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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zardoz who wrote (37790)	7/26/1999 7:43:00 AM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116764

Hutch, nice story, but I am not sure that even such a far fetched venture would bring NASA to a positive cash flow state. In the early 1970's I participated in a program with a goal to develop cost effective space manufacturing technologies. The idea was that there might be processes with such high value added that it could be more cost effective if carried out in the near zero G environment of space. Well, the "hurdle" that was given to us then, is that the cost of getting a pound of material to space was about $3000/lbs then (so today it will be of the order of at least 10 times as much or $30,000), gold will have to reach some hefty prices to make this endeavor profitable (VBG). Zeev

To: Zardoz who wrote (37790)	7/26/1999 2:32:00 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116764

Hutch, You Ron, & others have asked for any proof of gold price manipulation lower. May I offer this: Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: This exchange of correspondence I've had in the last few days with a GATA eGroup member, Ruth Rosenhek of the Rainforest Information Centre, may be of interest. Please post it wherever it seems useful. With good wishes. CHRIS POWELL, Secretary Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. I'm interested in the ecological aspects of gold mining as well as its effects on communities' health and well- being. With this foremost in mind, the GoldBusters campaign initially sought to bring the price of gold down by putting forth that if reserves would sell their gold, the price would drop and gold mining would decline. We did not envision that something like this would cause a quick and extreme price drop; we thought there would be plenty of time to look at job-transition programs and conversion to more ecological mining techniques. But almost moments after we launched our campaign -- and quite independently, of course -- President Clinton endorsed the International Monetary Fund's proposal to sell its gold reserves and the price of gold dropped. Then the Bank of England announced its gold sales and again the price dropped. We realize that this drastic drop in price has severe economic consequences on communities dependent on gold mining -- for instance, Africa. At the same time we heard about GATA and possible ulterior motives for these gold sales. These two things made us uncomfortable supporting such a drop in the price of gold. Too much is at stake and the intentions involved are too mysterious. We also became interested, through Brian Hill, in the possibility of asking that all gold mining be ecologically and socially certified, a move toward a benign and sustainable industry. And so we stopped putting out our hard-edged campaign literature, modified it, and went into an information-gathering mode, looking for realistic alternatives that would keep both the Earth and her peoples happy. I have been following the stimulating GATA conversations for some time now and am impressed with the expertise of those involved. I'm wondering if anyone in the GATA eGroup would be interested in talking with us about how we might compose a call for those institutions that sell gold to take responsibility for their impact on the gold mining industry. That is to say, if a reserve sells some of its gold (assuming that this is done in an above-board way and not for the motives that GATA is talking about), is there some way that the reserve to be held fiscally responsible for the job losses? That is, is it feasible to set up a compensation fund for countries suffering from such sales? I do not wish to confuse this with the important ethical issues GATA is raising. I'm talking here about legitimate sales that are not rigged or made with bad intentions. Do you have any thoughts about this and suggestions about who might be able to engage in such discourse? For the Earth, RUTH ROSENHEK, Director Rainforest Information Centre forests.org * * * Dear Ruth: Thanks so much for your thoughtful letter. Here's what comes quickly to mind: 1) My impression is that only prosperous societies respect the environment or pay much attention to environmental protection. Impoverished and developing nations are concerned only with subsistence and will ruin their entire environment for the sake of their next meal. (The deforestation of Haiti is a good example; the trashing of Russia is another.) If history is any guide, wrecking the economies of gold-producing countries in the developing world by driving down the price of gold may end the environmental damage caused by gold mining but increase the environmental damage cause by the more impoverished society's raping what's left of the countryside. My guess is that a higher price of gold, rather than a lower one, along with higher prices for commodities generally (since the developing world has more of a commodity economy) may be what's required to advance environmental protection. 2) Of course this is not to say that international trade and finance don't have huge effects on the environment, don't already tend to push environmental damage into the developing world, where there is less regulation, and shouldn't be regulated to encourage the developing world to raise environmental and labor standards. But as far as I know even relatively advanced countries like the United States and Mexico haven't figured out exactly how to make the North American Free Trade Agreement work without turning Mexico into its northern neighbor's industrial dump. Then there's the global warming/greenhouse gases issue that the Rio Treaty was meant to address, but the treaty doesn't seem to be getting very far. As for some sort of environmentally- minded international gold mining compact, I'm no expert here but my guess is that the developed countries' gold reserves indeed could be leveraged to exact better environmental standards in the developing world -- if, of course, that's how the developed world's central banks wanted to use their gold reserves. My impression is to the contrary -- that the central banks would prefer worldwide nuclear war to anything that might threaten the solvency of Goldman Sachs and that you'd be quite wasting your time in this direction. But at least you'd have a good point and be trying to do the right thing for the right reasons. 3) Could central bank gold sales be taxed to provide compensation to the mining-dependent countries whose economies would be damaged by those sales? I imagine that some formula could be worked out in theory, but remember that the world price of gold is already below the break-even point for most mines, and that the central bank reserves are only a fraction of the below-ground reserves in the developing countries. Thus any formula probably could provide only a little relief for a very short time. You probably would be asking the developing world to give up its patrimony for a mere pittance. 4) Where to raise these issues? I suppose the people to start with are the people with the gold who are selling it in bulk -- the central banks. You could ask them why they don't try using their gold for a socially useful purpose instead of using it to bail out the investment houses that are short gold. The "debt relief" explanation for the central bank sales is easily disproven; the relief would come not from the money raised by the gold sales but rather from the INTEREST earned on the money raised, a terribly small amount that the developing world doesn't want at the cost of devastating its mining industry. And of course there are always the political authorities; Prime Minister Tony Blair is supposed to represent laboring interests but wouldn't give the time of day to the laborers' representatives who came to visit him from South Africa. Of course I don't think you'd get the time of day from these supposed lefties either. But, as GATA realized when it came into being, idle complaining to oneself accomplishes nothing either; you just have to do what you can do, and if you're right, you might surprise yourself and the whole world. I'm not sure that this is much help to you, but with your permission I'll post our correspondence to the GATA eGroup and forward any responses to you. Thanks always for your interest. CHRIS POWELL, Secretary Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. and don't you just love this quote "But almost moments after we launched our campaign -- and quite independently, of course -- President Clinton endorsed the International Monetary Fund's proposal to sell its gold reserves and the price of gold dropped." rh