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Wall Street Journal says Comex has been classified as 'too big to fail'
A Mess the 45th President Will Inherit
Taxpayers Now Stand Behind Derivatives Clearinghouses
From the Wall Street Journal
Thursday, May 24, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230484090457742239316410627...
President Obama's standard gripe is that the economy has performed so poorly during his term because of the financial crisis he inherited from George W. Bush. But this week it is Mr. Obama who has bequeathed to his successors a landmark in financial regulation. It is bound to haunt them, though not as much as it will haunt taxpayers.
J.P. Morgan's recent trading loss and the resulting Washington blather about tighter regulation have grabbed headlines.
Little noticed is that on Tuesday Team Obama took its first formal steps toward putting taxpayers behind Wall Street derivatives trading -- not behind banks that might make mistakes in derivatives markets, but behind the trading itself. Yes, the same crew that rails against the dangers of derivatives is quietly positioning these financial instruments directly above the taxpayer safety net.
As we noted in May 2010, the authority for this regulatory achievement was inserted into Congress's pending financial reform bill by then-Senator Chris Dodd. Two months later, the legislation was re-named Dodd-Frank and signed into law by Mr. Obama. One part of the law forces much of the derivatives market into clearinghouses that stand behind every trade. Mr. Dodd's pet provision creates a mechanism for bailing out these clearinghouses when they run into trouble.
... 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
Specifically, the law authorizes the Federal Reserve to provide "discount and borrowing privileges" to clearinghouses in emergencies. Traditionally the ability to borrow from the Fed's discount window was reserved for banks, but the new law made clear that a clearinghouse receiving assistance was not required to "be or become a bank or bank holding company." To get help, they only needed to be deemed "systemically important" by the new Financial Stability Oversight Council chaired by the Treasury Secretary.
Last year regulators finalized rules for how they would use this new power. On Tuesday, they began using it. The Financial Stability Oversight Council secretly voted to proceed toward inducting several derivatives clearinghouses into the too-big-to-fail club. After further review, regulators will make final designations, probably later this year, and will announce publicly the names of institutions deemed systemically important.
We're told that the clearinghouses of Chicago's CME Group and Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange were voted systemic this week, and rumor has it that the council may even designate London-based LCH.Clearnet as critical to the U.S. financial system.
U.S. taxpayers thinking that they couldn't possibly be forced to stand behind overseas derivatives trading will not be comforted by remarks from Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler. On Monday he emphasized his determination to extend Dodd-Frank derivatives regulation to overseas markets when subsidiaries of U.S. firms are involved.
Readers know Mr. Gensler as the chief regulator of MF Global, which was run into bankruptcy by his old Beltway and Goldman Sachs pal Jon Corzine. An estimated $1.6 billion is still missing from MF Global customer accounts. What an amazing feat Mr. Gensler will have performed if, through his agency's oversight, he can manage to have U.S. customers eat the cost of Mr. Corzine's bets on foreign debt and have U.S. taxpayers underwrite bets in foreign derivatives trading.
If there's one truth we've learned about government financial backstops, it's that sooner or later they will be used. So eventually taxpayers will have to bail out one derivatives clearinghouse or another. It promises to be quite a mess. And if the 45th president spends his first term whining about his predecessor's mistakes, he'll have a point.
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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...
