ALEC HOGG: Well, it's across to Vancouver now, where we link up with Jeff Christian, managing director  of the CPM group. Jeff, earlier today your time, or North American time, the gold price jumped $50 in a period of 10 minutes. It's holding that level above $830/oz - do you have any insight into what's going on?

JEFFREY CHRISTIAN: Well, there's a mistake that people regularly make about gold when you see a financial crisis like we are seeing this week. People are always expecting gold to skyrocket immediately. And usually if you look at it - you know, October 1987, August 2007, this week - typically what often happens is that gold prices fall initially and then they rise. And the reason for that is one of the functions gold serves for investors is it's a source of liquidity in a time of crisis. That's why people want gold, because if things get really nasty in the financial markets: "I've got gold, I can sell to raise cash." We saw on Monday and Tuesday some of that liquidity rush, in the rush to cash, the rush to convert you money into US dollars, and buy US Treasury-guaranteed investments with it. And that pushed gold and silver down. I think what you're seeing now is that that liquidity rush is over. Meanwhile you have this tremendous demand for gold and silver in physical form around the world. People are paying record high premiums for gold and silver; in India there are reports of tightness in an investment for silver and gold by North America and Europe. So I think what you are seeing - the paper market can swamp the physical market for a time, but the physical market ultimately trumps the paper market - and that's what you are seeing.

ALEC HOGG: Jeff, is gold then acting like a canary in a financial services coal mine?

JEFFREY CHRISTIAN: I don't know if that's the right metaphor. Gold is more acting like the fire extinguisher in a burning building. It's what you grab when you really want to make it to the door. A canary in a gold mine dies in an emergency. Gold thrives in an emergency.

ALEC HOGG: And how much of an emergency is this? We've seen the Federal Reserve in the United States bailing out AIG, the biggest insurance company in the world. Next on the chopping block seems to be Washington Mutual, and big questions marks about who might come thereafter. This seems to be an ideal environment for gold to flourish?

JEFFREY CHRISTIAN: I think I said it when I was in your studio in August - we are having troubles at CPM Group coming up with scenarios in which the gold price falls in the next several quarters significantly, and in which the gold bull market ends. This is in fact probably the ideal time - financial market conditions are more unruly than ever - at least since World War II, and maybe the Great Depression and the panic of 1907. This is a worse financial market than we had in '79/'80. Things are very bad, we are not out of the woods. I think that we are - Churchill's famous statement - at the end of the beginning of the financial market unrest, and I think there's a lot more to come, and a lot more will come that is going to keep gold in the hearts and minds of investors for at least another six or eight months.

ALEC HOGG: Perhaps we could close off with Mike Myers' statement again: "I love go-o-o-old!" It was a great movie, Goldmember.

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