What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow. During the past decade that belief has proved correct. Beyond that, the rising price has on its own generated additional buying enthusiasm, attracting purchasers who see the rise as validating an investment thesis. As 'bandwagon' investors join any party, they create their own truth - for a while.

Forecasts usually tell us more of the forecaster than of the forecast

You have no ability, if you're a financial institution and you're threatened with criminal prosecution, you have no ability to negotiate.

Can you know you can have institutions that put curbs on that in various ways, and actually what the banks, you know, they have various capital ratios and that sort of thing, but the banks got around them, I mean, they set up sieves and that sort of thing just to get more leverage. People love leverage when it's working. I mean, it's so easy to borrow money from a guy at X and put it out at X.

It is to our advantage to have securities do nothing price-wise for months, or perhaps years, while we are buying them.

I really like my life. I've arranged my life so that I can do what I want.

We will only do with your money what we would do with our own.