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House approves Paul's legislation to audit Federal Reserve
By Joshua Zumbrun
Bloomberg News
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-25/fed-audit-bill-opposed-by-berna...
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House of Representatives today approved legislation that would subject the Federal Reserve to an audit of monetary policy, including deliberations over changes to the benchmark interest rate.
The legislation, directing the Government Accountability Office to conduct the audit, is sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2012 and author of "End the Fed."
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has repeatedly said the legislation would open up Fed policy-making to political pressure and put the central bank's independence at risk. The bill, which passed 327-98, needs to gain Senate approval and the signature of President Barack Obama before becoming law.
House passage will create "the perception that Congress is going to politicize the way interest rates are set and that will in itself have a destabilizing effect," Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts said yesterday during floor debate. He is the senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.
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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
Similar legislation, S. 202, was introduced in the Senate by Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky and Ron Paul's son. The Senate bill, which has 21 Republican cosponsors, hasn't been considered by the Senate Banking Committee.
"The Senate will give us trouble," Ron Paul said yesterday in an interview on C-SPAN, referring to the odds his bill will gain support in the Senate. Paul in his book says eliminating the Fed "is the one sure way to restore sanity to economic and political life in this country."
Paul's bill passed with 274 cosponsors, including 45 Democrats and 229 Republicans. Supporters ranging from Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, and Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon, said during the House debate yesterday that the Fed needs to be transparent about the inner workings of its decision making over stimulus and financial stability.
Due to the central bank's role in bailing out Wall Street banks during the financial crisis, "it's past time to audit the Federal Reserve," DeFazio said.
"The Federal Reserve balance sheet has exploded in recent years," Chaffetz said. "The American people and this Congress deserve more openness and transparency and at the very least an audit."
Bernanke reiterated his objections to the legislation in testimony last week to the House Financial Services Committee, describing to committee members his "nightmare scenario" following a Fed decision to raise interest rates.
"Somebody in this room would say, 'I don't like that decision. I want the GAO to go in and get all of the records,'" Bernanke said. Such a move would have a "chilling effect" on central bank decision making, he said at the July 18 hearing.
Paul's audit bill passed the House in 2010 as part of an overhaul of U.S. financial regulation before being rejected by the Senate and a committee of lawmakers negotiating details of the Dodd-Frank Act. Bernanke opposed the legislation.
While rejecting Paul's bill, Congress directed the GAO to audit the Fed's emergency-aid programs during the financial crisis and review the system of directors of regional Fed banks for possible conflicts of interest. The Fed was also required to identify borrowers involved in its crisis-lending programs.
House passage of the bill today "strikes me as really a last hurrah and sendoff from the Republican leadership to Ron Paul," Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who researches the relationship between the Fed and Congress, said before the vote. "I doubt the Democratic Senate will act on the bill."
Paul announced on May 14 that he would no longer spend money to compete in the Republican presidential primaries. He plans to retire from the House at year's end.
Referring to Paul's bill on the House floor yesterday, Frank said, "Nobody here thinks this will ever become law."
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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...
