Hi MrSoul!

I am hopeful that the democratic dream for Egypt will come to pass as per your optimism. But similar events in other mid-East regimes provide cause to be concerned. The Hamas Party was democratically elected. Back in 1980 the exact same scenes of demonstrations followed by celebration accompanied the ouster of the Shah in Iran. How quickly thugs and extremists hijacked that process and imposed a new brutal regime that Iranians are struggling to rid themselves of to this day. Careful what you wish for.

I do hope the Egyptians find freedom through this process. But as it stands now it appears the military is now firmly established in control. I can think of many other nations in the world where military control was supposed to be temporary and then became the new regime. Freedom is often not the reality that all had expected.

What we do know is that the fragile stability that had existed in the region is now in question. Things could be resolved to a better and more functioning relationship for all of Egypts neighbors. But lets not forget there are malignant interests that will attempt to intervene and impose their own agenda in the political vacuum. I do not think muslim extremists are going to stand back and let unrestrained freedom take root in Egypt. Perhaps a strong military is the best hope to thwart that.

I keep my fingers crossed and watch. In my opinion the best solution would have been an orderly transformation in the fall through elections, that would have allowed stronger new leadership to step forward in a real democratic process. Now we must trust in the benign intentions of the military, and hope that the intervention of extremists can be prevented for long enough to allow a new popular government to evolve.

And I do think this is of great interest to ECU shareholders. Just notice how the entire sector was bamboozled lower on the news out of Egypt. I do not think any of this situation is bearish for gold, but the Cartel will take the initiative to frame the issue by pounding the spot market lower and create the impression that gold is a liability. Some things never change.

For the record I took advantage of the selling in ECU and added more shares below $1.10 yesterday. Earlier in the week we were debating on whether the stock could break above $1.20. Adding more cheap shares seems like the right play here and lets see how it resolves in the next week.

cheers!

mike