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CFTC's Chilton contradicts Financial Times report on silver probe

Section: Daily Dispatches

1:45p ET Monday, August 6, 2012

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Silver Doctors today quotes U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission member Bart Chilton as criticizing yesterday's Financial Times story reporting the end of the commission's investigation of the silver market. The FT report, Chilton is quoted as saying, is "premature" and "inaccurate." And Chilton today repeats his belief that there have been improprieties in both the silver and gold markets. The Silver Doctors report is here:

http://www.silverdoctors.com/bart-chilton-ft-report-that-cftc-to-drop-si...

While it's still hard to expect the CFTC to do anything to impair what is essentially another U.S. government market-rigging operation, the anger directed at Chilton over the commission's inaction has long struck your secretary/treasurer as grossly unfair.

Indeed, Chilton is the target of this anger in large part because he alone of CFTC commissioners tries to answer his e-mail with some substance, even as it's remarkable that he acknowledges it at all, since most commissioners don't bother replying to e-mail from mere citizens.

Further, of course, Chilton is largely responsible for all the clamor that has been raised before the CFTC in the last two years about manipulation of the monetary metals markets. Without Chilton GATA Chairman Bill Murphy and Board of Directors member Adrian Douglas never would have been permitted to speak at what became the CFTC's crucial hearing on regulation of those markets on March 25, 2010. That hearing gained international publicity for the monetary-metals manipulation issue, and since that hearing silver has doubled in price and gold has gone up by a third -- in just 2 1/2 years.

Chilton's giving voice to the despised (and perhaps somewhat feared) minority of advocates of free markets in the monetary metals has surely made great trouble for him with the political and financial establishment, and if, as we should expect, the CFTC in the end once more cannot bring itself to acknowledge market manipulation despite the abounding signs of it, Chilton will be seen to have been repudiated and emabarrassed by his own agency.

Whatever the CFTC does or doesn't do, anyone who wants the United States to recover its market economy owes the guy big-time. He has risked his career, and maybe much more than that, for the good of the country.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.


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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...



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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