Newmont President's Gold at $525 "prediction" in Jan 2006- Price-fixing?

A few weeks ago Newmont's President Pierre Lassonde predicted that Gold will trade at $525 in January 2006. Well, we already have broken that level, and even though there has been a retracement, the bull case is very much in tact. What was surprising was that no one took issue with this statement-in other industries this can be construed as to price-fixing. How?

If a major industry player comes out with a prognostication for the price of a product in the future (and NEM is the No. 1 producer of Gold in the world), it is imaginable that they are hinting the competitors to raise (or sometimes, decrease) prices to certain level. After all, if all Gold producers decide to say that we ain't selling any Gold until it is $525, minimum, the price WILL BE $525 minimum!

In June 2006, Toyota's Chairman Hiroshi Okuda talked about increasing prices on Toyota models in the US. The media was full of price-fixing allegations. See USA Today story here.

And here we have the largest producer of Gold in the world "predicting" a particular price in a few weeks time (when he made the prediction Gold was trading at $470), and the press is silent.

But that's why blogs like mine are around.

Sanjay John G.
PS: Did you see the new ETF, FXE, tracking the Euro? You can now buy and sell the Euro on the NYSE. It is priced for 100 euros in dollars (so today's price close of $120 means the price of Euro is $1.20).

You can buy or short the thing to speculate on the Euro. Bye Bye to futures...