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South African Gold Production Dives Again To 90 Year Lows
From GoldCore
South African Gold Production Dives Again To 90 Year Lows
Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,646.75, EUR 1,262.26, and GBP 1,052.57 per ounce.
Yesterday's AM fix was USD 1,662.00, EUR 1,271.61 and GBP 1,057.93 per ounce.
Gold fell more than 2% in New York yesterday and closed at $1,643.80/oz. Gold fell in Asia and its low hit $1,635.66/oz and high of $1,649.9/oz, and is now trading sideways in Europe at $1,647.05/oz.
Gold recovered some strength on Thursday after a drop in the prior session attracted bargain hunters, however a strong dollar and diminished expectations of more QE in the US made the yellow metal vulnerable to more selling.
Gold has dropped around 8% since late February as institutional funds appeared to have closed out of their bullish gold bets on worries the Fed will not embark on another round of QE to keep interest rates and borrowing costs low. The dollar hit an 11 month high against the yen and a 1 month peak against the euro on Thursday on growing hopes of a US economic recovery and continuing rises in U.S. bond yields.
South Africa's gold output fell again in January and was down a very large 11.3% in volume terms in January. Annual gold production is set to be close to 220 tonnes which is a level of gold production not seen since 1922 (see chart below).
The falls were seen only in the gold market with production of other minerals holding up with total mineral production down only 2.5% compared with the same month last year.
South Africa as recently as two decades ago was the world's largest producer of gold by a huge margin. Only 40 years ago South Africa produced more than 1,000 tonnes of gold per annum but will only produce some 220 tonnes in 2012. Production peaked in 1970 and has been falling steadily and sharply since.
The nearly 80% fall in South African gold production has led to it being recently overtaken by China, Australia and the U.S. It is now even at risk of being overtaken by Russia.
The scale of the collapse is such that it is worth considering the possibility that the Apartheid regime may have exaggerated the size of South African gold production. Indeed, similar questions could be asked of the massive increase in China's gold production in recent years and whether Chinese gold production tonnage figures are exaggerated.
The massive 11.3% decline in South Africa was more than even that seen in December when gold output fell by 8.2%.
The continuing output decline is due to many of the country's biggest gold mining operations having reached the ends of their lives and having closed down.
Old mines that are still operating are mostly getting deeper and deeper with safety concerns a limiting factor, while new operations coming on stream tend to be either small by comparison, low grade, or both.
South Africa's continuing gold production decline is not cyclical and is permanent and is another bullish factor for the gold market in the long term.
Geological constraints mean that there is little prospect of any serious reversal in the trend. Geological and the lack of any major gold finds anywhere in the world in the last 20 years also suggest that the supply side of the gold equation remains bullish.
The decline in South African production has been a major contributor to at best flat global gold production over the past few years.
Indeed, some data suggests that global gold production may have peaked in the early 2000s.
In the light of the continuing strong fundamentals, this is another healthy correction in the gold market as investment demand is set to remain strong for the foreseeable future while supply remains tight.
Also, central banks are increasingly reluctant to sell their gold reserves and indeed some increasingly wealthy and powerful central banks are adding to their reserves or attempting to gain control of the reserves of smaller debtor nations.
For breaking news and commentary on financial markets and gold, follow us on Twitter.
SILVER
Silver is trading at $32.30/oz, €24.75/oz and £20.61/oz.
PLATINUM GROUP METALS
Platinum is trading at $1,673.00/oz, palladium at $689./oz and rhodium at $1,450/oz.
NEWS
(Reuters)
Gold bounces after 2 percent drop, U.S. dollar eyed
(Wall Street Journal)
Gold Settles 3% lower
(The Economic Times)
Gold bounces after 2 pct drop, U.S. dollar eyed
COMMENTARY
(MoneyWeek)
Gold Bubble? No Chance
(Got Gold Report)
Ron Paul – Gas Costs a Dime a Gallon in Sound Money - Silver
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Is Another Record ECB Margin Call Impairing Gold Again?
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The Science of Gold & Other Precious Metal
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No sweat. Low demand for relics this time of year.
Crap.......peak gold.
Peak Resources + Peak Debt = Peak US War!
Goled iz een eh bauble.
ionic liquids and "new technology" can resurrect this.
In reality, geology plus the TRIUMPH OF DIVERSITY. RSA is gone...cooked, fork. Only if the white people rise up and secede from the nation will there be any reversal.
Light sweet crude iz een eh bauble.
Nothing sweet about 'im.
Once again, The Grand Wizard of the Kooky-Klux Klan has spoken --- it is all the fault of those fucking niggers.
And for those who are down-arrowing me, by doing so you are implicitly supporting the mindless, malignant racism of Trav7777. Good job.
Made me laugh.
Typical US citizen speech. US citizens are going to beat the environment.
Less and less gold underground but let US citizens in charge and you will get more and more of it.
Funny.
Ironic, this coming from a citizen of the most egregiously polluting, environmentally destructive, rapaciously resource-overexploiting, all-around blobbing-up regime in the world today. Make me laugh! But chinese citizenism is nothing if not hypocritical.
If Chinese had been as environmentally destructive as US citizens, it would be known.
Once again, denial of the most obvious facts.
And it IS known, widely if not almost universally.
But not acknowledged by desperate defenders of an evil, totalitarian, censorship-happy and resource blobbing-up chinese citizenism regime such as yourself.
Like your wholesale rewriting of history, as demonstrated by your egregiously dishonest and bigoted babblings about Easter Island?
You make me laugh!
Dishonest? How?
You brought nothing.
You created the fantasy that first contact had to be the lethal touch.
Never wrote something like that.
Contact with US citizens is what sank the islanders. Not contact with Europeans, pre US citizenism.
Chinese express their talent mostly on their own ground, US citizens have the whole world as their playground.
Once again, an issue of scale.
Insane babbling, nothing more.
The fact that NO US ship ever even touched the shores of Easter Island prior to that population's decimation at the hands of European-introduced foreign diseases and Chilean slave traders means absolutely nothing to a dishonest and malignant troll like you, as it does not fit with your hysterical and irrational anti-American bigotry. You are a gross liar and a troll of the most obvious kind.
Next, you will probably be blaming your mythical and meaningless "US citizenism" for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Black Death (which originated in China, fyi), and the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Buy Krugerrands!!
Isn't it funny that the peak is 1970 right around the time Nixon closed the gold window? Perhaps this is Greshem's law and there is not much reason to dig gold out of the ground to just turn around and bury it again.
This is another example of how multiculturalism destroys economies. The new multicultural South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia are all failures. Segregation is the ONLY way forward. Ron Paul is one of the few politicians in America who understands this, and he is our last chance.
well, RSA gold production peaked long before the fall of apartheid.
Utter collapse like this in the face of depletion- this is the REALITY about which the intelligent and informed have been trying to warn people regarding the oil peak. Resource depletion and decreasing production rates as a result thereof are fact. They are not conjecture and they are not theory. Fact.
RSA's production collapse has been exacerbated by the handover of mines to people with no history of ever having mined anything anywhere, never having shown much interest in resource development for themselves, even if the resources were under their feet. Never even knew the land had much value other than to say "me ownz dis." You can witness the same trend historically in rhodesia as formerly very productive farms are now just weeds. The natives weren't farmers or miners before colonization, why should we expect them to suddenly take it up after? It's simply not in everyone's nature to mine things or farm things or develop civilizations.
Hell, some tribes there, such as the Massai, have only very recently graduated to agricultural ways of living instead of being nomads. It is a continent full of primitive people. They walk miles a day to get water from a well. Nobody thinks to hey maybe we should drill down to the water table. It's a leap of intelligence apparently out of reach of the population.
Dum stoopid niggirs! It's ALL their fault!
Still afraid of Ron Paul, aren't you?
Why else the smear campaign?
It is interesting to see that as economically recoverable SA gold resources are depleted, production follows the same sort of gaussian curve as does oil production. Down thread I expect to see claims from peak gold deniers about abiotic gold...
In other news, Wall St. paper gold production is at all time highs - so no supply issues to worry about. As long as you don't want any actual gold, of course.
Here.....let me write you a check for that IOU.
For some reason I smell bullshit. Why would the CIA make a Kony video if they don't want something out of Africa?
I am about to think its oil.
Africa is the new middle east.
US citizens left control of SA after taking care of oil. Depletion is showing signs there and they want to switch to nuclear energy because of oil depletion progress.
Africa is already well integrated in the US citizen world plan of depletion of resources. It is not dysfunctional as extraction works smoothly.
If you want fresh territories, go toward the former USSR territory, big poppa commie failed to consume its satellites at the US citizen consumption rate.
But as US citizens could not consume those territorities because they were big poppa commie's territories, well, you've got some room to grow the depletion of resources plan.
Yes, the stellar record of Chinese citizenism in regard to resource overexploitation, environmental degradation, gross overpopulation and general blobbing-up is far superior to that of the round eyes.
Behind US citizens's record.
Chinese are small league players.
Pushing them forward is an embarrassment when light catchers like US citizens are on the scene.
See what happens in South Africa. Not the job of Chinese but of US citizens.
Now quite a number of people are going to live on a depleted place.
Thanks to US citizens. Not Chinese.
A few facts will rest my case:
Which nation has 300 million citizens, and which has 1300 million rabbit-breeding citizens living in roughly the same area?
Which nation is undergoing the most extreme rates of desertification in the world today?
Which nation is experiencing the worst rate of farmland loss due to urbanization in the world today?
Which nation is suffering the worst urban pollution in the world today?
Hypocrisy, thy name is chinese citizenism!
At least, the Chinese are depleting their own area.
Or is there another US citizen scam like doing it to its own people?
US citizens are depleting the world.
The Chinese are depleting their land within the US world order, to serve the purpose US citizens assigned to them, that is soaking inflation as generated by US citizen economics.
What is that obsession with small players?
What next? That the negroes in Africa deplete their part of the african continent or something?
US citizen work. US citizen systemics at work.
Oil or to mobilize troops in the area.
I have people very close to me in Africom...this is a new frontier for the movement.
Africa is a resouce-rich continent occupied by people of very low average intelligence. It will be the same challenge it has always been because civilization simply WILL NOT "emerge" there without almost unilateral imposition by "colonizers."
Itz all a-bein' du fawlt of dem dum niggirs!
Damn, dude, you're - what - 3-for-3 on cutesy "niggers!" rejoinders to anything that guy says now. Can't help yourself, can you? Y'know, based *solely* on your tired little 'shout him down!' or 'marginalize anything he says!' tactic, I'll bet you I can forecast with 100% accuracy what party you reflexively straight-ticket vote for in every election; and the sum total of your ideology.
Further, I can also predict you'll lie about it if you respond to this in any way that's not "niggers! or "KKK!"
So the blatant, deep-seated, profoundly hateful, kneejerk racism of Trav is OK by you, but my mocking rejoinders to that racism is not? Curious how your vitriol is directed at me and NOT at the one constantly spouting hateful, malicious racist bullshit.
As an aside, your assumptions about me are uniformly incorrect --- in fact, I have NEVER voted for any political candidate who has subsequently been voted into office, having usually voted Libertarian.
Suspicion confirmed!
Sockpuppet of Trav7777 much?
Thank you for demonstrating such a complete lack of intelligence that I can without hesitation now ignore all subsequent posts under your handle.
Hell, while I'm showing off my massive prognosticationality skillz, having aced a) your political ideology and the fact that b) you'd deny it, I will now make yet another Amazin' Prediction: you'll have to answer back. Since, as everyone knows, angry leftists are simply unable to let someone else have the last word. They *have to* fire back a snotty little rejoinder, so they can tell themselves, "I won!", as well as satisfy their ingrained-by-the-profs "shout the heretic down!" urges. Y'all just can't NOT do it, can ya, Fidelito?
Time will tell....My guess is within the hour.
Africa is a resouce-rich continent occupied by people of very low average intelligence.
________________________________________________
Well, after US citizens departure, there will be much less resources. Much, much less.
Since it is in fact the blobbing-up chinese who are establishing resource colonies in Africa all in the pursuit of ever-more furious rates of resource extraction, you would once again (as always) be wrong. Your villians in this case are YOU chinese yourselves.
Hypocrisy, deceit and lies are the eternal nature of chinese citizenism.
Chinese in Africa? They are laggers. Bear with it.
They are oceans behind US citizens.
What's that obsession with focusing on poor achievers?
US citizen dream is about high achievers, not losers.
Chinese are losers when it comes to extract resources in Africa.
US citizens, best, no comparison.
If anyone here ever needed a demonstration of what an online troll is in its very worst manifestations, well, here it is.
Chinese citizenism: blobbing-up since 2000 BC.
More ad hominems, more denial, more can kicking.
Only references to an exterior, to fantasy. Impossible to tackle reality as it is.
That is the result of US citizenism. That set of beliefs implemented from 1776, July, 4th on.
Well done.
Go publicly pick your nose and spit on a sidewalk, chinese citizenism citizen --- those ARE your national pasttimes, after all.
You, however, are obviously VERY comfortable with the authoritarian, totalitarian set of chinese citizenism beliefs introduced by Chin Shi Huang Di in 246 BC.
Those morons in "Gold Rush" better get their shit together and stop fucking around.
They would have been dead broke long ago but for the money from the production of the show. They lost money the first year. The second year they found enough Gold so each of them got $8,000. This equates to working for $333.33 a month. A minimum wage job would pay $1,160 a month.
Even worst than that, they invested their life's savings also. They could have sit at home getting interest from a CD.
Actually, I don't think any of them had a pot to piss in except for old man hoffman... they then begged and borrowed everything they could from other people. They have an incredible amount of "SEE! YOU CAN STILL DO THIS IN MERICA! DETERMINE YOUR OWN FATE AND LIVE FREE!," but fail to acknowledge that it is america's disfunction that has allowed them the opportunity to squander others' money. Tsk tsk.
Gold Rush is an incredibly successful television show, one of the most popular on right now.
It's not about gold mining, it is a drama against the backdrop of gold mining, with some get rich quick undertones.
The TV show has made all the actors on it wealthy; the gold is just a TV prop.
"Interest from a CD"
Hahahahahaha......
Peak everything.. gosh. The disintigration will continue. There is no power great enough to stop it. The only commercial activity left will be an all consuming parasitic speculation.
There is no power great enough to stop it.
----------------------------------------------
Stop it? US citizens have been working to achieve that state, depletion of resources.
Why speak of stopping it when you work to make it happen?
meant the economic disintigration..not resource depletion.
were the residents of easter island us citizens or is there a more general or fundamental mechanism in play here?
Nope, they were not.
That is the reason why they were going up after moving down.
Please revise your history on Eastern Islands.
As disappereance of these people did not happen because of resource depletion (they were overcoming their situation) but because of contact with US citizens.
Less cheap propaganda, more facts.
Huh, no, wont happen, this is a US world order. Propaganda reigns supreme.
.
Make me laugh!
Seeing as how the United States was not even a nation when outside contact was first made with Easter Island, and how in any event ALL subsequent contacts of importance were made by Europeans and NOT Americans (including the French and British naval vessels which introduced various foreign diseases, decimating the population, and the Chileans who enslaved and slaughtered most of the remainder), your wild thesis is without foundation, and is just another demonstration of your rabid, irrational and sweeping anti-American prejudice and bigotry.
But thank you for proving your dishonesty (once again).
Waooo, that is quite thick.
Could it be, I dunno, that the contact with non US citizens did not terminate the locals but the later contact with US citizens?
Where does it read that US citizens made the first contact?
Europeans? But US citizenism is a set of beliefs, it is not a nationality.
US citizens: proponents of the system known as US citizenism ('Americanism')
Once again, cheap offuscation.
Hey, I dont know, why not claim that the Chinese were responsible for the decline of these populations? Or I dont know, the negroes?
Everything to kick the can and avoid facing the face that contact with US citizens and their set of beliefs ('Americanism') sank the island.
Evidently, historical facts mean nothing to you, as you apparently feel free to rewrite history willy-nilly to suit your seething, hate-filled prejudice.
You are insane. Please shut the fuck up already.
What historical facts?
Where does it read that the first contact was the lethal touch?
It reads that the contact with US citizens, that is proponents of 'Americanism' is what sunk the islanders.
No, it was contact with Martians that sank them.
Chinese citizenism Martians.
Make me laugh!
More fantasy, more can kicking.
US citizens, unable to deal with reality.
Your anti-American trolling is utterly laughable in the depths of its ignorance, its hypocrisy and its desperate defenses of the rapacious and evil communist chinese regime.
Sure, sure.
The denial of facts required by US citizens as a sign of submission is now way beyond the scope of ignorance.
Bear with it.
People targeting 'Americanism' have now the luxury of ignorance as the fantasy built by US citizens is too detached from reality to be accepted without consent.
Babbling.
You chinese citizenism citizens have utterly bizarre thought processes (which is clearly part and parcel of your insanity), do you know that? Your garbled and distorted thoughts simply cannot be rationally translated into anything that resembles logic or intelligence. Such is the eternal nature of public nosepicking, roadside shitting, environmentally destructive chinese citizenism.
Logics? Made me laugh.
Sure, sure.
Keep building up fantasy instead of answering to the situation at hand is indeed the logical answer when you cant defend your position.
Very understandable when the position is US citizenism.
It is a shame that your mother's pregnancy (one of at least ten, no doubt) was not one of the hundreds of millions of annual chinese-citizenism-enforced abortions in the Peoples Republic of Nose-Picking.
Make me laugh!
More fantasy, more empty talking.
Unable to speak about themselves, unable to speak about what they do, always compelled to forge tales, well, those are US citizens.
Somewhere in China, there are undoubtedly many piles of roadside turds with your name on them; you certainly have dropped far more than your share of them here as well.
How is it surprising? US citizens aim for depletion of resources.
Somebody really believed they would relinquish control in the extraction ascending phase?
Of course not.
They aimed at depleting resources and only left the helm when the area was on the downside.
That is the way it is.
A scenario to be repeated in many, many areas of the world.
With the offuscation scenario as broadcast by US citizen propaganda: the area was much better managed when they were in charge etc Well known song.
The reality is they left the boat when it started to smell ugly, resources wise.
Gooooooing to be some fun because when those people are going to be trapped on resources depleted areas,well, they will have to thank US citizens.
we'll never hit peak bullshit, that's for sure.
US citizenism does well actually in that domain.
What is the idea of going for depletion of resources?
What is the purpose? The goal? Very hard to understand what US citizens look for by achieving that.
It's just to make you keep guessing... we're weird like that.
It's just to make you keep guessing... we're weird like that.
________________________________________
Do US citizens even know? The situation looks more as if they have lost control over the systemics imposed by 'Americanism' and have no other solution than keeping up the trend, pushing as much as possible other people under the train. Better them than me. US citizen motto.
Trouble, situation is simple: when you promote your own solution by destroying alternative solutions, when you are successful, you are left with your own solutions and all the solutions you failed to eliminate.
Reads as it is what is happening to US citizens.
Go back to writing cryptic and incomprehensible chinese-made product manuals, you vile and ignorant troll.
Cryptic?
Most obvious facts. Denial seems to lead to consider that raw reality is cryptic.
so Rome was full of US Citizens too eh? I guess Britain and Spain too...
Homo sapiens evolved a "consume it now, store the surplus as body fat" instinct a very long time ago. This is the hard-wired present mindset of most current humans. The only exceptions are some peoples who moved into areas with cold winters; they were selected to defer gratification and store food and firewood (the ones who didn't got selected out).l
Deer on islands must also be US Citizens
LOL!
But in the warped and bigoted mind of our dear chinese citizenism diswasher friend Anymouse, you are undoubtedly correct. ALL the faults of the world apparently can be laid at the feet of his mythical and nonsensical "US citizenims". Make me laugh!
ALL the faults of the world apparently can be laid at the feet of his mythical and nonsensical "US citizenims".
_______________________________________________
'Americanism' is mythical? Once again this crap. US citizens did not develop a system of their own?
Denial, more denial, again denial, even more denial.
US citizens are the ones building fantasy as soon as they are asked about their miraculous system of theirs, 'Americanism'
Turning table has its limits.
All the faults of the world? Nice defense line. Do US citizens accept it? I dunno...
US citizens are responsible for the current state of the world.
US citizens have nothing to do with the great fire in London, death of William The Conqueror etc...
They are responsible for their actions and their actions only.
But hey, the main defense line by US citizens is strawsman, building fantasy, unable to speak of US citizenism for what it is.
I can smell a pre-programmed, automatic phrase-generating trollbot a mile away, and THIS one stinks to high heaven!
People do not smell their own odor.
Well, that could explain that US citizens can not smell the smells of US citizenism.
Perhaps my sense of smell was overwhelmed by all the chinese urban smog, or the stench of all those thousands of vast chinese mountains of steaming and toxic garbage, and all those millions of piles of festering turds deposited by roadside-shitting chinese citizens.
Homo sapiens evolved a "consume it now, store the surplus as body fat" instinct a very long time ago. This is the hard-wired present mindset of most current humans. The only exceptions are some peoples who moved into areas with cold winters; they were selected to defer gratification and store food and firewood (the ones who didn't got selected out).l
______________________________________________________
You got your biology right, US citizens way.
Hot desert people are indeed fat, fat and fat.
I suggest you meet a few Icelanders and learn how to fish fishes when they are in the sea.
Rome hit resource depletion?
First news.
Ah, I get it, that is to fit the story that US citizens will do perfectly well without resources.
That is the kind of obvious stuff one is forced to deny, you know, if indeed, Rome had been voracious as US citizens have been, that would be felt nowadays.
Reality, they were nothing compared to US citizens.
But hey, US citizens are so used to being pampered by their state they are now at denying the most obvious fact.
I am the Great Stoolman Mousy Tongue, conqueror and enslaver of Tibet and murderer of tens of millions of my own subjects in the "Great Leap Forward into Poverty", and I approve this chinese citizenism message.
The Great? The Small?
The big guy in the yard is US citizens.
They set the trend and they deplete continents. Continents. And maybe the world.
The obsession with low performers is another US citizen cheap propaganda artefact.
I am the Great Stoolman Mousy Tongue, murderer of tens of millions of my own subjects, running dog imperialist against Tibet and the independent republic of Taiwan, and father of chinese environmental destruction, and I approve this chinese citizenism message.
Ah, the own people dilution of responsibility.
US citizen: well, my neighbour beat his wife.
So I went in, killed the man, raped the woman, sold the children to pedophiles but at least, I did not do that to my own family!
Chinese citizenism, combined with autism, combined with trolling, is truly a sorry sight.
Simple, it's a Ponzi!
No mention that global gold mining production 2011 was at all time high of about 2800 metric tons? Those fucking gold pumpers.
>> No mention that global gold mining production 2011 was at all time high of about 2800 metric tons?
Where do you get that figure from? I'm showing gold production peaked in 2001 at just over 2,500 mt.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mcs/2012/mcs2012.pdf
Read page 67.
>> Read page 67.
Interesting, that report shows SA's gold production increasing. The numbers don't match up with what a quick google search revealed. Who knows where the truth lies.
yeah um...USGS...eh. Not saying they are totally full of shit and everything, but they have THROUGHLY OBLITERATED the truth when it comes to oil reserves and oil production projections.
Haha, yeah, was waiting for that kind of comment. The government is always lying, of course, and a company selling gold for a huge profits is always telling the truth, of course.
There are other sources that say world gold mining production was well over 2800 tons in 2011 and will exceed 3000 tons in 2012, Because so much new gold mining project are going in production now. A classic "pork belly circle", if you ask me.
Supposedly there is a massive amount of gold and other minerals near the surface in the DRC. 50 million Congoese depend on artisan mining for their livilihood. However, bank funded US NGOs have had laws passed labeling minerals from the DRC as "conflict minerals".
This is after the IMF gave money to rebels to buy guns.
Odd, no? Lots of gold and other minerals and they are preventing it from getting to the "western" markets. It first has to be laundered through China. Reminds me of that fake "blood diamond" scam that prevented the residents of Sierra Leone from scooping up diamonds in the mud, where they are plentiful.
I would not venture to say that Congolese resources are easy pickings and that its just a matter of exploiting the resources and merely brusing aside anxiety-ridden NGO concerns or apprehending sino-fraud. The Congo is one of the absolute worst places to mine because of years of mind-boggling, murderous civil strife.
Not only that, but recent moves by the Congolese government to appropriate valuable copper mining prospects from the hands of developers with agreements that had already been negotiated are perhaps the nail in the coffin to developing mines in that country.
But mines are being developed, and projects advanced just the same: http://www.banro.com/s/Home.asp
The big development focus is, of course, not the minerals, but the hydro-electric potential of the un-tapped Congo river:
http://af.reuters.com/article/investingNews/idAFJOE53M03C20090423
South Africans have a vested interest in infrastructure developments on the African continent, especially if they can ensure a power supply.
well, there were very bloody, savage wars all over the region over these diamonds. Wars that don't seem to break out in other places diamonds are found. Australia is a massive diamond producer and I'm yet to hear about their civil war.
Just think of the fun when the gold production plot shown for SA is for oil from the other SA....
Part of the decline is from lack of power from the grid....
Interesting, you can't trust financial stats out of China and you can't trust financial stats out of the US BLS any more. Is there some kind of correlation? /Snark/off.
Question: Is the price of silver to gold historically 16 to 1 or 17 to 1?
I love the prospectus for the IAU gold ETF. It is brutally honest. Paraphrasing just a bit: "We don't do chemical checks for the purity of the gold, we just look at the stamps and paper work. If it's phony, too bad. We charge our 0.25 % regardless by selling the gold to cover, if it gets too low to cover we'll close down and you are SOL. You aren't buying on the comodity market therefore you have none of the protections of that market, if things go tits up, too bad, you have little to no recourse. We try to duplicate what buying physical gold is only we get the first cut. "
Gold is deposited in igneous rock. I can think of no reasons why near-surface deposits (easilly mined) would be more common or rich than deep deposits. What we have here is a lack of deep exploration and prices too low to make recovery economically viable. I suspect there will not be peak gold at twice the price. Paper price suppression of physical has consequences. At the right price many things become viable. Robotics will play a role. Environmental issues will be rebalanced and better mitigated. At the right price, asteroids become attractive. And http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule "common heritage of mankind" my ass.
The gold deposited in South Africa is in sedimentary layers, not in 'igneous' rock.
Otherwise, you would say that the gold found in certain types of granite such as feldspar or andesites via fluids coming to the surface and forming quartz veins are intrusions.
Gold enrichment at or near surface is called supergene enrichment. Otherwise known as a "pay streak." In mining, you start at the outcrop, then dig deeper. Normally deposits are consistent in grade and disposition, so if you find a deposit, you can mine to depth as long as price remain above costs and the deposit is large enough to support a mining operation.
You can't start at depth for obvious reasons, simply that there's millions of tons of rock in the way.
See how it works now?
There is an asteroid coming near the earth in February. If they can get a cable around it and winch it to the space station, there are probably hundreds of tons of gold. They can then transport it to the new military base on the moon and chip away at it in a low gravity situation that would be cheaper. Newt in 2012!
You lost me at asteroids, but the geology discussion reminds me of a wise line from my 17yr old son's poetry:
"In real life, paper never beats rock."
What we have here is a lack of deep exploration and prices too low to make recovery economically viable.
How deep do you want to go?
Most SA mines(established long termers) are at neat 7 miles deep now.
Should I believe this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TauTona_Mine or you?
Production down, price down ... demand must be zero.
Meanwhile globalists release the latest propaganda "Kony 2012". A movie about some bad guy nobody's seen in five years.This will launch AFRICOM to a new level of continental control. Nothing to do with western anglo banksters desire to keep the pesky chinese from establishing any foothold in Africa. plunder
Wait 'til the Zimbabwe Zombie Negroes take over.....SA will be a net importer of Gold and Ivory and Rhinoceros horns ! Their AIDS exports will still thrive ! Monedas 2012 Calling a spade a spade !
I would be asking myself who actually controls these mines, their output, and thus the price of worldwide gold/silver.
from page 11 of this .pdf file: http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/the_babylonian_woe.pdf
Here is a review of The Babylonian Woe with many more excerpts from the book:
The Babylonian Woe
‘A conspiracy against life’
http://www.johnkaminski.info/pages/the_next_chapter/the_babylonian_woe.htm
one of those excerpts: