Gekko.

BOB Dole's loan to Newt Gingrich is the first recorded case of an airbag being saved by a person.

Back in the March 24 issue I recounted the pervasive dishonesty of the Ecuadorian government, and the grim prospects for the country's prospective Eurobond issue, then being marketed by Chase Bank. Chase was on the hook for a $300-million bridge loan that was to be paid off by the Eurobond, and I said at the time that if the bond deal got done, the marketer should get the Sales- man of the Year award.

Well, the Ecuadorian Euros got sold, even though the country's last president but one absconded with a pile of Central Bank cash in the course of the deal, and the award goes to the Chase Global Emerging Market bond team. When the deal closed in late April, the Ecuadorians had managed to raise $500 million in two slices -- one fixed-rate issue yielding 4.6 per cent more than the equivalent U.S. Treasury, and a floating-rate issue going for 4.75 percentage points more than six-month Eurodollar deposits yield. This for a country whose elite is undistinguished by Latin American standards and whose people believe they are exempt from the laws of the market.

When the new Ecuadorian international financial team made its debut at the Inter-American Development Bank meetings in Madrid in mid March, they dressed a lot more like guys selling a different commodity. They wore dark glasses indoors and looked as if they should be featured in grainy police pictures shot through a telephoto lens. The Chase team realized they had a credibility problem and grimly went to work with the skill of a Professor Higgins.

The results speak for themselves. Of course, the Chase team had the advantage of being at the tail end of a market environment that rewards greed over fear, but still. As Tommy Unterberg used to call out to the floor at the old L. F. Rothschild, "If you can sell this -- , you can sell anything!"

You know that things are as bad as they can get when even gold producers no longer believe in a rising price for their product.

For some time, of course, the smart thing to do if you want people to buy your gold stock has been to sell a substantial part of your future production for- ward. The people who have done this, such as American Barrick or Newmont, have outperformed the market. The people who don't, such as Homestake, have wound up at the top of the sell list.

But the ultimate sign of informed sentiment hitting the bottom was a public disclosure by an Australian gold-mining company called the Sons of Gwalia. "Sons," as the traders call it, has a reputation for being better run than other Australian mines. It has reserves of 3.06 million ounces and has sold 5.05 million of those ounces for future delivery.

As one of the heroes of nineteenth-century American finance once said, "He who sells what isn't his'n must buy it back or go to prison." That speculator was referring to Erie Railroad shares, not gold. But it turns out that Sons had gone short in part through options, rather than forward contracts, and so its management could lose its premiums but not its freedom. Even so, when part of your future prosperity depends on a continuing decline in the price of your commodity product, this is not a vote of confidence.

I got in touch with Joe Walsh, an analyst with RBC - Dominion Securities in London who follows Sons. "The Lalor brothers, who control it, are extremely astute," he said. "What they are saying with this position is that it is more likely that they will add new reserves than that the gold price will rise." In other words, they might be able to get these reserves through acquisitions rather than discoveries. Given the crash in gold equities, that may be true. Sons of Gwalia could buy an existing gold mine and have much or all of its future production already hedged forward, at prices above the present gold price.

Whatever the management's future deals are, the Lalor brothers might want to move quickly. Arch Crawford says that April 28 is likely to mark a bottom in the gold price at around $339 spot.

"Arch Crawford," I hear you mutter patronizingly. Isn't he the market-letter guy who's the astrologer? Yes, he is. I talked to him back at the beginning of February. Arch predicted then that on the basis of his technical analysis and astrological charts, the S&P June future would peak on February 18. He was right to the day. He was also right back in August of 1987, when he predicted a long-term peak on August 24. The equity market duly peaked on August 25.

It took a while to get through to Arch, since the subscription lines to his Crawford Perspectives have been busy of late. He is moving his operation to a new house to make room for more data-entry people. What's next?

"We've had a bounce since the early April low, but it's only what I call a dead-cult bounce. I'm still 200 per cent short. If we break down in the next two weeks, we'll have a thousand-point or more decline before we get a summer rally, though not one that goes to the old highs. The real crash will come in the fall in any case. I'm buying both gold and gold stocks." How did he know? The charts? "This call, and the one in 1987, were both 100 per cent astrologi- cal, because technically they were still trending upward. The fundamentalists would have been out for two years."

Better listen up, folks. Don't try to catch a falling piano. --