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Ron Paul: 'Audit the Fed' moves forward
By U.S. Rep. Ron Paul
Monday, July 30, 2012
http://www.paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1...
Last week the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed my legislation calling for a full and effective audit of the Federal Reserve. Well over 300 of my congressional colleagues supported the bill, each casting a landmark vote that marks the culmination of decades of work. We have taken a big step toward bringing transparency to the most destructive financial institution in the world.
But in many ways our work is only beginning. Despite the Senate Majority Leader's past support for similar legislation, no vote has been scheduled on my bill this year in the Senate. And only 29 Senators have cosponsored Senator Rand Paul's version of my bill in the other body:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:S.202:@@@P
If your senator is not listed at the link above, please contact them and ask for their support. We need to push Senate leadership to hold a vote this year.
Understand that last week's historic vote never would have taken place without the efforts of millions of Americans like you, ordinary citizens concerned about liberty and the integrity of our currency. Political elites respond to political pressure, pure and simple. They follow rather than lead. If all 100 senators feel enough grassroots pressure, they will respond and force Senate leadership to hold what will be a very popular vote.
In fact, "Audit the Fed" is so popular that 75% of all Americans support it according to this Rasmussen poll:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/general_business...
We are making progress.
... 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
Of course Fed apologists -- including Mr. Bernanke -- frequently insist that the Fed already is audited. But this is true only in the sense that it produces annual financial statements. It provides the public with its balance sheet as a fait accompli; we see only the net results of its financial transactions from the previous fiscal year in broad categories, and only after the fact.
We're also told that the Dodd-Frank bill passed in 2010 mandates an audit. But it provides for only a limited audit of certain Fed credit facilities surrounding the crisis period of 2008. It is backward-looking, which is of limited benefit.
The Fed also claims it wants to be "independent" from Congress so that politics don't interfere with monetary policy. This is absurd for two reasons.
First, the Fed already is inherently and unavoidably political. It made a political decision when it chose not to rescue Lehman Brothers in 2008, just as it made a political decision to provide liquidity for AIG in the same time period. These are just two obvious examples. Also, Fed member banks and the Treasury Department are full of former and future Goldman Sachs officials. Are we really to believe that the interests of Goldman Sachs have no effect on Fed decisions? Clearly it's naive to think the Fed somehow is above political or financial influence.
Second, it's important to remember that Congress created the Fed by statute. Congress therefore has the full, inherent authority to regulate the Fed in any way -- up to and including abolishing it altogether.
My bill provides for an ongoing, thorough audit of what the Fed really does in secret, which is make decisions about the money supply, interest rates, and bailouts of favored banks, financial firms, and companies. In other words, I want the Government Accountability Office to examine the Fed's actual monetary policy operations and make them public.
It is precisely this information that must be made public because it so profoundly affects everyone who holds, saves, or uses U.S. dollars.
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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...
