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Ron Paul: The Fed's largesse undermines foreign policy
By U.S. Rep. Ron Paul
Monday, April 4, 2011
http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1845:...
Last week I was both surprised and pleased when the Supreme Court upheld lower court decisions requiring the Federal Reserve Bank to comply with requests for information made by Bloomberg under the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA").
Bloomberg simply wanted to know who received loans from the Fed's discount window in the aftermath of the 2008 financial market crisis, and how much each entity received. Surely this is basic information that should be available to every American taxpayer.
... Dispatch continues below ...
Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture:
World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon
Company Press Release, January 18, 2011
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy.
PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding.
Following the transaction:
-- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC.
-- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis.
-- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp.
-- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings.
Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000.
For the complete announcement, please visit:
http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php
The Fed fought tooth and nail all the way to the Supreme Court to preserve their privileged secrecy. But transparency and openness won the day. There are some 29,000 pages to decipher, but a few points stand out initially.
The Fed lent huge sums of our money to foreign banks. This in itself was not surprising, but the actual amount is staggering.
In one week at the height of the crisis, about 70 percent of the money doled out went to foreign banks. We were told that bailing out banks was going to stave off a massive depression. Depression for whom?
We now know that the Fed's bailout had nothing to do with helping the American people, who have gotten their depression anyway with continued job losses and foreclosures. But now we learn that a good deal of the money did not even help American banks.
In light of recent world events, perhaps the most staggering revelation is that quite a bit of money went to the Arab Banking Corp., a third of whose stock is owned by the Libyan central bank. This occurred while Libya, a declared state sponsor of terrorism, was under strict economic sanctions.
How erratic the United States must appear when we shower a dictator alternately with dollars and bombs.
Also, we must consider the possibility that those loans are inadvertently financing weapons the Gadhafi regime is using against its own people and Western militaries.
This would not be the first time the covert activities of the Fed have undermined not only our economy and the value of the dollar but our foreign policy as well.
Of course I can't say I'm surprised by the poor quality of the data provided by the Fed. The category of each loan made, whether from the "Primary Discount Window," the "Secondary Discount Window," or "Other Extensions of Credit," is redacted. Thus we don't know with certainty how much discount window lending was provided to foreign banks and how much was merely "other extensions of credit."
Also, some of the numbers simply do not seem to add up. We are of course still wading through the massive document dump, but it does seem as though several billions of dollars are unaccounted for.
As the world economy continues to falter in spite of -- or rather because of -- cheap money doled out by the Federal Reserve, its ability to deceive financial markets and American taxpayers is coming to an end. People are beginning to realize that when the Fed in effect doubles the worldwide supply of U.S. dollars in a relatively short time, it has the effect of stealing half your money through reduced purchasing power. Rapid inflation will continue as trillions in new money and credit recently created by the Fed flood into the commodity markets.
It is becoming more obvious that the Fed operates for the benefit of a few privileged banks, banks that never suffer for bad decisions they make. Quite the opposite -- as we have seen since October 2008, under our current monetary system politically connected banks are paid to make bad decisions.
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U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy.
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Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit,
Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property
Company Press Release, October 27, 2010
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include:
-- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres.
-- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres.
-- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre.
Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface.
"The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest."
For the company's full press release, please visit:
http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf
