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What Is Greece Planning To Do With Its Gold After The Elections?
Source: The Independent
In Greece, all members of the press seem to be focusing on the fact prime minister Alexis Tsipras has called for new elections. That in itself is quite a ballsy move as it could either indicate Tsipras expects to get an even stronger mandate from the Greek people which – for that to happen – would have to forgive him for not even remotely listening to their vote in the July referendum.
Another possibility obviously is the fact Tsipras has had enough of it and wants to give the reigns to someone else. That’s less likely but definitely still possible considering he hasn’t really had a lot of fun during his six month tenure.
But there was another event a few weeks ago which truly caused us to raise our eyebrows. The Greek government has revoked the permits at its largest mine development project in the country as it has forbidden a Canadian company, Eldorado Gold, to continue to build its large Skouries mine as well as some processing facilities which would improve the efficiency at its other operations.
Source: mining.com
This leaves Eldorado with a very bitter taste. The company has deployed almost a billion dollar in the region to advance the Skouries project towards production and now, in the final stages of developing the project, the government is pulling the plug for what seems to be a weird reason. Greece doesn’t agree with the fact Eldorado completed the metallurgical test work in a Finnish facility, and exactly because the test work wasn’t done inside Greece, the government declared the original development contract null and void.
Source: Eldorado Gold
Let’s take a step back and look at the situation from a larger perspective instead of a company-government quarrel-perspective. The gold mining company is the largest foreign investor in Greece, and after pledging to invest $1B in the development of Greek mines, why would the Greek government try to piss them off over what seems to be a futility?
Additionally, Eldorado Gold employed in excess of 2,000 people directly and very likely created an additional 3-4,000 indirect jobs. Why would a country plagues by a sky-high unemployment rate suddenly care more about trying to get rid of a gold mining company by trying to find a nonsense-excuse instead of keeping 7,000 people at work and looking forward to a (corporate) tax inflow once the mine would be up and running?
Is it because the metal that would be mined is gold? Does the Greek government want to keep the gold in the ground until the time it needs it? It sure looks like it because it makes no sense at all to scare the country’s largest foreign investor away. Greece has a plan, but we might have to wait until after the snap elections to discover what it is.
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I have about 100 tonnes of copper buried, spread out over 14 counties in container load locations. I am ready to the bronze age! It is already refine 99.97 pure in weather proof wrapping .
I converted some of it to lead and brass by the case, just in case!
"Does the Greek government want to keep the gold in the ground until the time it needs it?"
Gold in the ground is worth more than gold deposited for safekeeping at Fort Knox.
Looks as bad as the tar sands at Fort McMurray Canada.Destroy the environment.All open pit mining should be banned worldwide.It looks like shite.How do you fix that?
The hell with Eldorado and its gold. The region the mine is in is extremely sensitive, and over 200,000 jobs in tourism hang in the balance. There is much more money to be made in tourism than in some gold mine! FUCK OFF ELDORADO!
You mean that out of the 500K total tourism jobs in Greece, 200K are in the vicinity of the mine? Bad choice of numbers for your propaganda.
To Eldorado. Plant explosives throughout the mines, equipment and infrastructure. If they try to steal your works, push the button, leave the country, then shrug.
More physically productive folks need to shrug.
In fact, all of them should.
Won't happen.
But should.
Most of the Greek gold was stolen by the germans during WWII I doubt there is much left after the recent shake down the EU has performed on Greece.
I'll take nationalize Foreign Assets for $1000.00 Alex
The Byzantine empire had a gold currency for 600 years. In fact, the current name for it's capital is just "To the City" in Greek: "Stin Polis" During that period it was the center of world trade and influence. With war pressure on its borders debasement picked up pace after 1060 and finally they eliminated gold coinage altogether. The western rump of the Greek world may be following Russian example/advice that nothing really changes under the sun.
When the dollar dies gold will be the only obvious reserve and it will be multiples higher in purchasing power.
After 1971 gold prices increased 24 fold (35$ to 850+$). Some suspect that a multiplier of similar or more likely greater magnitude would apply this time round. This is how freegolders get to their $55,000 per ounce price tag.
The price of gold will never depend upon the total gold in the world divided by the total cash in the world. It will be a market price based on how many dollars are offered and how much gold responds. Once gold is established, the urge to sell gold will be diminished, once the poorer holders of gold blow their first few ounces buying their first Lamborghini and McMansion. Once folks are comfortable they will ask themselves: 'what better way to save is there? they will find the answer is 'none, there is no better way to save' and much of the gold will lay still and not be willing to accept dollars or any other currency. This will help establish a much higher price of gold world wide.
The Greeks are doing the right thing.
They have done well to keep WS paws off the gold so far. Look at Ukraine, their gold was gone in a few days stolen in the night by WS Banksters with the assistance of US cargo flights.....
Greek nutters. Because the test work was done in Finalnd? Please, more like they want to create their own national mining company and pull out the gold for the current political establishment to embellish as they so desire.
Greece the great corruption.
A government run...
again...
A GREEK government run goldmine...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Hmmm. This can't be good for Eldorado Stock. I wonder if anyone knew about this little turn of events beforehand. All anyone in Greek gov't has done is find a way to make $$$ and run away before the music stops. Facilitating some insider trading would be a much less risky way of making some side cash, than directly embezzling.
This happened way back in March. It does seem strange.
http://www.mining.com/greece-deals-major-blow-eldorados-skouries-mine-45...
My guess is it's nothing to do with the gold itself. It's probably much more to do with around 30-40K environmentalists votes in the upcoming elections. Cheap price per vote: 2,000 people (votes) unemployed and tax income for a few months waived.