this is from ian mc avity:

In the next 18 months to two years gold could well rise to around $2,500 to $3,000 an ounce but, such a move is not a cause for celebration.

Ian McAvity, author of the newsletter, Deliberations on World Markets, speaking on Mineweb.com's Gold Weekly podcast, said that while he is a gold bug, buying gold in the current economic climate is very much like buying life insurance for a short term capital gain, "there is a transaction cost one needs to look at".

To listen to the whole podcast click here.

McAvity says that he expects gold to head north toward the $3,000 level over the next two years but, says he cannot yet quantify "The magnitude of the crisis that takes it higher".

"I have very little confidence of what I would call the outcome of quantitative easing as is being pursued by both the US and Europe. So we've got in a sense, the second half of the bear market that started three years ago - we're only just starting the second half of that now and you might say that the first half of it was arrested by the central bankers bailing things out. The problem that we've got now is the central bankers are wielding a bailing can that has holes in it. It's the bailers that have now run out of credibility."

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page33?oid=106419&sn=Detail&pid=92730