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Hinde Capital's Ben Davies: 'Eyes wide shut' as debt bloats government and destroys productivity
1:54p ICT Saturday, June 30, 2012
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Hinde Capital CEO Ben Davies, who spoke at GATA's Gold Rush 2011 conference in London last year, has written an incisive diagnosis of the economic decline of the United Kingdom and by extension most of the West, concluding that the solution requires separation of bank and state.
Among other things, Davies' commentary, a report in two parts titled "Eyes Wide Shut," remarks:
"The 'naughties' was a decade of growth, but this growth was not real. It was not a growth borne out of production from savings but a false growth borne out of rising debt levels. The U.K.'s seeming prosperity was, and still is, an illusion.
"The UK experienced a credit-fueled boom predicated on escalating private sector borrowing drawn primarily out of the equity of rising house prices. The tax revenues this spawned allowed the Labor government to grow the hand of the state, leading to an unsustainable growth in public-sector debt.
... 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
"Money was not earned; it was borrowed and spent on fancy clothes, smart cars, and endless electronic devices whose fads changed by the hour. The rise in public-sector employment as a share of the U.K. economy not only helped reinforce this debt binge, as the new gainfully employed enjoyed the fruits of their labor, but it no doubt did not harm New Labor's re-election potential. A prosperous electorate, after all, is a happy electorate.
"As dreary as it is to rehash the point that we have too much debt (I hear you yawning), it does not negate the reality that the U.K. has not managed to deleverage its burdens some four years since the 'Great Financial Crisis' began. This reality has very grave implications for the U.K. economy and its people. ...
"Mounting debt that has merely boosted government consumption and transfer payments has undermined overall productivity growth and has led to economic stagnation and loss of economic freedom. Unfortunately, we believe that a nation will tend to bankrupt its citizens before it bankrupts itself; especially under a fiat currency system when it has the temptation to fund a welfare state through continued deficit financing. This is the case in the U.K. today."
Elaborating on his diagnosis in an interview Thursday on CNBC --
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000098263&play=1
-- Davies added: "We need monetary reform and out of that it begets political reform. ... We really have a state monopoly on the issuance of money ... and in that relationship with the banking sector, which is highly circular, you capitalize banks using sovereign debt." Davies advocates allowing competing forms of money, which implies, of course, terminating the Western central bank scheme of gold market manipulation.
Davies' commentary is a manifesto for limited government and greater individual economic freedom. It has been published in two parts with graphics in PDF format at the Hinde Capital Internet site.
Part I is here:
http://media.hindecapital.com/attachments/reports/full/129/original/Eyes...
And Part II is here:
http://media.hindecapital.com/attachments/reports/full/131/original/Eyes...
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
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Prophecy Platinum Announces Wellgreen Preliminary Economic Assessment:
38% Pre-Tax IRR, $3.0 Billion NPV, and a 37-Year Mine Life
Company Press Release
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada -- Prophecy Platinum Corp. (TSX-V: NKL, OTC-QX: PNIKF, Frankfurt: P94P) reports the results of an independent NI 43-101-compliant preliminary economic assessment for its fully owned Wellgreen nickel-copper-platinum group metals project in the Yukon Territory.
The independent assessment, prepared by Tetra Tech, evaluated a base case of an open-pit mine (with a mining rate of 111,500 tonnes per day), an on-site concentrator (with a milling rate of 32,000 tonnes per day), and an initial capital cost of $863 million. The project is expected to produce (in concentrate) 1.959 billion pounds of nickel, 2.058 billion pounds of copper, and 7.119 million ounces of platinum, palladium, and gold during a mine life of 37 years with an average strip ratio of 2.57.
The financial highlights of the preliminary economic assessment, shown in U.S. dollars, are as follows:
Payback period: 3.55 years
Initial capital investment: $863 million
IRR pre-tax (100% equity): 38 percent
NPV pre-tax (8% discount): $3 billion
Mine life: 37 years
Total mill feed: 405.3 million tonnes
Mill throughput: 32,000 tonnes per day
Prophecy Chairman John Lee says: "We are pleased with the preliminary economic assessment results. The numbers indicate that Wellgreen is one of most exciting mineral projects in the Yukon. The company is drilling to upgrade and expand the resource base. The infrastructure is excellent as the project is only 1,400 meters in altitude and 14 kilometers from the paved Alaska Highway, which leads to the Haines deep seaport. Discussions are under way with support from local stakeholders regarding permitting and logistics."
For the complete press release, please visit:
http://prophecyplat.com/news_2012_june18_prophecy_platinum_announces_res...
