You move into a new house or apartment, your heart filled with high hopes and optimism. Your expectations are boundless as you look forward to a new environment, one filled with peace, prosperity, and joy.

However, much to your dismay, you discover that you are living right next door to a barking animal, one that cannot be tamed, and whose yelps, whines, and growls reverberate loudly and randomly, day and the night.

At first, you try and ignore the barking tormentor, in the hopes that it will simply disappear over time.

But barking dogs rarely roll over and die. They are a part of life and there is no escape. As long as there are American families with kids or lonely senior citizens or single women preferring canine protection instead of guns, then barking dogs are here to stay.

When you finally accept that fact, it is at that point you slowly begin to grow mad.

So first you complain to the authorities and request they intervene on your behalf. The authorities proceed to issue "warning" letters to the offenders. Sometimes the intimidation factor succeeds and the dog's barking diminishes or disappears for a while. However, in no time at all, in the absence of any further warnings from civic officials, then you can be certain that the dog's barking will resume, often with even greater intensity and loudness.

Unless you have direct and absolute control over the dog's owners, you may only suppress the barking but you can never terminate it.

Of course, if you complain often enough, eventually you finally might persuade the civic authorities to remove the dog and place it in a pound. But the Universe is such that when one door closes, another usually opens. In dog language, that means the odds greatly favor that some other neighbor proceeds to acquire a barking hound or sells his house to the owner of one....and the vicious cycle begins all over again.

So it is with gold....

Much to the dismay of the heavily gold short Wall Street Establishment, the yellow metal is a barking dog that refuses to disappear. Despite all efforts to destroy its appeal as an investment, gold keeps barking at the doors of the bullion banks, keeping them awake at night. A ten thousand ton physical short position demands attention, no matter how they attempt to ignore it.

Gold cannot be silenced. Its fierce and "in your face," it cannot be subdued.

When gold begins to get unusually noisy...when it really starts to drive the bullion banks mad, then you can be certain they will appeal initially to their friends in the Big Media. They will ask the news organizations to print countless articles and provide hours of TV spin to the effect that gold is not worth owning anymore. With luck, they can convince all gold owners to get rid of the much despised dog, thereby allowing the bullion banks to sleep peacefully again.

Along with the foregoing strategy, the bullion banks will engage in a massive collusive short cover of mainstream equities in order to drive them up quickly and sharply. If the upmove is dramatic enough, then the bullion banks hope to convince gold owners that they should abandon the annoying gold dog in favor of their vaunted pet darling, the Nasdaq/S & P cat.

If an anti-gold media campaign in concert with a rocket launch in the stock market fails to suppress gold's most disturbing bark, then it is time to call in the ultimate enforcement authorities. The bullion banks make a beeline over to the Fed or Treasury, demanding remedial actions that will end the gold menace once and for all. If the Fed and Treasury cannot deal directly with the rabid dog, they call on their friends at various international central banks to assist in its destruction.

Yet no matter what strategy is utilized, the gold dog still barks... more frequent, more urgent, and much, much LOUDER.

Woof, woof, woof, WOOF.....

Woof, woof, WOOF, WOOF...

Woof, WOOF, WOOF, WOOF................

SO annoying....and enough to drive any bullion bank stark raving mad.

Farfel

November 25, 2002