RE: Did you follow my advice? No I didn't follow your advice because of this:
"Never in the history of the United States have so many home owners hocked so much of their biggest asset, hoping that rising prices would let them outrun their debt forever. The resulting picture isn't pretty. Last week, Moody's Investors Service reported that the delinquency rate in the home equity loan market rose 11 percent for the quarter ended in April from the same period a year earlier.
According to Moody's, delinquent loans now represent nearly 7 percent of the total existing pool of home equity loans. "This is the 11th consecutive month that the home equity delinquency growth rate has risen," Moody's Ben Garber said."
The bursting of the property bubble has just started: House prices recorded their smallest increase in value in July since 1975 when the index was started. This will bring down consumer spending - 1/3 of GDP. Rates will not have to decrease - it is the spectre that declining rates are the only way to save the US economy that will take the $USD to a new all time low, repatriation of US funds from abroad will be insufficient to stem the deluge. How will gold respond? There is a good reason that the US has not sold a single once of its 8,139 tonnes of gold since the IMF/US aborted attempt to demonetise gold in the 1970's. Why do you think that the US obstructed Gordon Brown's plan the sell IMF gold last year to relive the debt of the LDC's? This action was taken in spite of the fact that the US "owed the UK" for the latter's slavish support of US policy in Iraq. Look at the BIG picture - the blips in gold prices that you are concerned with could vanish overnight.