Gold hits all-time high (above $1,600/oz)

Wisdom Quarterly

Gold investors favor bars and coins (Euronews)

If one wants profit, silver is a better bet. It's much more volatile. If one wants stability -- preventing erosion of purchasing power in the face of inflation -- gold is safest. But what gold? Coins, paper notes backed by gold, bullion, jewelry, Krugerrand... there is no standard. The scam behind gold is how it's sold. Not all forms are equally valuable. Levels of purity vary; reputations of minted coins by country vary; broker's fees eat into profit; the US government does not want citizens holding actual precious metals. Research before investing. The worst time to go into any investment is at its high. Buy low, sell high. Will gold go much higher before it crashes?

• Gold hits record high on Bernanke, euro fears
  

"Where do you think you're going, punk?" "Mmm, I'm trying to get to the bank, sir."

Gold hits new high
Issac John (KhaleejTimes.com, July 18, 2011)

DUBAI — Gold prices rallied to a new all-time high above $1,600 per ounce on Monday morning, rising for the 11th consecutive trading session, the longest winning streak for the yellow metal since January of 1980.

Prices soared as high as $1,603.40 per ounce on Monday morning, driven by jitters over the eurozone debt crisis and the US debt ceiling, before backing off to trade just the $1,600 level.

A stalemate in the US debt ceiling talks and concerns of Eurozone debt contagion continued to underpin the metal’s investor appeal across the globe, precious metal analysts said in Dubai. With Monday’s advance, the gold price extended its monthly and year-to-date gains to 6.6 per cent and 12.5 per cent, respectively.

Yan Chen, head of metals and mining at Standard Chartered Equity Research, predicts that gold may rally to $5,000 by 2020 as incomes rise in China and India, the two biggest users.

Analysts said gold gained on the back of a surge in borrowing costs for Italy. The lack of a deal to raise the $14.3 trillion US debt ceiling also helped boost prices. “The long-term trend is certainly bullish and there isn’t anything in the horizon to suggest why $1,650 or $1,700 shouldn’t be reached earlier than expected. More

Against the Grain: Anarchy and Zen

David Kupfer (The Sun Magazine, June 2011)

Performers in New Delhi with innovative moves and the Buddha as backdrop (mayankpandey)

Actor Peter Coyote suggested we meet for this interview at his home north of San Francisco. Nicknamed “the Treehouse,” it has a striking view of Mount Tamalpais and is close to Golden Gate National Recreation Area and San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm. It is a long way from Hollywood, where Coyote has worked since 1980, appearing in more than ninety films and television programs. He says that he is “a Zen Buddhist student first, an actor second.” He will be ordained as a Zen priest in August.

Coyote has had an eclectic life, having done everything from farming to being a stockbroker. A self-described “socialist radical hippie anarchist environmentalist,” he’s seldom without an opinion on an issue and never one to hold back his views. Born Rachmil Pinchus Ben Mosha Cohon in New York City in 1941, Coyote took his stage name from an experience he had while taking peyote in the Southwest. He has been socially and politically engaged since the age of fourteen, when he volunteered for the Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign in Englewood, New Jersey. Coyote’s passion for progressive reform continued at Grinnell College in Iowa, where, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, he helped organize a group of twelve students to travel to Washington, D.C., and protest nuclear testing. They fasted for three days outside the White House before President John F. Kennedy invited them in to talk with National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy.

After college Coyote joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a guerrilla street-theater group still in existence today. He and some of his fellows from the mime troupe went on to form the Diggers, an anarchist group that “acted out” its ideas of what culture should be, questioning the core values of capitalism and distributing free food to runaways in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, sometimes feeding hundreds of people a day. They also ran a Free Store, a Free Clinic, and even (briefly) a Free Bank. The Diggers evolved into the Free Family, a network of communes around the country pursuing an alternative economy and culture.

Coyote is the author of the memoir Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle, a portion of which won a Pushcart Prize. A new book, about what he calls the “present mass hypnosis afoot,” is currently in revision. More