‘I.O.U.S.A.’: In debt we trust
G. Allen Johnson
Thursday, August 21, 2008

The most important issue in the forthcoming presidential election, according to many experts, is not one that John McCain or Barack Obama is willing to discuss.

It’s our national debt.

Don’t start snoozing yet. “I.O.U.S.A.” might be the most must-see movie out there, if only because it is constantly evolving.

Director Patrick Creadon, who turned crossword puzzles into a compelling subject for a movie in “Wordplay,” has been tinkering with his new film since its premiere at Sundance, revamping all the graphics and scoring new interviews with former Federal Reserve chairs Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker.

“They’re dancing around the issue,” Creadon said of McCain and Obama by telephone from Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children. “It’s disappointing because it’s the biggest issue of the election. … It’s a bad issue for any candidate because the solution involves higher tax revenue and lower spending.”

In a unique twist, tonight there will be a town hall meeting, beamed via satellite from Omaha, Neb., to hundreds of theaters across the country (including 13 in the Bay Area) after a screening of the movie. The panel includes billionaire financier Warren Buffet and former U.S. comptroller Dave Walker, who appear in the film.

The movie itself is surprisingly engaging, at times humorous and colorful, despite a message that could be taken as gloom and doom.

Creadon says he went to great lengths not to make a partisan film - whether you’re a tax-and-spend Democrat or an anti-big-government Republican, the idea is to be fiscally responsible.

“Lower taxes is fine - if your spending is also low,” Creadon said.

Care to guess the number of balanced budgets in the past 40 years that didn’t depend on dipping into a surplus fund (such as Social Security)? One.

“The American voter tends to vote for fiscally irresponsible candidates,” Creadon said. “And guess what? That’s what they’ve got. We have the government we elected. I don’t think people understand the issue.”

Screening and town hall meeting (via satellite) at 13 Bay Area theaters tonight. Go to www.fathomevents.com, select “I.O.U.S.A” and enter your zip code. Opens Fri.

APMEX inventory:

(1 oz) Gold Krugerrand - Random Year Out of Stock
(1 oz) Gold Maple Leaf - Random Year Out of Stock
(1 oz) Gold American Eagle - Random Year Out of Stock
2008 1 oz Gold Buffalo Coins - Brilliant Uncirculated Out of Stock
(1 oz) Gold Buffalo - Random Year Out of Stock
(1 oz) .9999+ Fine Gold Bar - Pamp Suisse (In Assay Card) Out of Stock
(10 oz) .999+ Fine Gold Bar - Pamp Suisse Out of Stock
1 oz Austrian Philharmonic Gold Coins Out of Stock
Switzerland 20 Franc Gold Coins - Brilliant Uncirculated Out of Stock
France 20 Franc Rooster Gold Coins - Brilliant Uncirculated Out of Stock
Great Britain Gold Sovereigns - Almost Uncirculated or Better! Out of Stock
Austria / Hungary 100 Corona Gold Coin - Brilliant Uncirculated Out of Stock
Generic Silver .999 Fine - As low as $0.59 per ounce over spot!! Out of Stock
1 oz Silver Rounds .999 Fine Out of Stock
1 oz Silver Rounds .999 Fine (Engelhard ONLY!) Out of Stock
1 oz Silver Bars .999 Fine Out of Stock
1 oz Silver Bars .999 Fine - (Engelhard ONLY!) Out of Stock
10 oz Silver Bars .999 Fine Out of Stock
100 oz Silver Bars .999 Fine - Engelhard or Johnson Matthey Out of Stock
1 oz Silver American Eagles - Brilliant Uncirculated Out of Stock
2008 Silver American Eagles - Brilliant Uncirculated Out of Stock
2008 Silver American Eagles (500 Coin Sealed MONSTER Box) 9/8/08 Out of Stock
2008 - (1 oz) Silver Maple Leaf Out of Stock
$1.00 Face Value Wartime Nickels (35% Silver) Out of Stock
($1000 Face Value) Bag of 90% Silver Coins Out of Stock
Canada (Silver Dollars) 1958 - 1967 (AU/BU) Out of Stock
Canada 80% Silver Coins in $1.00 Face Value Increments Out of Stock

Alex’s Notes: This guy manages a $1 Billion Fund, he cant be all that dumb.

Star fund manager sticks to $1600 gold troy ounce prediction despite slump

By Philip Haddon | 06:13:00 | 19 August 2008

Despite gold falling to below $800 for the first time in nine months on Friday and hitting his fund’s performance, AAA-rated star US equity manager François Mouté is standing by his prediction of the gold price reaching $1600 per troy ounce in the next year.

Mouté (pictured below) has a number of gold mining companies in the top ten holdings of his $1 billion ABN AMRO US Opportunities fund. As the gold price has fallen in recent weeks, reaching $787 per troy ounce on Friday last week, so have the values of some of his top holdings. This has resulted in Mouté suffering a rare period of underperformance; his fund has lost 11.4% in the last four weeks while the S&P 500 index has risen 4.5%.

‘I am disappointed to see gold below $800, and I am even more disappointed to see the exaggerated decline in the price of gold mines,’ AAA-rated Mouté told Citywire. ‘Mines are selling at 1.1 times NAV, when they normally trade at anywhere between one and three times NAV.’

‘The falling oil price was one of the factors that precipitated the weakness in gold,’ he says. ‘But I am still using as a basic yardstick the fact that an ounce of gold should be 16 times the price of a barrel of oil. So a falling oil price is not that worrisome, as even if oil goes to $100 a barrel, that still does not change my 12 month view of gold reaching $1600 a troy ounce.’

I just read a quote, and I totally thought the author of the quote was talking about the United States. Until I read who the author was and realized this dude lived around the time of Christ.

Wow. We sure as hell do not learn from history.

The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance. –Cicero, 55 BC

Well, the current fiasco over the physical shortage symptoms surely isnt quieting down, if anything its getting more gas poured on daily as more and more analysts weigh in on the situation.

I was just reading one such article on Seeking Alpha, and ran across a rather excellent and well put comment:

Actually, the U.S. Mint has not just “run out of blanks” as Bron suggests.

Bron says that Perth Mint is not having trouble getting adequate supply. But, remember, the U.S. Mint is several orders of magnitude bigger than the Perth Mint. Its coin production many times larger than any other mint in the world. It needs a level of supply that the Perth Mint couldn’t even dream of. And, it doesn’t have any “unallocated storage” schemes with which it might have metal, it now is using, stored up from long ago, when availability of physical metal was higher.

The U.S. Mint’s daily needs, in light of the doubling and quadrupling of its bullion coin production is, apparently, too much silver and gold for the real market to supply. If there is market manipulation going on, I am sure that the manipulators would have wanted to supply the U.S. Mint. Certainly, the public relations fiasco, and the possibility that this type of overt proof of supply/demand manipulation, might cause some state to intensely investigate, and seek jail time for some of them, should have been enough to make sure the Mint was supplied. But, apparently, there isn’t enough available gold and silver, in the world, right now, to supply both the U.S. Mint and the Indian weddings demand that is about to happen. This implies a very severe shortage of gold and silver, probably also inside national gold hoards, whose physical supplies of gold, some say, has been largely replaced by IOUs. Could the real level of gold swaps and IOUs been seriously underestimated by guys like James Turk and the boys at GATA?

Anyway, the U.S. Mint wrote back to the Silver Institute, when questioned about their rationing of silver coins, admitting that they cannot source enough silver. They claimed that the reason is that they are forced, by law, to source silver from American mines, only. Numerous commentators have researched the law, and found that the American sourcing rule applies only to gold, not silver. It is an ancient piece of pork for U.S. gold producers, from back when gold prices were in the doghouse. So, the Mint was not telling the complete truth, for its own reasons.

The June letter, from the Mint, stated:

“…By law, the United States Mint’s American Eagle silver bullion coins must meet exacting specifications and must be composed of newly mined silver acquired from domestic sources. The United States Mint will continue to make every effort to increase its acquisition of silver bullion blanks that meet these specifications and requirements to address continuing high demand in the silver bullion coin market…”

Have to say, this guy makes alot of sense.

Original Seeking Alpha article here