road that has been kept closed to protect a threatened fish. State Assemblyman John Carpenter plans to lead up to 1,000 people to the Jarbidge River near the Idaho state line to rebuild the dirt road, which is in a national forest. The protesters claim the road has belonged to Elko County for more than a century. "I'm afraid the potential for an explosive confrontation is high,'' said Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev. The dispute involves a 1.5-mile section of road that leads to a campground and outhouse in the Humboldt Toiyabe-National Forest. A flood washed the road out in 1995 and the Forest Service decided not to rebuild it because eroding soil could foul the river and threaten the bull trout, which is now protected under the Endangered Species Act. Justice Department officials won't say how they intend to respond if the volunteers begin reconstructing the road. "If they stop people, they'll never hear the end of it,'' Carpenter said. "This is an absolute peaceful work party. We don't advocate violence and never will.'' The state attorney general asked Elko County officials to help stop the rebellion in Jarbidge, a historic mining town in a canyon so remote most Nevadans can't get there without driving north into the Idaho wilderness and then back south into Nevada. Sheriff Neil Harris said only that he will help keep the peace. "To send a small contingent of federal law enforcement up there to issue citations or make arrests could cause the thing to become somewhat violent,'' he said. Associated Press, October 6, 1999 Nuclear Accidents Japan's Nuclear Leak Worse Than Feared "The safety standards of a bakery." TOKYO - As the investigation continued into Japan's worst nuclear accident, concerns were rising here Thursday that it might have been more serious and have affected more people than was initially reported. The government will expand its examination of people possibly exposed to radiation near the uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Tokyo, according to a spokesman for the Science and Technology Agency. Officials had said that 49 people were affected by the accident last Thursday, including three plant workers, two of whom were in serious condition. "Initially we did not see the accident as being so serious,'' Masaru Hashimoto, the governor of Ibaraki prefecture, said Thursday. Officials also said they were likely to raise the accident rating from level four to level five on the international scale of seven. That puts it at the same level as the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979. Such a move would indicate that the government believed the risk of contamination outside the plant was extensive. The environmental group Greenpeace said Thursday that its analysis of samples taken about 500 meters from the plant, beyond the area evacuated by the government, indicated that the number of people exposed to radiation was higher than the government's estimates. Jan Rispens, an energy specialist with Greenpeace, said the government should be testing people more thoroughly. ''It's not enough to run Geiger counters over their arms and their feet,'' he said. Mr. Rispens said the plant ''had the safety standards of a bakery and not a nuclear facility. It was just a normal building.'' Details of safety violations have come out daily since the accident. Officials of JCO Co., which operates the plant, told reporters and admitted to investigators that they had used an illegal procedure for the past seven or eight years. Some workers did not know what ''criticality'' meant, according to newspaper reports. Company officials also said that they had not prepared for this type of accident because they did not expect one. The workers used buckets to transfer a uranium mixture from one tank to another, bypassing a cylinder that would have limited the amount of uranium they could use. As a result, they combined enough uranium to start a nuclear chain reaction that apparently continued for 17 to 20 hours, until workers succeeded in emptying water from the tanks and pouring in boric acid. Families close to the plant were evacuated, while more than 300,000 others were asked to stay indoors for more than 24 hours. Police searched JCO's offices Wednesday and carted off boxes of documents. The search warrants were for suspicion of professional negligence, a police spokesman said. Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who says he is determined to push ahead with Japan's nuclear power program, said Thursday that he wanted ''to restore trust in our nuclear energy policy.'' International Herald Tribune, October 8, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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