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Central banks, not bullion banks, long have been GATA's primary target
7:40p ET Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
In commentary today (http://www.gata.org/node/16850) Sharps Pixley CEO Ross Norman rebutted your secretary/treasurer's skepticism about the need for a price benchmarking mechanism in gold like the venerable daily gold price fixings in London, which are operated by a few large investment banks (http://www.gata.org/node/16845).
Maybe your secretary/treasurer should have been clearer from the outset, but it seems to GATA that valid benchmarks could be derived entirely from price and trade volume data at the end of each day, benchmarks that would result from all trading and not the trading of a few banks talking confidentially to each other and to God-only-knows who else.
... Dispatch continues below ...
Sandspring Resources Commences 2016 Exploration Campaign
Company Announcement
August 17, 2016
Sandspring Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:SSP, US OTC: SSPXF) is pleased to announce commencement of the 2016 exploration campaign at its Toroparu Gold Project in Guyana, South America.
In 2015 the company completed a 3,700-meter diamond drilling program on the promising Sona Hill Prospect, located 5 kilometers southeast of the main Toroparu deposit. Sona Hill is the easternmost gold anomaly in a cluster of 10 gold features located within a 20-by-7-kilometer hydrothermal alteration halo around Toroparu. Drilling at Sona Hill in 2012 and in 2015 intercepted high-grade mineralization in both saprolite and bedrock, and confirmed the continuity and grade potential of the Sona Hill mineralization.
For the remainder of the announcement and highlights of the 2015 drill program:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sandspring-resources-commences-2016-explo...
Norman also disparaged Deutsche Bank's $38 million payment to settle the class-action lawsuit accusing it of rigging the silver market. (See http://www.gata.org/node/16847.) As Norman wrote, the settlement seems small. But it may be small for several reasons quite apart from what Norman supposes is the bank's desire to confess to everything everywhere, pay a comprehensive fine, and move on.
Deutsche Bank's payment may seem small because: 1) The plaintiffs' lawyers surely were prepared to give the bank a break for being the first defendant to capitulate, much as prosecutors make generous plea and sentencing offers with the first criminal defendant in a case who turns state's evidence. 2) The settlement with Deutsche Bank will pressure the other defendant banks to capitulate and pay up as well. As such Deutsche Bank's payment may be worth far more than its nominal amount. And 3) the settlement with Deutsche Bank apparently covers only silver, even as the gold lawsuit continues and Deutsche Bank is still on the hook there.
As for Norman's observation today that GATA would do better to concentrate its fire on central banks rather than the bullion banks: GATA does concentrate its fire on central banks and has done so for many years. The bullion banks are of interest to us mainly because they often act as agents of the central banks. Norman may not have read the summary of GATA's work that your secretary/treasurer invited him to review the other day --
http://www.gata.org/node/14839
-- but it deals almost entirely with central banking. Indeed, all the questions your secretary/treasurer put to Norman directly the other day involved governments and central banks, not the banks in the London fix:
http://www.gata.org/node/16839
Anyway, GATA is grateful to Norman for cordially engaging with us on these issues. Hardly any respectable participant in the gold business does, and financial news organizations have forsworn critical questions involving gold. Let's hope that this exchange hasn't made Norman any less respectable to his business colleagues.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
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