Rhosty,

Australia does not have weapon grade fissile material. No one would sell it to us I guarantee that!

Thus you are incorrect.

Arjay,

Why is gold falling in price? where is its bottom likely to be? And did you know that computer trades can detect a gold purchase as low as $20k and place calls to jockey that investment into a losing position?

You are correct about precious metals, but how do you outsmart a nanosecond probing computer programmed by a Havard Grad with a 200 IQ?

Kaep," Why has the price of gold fallen?" Yes it has even with increasing demand. http://maxkeiser.com/ Max Keiser and others have put this down to the use of derivatives which are really bets.You can put a small amount of money down and bet on the price of a share rising or falling eg futures.Collaterised debt obligations and credit default swaps are some others.

Max tells us that for every oz of gold there are 80 pieces of paper laying claim to its existance.This is how they manipulate the price of precious metals.Presently they are acting in concert to force prices down so they can buy the real stuff.You have to be able to take possession of your gold.

I think silver is the dark horse that will beat gold.Gold is 60 times more expensive than silver,but silver is only 10 times more abundant than gold.

Eventually this derivative game will collapse.Our banks here have a derivative exposure of $20 trillion which is 16 times our GDP or six times their assets which are really our mortgages.Their assets are mortgages which are based on over inflated house prices that have not been paid off.

For the first time this year the Commonwealth Bank has refused to reveal its exposure to derivatives.

Arjay,

Got it!

Nuf said

Rhrosty, just when I think you know what you are talking about you mention "fusion" bombs and scram jets capable of reaching London! It's a bit like your fascination with ceramic fuel cells. (Just in case you haven't heard, the company which makes them has left the country.) The other two items I suspect are still ideas waiting to happen. As far as I know no one, but no one, has achieved nuclear fusion. The scram jet has been around forever, and no one has used it, in a long range bomber. We wouldn't need to anyway, aircraft from Darwin can reach most of the important bits to our North.

KAEP: Actually, you are the one who is wrong, again! We own 40% of the world's uranium, and the invented here, pulsed laser light enrichment process, that much more effectively and inexpensively, produces fissionable material!
And it is portable enough to be deployed and set up, almost anywhere, in this wide brown land.
Should our intell tell us we'd become a preferred prime target of a nuclear armed nation, for whatever reason?
We could produce enough fissionable material, in just a few hours, for several bombs.
We already have the technology and the expertise to make them right here! I mean, we've exploded several of them right here!
However, we have decided not to become a nuclear armed nation, for several cogent reasons, one of which remains, mutually assured destruction!
The other, a heartfelt desire, for nuclear disarmament!
I mean, it'd be hard to argue that position, while building our own nuclear arsenal!
Moreover, we already have the means to deliver them by stealth and in smart bombs, that keeps ground zero, to military targets as much as is still possible!
Not that one sees, or wishes for, this virtually guaranteed, mutual destruction outcome!
On another related topic, we have finally learned to make Collins class submarines, therefore it behoves us to build more of them here?
Except, the newer model ought to be nuclear powered, with the much safer helium cooled pebble reactors.
This would ensure they could run for twenty years or more without ever needing to refuel; and, run far more silently and submerged, for many months at a time, should that ever prove necessary or desirable?
As Roosevelt once remarked, walk softly, but carry a big stick!
Rhrosty.

Jon R: Scram jets, which NASA are also trialling, are a fairly recent local innovation!
We are not talking about ram jets, which have been around as you say, a very long time!
Possibly as long as your very dated, actual knowledge of such things?
Ceramic cells? You say the company that makes them has already left the country!
This would be news to the Melbourne based company, recently in the news, deferring that decision for any number of reasons, one of which could be the 20% annual wages inflation in China!? Another, renewed local interest in localised NG>ceramic cell based power provision?
As far as you know, nobody has made a fusion bomb?
Well, given your accuracy on ceramic cells, one would suggest, your other self proclaimed expertise, who knows how to make fusion bombs, is even less reliable!
Knowing how to make one, and the science, is very different from actually making one or more, which could be a fool's errand; given, in testing these devices, one could start an unstoppable thermonuclear reaction!
Rhrosty.