Gold World News Flash

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• This is all part of China’s plan for the internationalization of its currency, which may, in the decades to come, threaten the global ‘market share’ of other currencies like the US dollar.
• Strong Technicals for Junior Gold Miners GDXJ ETF
• Inflation and the Value of Gold Explained
• Seeking Value in Junior Miners
• New York Times: The Silver Conspiracy
• Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Rise To New Highs Again
• Bill Gates Worried About Public Pensions?
• US Naval Update: It's A Mediterranean Party And The Enterprise Is Invited - Libyan Endgame Expected Within 5-7 Days
• Yikes! NYTimes (online) columnist finds silver price rigging plausible
• The Gold Price Completed a Move Up $6.50 Today to $1,437.20, May Back Off Tomorrow
• U.S. Mint reduces delivery of silver eagles
• Things
• In The News Today
• Jim?s Mailbox
• Fear, Inflation and Debt
• Taps for the Dollar
• Gene Arensberg: Fiat money confidence meters
• China "Attacks The Dollar" - Moves To Further Cement Renminbi Reserve Currency Status
• Zero Hedge: A deep walkthru for silver manipulation, redux
• Utah gold and silver money legislation advanced by committee
• Despite rising gold price, Barrick won't hedge anymore, CEO says
• Paul jousts with Bernanke but presses no gold questions
• Chen Lin: Seeking Value in Junior Miners
• Jim's Mailbox
• Who’s Really Affected By Rising Food Prices
• Crisis? What Crisis?
• Hecla Mining: Solid 2010 But Settlement Risk Remains
• Is Your Gold Safe?
• "Safe Haven" Dollar Not Finished Yet
• "Safe Haven" Dollar Not Finished Yet

This is all part of China’s plan for the internationalization of its currency, which may, in the decades to come, threaten the global ‘market share’ of other currencies like the US dollar. Posted: 02 Mar 2011 07:19 PM PST China "Attacks The Dollar" – Moves To Further Cement Renminbi Reserve Currency Status Share this:

Strong Technicals for Junior Gold Miners GDXJ ETF Posted: 02 Mar 2011 07:08 PM PST The hourly chart of the Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners (GDXJ) has two powerful aspects to it.   One is that the base-like accumulation pattern that developed between early Jan and late Feb has propelled prices above its key breakout plateau at 38.50.  This triggers potential upside targets at 42.50 and then 44.40.

Inflation and the Value of Gold Explained Posted: 02 Mar 2011 06:06 PM PST As the story goes, someone asked an economist how his wife was doing, and the economist answered "compared to what?" Joking aside, this is one of the most important questions one can ask when dealing with many economic problems.

Seeking Value in Junior Miners Posted: 02 Mar 2011 06:04 PM PST Independent investor Chen Lin takes advantage of high metals prices by investing in companies with the financial strength to stay the course until the resource is in production or can be expanded, making the company an attractive takeover target. For metal miners, the sustainability factor is critical because it can take years to get a mine to cash flow-positive status. Chen shares several of his strategies for finding significant returns in this exclusive interview with The Gold Report.

New York Times: The Silver Conspiracy Posted: 02 Mar 2011 04:22 PM PST As Americans know all too well by this point, commodity prices — for corn, wheat, soybeans, crude oil, gold and even farmland — have been going through the roof for what seems like forever. There are many causes, primarily supply and demand pressures driven by fears about the unrest in the Middle East, the rise of consumerism in China and India, and the Fed's $600 billion campaign to increase the money supply. Nonetheless, how to explain the price of silver? In the past six months, the value of the precious metal has increased nearly 80 percent, to more than $34 an ounce from around $19 an ounce. In the last month alone, its price has increased nearly 23 percent. This kind of price action in the silver market is reminiscent of the fortune-busting, roller-coaster ride enjoyed by the Hunt Brothers, Nelson Bunker and William Herbert, back in 1970s and early 1980s when they tried unsuccessfully to corner the market. When the Hunts started buying silver in 1973, the price of the metal was $1.95 an ounce. By early 1980, the brothers had driven the price up to $54 an ounce before the Federal Reserve intervened, changed the rules on speculative silver investments and the price plunged. The brothers later declared bankruptcy. Accusations that JPMorganChase and HSBC allegedly manipulated precious metal markets are worth looking into. The Hunts may be gone from the market, but there are still plenty of people suspicious about the trading in silver, and now they have the Web to explore and to expand their conspiracy narratives. This time around — according to bloggers and commenters on sites with names like Silverseek, 321Gold and Seeking Alpha — silver shot up in price after a whistleblower exposed an alleged conspiracy to keep the price artificially low despite the inflationary pressure of the Fed's cheap money policy. More Here..

Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Rise To New Highs Again Posted: 02 Mar 2011 04:00 PM PST Gold waffled near unchanged in Asia before it steadily rose in London and New York to a new all-time high of $1440.13 by about noon EST and then fell back off a bit in afternoon trade, but it still ended with a gain of 0.46%. Silver climbed to as high as $34.96 and ended with a gain of 1.22% at a new 30-year high.

Bill Gates Worried About Public Pensions? Posted: 02 Mar 2011 02:35 PM PST Via Pension Pulse. Robert Guth and Michael Corkery of the WSJ report, Gates Says High Pension Costs Hurt Education: Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates will step into the national debate over state budgets Thursday with a call for states to rethink their public-employee benefits systems, which he says stifle funding for the nation's public schools. Mr. Gates in an interview said he will use a high-profile conference Thursday in Long Beach, Calif., to urge that more attention be paid to how states calculate their employee-pension funding and health-care obligations. "These budgets are way out of whack," Mr. Gates said. "They've used accounting gimmicks and lot things that are truly extreme."  The comments come after Mr. Gates spent more than a year studying the issue and enlisting the advice of leading academics and others. The talk will be at a meeting of leading thinkers called the TED conference. Mr. Gates will outline how, as he sees it, rising state health-care costs and flawed pension accounting hamper the ability of states to pay for education. He said he'd use California as an example to illustrate his point. "I'm just very worried about the investments we make for kids' education and what that means for the future," he said. "It's going to take voters to really look at that." Without that, he said, "The default course—where the health care costs are squeezing out education — is quite bleak." Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, which has 3.2 million members, said U.S teachers have been trying to make up funding shortfalls by raising their contributions to their pension plans. He added that pensions are one of the reasons schools can attract quality teachers. "People within public services know they are not going to make a high salary but they know that you have some semblance of retirement security," Mr. Van Roekel said in an interview. As co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, Mr. Gates focuses most of his efforts on three areas: global health; overseas development; and U.S. education. Yet he occasionally uses his stature in the service of other causes, and when he does, it's very deliberate. Two years ago, Mr. Gates used the same TED conference to outline his views on energy. That talk was the start of an increasingly higher profile by Mr. Gates in national discussion on the state of government investment into energy-related research and nuclear power. His involvement has stirred debate on streamlining the licensing process for U.S. nuclear-power facilities. He said he is concerned that states' public employee-benefit costs could now stand in the way of broader changes. These include programs Mr. Gates's foundation backs that aspire to use technology (including cameras that monitor classrooms) and strengthened teacher evaluations to improve K-12 education. "Those goals will never be met with the kinds of cuts that we're seeing right now" in education, he said. One focus of Mr. Gates is public pension funds' use of a relatively high discount rate to calculate obligations. The discount rate is an assumed rate of return used to calculate the current value of a future liability. The higher the rate, the smaller a fund's obligations appear—and the less that states need to contribute to their pension funds. Critics blame this accounting approach for contributing to state pension shortfalls, estimated nationwide to total more than $1 trillion. Pension funds say their discount rates are prudent when considering investing returns over several decades. Mr. Gates downplayed any suggestion that his view on pensions will court controversy. "The only position I'm taking you could call a political position is that I wish education spending can go up," he said. Over two days last September, Mr. Gates hosted experts in state pensions and health care at his office near Seattle. Several of the participants continue to advise Mr. Gates. Among the participants in the meetings were Jeremy Gold, an independent actuary, who argues that state and local government accounting methods understate the true size of pension liabilities; Robert Clark, a North Carolina State University professor who has written a book on the history of public pension funds in the U.S.; and Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, whose research has focused lately on the cost of state and local pension plans. Along with his comments Thursday, Mr. Gates will unveil a new set of tools to his personal Web site, "The Gates Notes." The tools allow visitors to click through U.S. maps that show state-by-state the funding status for pension obligations and retiree health-care benefits. There is also a feature on Mr. Gates's site that ranks how much each state spends on programs such as higher education and prisons, as a percent of its total budget. "A lot of society's resources go into state budgets and yet it has been made complicated enough and the accounting is bad enough that people haven't had a sense of what's going on," Mr. Gates says in a video on the Web site. I applaud Bill Gates for bringing this issue out in the open and giving it the publicity it deserves. He's absolutely right that US public pension funds need to use a more realistic discount rate to gauge future pension obligations. It's silly to use a discount rate based on rosy investment projections (typically 8%) when interests rates are at historic lows. But the assumed discount rate isn't the only driver of pension shortfalls (see discussion below). You should all go back and read the study released last February by The Pew Center on the States, The Trillion Dollar Gap. On page 23 there is a discussion on "the roots of the problem" where Pew examined four of the most significant: (1) the volatility of pension plan investments; (2) states falling behind in their payments; (3) ill-considered benefit increases; and (4) other structural issues. The study estimated $3 trillion in unfunded legacy liabilities from state-sponsored pension plans. Another study ,“The Crisis in Local Government Pensions in the United States,” by Joshua Rauh of the Kellogg School and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester, estimated an additional $574 billion in unfunded liabilities from pension plans at the city and county levels: “This new paper calculates the present value of local government employee pension liabilities for about two-thirds of total local government employees, and estimates the unfunded obligation for the remaining one-third of workers covered by municipal plans not in our sample,” said Rauh, associate professor of finance at the Kellogg School. “In total, we estimate that municipal plans in the U.S. are carrying $574 billion in off-balance-sheet debt in the form of unfunded pension obligations.” In many cities, these unfunded promises will be a long-standing and substantial burden for municipal revenues. For example, even if all other spending was shut down, the city of Chicago would need to allocate about eight years of dedicated tax revenues to cover pension promises it has already made. Six major cities have current pension assets that can only pay for promised benefits through 2020: Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Jacksonville and St. Paul. An additional 18 cities and counties, including New York City, Detroit, Cook County in Illinois and Orange County in California would be solvent through 2020 but not past 2025. “Philadelphia has the most immediate cause for concern, as the city can pay existing promises with existing assets only through 2015 — less than five years from now,” Rauh said. Rauh and Novy-Marx estimate that each household already owes an average of $14,165 to current and former municipal public employees in the 50 cities and counties they studied, only including the unfunded portion of benefits that have already been promised based on work performed. In New York City, San Francisco, and Boston, the total is more than $30,000 per household. In Chicago, the total is more than $40,000 per household. “The situation is especially dire for taxpayers in these areas,” Rauh said. “In addition to being exposed to the prospect of severe local government tax increases and spending cuts, they also will be called upon to pay for their share of the $3 trillion unfunded liabilities at the state level.” According to Rauh, it is clear that state and local governments in the U.S. are not far from the point where these pension promises will impact their ability to operate. Once the funds themselves are liquidated, the extent to which promised pension payments are competing with other local resources will skyrocket, eroding a large portion of many municipal budgets. “The fact that there is such a large burden of public employee pensions concentrated in urban metropolitan areas threatens the long-run economic viability of these cities, as residents can potentially move elsewhere to escape the situation,” he explained. “What is yet to be seen is how this burden will be distributed between state and local governments, and whether the federal government will be called upon for bailouts. If these issues are left unresolved, fiscal crises on the state and local levels may translate into significant losses for municipal bondholders,” he concluded. Professor Rauh recently testified before members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on the role of public employee pensions and the risk of state bankruptcy from these underfunded liabilities.“This hidden debt will eventually force states and localities to choose among the unpalatable options of cutting services, raising taxes, attempting to reduce benefits owed to public employees, defaulting on other obligations, or seeking a federal bailout,” Rauh testified. But not everyone agrees with the findings of these studies. In early February, Kaitlin Meehan reported, Pension experts disagree on how states should calculate unfunded pension liabilities: Some experts peg the size of states’ unfunded pension liability at $3 trillion, while others value it at a much lower $700 billion. The discrepancy is due to different opinions on the appropriate rate of return on investments that states use to calculate their pension contributions. One thing nearly everyone agrees on: There are dangerous policy implications for getting this figure wrong. To calculate how much to contribute to the pension funds of public employees, states must assume a rate of return on their investments. Most states currently use a so-called “discount rate” of between 8 percent and 8.5 percent. Some experts say that’s too optimistic. They argue that states should be using a “riskless rate” that is a more conservative 4 percent to 5 percent. The $3 trillion figure is calculated using the lower rate of return. Prominent advocates for the conservative approach include Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester. Novy-Marx said the discount rate is so named because states use the expected return on pension investments to lower the amount they pay in contributions to the fund. In other words, states calculate the amount they need to invest in pension funds based on an assumed 8 percent rate of return. This is irresponsible accounting, he argues. “The way states do the accounting is that they think if they take a dollar out of the bank account and put it into the stock market, they somehow owe a dollar less,” Novy-Marx said. “That doesn’t make sense. Their debt is their debt.” The riskless rate is so named because it eliminates the risk assumed by investing in a diversified market basket and uses a rate comparable to that on U.S. Treasury bonds. The rate of return on a 30-year Treasury bond was 4.6 percent as of Feb. 2. Treasury bonds are considered safe investments because they are guaranteed by “the full faith and credit of the United States.” Likewise state pensions are usually guaranteed to retirees by a state’s constitution. The Illinois constitution, for example, calls its pension plans “an enforceable contractual relationship.” “I’ve talked to lots and lots of people and the only people who think discounting liabilities by the expected return on assets is the right thing to do are pension actuaries,” Novy-Marx said. “No one in business would let you do this. No one in finance or economic academics would let you do this.” However, others argue that overstated pension obligations could cause unnecessary policy changes to state budgets at a time when they are under extreme scrutiny. Elizabeth McNichol, a state budget researcher with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, thinks the $3 trillion liability figure for the states is too high. According to her calculation, which uses an 8 percent return rate, the states’ pension liability is closer to $700 billion. Because public pension managers invest in more risky vehicles than Treasury bonds, they can reasonably expect a higher rate of return than 4 percent, McNichol said. For example, the Teachers’ Retirement System, one of Illinois’ five public pension programs, currently has an 8.5 percent target rate of return. In 2010, the fund had a 12.8 percent rate of return after all fees had been subtracted, according to a TRS spokesman. “I don’t think it makes sense to assume a rate that you’re not likely to get,” McNichol said. “This means states would think they have to put aside more money than they need to in order to have enough money to fund their pension commitments.” The downside of overstating pension obligations is that states may be forced to cut spending to meet their actuarially required contributions. In a Jan. 20 report that McNichol co-authored, she said excess payments into state pension funds take away money that would otherwise “support public services, resupply reserve funds, invest in infrastructure or return to taxpayers in the form of tax cuts.” Bukola Bello, director of the Illinois Retirement Securities Initiative in Chicago, said she thinks the discount rate is a safe assumption for the Teachers' Retirement System, for example. “The retirement systems are filled with experts and chief financial officers and trustees who take their fiduciary responsibility very seriously,” Bello said. “If they are comfortable with the rate of 8.5 percent, then we really need to trust those numbers.” Novy-Marx said it is not a matter of meeting or missing return expectations, but a matter of the states being allowed to hide the actual size of their pension debt. “This accounting is essentially letting states take on a lot of off-balance sheet debt,” he said. “States want to be able to do what the federal government does, which is run big deficits and the way they’re doing that is by borrowing from their pensioners.” Illinois currently has $63.4 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, according to a Reuters report. Experts agree that it is not the rate at which public pension liabilities are calculated that has led to the Illinois’ major shortfall, but the fact that the state has underfunded its pension plans in recent years and had to borrow money meet its actuarial requirements. In fact, the state has plans to sell $3.7 billion of eight-year general obligation bonds this month to make contributions to its pension funds for the 2011 fiscal year. “I think the general assembly really needs to concentrate on No. 1, making sure we meet our pension obligations again,” Bello said. Illinois pension plans are severely underfunded and it concerns me that they decided to sell "general obligation bonds" to make contributions to pension funds for FY2011. Pension bonds are not a long-term fix for chronically underfunded state pension plans. Only meaningful pension reforms can address this issue which include changing the whole governance structure at state pension plans. Importantly, state pensions need more accountability, transparency and they need to properly compensate pension fund managers for delivering risk-adjusted returns. As for Mr. Gates and the TED conference, I look forward to hearing the discussion. I got my own ideas on how the US and other developed nations should be addressing the pension crisis, but Mr. Gates is right to be concerned about how public pension costs will impact public education. No matter what discount rate you assume, the pension tsunami is coming and it will impact the prosperity of the United States and other countries for many years.

US Naval Update: It's A Mediterranean Party And The Enterprise Is Invited - Libyan Endgame Expected Within 5-7 Days Posted: 02 Mar 2011 02:34 PM PST As we speculated last week, the LHD 3 Kearsarge deftly left the treacherous waters of the Red Sea a few days ago, and after crossing the Suez is now well on its way to the shores of Tripoli (where it is set to meet Canadian, Korean and Dutch warships). Yet to those who argue that the US military is a well-oiled machine, look no further than the schizophrenic moves the CVN 65 Enterprise has had to endure in the past two weeks: after it was just off the coast of Libya as recently as February 9, and rushing into the Red Sea in direction Straits of Hormuz two weeks ago, the storied aircraft carrier was halted dead in its tracks en route, and ordered to do a 180. It is now hot on the heels of the Kearsarge and we believe will also cross the Suez within 48 hours as it moves in to provide air support to Libya by the weekend. And with air coverage, the no fly zone will likely be instituted by Monday of next week, which, as Robert Gates telegraphed earlier, is the codeword for a "NATO" invasion. Which means this weekend will likely be do or die in terms of game theory defection choices for the Gaddafi family: will he defect peacefully and spend the rest of his days with his friend Robert Mugabe, the world's second best performing stock market after the NYSE Borse, and a few hundred pounds of gold, or will he set fire to the Libyan oil infrastructure as he leaves the scene kicking and screaming. Source: Stratfor

Yikes! NYTimes (online) columnist finds silver price rigging plausible Posted: 02 Mar 2011 02:14 PM PST Maybe the story will seep into the newspaper in another few decades. * * * A Conspiracy with a Silver Lining By William D. Cohan The New York Times (Online) Wednesday, March 2, 2011 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/a-conspiracy-with-a-silv... As Americans know all too well by this point, commodity prices -- for corn, wheat, soybeans, crude oil, gold, and even farmland -- have been going through the roof for what seems like forever. There are many causes, primarily supply and demand pressures driven by fears about the unrest in the Middle East, the rise of consumerism in China and India, and the Fed's $600 billion campaign to increase the money supply. Nonetheless, how to explain the price of silver? In the past six months, the value of the precious metal has increased nearly 80 percent, to more than $34 an ounce from around $19 an ounce. In the last month alone, its price has increased nearly 23 percent. This kind of price action in the silver market is reminiscent of the fortune-busting, roller-coaster ride enjoyed by the Hunt Brothers, Nelson Bunker and William Herbert, back in 1970s and early 1980s when they tried unsuccessfully to corner the market. When the Hunts started buying silver in 1973, the price of the metal was $1.95 an ounce. By early 1980, the brothers had driven the price up to $54 an ounce before the Federal Reserve intervened, changed the rules on speculative silver investments and the price plunged. The brothers later declared bankruptcy. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture: World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon Company Press Release, January 18, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy. PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding. Following the transaction: -- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC. -- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis. -- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp. -- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings. Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000. For the complete announcement, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php The Hunts may be gone from the market, but there are still plenty of people suspicious about the trading in silver, and now they have the Web to explore and to expand their conspiracy narratives. This time around -- according to bloggers and commenters on sites with names like Silverseek, 321Gold, and Seeking Alpha -- silver shot up in price after a whistleblower exposed an alleged conspiracy to keep the price artificially low despite the inflationary pressure of the Fed's cheap-money policy. (Some even suspect that the Fed itself was behind the effort to keep silver prices low, as a way to keep the dollar's value artificially high.) Trying to unravel the mysterious rise in silver's price is a conspiracy theorist's dream, replete with powerful bankers, informants, suspicious car accidents, and a now a squeeze on short sellers. Most intriguingly, however, much of the speculation seems highly plausible. The gist goes something like this: When JPMorgan Chase bought Bear Stearns in March 2008, it inherited Bear Stearns' large bet that the price of silver would fall. Over time, it added to that bet, and then the international bank HSBC got into the market heavily on the bear side as well. These actions "artificially depressed the price of silver dramatically downward," according to a class-action lawsuit initiated by a Florida futures trader and filed against both banks in November in federal court in the Southern District of New York. "The conspiracy and scheme was enormously successful, netting the defendants substantial illegal profits" in the billions of dollars between June 2008 and March 2010, according to the suit. The suit claims that JPMorgan and HSBC together "controlled over 85 percent the commercial net short positions" in silver futures contracts at Comex, a Chicago-based exchange on which silver is traded, along with "25 percent of all open interest short positions" and a "a market share in excess of 90 percent of all precious metals derivative contracts, excluding gold." In the United States, trading in precious metals and other commodities is regulated and closely monitored by a federal agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In September 2008, after receiving hundreds of complaints that silver future prices were being manipulated downward by JPMorgan and HSBC, the commission's enforcement division started an investigation. In November 2009, an informant, described in the lawsuit only as a former employee of Goldman Sachs and a 40-year industry veteran, approached the commission with tales of how the silver traders at JPMorgan were bragging about all the money they were making "as a result of the manipulation," which entailed "flooding the market" with "short positions" every time the price of silver started to creep upward. The idea was that by unloading its short positions like a time-released capsule, JPMorgan's traders were keeping the price of silver artificially low. Soon enough, the informant was identified as Andrew Maguire, an independent precious metals trader in London. On Jan. 26, 2010, Maguire sent Bart Chilton, a member of the futures trading commission, an e-mail urging him to look into the silver trading that day. "It was a good example of how a single seller, when they hold such a concentrated position in the very small silver market can instigate a sell off at will," Maguire wrote. On Feb. 3, 2010, Maguire gave the futures trading commission word about an impending "manipulation event" that he said would occur two days later, when the Labor Department's non-farm payroll numbers would be released. He then spelled out two trading scenarios about which he had been told. "Both scenarios will spell an attempt by the two main short holders" -- JPMorganChase and HSBC -- "to illegally drive the market down and reap very large profits," Maguire wrote in an e-mail to a trading commission investigator. On Feb. 5 Maguire took a victory lap, writing in another e-mail to the trading commission that "silver manipulation was a great success and played out EXACTLY to plan as predicted." He added, "I hope you took note of how and who added the short sales (I certainly have a copy) and I am certain you will find it is the same concentrated shorts who have been in full control since JPM took over the Bear Stearns position. ... I feel sorry for all those not in this loop. A serious amount of money was made and lost today and in my opinion as a result of the CFTC's allowing by your own definition an illegal concentrated and manipulative position to continue." In March 2010, Maguire released his e-mails publicly, in part because he felt the trading commission's enforcement arm was not taking swift enough action. He was also unhappy over not being invited to a commission hearing on position limits scheduled for March 25. Then came the cloak and dagger element: The day after the hearing, Maguire was involved in a bizarre car accident in London. As he was at a gas station, a car came out of a side street and barreled into his car and two others; London police, using helicopters and chase cars, eventually nabbed the hit-and-run driver. Reports that the perpetrator was given a slap on the wrist inflamed the online crowds that had become captivated by Maguire's odd story. In any case, the class-action lawsuit contends that between March 2010 and November 2010, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC reduced their short positions in the silver market by 30 percent, causing the metal's price to rise dramatically but leaving them still with a large short position. Now, with the value of silver rising nearly every day, the two banks are caught in a "massive short squeeze," according to one market participant, that appears to be costing them the billions they made originally plus billions more. Whether these huge losses will show up on the books of JPMorgan Chase and HSBC remains to be seen. (Parsing through the publicly filed footnotes of derivative trades is no easy task.) Nonetheless, the conspiracy-minded have claimed that the Fed must have somehow agreed to make JPMorgan and HSBC whole for any losses the banks suffered if and when the price of silver rose above the artificially maintained low levels -- as in right now, for instance. (About all this, a JPMorganChase spokesman declined to comment.) Some 2 1/2 years later, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's investigation is still unresolved, and at least one commissioner -- Bart Chilton -- thinks that after interviewing more than 32 people and reviewing more than 40,000 documents, there has been enough investigating and not enough prosecuting. "More than two years ago, the agency began an investigation into silver markets," Chilton said at a commission hearing last October. "I have been urging the agency to say something on the matter for months. ... I believe violations to the Commodity Exchange Act have taken place in silver markets and that any such violation of the law in this regard should be prosecuted." What's more, Chilton said in an interview last week, that "one participant" in the silver market still controlled 35 percent of the silver market as recently as a few months ago, "enough to move prices," he said, and well above the 10 percent "position limits" the commission has proposed to comply with Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Since that law's passage last summer, the commodities exchanges have issued waivers permitting the ownership of silver positions above the limits the CFTC has proposed, and which were supposed to be in place by January of this year. Yet the waivers remain in place, and the big traders have not been penalized, much to Chilton's frustration. And the mystery deepens: Last Thursday the price of silver fell $1.50 per ounce in less than an hour before recovering. "This was robbery at its most obvious and most vindictive," wrote Richard Guthrie, a London-based trader, in an e-mail to Chilton. "How many investors lost money and positions to the financial benefit of an elite few?" It's getting harder and harder to continue to brush off Andrew Maguire's claims as the rantings of a rogue trader with a nutty online following. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission should immediately release the files from its investigation into the supposed manipulation of the silver market so the public can determine whether JPMorganChase and HSBC did anything illegal, with or without the help of the Fed. In addition, the commission should start enforcing the 10 percent threshold on silver positions it has proposed to comply with Dodd-Frank law. Basically, the other commissioners must join with Bart Chilton to do the job they are required to do: Protecting the sanctity of the markets and preventing the sorts of manipulation we've seen all too often. ----- William D. Cohan, a former investigative reporter in Raleigh, N.C., writes on alternate Fridays about Wall Street and Main Street. He worked on Wall Street as a senior mergers and acquisitions banker for 15 years. He also worked for two years at GE Capital. He is the author of "House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street" and "The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co." and is working on a book about Goldman Sachs. In addition to The New York Times, he writes regularly for Vanity Fair, Fortune, the Financial Times, ArtNews, and The Daily Beast. * * * Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon: http://www.goldrush21.com/ Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property Company Press Release, October 27, 2010 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include: -- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres. -- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres. -- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre. Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface. "The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest." For the company's full press release, please visit: http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf

The Gold Price Completed a Move Up $6.50 Today to $1,437.20, May Back Off Tomorrow Posted: 02 Mar 2011 02:00 PM PST Gold Price Close Today : 1437.20 Change : 6.50 or 0.5% Silver Price Close Today : 34.825 Change : 0.409 cents or 1.2% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 41.27 Change : -0.302 or -0.7% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.02423 Change : 0.000176 or 0.7% Platinum Price Close Today : 1850.00 Change : 9.80 or 0.5% Palladium Price Close Today : 818.25 Change : 2.00 or 0.2% S&P 500 : 11,308.44 Change : 2.11 or 0.0% Dow In GOLD$ : $173.56 Change : $ (0.64) or -0.4% Dow in GOLD oz : 8.396 Change : -0.031 or -0.4% Dow in SILVER oz : 346.50 Change : 0.21 or 0.1% Dow Industrial : 12,066.80 Change : 8.78 or 0.1% US Dollar Index : 76.73 Change : 0.057 or 0.1% The GOLD PRICE rose $6.50 today to $1,437.20 while silver rose 40.9c to 3482.5c. Stay out of their way. Gold seems to have completed a move up today, so may back off a bit tomorrow. As long as it doesn't fall through $1,422 'twill be all right. Today's high was $1,440.10, low was $1,427.55. Gold will move higher. Sounds crazy at these heights, but I would buy it here. The SILVER PRICE bounced more than gold today, but that's what it is supposed to do. Here, too, you might see it back off a bit, but silver is itching to eat up another dollar. High today was 3496c. And silver hit another milestone today: a bag of US 90% silver coin now costs more than $25,000. When this bull market started, bags cost about about $2,850. The GOLD/SILVER RATIO fell today, from 41.57 yesterday to 41.27 today. You still have time to swap silver for gold. When the eventual reaction carries the ratio back to 57.5 and you swap that gold swapped now for silver then, you'll understand why we do this. Just count the ounces. The GOLD PRICE and the SILVER PRICE kept right on plugging away, yet again today. Stocks burned up fuel to no purpose. Dollar staggered and stumbled again. The dollar can't make any headway. Made another new low for the move today. Low came at 76.55, and the chart shows a down move in deadly earnest. Any move below 76.00 sends the dollar tumbling again. Dollar lost 29.2 basis points today and is now trading about 76.728. It appears the dollar has smashed the last low at 76.88, and set itself up for a fall to 75.60, November's low. And lower. Euro inched to a new high or the move, or maybe I should say millimetered. Last intraday high was 1.3841, close today was 1.3862. But the euro stands above its 200, 50, and 20 day moving averages, so is in rally mode. Stock chart today looks like the EKG of somebody with hiccups. Up down, up down, up down, and for burning all that buying power, what did they gain? Dow rose a microscopic 8.78 points to 12,066.80 and S&P500 rose an infinitesimal 2.11 points to 1,308.44. Stocks have definitively broken down. Oh, the consummation hasn't come yet, but it will as soon as they drop through 12,000. Get the tourniquets ready. Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com Phone: (888) 218-9226 or (931) 766-6066 © 2011, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission. To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold; US$ or US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate in a bubble, primary trend way down. Whenever I write "Stay out of stocks" readers inevitably ask, "Do you mean precious metals mining stocks, too?" No, I don't.

U.S. Mint reduces delivery of silver eagles Posted: 02 Mar 2011 01:17 PM PST 9:12p ET Wednesday, March 2, 2011 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver): King World News interviewed Bill Haynes of CMI Gold and Silver today and reports that the U.S. Mint has reduced its delivery schedule of silver eagle coins, sending coin premiums up. No explanation was given but surely the daily commentator over at Kitco will explain tomorrow why it indicates an imminent collapse in the silver price. He's bound to get it right any year now. You can find excerpts from the interview with Haynes at the King World News blog here: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/3/2_US_... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture: World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon Company Press Release, January 18, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy. PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding. Following the transaction: -- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC. -- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis. -- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp. -- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings. Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000. For the complete announcement, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon: http://www.goldrush21.com/ Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property Company Press Release, October 27, 2010 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include: -- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres. -- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres. -- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre. Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface. "The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest." For the company's full press release, please visit: http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf

Things Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:50 PM PST The following is automatically syndicated from Grandich's blog. You can view the original post here. Stay up to date on his model portfolio! March 02, 2011 05:42 PM [LIST] [*]Grandich client Timmins Gold reports excellent results. IMHO the potential takeover has kept TMM’s share price in check. Corporate results have been simply very good for months now. One day the takeover drama will end and in my biased opinion, the stock should be revalued higher no matter if the takeover is successful or not. Right now only a serious decline in gold appears to be the main risk. [*]Grandich Client Rodinia Lithium also had great results but market did a yawn. I think this is due in part to the cloud Canadian Lithium has cast over itself. It’s impacting other Lithium plays. However in the long run it just may help others like RM and LI who appear to have their act totally together. [*]Interesting gold video. Lets not forget what normally happens to gold and silver around monthly employm...

In The News Today Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:40 PM PST View the original post at jsmineset.com... March 02, 2011 03:57 PM Thoughts For The Day Cycles are analyzed by comparing their message to what the market is doing. Cycles are not commands from on high dictating to the markets what they must do. The answer is what is happening now in the market versus what the cycles call for. The cycle calling for gold to decline into June of 2011 was cancelled by the market’s action of blowing through $1372 and never looking back. The importance of this analytical approach is that it says without any doubt that the gold price is stronger than any accepted commentator believes. The normal suspects will throw their blocks, but I assure you at only a waste of good money.  The price we have spoken about for a long period $1650 will be low. I know you wonder what is going on in Jim’s world from time to time. One thing for sure is that it is never boring. I am the host in my playpen to two Titans punching it out without any refer...

Jim?s Mailbox Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:40 PM PST View the original post at jsmineset.com... March 02, 2011 03:53 PM Sprott, CEO of Sprott Asset Management CIGA Eric BNN talks to one of the world’s leading investor’s and investment strategists Eric Sprott, CEO of Sprott Asset Management and finds out just how precious the metals are. Video: watch.bnn.ca : The Street : March 1, 2011 : Silver is Money The 2003-2011 linear trading channel has been broken to the upside. This increases the probability of a higher-order (parabolic) advance into resistance. Silver, London P.M. Fixed More…   Boise County files for bankruptcy CIGA Eric And, so it begins, driven not by politics (leadership) but rather market forces. In a move rare in the United States and perhaps unprecedented in Idaho, Boise County is filing for federal protection against a multimillion dollar judgment. "This was not our first option. This was our last option," said Jamie Anderson, chairwoman of the three-member Boise...

Fear, Inflation and Debt Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:40 PM PST View the original post at jsmineset.com... March 02, 2011 10:12 AM By Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog.com Dear CIGAs, Yesterday, gold hit fresh all-time highs at $1,432.10 an ounce. Silver hit a 31 year high, closing at more than $34.50 per ounce. Oil nearly touched $100 per barrel, which is the highest it has been since September 2008.   What's going on?  Part of the price spikes are, no doubt, due to riots and rebellions in the Middle East, but it is also the world's awakening realization America's crushing debt will never be repaid in real money.  The U.S. needs to slash its budgets, but finding politicians on Capitol Hill with the nerve to make deep cuts is elusive, to say the least.  Yesterday, the Associated Press reported, "The Republican-controlled House is on course to pass legislation cutting federal spending by $4 billion and averting a government shutdown for two weeks. And Senate Democrats say they will go along. . . . Republicans want to slash more...

Taps for the Dollar Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:40 PM PST By: Michael Pento Wednesday, March 2, 2011 It now appears that the United States has finally succeeded in its efforts to destroy confidence in the U.S. dollar. Given the currency's reserve status, its ubiquity in financial markets, and the economic power and political position of the United States, this was no easy task. However, to get the job done Washington chose the right man: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Thanks to Bernanke's herculean efforts, investors across the globe have now been fully weaned from their infantile belief that the U.S. dollar will remain the ultimate safe haven currency. The proof of Ben's success can be seen in comparing how the foreign exchange markets reacted to the recent crisis in the Middle East with how they reacted to the financial crisis of 2008. Back then, investors looking for safety abandoned their foreign currency positions and pil...

Gene Arensberg: Fiat money confidence meters Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:28 PM PST 8:21p ET Wednesday, March 2, 2011 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Gene Arensberg of the Got Gold Report tonight talks back to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's assertion to a Senate committee yesterday that there's not enough gold to make the U.S. dollar convertible to metal again. The problem, Arensberg writes, is not a shortage of gold but rather a surplus of dollars. Of course, as so many others have noted, there will always be plenty of gold to make the dollar convertible again if the price of gold is high enough and not always suppressed by an ever-growing supply of gold derivatives without any real metal backing them. Arensberg's commentary is headlined "Fiat Money Confidence Meters" and you can find it at the Got Gold Report Internet site here: http://www.gotgoldreport.com/2011/03/fiat-money-confidence-meters.html CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture: World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon Company Press Release, January 18, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy. PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding. Following the transaction: -- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC. -- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis. -- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp. -- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings. Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000. For the complete announcement, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon: http://www.goldrush21.com/ Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property Company Press Release, October 27, 2010 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include: -- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres. -- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres. -- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre. Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface. "The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest." For the company's full press release, please visit: http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf

China "Attacks The Dollar" - Moves To Further Cement Renminbi Reserve Currency Status Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:24 PM PST In a surprising turn of events, today's biggest piece of news received a mere two paragraph blurb on Reuters, and was thoroughly ignored by the broader media. An announcement appeared shortly after midnight on the website of the People's Bank of China. The statement, google translated as "Pragmatic and pioneering spirit to promote cross-border renminbi business cum on monitoring and analysis to a new level" is presented below: Reuters provides a simple translation and summary of the announcement: "China hopes to allow all exporters and importers to settle their cross-border trades in the yuan by this year, the central bank said on Wednesday, as part of plans to grow the currency's international role. In a statement on its website www.pbc.gov.cn, the central bank said it would respond to overseas demand for the yuan to be used as a reserve currency. It added it would also allow the yuan to flow back into China more easily." To all those who claim that China is perfectly happy with the status quo, in which it is willing to peg the Renmibni to the Dollar in perpetuity, this may come as a rather unpleasant surprise, as it indicates that suddenly China is far more vocal about its intention to convert its currency to reserve status, and in the process make the dollar even more insignificant. International Business Times provides further insight: This is all part of China’s plan for the internationalization of its currency, which may, in the decades to come, threaten the global ‘market share’ of other currencies like the US dollar. Previously, China also announced that bilateral trades with Russia and Malaysia will begin to be conducted with the yuan and the ruble and ringgit, respectively. Other moves on the part of China to internationalize its currency include allowing foreign companies to issue yuan-denominated bonds and relaxing rules for foreign financial institutions to access the yuan. Aside from the efforts of the Chinese government, fundamentals also point to the increasing international popularity of the Chinese currency. China is already the leading trade partner with Australia and Japan. It’s also the leading or a large trade partner with many of its smaller neighbors. The purpose of having foreign currencies is to conduct foreign trade and investment, so the yuan is expected to become a more attractive currency for China’s trade partners, espeically as the government continues to relax restrictions. The reason for this dramatic move may be found in what Stephen Roach wrote a few days ago in Project Syndicate: In early March, China’s National People’s Congress will approve its 12th Five-Year Plan. This Plan is likely to go down in history as one of China’s boldest strategic initiatives. In essence, it will change the character of China’s economic model – moving from the export- and investment-led structure of the past 30 years toward a pattern of growth that is driven increasingly by Chinese consumers. This shift will have profound implications for China, the rest of Asia, and the broader global economy. Like the Fifth Five-Year Plan, which set the stage for the “reforms and opening up” of the late 1970’s, and the Ninth Five-Year Plan, which triggered the marketization of state-owned enterprises in the mid-1990’s, the upcoming Plan will force China to rethink the core value propositions of its economy. Premier Wen Jiabao laid the groundwork four years ago, when he first articulated the paradox of the “Four ‘Uns’” – an economy whose strength on the surface masked a structure that was increasingly “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and ultimately unsustainable.” The Great Recession of 2008-2009 suggests that China can no longer afford to treat the Four Uns as theoretical conjecture. The post-crisis era is likely to be characterized by lasting aftershocks in the developed world – undermining the external demand upon which China has long relied. That leaves China’s government with little choice other than to turn to internal demand and tackle the Four Uns head on. The 12th Five-Year Plan will do precisely that, focusing on major pro-consumption initiatives. China will begin to wean itself from the manufacturing model that has underpinned export- and investment-led growth. While the manufacturing approach served China well for 30 years, its dependence on capital-intensive, labor-saving productivity enhancement makes it incapable of absorbing the country’s massive labor surplus. Instead, under the new Plan, China will adopt a more labor-intensive services model. It will, one hopes, provide a detailed blueprint for the development of large-scale transactions-intensive industries such as wholesale and retail trade, domestic transport and supply-chain logistics, health care, and leisure and hospitality. Obviously, a reserve currency would be not only extremely useful, but quite critical in achieving the goal of China's conversion to an inwardly focused, middle-class reliant society. And even that would not guarantee a smooth transition. However, should China really be on a path to a step function in its evolution, the shocks to the system will be massive. Roach puts this diplomatically as follows: But there is a catch: in shifting to a more consumption-led dynamic, China will reduce its surplus saving and have less left over to fund the ongoing saving deficits of countries like the US. The possibility of such an asymmetrical global rebalancing – with China taking the lead and the developed world dragging its feet – could be the key unintended consequence of China’s 12th Five-Year Plan. A less diplomatic version implies that the relationship between China and the US would suffer a seismic shift in which the game theoretical model of Mutual Assured Destruction, and symbiotic monetary and fiscal policies, would no longer exist, allowing China to pursue its fate completely independent of any economic shocks that the increasingly distressed United States may be going through. And confirming that the PBoC announcement is far more serious than the amount of airtime allotted to it by the mainstream media, is the just released article in Spiegel "China Attacked the Dollar" (google translated): The Chinese central bank surprised with a spectacular announcement: The would-be superpower wants to handle their entire future foreign trade in yuan, not in dollars. Beijing shakes America's claim to represent the key currency - with serious consequences for the U.S.. The announcement was inconspicuous , but it has the potential, to permanently change the balance of power on the world currency market: China strengthens the international role of the yuan. All exporters and importers will, this year, be allowed to settle their business with their foreign partners in Yuan, the central bank said on Wednesday in Beijing. This will respond to the growing importance of the yuan as a global reserve currency. "The market demand for cross-border use of the yuan rises," said the central bank. The PBoC had previously tested this plan by allowing 67 000 enterprises in 20 provinces to run their business abroad in yuan. The trade volume amounted to the equivalent of €56 billion. Now the amount of yuan to be extended, it should be handled much more business in Chinese currency - and less in the U.S. Chinese companies trade at present often in dollars, they are thus dependent on the decisions of the U.S. Federal Reserve to pay on it in a rising oil price and will have pay higher transaction fees than necessary. That should change now. Currently, the People's Republic can hardly take yuan out of the country and even that is monitored within the boundary of all legitimate capital flows. Chinese exporters have to change a large part of their euro, yen or dollars at a fixed rate revenue in yuan. Foreign companies wishing to do business in China must do so in Yuan, they can exchange their money in the People's Republic. Tourists are allowed a maximum of 20,000 yuan and exporting. Yuan an international market can not occur - and not on supply and demand-based exchange rate. Needless to say, should the yuan be seen increasingly as a reserve currency, all of this, and virtually everything else is about to change. The only question is whether or not the Yuan will cement its status at the top of the currency pyramid by allowing the backing of the currency with individual or a basket of commodities. If that were to happen, it would be the last nail in the coffin of the already terminally ill dollar.

Zero Hedge: A deep walkthru for silver manipulation, redux Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:17 PM PST 8:12p ET Wednesday, March 2, 2011 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Zero Hedge's Tyler Durden tonight reprises a long memorandum written a year ago by a silver trader outlining the manipulative and dishonest tactics used to fleece and skin silver investors. The memo is more or less in shorthand and not always grammatical but makes its points clearly enough -- particularly that the manipulation has been facilitated largely by the failure of investors to take delivery of their metal. The post at Zero Hedge is headlined "A Deep Walkthru For Silver Manipulation -- Redux" and you can find it here: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/deep-walkthru-silver-manipulation-redux CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture: World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon Company Press Release, January 18, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy. PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding. Following the transaction: -- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC. -- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis. -- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp. -- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings. Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000. For the complete announcement, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon: http://www.goldrush21.com/ Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property Company Press Release, October 27, 2010 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include: -- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres. -- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres. -- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre. Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface. "The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest." For the company's full press release, please visit: http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf

Utah gold and silver money legislation advanced by committee Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:10 PM PST By Ladd Brubaker The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake City, Utah Wednesday, March 2, 2011 http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51349269-76/bill-tax-currency-alternat... A bill that recognizes U.S. gold and silver coins as legal tender and exempts their sale from the state capital gains tax passed the Utah House Government Operations Committee Wednesday. Supporters say HB317, introduced by Rep. Brad Galvez, R-West Haven, is a first step to creating an "inflation-proof" alternative to the "paper dollar." Larry Hilton, a local attorney and supporter of the "sound money movement," said that "unbacked money" created by the Federal Reserve to stimulate the economy is "hanging over us like the sword of Damocles waiting to just come down in an avalanche and destroy the value of our currency." ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture: World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon Company Press Release, January 18, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy. PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding. Following the transaction: -- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC. -- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis. -- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp. -- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings. Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000. For the complete announcement, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php While the bill says the use of gold and silver coin as currency would be voluntary, it requires the Legislature to study the "possibility of establishing an alternative form of legal tender" and to come up with further recommendations for the 2012 session. Jeffrey Bell, the policy director for the Washington, D.C.-based American Principles Project, told legislators the bill would be seen as a "symbolic act." But it sends a signal, he said, to Washington "political elites who want to leave the value and staying power of our currency uncertain, indefinite, so that they can at will intervene to do what they think would ameliorate the situation" facing the U.S. economy. "The last time we had the system that we are recommending -- the international gold standard -- it set a record for least inflation," Bell added. The bill passed 7-1 and will go on to the full House for debate. The lone dissenter, Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, D-Salt Lake City, said her only reservation was the bill's potential effect on tax revenues. "I hesitate to implement some of the tax code changes in advance of a study," she said. The bill's fiscal note predicts a loss in tax revenue of over $260,000 in 2012 and over $600,000 in 2013. But Galvez said that is based on an assumption that the sale of such coins currently accounts for 0.5 percent of capital gains tax revenue. * * * Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon: http://www.goldrush21.com/ Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property Company Press Release, October 27, 2010 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include: -- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres. -- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres. -- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre. Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface. "The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest." For the company's full press release, please visit: http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf

Despite rising gold price, Barrick won't hedge anymore, CEO says Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:01 PM PST 8p ET Wednesday, March 2, 2011 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Interviewed today by Bloomberg Television's Adam Johnson at the BMO Capital Markets Global Metals and Mining Conference in Hollywood, Florida, Barrick Gold CEO Aaron Regent insisted that the company, once infamous for hedging its gold production to help central banks control the gold market, won't hedge anymore despite gold's rising price. The interview is six minutes long and you can find it at Bloomberg's Internet site here: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/67147748/ CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture: World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon Company Press Release, January 18, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy. PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding. Following the transaction: -- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC. -- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis. -- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp. -- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings. Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000. For the complete announcement, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon: http://www.goldrush21.com/ Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property Company Press Release, October 27, 2010 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include: -- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres. -- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres. -- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre. Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface. "The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest." For the company's full press release, please visit: http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf

Paul jousts with Bernanke but presses no gold questions Posted: 02 Mar 2011 11:12 AM PST House Republicans Rip into Fed Chief Bernanke By Greg Robb MarketWatch.com Wednesday, March 2, 2011 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/paul-other-republicans-rip-into-bernank... WASHINGTON -- House Republicans turned up the heat Wednesday on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as he appeared before Congress for a second time this week to testify on the U.S. economic outlook. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, called inflation a "deadly threat" to the economy and said it's being caused by current monetary policy. Paul, long a fierce critic of the U.S. central bank, disagreed with Bernanke's assertion in his appearance before the Senate on Tuesday that the recent spike in oil prices would lead only to a "temporary and relatively modest" increase in consumer price inflation. "I would suggest that we still have a lot of inflation in the system and it is going to get much worse," Paul said. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture: World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon Company Press Release, January 18, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy. PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding. Following the transaction: -- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC. -- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis. -- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp. -- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings. Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000. For the complete announcement, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php Paul said that economists he follows argue that consumer prices are rising at a 9% clip and that the money supply is rising at a 24% pace. "Inflation is exploding and interest rates are going to go up and we are going to have one heck of a problem in the future," Paul said. Pressed by Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J., about how long inflation would have to rise before the Fed would respond, Bernanke said it depended on whether inflation expectations were anchored and what was going on with the broader basket of prices. "Oil prices alone, with nothing else moving, would probably not be enough to make us respond," Bernanke said. The central banker seemed unnerved by the strong criticism but stuck to his defense of the Fed's innovative bond-buying program. Known as quantitative easing or "QE2," the policy has entailed the Fed buying up U.S. bonds, including cash reinvested from maturing mortgage-related holdings, in a bid to curb upward pressures on interest rates and thus foster the economic recovery. Through Tuesday, the Fed had bought back about $458 billion under the $600 billion program, according to the latest tally compiled by Morgan Stanley. Bernanke insisted that supply and demand factors, and not Fed policy, were behind the run in commodity prices. He specifically said the weaker dollar wasn't behind the surge in commodity prices, since prices have climbed significantly in terms of all major currencies. "The fears of some foreign governments that we were manipulating the currency ... have not come true; the dollar has not moved very much at all. And commodity prices have risen just about as much in other currencies as they have in terms of the dollar so I don't think they are primarily a dollar phenomenon," he said. In a sign of the unusual clout of the class of House Republicans elected last November, Rep. Spencer Bachus, chairman of the House Financial Services panel, let five freshman members of the committee give opening statements. In typical hearings with Bernanke, freshmen might not even get to ask a question. In general, the freshman members used their time during the hearing to urge the government to slash spending to achieve faster growth. Rep. Michael Grimm, a freshman Republican from New York's Staten Island, said he was concerned about what has happened since the start of QE2 early last November. During that interim, oil prices have risen from $84 to $100 a barrel, Grimm pointed out. "There are more people who believe that there are aliens in Roswell than believe inflation is 1.6%," said Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M. His district includes the town of Roswell, where a spaceship is rumored to have crashed in 1947. Last month, the government reported retail-level inflation running at a 1.6% clip for the 12 months through January. Also Wednesday, Bernanke continued to urge Congress to come up with a "longer-term plan" to bring down the deficit. In testimony before a Senate committee Tuesday, Bernanke said that whether or not interest rates will spike depends "far more on Congress' decisions about long-term fiscal planning than anything the Fed is going to do." * * * Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon: http://www.goldrush21.com/ Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property Company Press Release, October 27, 2010 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include: -- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres. -- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres. -- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre. Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface. "The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest." For the company's full press release, please visit: http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf

Chen Lin: Seeking Value in Junior Miners Posted: 02 Mar 2011 10:55 AM PST Source: George Mack of The Gold Report 03/02/2011 Independent investor Chen Lin takes advantage of high metals prices by investing in companies with the financial strength to stay the course until the resource is in production or can be expanded, making the company an attractive takeover target. For metal miners, the sustainability factor is critical because it can take years to get a mine to cash flow-positive status. Chen shares several of the companies he owns that he believes will return significant capital appreciation in this exclusive interview with The Gold Report. The Gold Report: How important is technical analysis for you? Is it more useful as an entrance or exit point for a stock? Or, do you use technical indicators as a longer-term approach? Chen Lin: That's a very good question. I know technical analysis pretty well, and I watch a lot of indicators. Technical analysis probably helps most when entering or exiting a stock. You can also see some pretty g...

Jim's Mailbox Posted: 02 Mar 2011 10:53 AM PST Sprott, CEO of Sprott Asset Management CIGA Eric BNN talks to one of the world's leading investor's and investment strategists Eric Sprott, CEO of Sprott Asset Management and finds out just how precious the metals are. Video: watch.bnn.ca : The Street : March 1, 2011 : Silver is Money The 2003-2011 linear trading channel has been broken to the upside. This increases the probability of a higher-order (parabolic) advance into resistance. Silver, London P.M. Fixed More…   Boise County files for bankruptcy CIGA Eric And, so it begins, driven not by politics (leadership) but rather market forces. In a move rare in the United States and perhaps unprecedented in Idaho, Boise County is filing for federal protection against a multimillion dollar judgment. "This was not our first option. This was our last option," said Jamie Anderson, chairwoman of the three-member Boise County Board of Commissioners. "This protects us so we can continue to operate." Chapter 9 protection, from a section of federal code expressly for financially distressed municipalities, means that creditors can't collect while the county is developing a plan for reorganizing its debts. Dan Chadwick, an attorney and executive director of the Idaho Association of Counties, said he is not aware of any other county, city or taxing district in Idaho ever filing for bankruptcy. He's been with the association for 20 years and before that was at the Attorney General's Office for 10 years, he said. Source: idahostatesman.com From Bob More…

Who’s Really Affected By Rising Food Prices Posted: 02 Mar 2011 10:42 AM PST It is certainly old news around here that terrifying inflation in prices, thanks to the monstrous inflation in the money supply caused by the Federal Reserve creating So Freaking Much Money (SFMM) for the last few decades, has caused me to venture to that dangerous precipice between being merely weird and obnoxious, to being a raving lunatic screaming from the rooftop "We're freaking doomed!" Of course, I also thunder, "Buy gold and silver! Buy gold and silver! Buy gold and silver!" until my voice is raspy and my throat is sore, only to have my words of wisdom and financial salvation drowned out by the roar of the assembled crowd chanting, "Jump! Jump! Jump!" and I'm trying to yell loud enough to tell them that they have it all wrong, and that "I have no intention of jumping to my death, you morons! But if you don't buy gold and silver against the horrific inflation in prices unleashed by the Federal Reserve creating so much money, then you are, ironically, jumping to YOUR financial d...

Crisis? What Crisis? Posted: 02 Mar 2011 10:42 AM PST The 5 min. Forecast March 02, 2011 01:54 PM by Addison Wiggin & Dave Gonigam - March 2, 2011 [LIST] [*] You call this a crisis? How the Libya uprising stacks up against other oil shocks [*] What the oil spike last week might mean for stocks between now and September [*] Gold reaches a record, thanks in part to Chinese demand [*] Looking past the iPad hype… Patrick Cox on the stunning impact of Android [*] “Maybe you’ll see what guns are really good for”… Wisconsin debate gets heated [/LIST] Loyalists and rebels in Libya are fighting it out over the town of Brega. That’s one of five export terminals in the east of the country. Two U.S. warships loom over the horizon in the Mediterranean. The flow of Libyan oil to the world market -- already a trickle -- may soon shut down completely. West Texas Intermediate, the oil price most often cited by the media, cracked $100 yesterday, and as we write, it’s nearly $101. Brent crude,...

Hecla Mining: Solid 2010 But Settlement Risk Remains Posted: 02 Mar 2011 10:38 AM PST David Urban submits: Hecla Mining (HL) started in the famous Coeur D'Alene district of Idaho in 1891 and has grown to be the largest silver producer in the U.S. with 10 million ounces of silver mined annually. During 2010, reserves grew to the highest level in the company's history with 142 million ounces of Proven and Probable Reserves (P&P) and 248 million ounces of Measured, Indicated and Inferred (MII). Also, 2010 revenues rose to $418.8 million while EPS was down for the year primarily on a provision for environmental matters which will be discussed below. The balance sheet is strong with over $284 million in cash and no debt. Silver production during 2010 totaled 10.6 million ounces at a negative total cash cost of $1.46 per ounce due to strong byproduct prices. Silver production at the Lucky Friday camp totaled 3.36 million ounces for 2010, a slight decrease over the 3.5 million ounces Complete Story »

Is Your Gold Safe? Posted: 02 Mar 2011 10:15 AM PST Gold kept at home – just how safe is it...? read more

"Safe Haven" Dollar Not Finished Yet Posted: 02 Mar 2011 10:12 AM PST The US Dollar remains the Big Money's "safe haven" choice...for now... read more

"Safe Haven" Dollar Not Finished Yet Posted: 02 Mar 2011 10:12 AM PST The US Dollar remains the Big Money's "safe haven" choice...for now... read more

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