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Dutch government comes half clean on gold reserves
7:18p BST Saturday, October 8, 2011
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
The Dutch blog Vrijspreker today reports that the Netherlands secretary of the treasury has answered half-candidly the questions put to him by the Dutch Socialist Party about the disposition of the Dutch National Bank's gold reserves. According to Vrijspreker:
-- The Dutch National Bank has not loaned gold since 2008 but has sold 1,100 of its 1,700 tonnes of gold since 1991.
-- The Dutch gold reserves are vaulted in New York, Ottawa, London, and Amsterdam, but the bank would not specify how much was at each place. So it may be fairly assumed that the Dutch gold vaulted in London and New York, what the Bundesbank famously calls "gold trading centers," has been made available for surreptitious gold market intervention to suppress the monetary metal's price.
-- The Dutch National Bank or at least the Dutch treasury secretary acknowledge that gold is not just money but the best sort of money: "The DNB's physical gold holdings function as the ultimate reserve and anchor of trust in times of financial crisis."
... Dispatch continues below
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 bank or the treasury secretary answer ambiguously as to why the bank records "gold and gold receivables" in the same entry on its books, as if loaned gold is still in the vault: "DNB follows the rules for valuation, determination of result, and balance sheet presentation of the European System of Central Banks. The asset 'Gold and Gold Receivables' reflects the physical gold inventory."
-- The treasury secretary says "a wide group of countries" has "sold gold in the past decade, including France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland." While the U.K. and Swiss sales are acknowledged and well known, the French and Spanish sales are not.
The treasury secretary's answers are recorded along with some commentary at Vrijspreker here:
http://www.vrijspreker.nl/wp/2011/10/dutch-secretary-of-the-treasure-ans...
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
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Prophecy Platinum Drills 120.9 Meters
Grading 1.26 g/t PGM+Au at Yukon Wellgreen Project
Company Press Release
Monday, September 26, 2011
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada -- Prophecy Platinum Corp. (TSX-V: NKL, OTC-QX: PNIKF, Frankfurt: P94P) has announced the drill results received from its 2011 drilling Wellgreen platinum group elements, nickel, and copper project in the Yukon Territory.
Borehole WS11-188 encountered 457 meters of mineralization grading 0.47% nickel equivalent (including 0.72 grams per ton platinum, paladium, and gold) from surface to the footwall contact. Within this larger swath of mineralization, the hole encountered a high-grade section of 17.8 meters of 3.14 grams per ton platinum, palladium, and gold, 1.03% nickel, and 0.74% copper (1.77% nickel equivalent).
The hole was drilled completely outside of current resource boundaries, between the East Zone resource and the West Zone resource that was reported in the company's press release no July 14, 2011.
The high-grade intercept located between the two resources not only demonstrates that the East and West Zone resource form a single, geologically contiguous body but also indicates that the higher-grade material in the East Zone continues to the west and at depth at Wellgreen.
For drill result tables and maps, please see the company's full press release here:
http://www.prophecyplat.com/news_2011_sep26_prophecy_platinum_wellgreen_...
