Just days before the UN''s deadline for Iran to halt its Uranium enrichment program, Iran inaugurates a new heavy water facility taking it one step closer to acquiring Nuclear technology. Just as the appeasers at the onset of WWII refused to believe there was a credible threat, the same sort of innocent and lame statements were once again emanating from Iran this past weekend, but the reality is we have seen this movie before, where really throughout the 1990''s and even going back 30 years terrorism threats or even periodic attacks were never taken that seriously or responded to in kind and the results were a series of increasingly severe attacks culminating in 9/11 that have since led to a number of aftershock events around the World and leaving the World potentially overdue for a follow-up even larger event.

Back in 2001, even if events had been somewhat telegraphed ahead of time, not knowing the nature of the threat, it was difficult to create a defense or hedge against one''s investment portfolio, but given the increasing nature of the terrorism threat, today Gold and Silver stand out as the logical defense against an increasingly uncertain future, wherein the consequences of which, may be beyond imagination, in just the same way as the prospect of flying commercial airlines into buildings was dismissed as so remote, it was really hard to imagine right up to September 10, that such a boldly co-ordinated and outrageous attack that could even include the seemingly majestic World Trade Center and hitherto invincible Pentagon, could actually occur in the way it did.   In a post 9/11 World, we can not longer dismiss anything as remote or not going to happen even worse attacks are going to happen sooner or later and not acknowledging this is like acting blind to future possibilities, because the next event could eclipse all previous all previous terrorist or even many wartime experiences combined...

To understand the true threat from Iran, maybe the best estimate of that should come from an Iranian: Ghazal Omid, an Iranian exile may have put the looming threat into perspective more succinctly than most. Author of "Living in Hell", an autobiography of her experiences of living in Iran, when asked: Do we really understand the true threat from Iran, when Iran''s government claims it is not a threat to anybody?

She doesn''t pull any punches in her response: "The true threat is, that if they had a nuclear bomb, they would drop it on our heads". That is a very profound statement that has apparently caused widespread consternation, but as also been a wake-up call to the ordinary Iranian people who now fear the onset of war brought about by a government from all appearances of recent months is gunning for a big showdown.

We''ve already made the case as to extreme undervaluedness of Gold, which just strengthens the case for Precious Metals to become the logical repository for an increasing percentage of investments in an increasingly uncertain World that may also be running out of resources.

On Friday, we did see some attempts by the S&P to overcome the 1,300 level which we suggested might occur and this week the ability of the S&P 500 to either overcome and exceed this level or break down to lower levels, may set the trend going well into September or later.

Trade Well