Daily Dispatches

9:47p ET Tuesday, October 3, 2006

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

More financial market participants are sensing or even recognizing the increasing intervention in the markets by the U.S. government and its agents. Today's most telling observations on this score may have come from Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist for Raymond James Associates in St. Petersburg, Florida, as he was interviewed by (who else?) Jim O'Connell on the "Market Wrap" program on ROB-TV in Canada.

8:27p ET Tuesday, October 3, 2006

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Silver market analyst and GATA consultant Ted Butler argues in his new commentary that there never really was a "bubble" in commodities and there sure isn't one after the market action of the last few days, now that most speculative positions have been wiped out and the prospects for long positions are excellent. Butler's commentary is headlined "Extreme Liquidation" and you can find it at GoldSeek's companion site, SilverSeek, here:

Black Boxes and Dead Hedge Funds

By Jim Sinclair
www.JSMineSet.com
Tuesday, October 3, 2006

The action in the marketplace speaks to bankruptcies among hedge funds that are not evident to the public or even to those professional traders I know.

Sure, those in gold and energy on margin beyond their capacity are being liquidated into the marketplace. But it is the hedge fund managers with their damn algorithms who have hit the fan hard -- and you can guess what is flying all over the place.

By Shamim Adam
Bloomberg News Service
Tuesday, October 3, 2006

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aOgjMkgYz91w

SINGAPORE -- Global leaders must find a way to unravel lopsided trade and investment flows or risk a slump in the U.S. dollar that would create havoc for the world economy, Asian Development Bank Chief Economist Ifzal Ali said.

An international agreement along the lines of the 1985 Plaza Accord "on a bigger scale" is needed to unwind the imbalances that have resulted in the U.S. current account deficit swelling to a record $805 billion and surpluses in China, the rest of Asia, and Europe, Ali said in an interview in Tokyo.

Barclays Files to Add Shares to Silver ETF

From Reuters
Monday, October 2, 2006

http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?type=fundsNews2&stor...

NEW YORK -- Barclays Global Investors on Monday said it had filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to register 15.2 million new shares of the iShares Silver Trust (SLV), which has proven popular with investors as a silver play this year.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph, London
Monday, October 2, 2006

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2006/10/02/ccview...

Arrayed on one side of the commodity debate are the ivory-tower economists and perma-bears, all warning that the four-year boom is over -- with worse to come. On the other are the traders and specialists who live and breathe the stuff every day, convinced that the market is tighter across the spectrum of metals and energy than outsiders realise.

From The Associated Press
via Yahoo News
Sunday, October 1, 2006

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061001/ap_on_bi_ge/china_currency_1

The flexibility of China's currency is gradually being expanded as the influence of market forces grows stronger, the nation's central bank chief said.

In an interview to be published in Monday's edition of the Chinese-language Caijing magazine, People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan reaffirmed China's principle of carrying out gradual foreign exchange reform, and said the importance of the basket of currencies to which the yuan is referenced will diminish.

10:51a ET Sunday, Ocober 1, 2006

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

GoldMoney founder James Turk, editor of the Freemarket Gold & Money Report and consultant to GATA, gets out his charts to dismiss suggestions that commodities are finished. In "The Commodity 'Cycle' Is Not Over," Turk writes:

"Both gold and silver have a long way to climb before the bull market that is driving all commodities higher breathes its last breath. The reason is simple. People are exiting the dollar, and they will continue to do so until the problems adversely affecting the dollar are fixed -- and no one is taking steps to do that."

As reported a week ago by Bill King in The King Report, redistributed by GATA:

http://www.gata.org/node/4404

* * *

Change in Goldman Index Played Role in Gasoline Price Drop

By Heather Timmons
The New York Times
Saturday, September 30, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/30/business/30trading.html?_r=1&oref=slog...

LONDON, Sept. 29 -- Politics and worries about oil supplies may have caused gasoline prices to go up at the pump earlier this year, but one big investment bank quietly helped their rapid drop in recent weeks, according to some economists, traders, and analysts.

11:36a ET Saturday, September 30, 2006

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

GoldSeek's companion site, SilverSeek, reports that the iShares Silver Trust exchange-traded fund operated by Barclays Global Investors, which claims to hold 104 million ounces of silver, is preparing to buy about 150 million more ounces:

http://news.silverseek.com/SilverSeek/1159546321.php

That that would be about 50 million more ounces than were reported held by the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday: