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

To: long-gone who wrote (52363)	5/5/2000 12:34:00 PM
From: IngotWeTrust	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116814

Fair use, etc., [in case Yahoo ages this off] Thursday May 4 3:52 PM ET Portugal Shrine Admits Nazi Gold Use By CRISTIANA PEREIRA, Associated Press Writer LISBON, Portugal (AP) - In an embarrassing disclosure a week before a visit by Pope John Paul II, officials at Portugal's famed Fatima shrine have admitted that the shrine once owned Nazi gold. Ingots bearing the German Third Reich insignia were among the shrine's gold deposits from 1976 until 1986, according to a statement faxed Thursday to The Associated Press. The Nazi gold was not purchased by the Roman Catholic shrine's authorities, the statement said. The shrine 70 miles north of Lisbon is built on the site where three children in 1917 claimed to witness a vision of the Virgin Mary. The shrine receives about 6 million pilgrims a year. In 1970, shrine authorities granted Banco Pinto de Magalhaes a loan in gold. When the bank, which no longer exists, repaid the debt in 1976, some of the ingots it supplied bore the stamp of the Third Reich, the statement said. Between 1982 and 1986, the shrine sold the gold to pay for construction. The whereabouts of the Nazi gold is not known, the statement said. The statement came after weekly magazine Visao reported the bank held four gold ingots in the shrine's account that may have been looted from Holocaust victims. Portugal, a neutral country during World War II, was the largest recipient after Switzerland of gold sold by Germany during the war. Portugal provided Germany's war machine with tungsten and other materials used to produce weapons-grade steel, as well as canned food and other goods. Rector Luciano Guerra said in the statement that he saw the ingots in the bank's vaults in 1976 and thought they were ``curious'' but took no action. He did not say how many ingots he saw. The shrine's authorities said they were willing to cooperate in tracing the gold, but declined to answer further questions. The pope visits the shrine May 12-13. A Portuguese panel of inquiry, headed by former President Mario Soares, last year concluded that Portugal owed no further financial restitution to Holocaust survivors because it didn't knowingly handle gold looted from them by Nazi Germany. Portugal returned almost 4 tons of Nazi gold - then worth $7.2 million - in 1953 through the Allied Tripartite Commission, which was in charge of recovering stolen gold after the war. The commission had initially demanded that Portugal return 44 tons of gold plundered by the Nazis from the banks of occupied countries and the melted-down valuables of Holocaust victims. dailynews.yahoo.com

To: long-gone who wrote (52363)	5/5/2000 12:54:00 PM
From: Enigma	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116814

Well there was obviously a lot of that sort of thing going on as a result of the war - and we know that the Swiss by buying gold from the Nazis in effect bank rolled the Nazi war effort - no questions asked. Much of the problem with the price is caused by Govt. selling and leasing etc. What some fail to realise on this thread is that the business of mining is to extract ore at a profit - whatever the price. As Bob Johnson had pointed out with great patience, mining methods have changed so that large deposits, often low grade, can be mined at extremely low cost. It is quite unrealistic to call for a cartel among producers - or ask Barrick to step aside and let others beat them to the punch. Some companies will fail in this low price environment - I wonder for example about Kinross - the stock is the pits - and we may be in a low price environment for a long time. But we live in a free enterprise system and mining companies have had to adjust.