Gold should be going up for these reasons:

1] The current wait for bars and coins indicates there are buyers.

2] The inflow of cash to the etf means that they are buying

3] Producers are still in the process of dehedging

4] The central banks are not selling [ as yet]

gold should go down if :

1] long positions in gold are being unwound

2] Financial institutions need cash and are dumping gold

3] Lots of people and institutions have sold recently and

that money is still on the sidelines.

4] All the people that bought gold at 276.00 saw numerous

bargains and just had to buy.

I am reluctantly drawn to this conclusion:

The immediate near future for gold does not look as good as it has in the recent past. As we all know ,Gold is the report card for the various governments currencies. The government is very busy trying to restore confidence in their system . They are for sure going to discredit gold as much as possible. Any gold spike I reckon will be met with whatever means are at hand ,to keep the price of gold down.

In the short term Mr. Daniel Gschwend From Zurich in an essay on 'Will the IMF and Co. let gold crash?'' felt that ''since the bailout packages have reached astronomical proportions,the governments have to find some ways to finance the packages without destroying the little trust they have tried to build.''

I take that to mean that it is no holds barred as far as gold is concerned.

He further states: ''There are actually only two ways for financing this''

1] "printing money which only means dilution of the currency with severe long term implications. The money printing machines will create government bonds and thse bonds will be sold to the public. The out look for bonds is frightening.The debt will rise dramatically and eventually lead to a junk bond status.How can they ever repay these bonds? The very agressive fiscal policy now in place also erodes the tax income and wont help to handle this giant debt''

2] "Sell some assets such as goverment or central bank held foreign fixed income securities,stocks or gold."

'' Yes they will print money and sell new government bonds to the public ...Will they sell held bonds and stocks?Of course not, they want to stabilize the markets and will certainly not sell these assets.''

''But what about gold? I believe it is very likely that the governments around the globe which are dealing with these gigantic bailout packages will sell gold....Gold will be a very grateful casualty for the overall publics sake.''

The article went on as to how the IMF has a lot of bullion and is currently underemployed and failed to break even. Consequently the various goverments will probably say very little about the pending imf sale of [400 tonnes] as it will make them look good.

The main reason for the dollar strength is due to safe haven buying in treasuries. The bailout packages are denominated in us dollars and this forces other countries to sell their currencies against the buck. which gooses the us$ upwards as well. Eventually these transactions will be over and and the demand for the us$ will disappear. The fundamentals are not good in the U.S. and gold will rise from the ashes of 600/700 buck gold and head north once again.

Please comment on this. Thankyou