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13 years after leaving Treasury, Rubin says he has too many dollars
Well, that's the wages of sin for you. He could always make a donation to GATA.
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Rubin Says He Has Too Many Dollars
13 Years After Departing U.S. Treasury
By Nina Mehta
Bloomberg News
Friday, March 9, 2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-09/rubin-has-too-many-dollars-13-y...
NEW YORK -- Robert Rubin, who as U.S. Treasury secretary in the 1990s promoted a stronger dollar, said he has too much of his personal investments in the currency.
A "disproportionate amount" of his assets is in cash and he "should be more allocated away from the dollar," Rubin, 73, said yesterday in a speech at the TradeTech conference in New York. He said he also was "greatly overweighted" in private equity and had investments in hedge funds.
Rubin, who served in President Bill Clinton's administration between holding senior jobs at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc., had a so-called strong-dollar policy as Treasury secretary that successors followed. He said yesterday that his support for Federal Reserve quantitative easing has waned since the initial round, known as QE1.
... Dispatch continues below ...
Sona Discovers Potential High-Grade Gold Mineralization
at Blackdome in British Columbia -- 13.6g over 1.5 Meters
From a Company Press Release
November 22, 2011
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- With its latest surface diamond drilling program at its 100-percent-owned, formerly producing Blackdome gold mine in southern British Columbia, Sona Resources Corp. has discovered a potentially high-grade gold-mineralized area, with one hole intersecting 13.6 grams of gold in 1.5 meters of core drilling.
"We intersected a promising new mineralized zone, and we feel optimistic about the assay results," says Sona's president and CEO, John P. Thompson. "We have undertaken an aggressive exploration program that has tested a number of target zones. Our discovery of this new gold-bearing structure is significant, and it represents a positive development for the company."
Sona aims to bring its permitted Blackdome mill back into production over the next year and a half, at a rate of 200 tonnes per day, with feed from the formerly producing Blackdome mine and the nearby Elizabeth gold deposit property. A positive preliminary economic assessment by Micon International Ltd., based on a gold price of $950 per ounce over eight years, has estimated a cash cost of $208 per tonne milled, or $686 per gold ounce recovered.
For the company's complete press release, please visit:
http://www.sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR18_2011-opt.pdf
"QE1 was a necessity, QE2 I sort of wondered about," he said. "QE3 would accomplish very little. Not only would it expand the money supply, it would undermine confidence that the Fed would ultimately monetize our debt."
The U.S. economic outlook is the "most uncertain and the most complex" it has been in the past half-century, Rubin said. He cited concerns about the European sovereign-debt crisis, the labor and housing markets, and stagnant mean wages. A lack of change in U.S. income distribution "could undermine public support for trade and market-based economics," he said.
Rubin, who left the Treasury in 1999, collected more than $150 million in pay from Citigroup in the decade that followed. He took a part-time counselor role at merger-advisory boutique Centerview Partners LLP in 2010 and stopped advising hedge funds Taconic Capital Advisors LP and Farallon Capital Management LLC, Adam Miller, his spokesman, said at the time.
The role of Treasury secretary requires a knowledge of markets and politics that's hard to prepare for and he "probably would have failed" if he'd gone into the job straight from Goldman Sachs instead of serving first as director of the National Economic Council, Rubin said. Whoever is elected president in November may be tempted to pick a corporate chief executive officer for the role even though CEOs of corporations are accustomed to a hierarchical environment, he said.
Timothy F. Geithner, the current Treasury secretary, has said he doesn't expect to remain in office if President Barack Obama is re-elected. Geithner and his predecessors have stuck with Rubin's phrase that a "strong" dollar is in the nation's interest. The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the currency against those of six trading partners, retreated 22 percent since the end of 1999 through yesterday.
The Volcker rule, which seeks to limit federally insured banks from making bets with their own money, could stop big institutions from providing liquidity to the market if it's not implemented well, Rubin said. While regulators need to allow "large-scale intermediation" for markets to function properly, they will struggle to define the difference between market-making and proprietary trading, he said.
"I think I could spend the rest of my life trying to define that distinction and I wouldn't succeed at it," he said.
Rubin said he has visited China twice in the past six months and has met with the man who will be its next president. While the country has challenges adapting from an export-led economy, growth in China probably will remain strong, he said.
"My overall conclusion is we should all hope for the best," he said. "It is absolutely prudent to prepare for the worst."
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Prophecy Platinum (TSXV: NKL) and Ursa Major Minerals
Sign Combination Agreement
Company Press Release
Friday, March 2, 2012
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada -- Prophecy Platinum Corp. (TSX-V: NKL, OTC-QX: PNIKF, Frankfurt: P94P) and Ursa Major Minerals Inc. have signed a binding letter of agreement for a business combination through a proposed all-share transaction. In doing so Prophecy and Ursa have acted at arm's length and the transaction has been negotiated at arm's length.
Prophecy will issue one common share in exchange for every 25 outstanding common shares of Ursa. Ursa options and warrants will be exchanged for options and warrants of Prophecy on an agreed schedule.
Prophecy's offer represents a value of about $0.15 per each common share of Ursa based on Prophecy's share price of $3.70 as at March 1, representing a premium of 130 percent to Ursa's March 1 closing price of $0.065.
Prophecy is to subscribe for $1 million common shares of Ursa by way of private placement financing at $0.06 per share, subject to regulatory approval. Upon placement completion, John Lee and Greg Hall, current Prophecy directors, will be appointed to Ursa's board.
Prophecy thus will become a mid-tier resource company with a robust and
diversified pipeline of platinum nickel projects, including:
-- The fully permitted open-pit Shakespeare PGM-Ni-Cu mine close to Sudbury, Ontario, infrastructure with near-term production capabilities.
-- The flagship Wellgreen (Yukon) PGM-Ni-Cu project with more than 10 million ounces of Pt-Pd-Au inferred resource. Drilling is under way and a preliminary economic assessment study is pending.
-- Manitoba's Lynn Lake Ni-Cu project with more than 262 million pounds Ni and 138 million pounds Cu measured and indicated.
For the complete announcement, please visit Prophecy Platinum's Internet site here:
http://www.prophecyplat.com/news_2012_mar02_prophecy_platinum_ursa_major...
