RE: You doom and gloom boysNo doubt gold companies will generate it's fair bit of scandal...but those usually appear at the top of a mania and we are a far ways away from that
again the exploration company are the most prone to that, they attract the spec money and explorations results and projections are easy to manipuilate
at some point some exploration compmies will be an integral part of the portfolio....the potnential gains are incredible
It is much harder for established mines to do the same as it requires outright fraud, something a mine company that has existed for decades or longer would not do....you mine x ounces at y cost for z price
it is pretty simple and what you need for scandal is complexity
what will happen to the hedged companies in due time is thus inevitalbe because nobody but a upper tier mathemetician can make any sense of derivatives etc
The thing about the enrons and the worldcoms and the tsx...I bet you the parties involved deep in thier guts, never felt they were being "fraudulent"...in their minds they were just being "clever" they knew the system and how to manipulate it...if the system allowed them to do it, the fact that might still be unethical did not even hit thier conciousness....expect lots of "obstruction of justice" charges and a surprisingly small number of actual fraud charges.
As far as wishing doom and gloom...there is some truth to that ...buying gold stocks means cavorting with the gold-eage crown most of who are people I despise....so nose plugs and latex gloves are de riguer....but just because you don't wnat it to happen doesn't mean it wont
the fact of the matter is that moderate sane people have given up the stage to the fundamentalists...and it is fundamentalists who run the agenda from al queda to the hamas to the jewish orthodox seetler to bush, ashcroft and the rest of his federalist born again buddies
Whenever these people run the show everything turns into a can of worms very quickly
I bought my first gold stocks the week the supreme court handed the presidency to bush...if i made any mistake was he exceeded even my negative expectations....that last spurt of telling everyone that a nuclear attack was inevitable was mind-numbing and of course it gave gold it's impetus for its first breach of 330...the more he and his cronies talk the better for gold
have no doubt that if things really start going south...in Thatcher like fashion he will launch a war to deflect criticism or brand any criticism an unpatriotic
the trouble with moderate people is that they are moderate...things really have to go to hell and a hand basket before they realize that if they want some peace and quiet they have to separate these fundamentalists from the levers of power...and in many cases the onlyl way to do that is to kill them
Carpet bomb the hamas, and alqueda, hang the jewish settlers in jail when they commit murder and sack ashcroft and bush
but that won't happen for awhile...bush already let al queda off the hook (if i was in charge they would have been dead by now..there were two opportunities to kill en masse but they had thier thumbs up thier butts)
so although short term one can debate where gold will go....in the long term it is not even close to its real salad days