In June 2008, the Emerging Issues Task Force issued EITF 07-5, Determining Whether an Instrument (or Embedded Feature) is Indexed to an Entity’s Own Stock.  EITF 07-5 replaces EITF 01-6 and  significantly modifies the analysis process used to determine whether an instrument or embedded feature is indexed to the company’s own stock.  EITF 07-5 effectively serves as a gatekeeper to EITF 00-19.  Recall that EITF 00-19 is the guidance for determining the classification of an instrument or embedded feature that is indexed to a company’s own stock and serves as the last resort for getting out of derivative accounting under FAS 133 for many embedded derivaitves.  An instrument that can be classified in equity is by definition not a derivative and EITF 00-19 is the guidance that gets you there.  From now on you will have to get by EITF07-5 first.

Look for a full analysis of EITF 07-5 a tour web site www.bennettpoint.com in the near future.  Its a bit of a beast and is taking a little while to render into plain English while still retaining its meaning.  In a nutshell, EITF 07-5 can take the most insignificant of features of an otherwise clearly equity-qualifying feature and completely taint the feature thereby disqualifying it from equity classification.  I believe EITF 07-5 is aimed primarily at instruments equity-host contracts that have features risks and characteristics of equity but that contain certain features that are very slightly debt-like. – mbl

Reminder: Today is the last day to vote in the Clive Staples Award – Readers Choice for the best Christian speculative novel published in 2008 by a royalty-paying publisher.

Also, you have until December 2 to vote for the November CSFF Top Tour Blogger.

- – -

I find this “what constitutes derivative” topic interesting because the accusation that a work is derivative seems to be leveled at fantasy more than at stories in other genres. When was the last time, for instance, that you heard someone criticize a romance for being derivative? Never mind that category romances, for years, followed a strict structure that was taught as necessary for the success of a novel.

I suppose, rather than “derivative” these works are considered formulaic, but didn’t they derive from one original work that contained the elements that have since become requisite to romance?

Still, I find it odd that fantasy similarly can’t fall into an easy formula and be acceptable, despite Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Rather, fantasy that cuts too close to an established work is labeled derivative, and this accusation is the kiss of death. It’s a wonder that Lord of the Rings became so successful once the derivative accusation began to swirl around Tolkien.

What exactly was it that brought the criticism, since it wasn’t setting, imaginative creatures, plot points, people groups, poetry, names, prose or style?

I suggest, in the case of Lord of the Rings, critics saw similarities with the central premise in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen:

The plot revolves around a magic ring that grants the power to rule the world
- Wikipedia

Add to this that the ring was cursed, enslaving whoever would possess it, and you have strikingly similar central plot points. Discussion swirls around the idea that the similarities exist because Tolkien and Wagner drew from the same influences. Yet some scholars cling to the belief that Tolkien knowingly “borrowed” Wagner’s core concept.

Interestingly, some fantasy is intentionally derivative. I think of Bryan Davis’s Raising Dragons and Stephen Lawhead’s King Raven Trilogy. Both derive intentionally from the legend of King Arthur. However, both, in unique ways, twist the familiar story in such a way that it becomes unique.

The accusation of “derivative” is not used in such instances. Instead, it seems to be reserved for works that either model themselves after another work (which is what Christopher Paolini seems to be accused of) or those that utilize someone else’s unique development (science fiction that employs Star Trek technology and lingo, for instance).

In some cases, it seems as if critics are simply weary of stories with tropes such as good versus evil, at least ones that represent good as good and evil as evil. Normally bad vampires, as good seem to be all the rage, but then the Twilight books are hardly high fantasy.

I guess my point is this: the accusation of “derivative” has been around since Tolkien first made fantasy literature a thing of its own. Does the mere suggestion that a story is similar to some other source mean it does not have merit? I think millions of Lord of the Ring readers would say otherwise.

Before I begin, just a reminder: you have until November 30 to vote in the Clive Staples Award – Readers Choice for the best Christian speculative novel published in 2008 by a royalty-paying publisher.

Also, you have until December 2 to vote for the November CSFF Top Tour Blogger. Lots of really, really good posts. I’ll be honest. I still have to vote because I’m having a hard time making up my mind.

- – -

Some while ago, as I prepared a post over at Spec Faith, I stumbled upon something interesting in a Wikipedia article about J.R.R. Tolkien. Some scholars claim this great fantasy writer owed a debt of influence where he claimed none.

Due to the common use of the same textual sources employed by Tolkien and [Richard] Wagner there are a large list of close parallels between The Lord of the Rings and the Der Ring des Nibelungen. Several critics have made the assumption that the novel was directly derived from Richard Wagner’s operas.

Despite the similarities of his work to the Volsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied, which were the basis for Richard Wagner’s opera series, Tolkien dismissed critics’ direct comparisons to Wagner, telling his publisher, ‘Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases.’ According to Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien, the author held Wagner’s interpretation of the relevant Germanic myths in contempt.

In the contrary sense, some critics hold that Tolkien’s work borrows so liberally from Wagner that Tolkien’s work exists in the shadow of Wagner’s.

J.R.R. Tolkien, derivative? So those critics claimed.

I find that to be thoroughly ironic because the great accusation against writers of high fantasy today is that their work is derivative, a mere shadow of, you guessed it, J.R.R. Tolkien.

While Tolkien denied taking his ideas from Wagner, he did not hesitant to mention others who influenced him such as William Morris, H. Rider Haggard’s novel She, and S. R. Crockett’s historical novel The Black Douglas.

So what’s the difference between derivative work and that which has come under the influence of another?

Whether Tolkien mentioned it or not, his work bears clear markings of Finnish, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse mythology. Some think there’s even a dose of Celtic mythology, though Tolkien claimed a distaste for those works.

But “derived”? Only the similarities to Wagner seem to have stirred this accusation?

Maybe the easiest way to come at this would be to identify what did not illicit the derivative accusation.

1. Including mythical creatures such as elves and dwarfs.

2. A fictive world pitting good versus evil.

3. Similarities between Hobbits and the “table high” characters in Edward Wyke-Smith’s work.

4. Monsters apparently influenced by such works as Beowulf.

5. A paraphrased Anglo-Saxon poem as an illustration of the poetry of one people group in Tolkien’s fantasy world.

6. An adapted Shakespearean scene.

7. Intentional imitation of Morris’s prose, style, and approach.

8. Borrowed setting elements such as Mirkwood and the Dead Marshes.

If none of these earned Tolkien the accusation of derivative, what then, qualifies as such? I have some ideas I’ll share next time, but I’m interested in what you think. Thoughts?

3400778    กฎหมายอนุพันธ์และตลาดอนุพันธ์    Law On Derivatives And Derivative Market

ลักษณะของสัญญาอนุพันธ์ วัตถุประสงค์และประโยชน์เชิงเศรษฐศาสตร์ของสัญญาอนุพันธ์ ตลาดอนุพันธ์และสำนักหักบัญชีอนุพันธ์ ผู้มีส่วนร่วมในการซื้อขายอนุพันธ์ นิติสัมพันธ์ของคู่สัญญาในสัญญาอนุพันธ์ กฎหมายที่กำกับการดูแลการซื้อขายอนุพันธ์ การกระทำอันไม่เป็นธรรมเกี่ยวกับการซื้อขายอนุพันธ์ ความผิดเกี่ยวกับอนุพันธ์

(Characteristics of derivative contracts; abjectives and economic benefits of derivative contracts; derivative market and clearing house; participants in derivative trading; legal relationship of contracting parties in derivative contracts; laws supervising derivative trading; unfair acts in derivative trading; derivative offences.)

(3400778 จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย)

On Friday, October 23, the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law held its annual symposium. This year’s symposium was entitled Drawing Lines in the Digital Age: Copyright, Fair Use, and Derivative Works. The symposium covered a variety of topics related to digital copyright, but the focus was on exploring the intersection of fair and derivative uses of copyrighted works. This issue was tackled head on by our first panel, and described briefly below.

Section 106(2) of the Copyright Act grants copyright owners the right “to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work.” The act defines a derivative work (in section 101) as “a work based on one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgement, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.” The typical derivative work is the motion picture version of a book. But in the digital age, user-generated content like mashups are creating whole new kinds of derivation, and pushing the boundaries of copyright as a result.

Notwithstanding the rights granted in section 106, section 107 of the Copyright Act deems “the fair use of a copyrighted work . . . not an infringement of copyright.” In interpreting the fair use standard, the Supreme Court in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. established the now well known and very popular transformative use test. The Court noted that “transformative works . . . lie at the heart of the fair use doctrine[],” and many transformative uses have been held fair as a result. Much of the user-generated content online justifies itself as fair use on these grounds.

The confrontation between fair use and derivative rights in the digital age is therefore clear. On the one hand, Campbell has made most “transformative” uses fair use. On the other hand, the Copyright Act grants the author the exclusive right to “transformed” derivative uses. And online, entire genres of user-generated content are based around the concept of transformation. How ought copyright law treat these works? Can a meaningful distinction between the transformative and the transformed be drawn? Our attendees’ answers to these questions will be available soon–both in the published symposium issue (early next year) and online video clips of our panels (much sooner).

– P.R.

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“You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

The current churches of New England (and perhaps a lot of other areas) suffer from biblical dementia, as the people who walk out of these structures continuously cling unto the idea that they are filthy sinners day in and day out. It is true that we are sinners, but God did not create us in his image so that we may think to ourselves, “Oh… how our creator has created us in an un-delightful way,” but rather he sees our imperfections and lovingly covers it with his grace. When Jesus walked the earth it was clearly stated that he saw the people with “compassion.”

I quote one of my friends, as he portrays the ideology of many that live in the Boston region. He stated, “the core of Christianity…fully realizing we’re dirtbags and realizing God saves us through undeserving grace through Christ…and accepting it… just that…with or without the religious aspects of it.” Perhaps this is taken out of context, but this particular person has been circling around the same ideology since 2007, when I first met him. I believe that out of God’s love would want us to grow, not live in a repetitive manner.

To this particular comment I responded,

“That’s exactly what Christianity has become. The religion itself portrays people, us, as the filthiest people in the world. Yes, we are sinners, but that is half the story. The rest of the story is how Jesus loved us so much that he died for us. He didn’t merely have compassion for us, but he is fully and completely in love with us. What people believe as Christianity is a mockery of who God is. God does not need us to worship him, as he is fully capable of making beings that can worship him without sin. God has two main commandments, to love him and to love our neighbors. It’s not to longer our sins. We are loved beyond our imagination, and as Christ has said, “go and make disciples of all nations.” Follow what Christ has done in order to understand the heart of the father. Stop lingering on the fact that you are a sinner, you are a son of God. And the Father embraces you beyond your comprehension and loves you for your flaws as well. Long story short, when we look at God, it makes his heart throb. The father is willing to give, you just have to accept.”

It is even stated in Ephesians 2: 8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” With this said, we should not let the prince of this world constantly deceive us into believing that we must work in order to receive grace.   We have fallen into the lies that sin controls us, because the human ideology is that, “we must do something in order to reciprocate grace.” However, grace is free and it covers all sins. With this said, we should not let the prince of this world hold us, because we have been freed from sin. Satan has power because God allows him to act, but if we realize we are the children of God, and align our hearts with the path chosen by our Father, we would quickly realize that Satan can have no power over us.

Am I allowed to buy life insurance on someone else’s life and also own a licence to kill him? Right. Then why am I allowed to buy a credit default swap (a form of unregulated insurance) on a company whose bonds I own that will pay me shit loads more money if the company goes bust than if I sell the bonds in the market for a profit? If you can’t have your pie and eat it too when it comes to someone’s life, why allow it when it comes to their money? It’s lethal and deadly. Not even the Mafia could collect life insurance on someone else’s life, so why are we still discussing allowing the practice on Wall Street?

http://www.thinkaloo.com

The Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law recently released its latest issue containing 11 articles on virtual worlds and user-generated content. Below are the abstracts from three of those articles: A First Amendment of Second Life: What Virtual Worlds Mean for the Law of Video Games, by Marc Jonathan Blitz; The Magic Circle, by Joshua A.T. Fairfield; and The Tangled Web of UGC: Making Copyright Sense of User-Generated Content, by Daniel Gervais.

• A First Amendment of Second Life: What Virtual Worlds Mean for the Law of Video Games

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, video games have finally taken their place alongside movies, comic books, and drawings as a form of protected First Amendment speech. Since the Seventh Circuit’s 2001 decision in American Amusement Machine Association v. Kendrick, court after court has struck down ordinances and statutes aimed at restricting violent video games–on the grounds that such violate game designers’ and players’ First Amendment speech rights. This series of rulings marks a stark change from courts’ previous stance on video games, which consigned them to the same realm of unprotected non-speech conduct as games like tennis, chess, or checkers. Video games were able to escape from this unprotected realm–and become First Amendment expression–largely because advances in computer graphics and design made them more and more like interactive movies and television shows, and less and less like digitized board games and pinball machines.

But instead of simply forging ahead in this jurisprudential evolution, as video games evolve from personal forms of recreation to virtual worlds, this Article suggests that virtual worlds should make us rethink the First Amendment theory that got us to this point. This is because, while video games may have become First Amendment speech by becoming intricate movie-like stories, many virtual worlds are decidedly not scripted stories. They are rather stages for a multitude of expressive activity, some of which is an electronic analogue of the chess-playing, tennis-playing, car racing, or aimless lounging and wandering, that the courts excluded from the realm of First Amendment speech in an earlier era. This Article argues that this exclusion was a mistake. Virtual worlds are realms of First Amendment expression not because of the stories and role play they make possible, but rather because they provide a setting for giving form to imagination in sounds and imagery, a setting that can be walled off from the business of civil government and thus reserved for more unconstrained exercises of individual freedom. Stories and messages are an optional part of this setting and are not a necessary ingredient of First Amendment speech. This is not to say that government has no role to play in regulating virtual worlds: where individuals bring harm-threatening activity into virtual worlds involving acts that abuse others’ money or reputation, for example, government might have to regulate such worlds. But such regulation must take place alongside of, and not simply displace, the First Amendment’s application to virtual worlds.

– Article Author: Marc Jonathan Blitz

• The Magic Circle

This Article examines the concept of the “magic circle,” the metaphorical barrier that supposedly excludes real-world law from virtual worlds. The Article argues that this metaphor fails because there is no “real” world as distinguished from “virtual” worlds. Instead of a magic circle, this Article advocates a rule of consent: actions in a virtual world give rise to legal liability if they exceed the scope of consent given by other players within the game. The Article concludes that although real-world law cannot reasonably be excluded from virtual worlds, game gods and players can control the interface between law and virtual worlds through their agreements, customs, and practices. This leads to a new conception of the magic circle: the point of interface between community-generated norms and background law, which often adops local norms as legal rules.

– Article Author: Joshua A.T. Fairfield

• The Tangled Web of UGC: Making Copyright Sense of User-Generated Content

Even as a mere conceptual cloud, the term “user-generated content“ is useful to discuss the societal shifts in content creation brought about by the participative web and perhaps best epitomized by the remix phenomenon. This Article considers the copyright aspects of UGC. On the one hand, the production of UGC may involve both the right of reproduction and the right of adaptation–the right to prepare derivative works. On the other hand, defenses against claims of infringement of these rights typically rely on (transformative) fair use or the fact that an insubstantial amount (such as a quote) of the preexisting work was used. One might also rely on another type of fair use defense–for example, that the second work was used in news reporting, or, although the case law on this point is still controversial, that the reproduction was fair use because it made the work more accessible. While it is clear that creating original content by reusing existing content is nothing new, the focus here is on amateur creation and reuse and the Article discusses whether the amateur nature of the content constitutes a new normative vector. The Article suggests that the first step to find adequate answers is a proper taxonomy of UGC.

– Article Author: Daniel Gervais

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Image Source 2

strange how random threads stretch out across time and continents.  got an email from this rather fetching label (comics and epic noise you say? my kinda place) and during my columbo-esque investigation realised i already owned one of their records.  the alan sparhawk album since you ask.  which somehow made it’s way to avalanche records, glasgow, scotland and eventually disappeared into the ungodly piles of stuff i hoard like some music compulsive shut-in.  anyways they have a bunch of new stuff (and a tonne of old too) and i’m gonna do a quick pimp of some of the choicest cuts, all three of which have proved a rather synchronous soundtrack to my reading material tonight (mark z. danielewski’s house of leaves)…

moodring: scared of ferret.  this is a rum bugger.  some kindof noirish jazz exotica.  part david lynch part sun ra.  has someof that primitive psyche folk vibe that all the best sunburned hand of the man shit has.  when they get into the hazy fug of percussive grooves and prog lounge freakouts all the ghosts in my haunted head get queered the fuck out.  it’s a heady mixture of the organic and the synthetic, full of spook-house vocal mumblings and claustrophobic dub clatter.  dense.  full of smoke and tar.  man do i dig this.

remora: derivative.  imagine a hundred roy montgomery’s exploding at the same time and yr somewhere near the geetar sound on this.  it’s kindof unrock (although there is an almost arpeggio in all our times have come).  a similar epic six (and twelve probably) string drone loop and post-whatever sonic violence as aidan baker or justin broadrick peddle.  it’s a huge bloody wall of electrikal whooomph and glacial tones.  apparently he’s jiggered about with a buncha tracks by hefner and pere ubu (misdirection maybe?) and warrior soul among others to produce this oddly listenable beast.  not that i can recognise anything of the sort among the wet bursts of ambient noise and pop-doomerry.  and hell any fella with the big brass balls to cover coil deserves yr uninhibited love.

slicnaton: basendrums.  plinky free- somethingorother if i was being facetious.  but i’m not, so really its somewhere betwixt free jazz and glitch and classical.  an idea which if yr not of the right persuasion should rightfully freak you the fuck out.  i’m reminded of a computer age the hunter gracchus in their manipulation and (re)deconstruction of the live percussive and stringed wood.  it’s rhythmic in an off-kilter all over the place way.  and it fizzes and buzzes and klangs and thumps it’s way rather nicely through my big headphones.  give it time and it comes together like some thousand piece jigsaw puzzle of pierre schaeffer.  i’m rather smitten by this record.

anyway my cats brought another live mouse into the house so must dash before it gets all itchy and scratchy…

silber records

This article is about this interview, separated into three parts:

From alters for Jesus Christ to the community investment act of Jimmy Carter; no subject was off the table for Michael Moore and Sean Hannity.   Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story is the central subject of one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve seen in a long while.

One of my favorite few moments within the video footage begins with Sean Hannity insisting he attends catholic mass every Sunday yet, for whatever reason, he could not recall the topic of the sermon from two nights prior.  It wraps up with Michael Moore avoiding disclosing his annual income.  He is quick to point out that the figures Hannity rambles off are earnings of the studio and not for himself alone.

Soon after, Sean Hannity suggests that Cubas internal affairs have not changed in 40 years.  Fair and balanced, eh?  Throughout the entire interview Sean Hannity makes various comments that are simply not based in fact and are purely speculative.  More examples will follow, I’m certain.

Michael Moore began to make an argument that I’ve been making for years.  When Timothy McVeigh bombed the government building in Oklahoma City, the federal government didn’t send military troops into Oklahoma to aprehend a terrorist.  Instead, the FBI arrested him based on the VIN number of a Ryder rental and the description provided my a hotel worker.  After he was apprehended he was not labeled a “terrorist.”  He was just a criminal who killed a lot of people.  In today’s world, anyone carrying mouthwash in their carry-on stands to be put aside and temporarily labeled a terrorist.  Okay, not literally but I imagine you follow my thinking.

Then it was back to Michael Moore’s income.  I couldn’t tell if Hannity was at all thrown off when Moore began naming people he’s helped.  Though I didn’t recall the family from “Roger & Me,” I do recall the man from Illinois.  A focal point in Moore’s new film were a number of American families who’s homes are being usurped from beneath them by billion dollar profiting banks such as Citibank and Bank of America.  Moore asserts that he has retained the house and legal assistance for the man from Illinois.

Hannity insisted the housing meltdown was caused by people who bought homes that they could not afford.  Moore quickly came back with “You think that this, the greatest collapse that we’ve had – certainly since the great depression, was caused by a bunch of poor people with no assets?”  Had I been at the table I would have interjected; “Derivatives are to blame.”

A derivative is defined as a financial instrument derived from some other asset or index.  In simpler language, it is a bet on a bet.  A gamble on a gamble.  Company A has 100 delinquent loans.  Studies show that 85 of the loans will be paid with interest over time.  15 loans will never be paid.  Company B says; “85 people will probably pay?  Sounds good, we could still make some money on this.  We’ll buy this asset from you.”  But the gravy train isn’t stopping yet!  Company C comes along and says to Company B; “You bought unpaid loans thinking 85 people would pay.  Our new numbers indicate that only 60 of those people might pay back their loan.  We’ll buy these assets from you and make the gamble that more than 60 will pay… and maybe we’ll profit.”  This can go on all the way from Company A to Company Z, each time being turned over with a larger wager and no actual product being created; just profit.  Profit, that is, until reality sets in an it turns out that only 15 people paid back their loans.  Values plummet, brokers get scared, and banks begin pulling properties out from under people to make up for their bad investments.

These derivatives are the product of financial deregulation.  It would suffice to say that financial deregulation is the enemy of the free market.  When there are no rules – all is fair.  Making billions of dollars at the expense of American lives becomes common place.

Getting back on track, by far my favorite quote from the interview is from Sean Hannity; ”I love them [al qaeda] in the sense that I want to destroy them.”

I think I should just stop there.  I can end my first real blog entry on that cheerful thought.

‘CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY’ – In Theaters October 2nd

“It’s a crime story. But it’s also a war story about class warfare. And a vampire movie, with the upper 1 percent feeding off the rest of us. And, of course, it’s also a love story. Only it’s about an abusive relationship.

“It’s not about an individual, like Roger Smith, or a corporation, or even an issue, like health care. This is the big enchilada. This is about the thing that dominates all our lives — the economy. I made this movie as if it was going to be the last movie I was allowed to make. “It’s a comedy.” — Michael Moore

www.SayNoToBailouts.com/

Gold has always been one of the favorite avenues for investors to put their money during any economic uncertainty. We’re into a new phase of this bull market that’s been going on since 2004. Factors like the credit crisis, ups and downs in the global economy, the response of the governments and the monetary authorities set up a very positive environment for gold, not only in the near term, but many years to come.

On the contrary,jewelry demand, however, has fallen off a cliff—it’s almost non-existing right now and a lot of scrap is coming into the market due to very high prices. This is also one of the reasons for which we had witnessed some range bound moves in gold prices in past few months. (Two dynamics in the gold market were pulling against each other as strong investment demand and very weak jewelry demand.

Gold is up by roughly 250% since 1999 and approx. 25% from Sept. 2008 till date as we’re seeing money coming into the gold sector. I think the gold market is out of crisis mode. It has been recognized as an alternative, as a safe haven hedge. Sentiment among investors, especially individuals, is very positive. It’s mainly high net worth individuals who are buying the stuff up with a long-term view. Over the period of time we have also seen that investors are putting more and more money into gold as an investment. However, this increase in investment has come from tiny levels. Retail investment in gold remains tiny comparative to investments in equity and bond markets. Also, the physical gold market is such a tiny market comparative to equity, bond, currency and derivative markets that even small flows from these massively larger markets can result in outsize moves up in the gold price in future.

Gold has always been one of the favorite avenues for investors to put their money during any economic uncertainty.

We’re into a new phase of this bull market that’s been going on since 2004. Factors like the credit crisis, ups and downs in the global economy, the response of the governments and the monetary authorities set up a very positive environment for gold, not only in the near term, but many years to come.

On the contrary,jewelry demand, however, has fallen off a cliff—it’s almost non-existing right now and a lot of scrap is coming into the market due to very high prices. This is also one of the reasons for which we had witnessed some range bound moves in gold prices in past few months. (Two dynamics in the gold market were pulling against each other as strong investment demand and very weak jewelry demand.

Gold is up by roughly 250% since 1999 and approx. 25% from Sept. 2008 till date as we’re seeing money coming into the gold sector. I think the gold market is out of crisis mode. It has been recognized as an alternative, as a safe haven hedge. Sentiment among investors, especially individuals, is very positive. It’s mainly high net worth individuals who are buying the stuff up with a long-term view. Over the period of time we have also seen that investors are putting more and more money into gold as an investment.

However, this increase in investment has come from tiny levels. Retail investment in gold remains tiny comparative to investments in equity and bond markets. Also, the physical gold market is such a tiny market comparative to equity, bond, currency and derivative markets that even small flows from these massively larger markets can result in outsize moves up in the gold price in future.