My views are being stolen??

Ok, not really, just a catchy title to the post. But my views on gold have been reaffirmed by none other than Jim Sinclair, chairman at Tanzanian Royalty Exploration (who BTW is one of the most informed individuals when it comes to gold)

"According to Jim Sinclair, chairman at Tanzanian Royalty Exploration, the price of the yellow metal could reach as high as $1650 by the end of 2010 and moving into the beginning of 2011. But, the man admits that, given recent happenings, this could be a bit of a low estimate."

full article on mineweb. http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page33?oid=93428&sn=Detail

Negative Interest Rates Again!!

Regular readers will recall that I had posted about this unheard of phenomenon in past as well. This time it's "window dressing" by banks that is to be blamed for not only free but actually profitable borrowing by US govt.

From FT:

Short-term US interest rates turned negative on Thursday as banks frantically stockpiled government securities in order to polish their balance sheets for the end of the year.
On Thursday, Treasury bills maturing in January traded below zero per cent, traders said. Three-month bills traded at 1 basis point and six-month bills fell to a record low of 13bp – compared with 14bp at the height of the crisis last year.
Investors looking for some return piled into two-year notes, driving their yield down to 0.68 per cent, a year low

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38f71676-d56a-11de-81ee-00144feabdc0.html

Gold at $800 or $1500 ??

A lot of people have been asking this question of late. I hear that Marc Faber has recently said that gold will move down to US$800 in the short term. However if I look at gold from a 1 yr perspective, I believe gold is headed up all the way to about $1300-1500. the reasons are many but biggest of all is the dual pressure of falling dollar and a move towards reserves other than dollar by most central bankers around the world. a recent IMF paper has this very interesting graph



The fact that US$ share of reserves has been falling can be seen but what is heard now is an indication that not only is the share falling, its falling faster than it did in the past. Recently RBI also bought a large chunk (US$200 bn worth) of gold to replace the dollar reserve. And increasingly all the national reserves that are loosing dollars and searching for alternatives, will find it in precious metals (mostly gold).

Hence I am a big bull on Gold

One of the best songs

I usually don't analyze music as I believe there are some things that should simply be enjoyed. but given how much I like this song I couldn't help but ask why do I like this one so much?

The song I am talking about is 'Aj din Chadeya' in the movie 'love aajkal'. This song, I have realized, is liked so much by me because it is a perfect package of everything.

The rhythm is undoubtedly amazing, hats off to Pritam Chakraborty, but it is complemented perfectly by the really soothing voice of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and the really touching lyrics by Irshad Kamil.

So you see, this song is an amazing blend of perfectly complementing music, lyrics and voice. All three are individually enough to make a very good song on their own and they have come together in this song. No wonder I am such a big fan of this.

Be careful, your bank statement may not be correct

It was recently reported by Wired that a new technique employed by cyber criminals actually changes your bank statement to hide the fraudulent transfers from your bank account, this means that potentially you may be out of money for long enough and not know about it if you rely solely on your online statement and dont transact too much

link: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/rogue-bank-statements

This is the most troubling article I have read this weekend.