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With college kids, Bernanke gets away with dissing gold

Section: Daily Dispatches

3:41p ET Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Dow Jones Newswires reports below how Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke criticized the gold standard during a lecture today at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. While GATA is not a gold standard advocacy organization, we can only wish that Bernanke would engage this subject where he risked a more informed and critical audience.

This is not just because we'd love the chairman to be asked how he squares the Fed's "transparency" campaign with its refusal to provide public access to the central bank's records involving gold:

http://www.gata.org/node/9917

It's also because some of Bernanke's arguments today, as reported below, are so pathetic.

... Dispatch continues below ...


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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


Echoing Warren Buffett, Bernanke says the gold standard is stupid because it's a matter of digging gold up only to bury it in a hole somewhere else. And yet gold was and, thanks to the Internet, today has been restored as a regular circulating currency like any other.

"Since the gold standard determines the money supply," Bernanke said, "there's not much scope for the central bank to use monetary policy to stabilize the economy." You bet, there isn't! That's the whole #@*^!#$ point! Half the world is screaming at the Fed, "Spare us your 'stabilization'!" And the Fed is "stabilizing" only what it messed up in the first place.

Then, with supreme cheek, Bernanke blames the gold standard for spreading to the rest of the world the U.S. central bank's "policy errors," as if spreading policy errors around quite without the gold standard hasn't lately been the Fed's main business.

Well, that's American college education for you. And people come here from all around the world to get it.

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

* * *

Bernanke Defends Country's Break with Gold Standard

By Kristina Peterson
Dow Jones Newswires
via The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, March 20, 2012

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120320-711511.html

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday defended the country's break with a gold standard at the first of his four lectures at George Washington University.

Bernanke explained to a packed lecture hall why a gold standard harmed the global economy during the Great Depression. Some recent critics of the Fed have pushed for a return to the gold standard, in which paper money is backed by gold. The U.S. was on the gold standard between the Civil War until the 1930s, and the tie was fully severed by President Richard Nixon in 1971.

The gold standard poses both practical and policy problems, Bernanke said. On the practical side, it can be a waste of resources to secure all the gold needed to back currency, moving it from South Africa to the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, for example, or as he put it, "all this gold is being dug up and being put back into another hole."

More significantly, a country on a gold standard will see more short-term volatility, Bernanke said.

"Since the gold standard determines the money supply, there's not much scope for the central bank to use monetary policy to stabilize the economy," he said. Bernanke noted the gold standard did not prevent frequent financial panics.

During the Great Depression, "policy errors" in the United States spread to other countries that were also on the gold standard, Bernanke said. Countries on the gold standard must maintain fixed exchange rates, making it easy for bad policies in one country to spread to another on the gold standard, he noted.

The gold standard can also cause both periods of deflation and inflation in the medium term, Bernanke said. If not "perfectly credible," the gold standard can be subject to speculative attack and ultimately collapse as people try to exchange paper money for gold. However, he did acknowledge that over decades, prices are very stable for countries using the gold standard.

Part of the reason the Fed failed in its managing of the Great Depression were its attempts to stay on the gold standard, he noted. One of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's most successful moves as president was to begin to take the country off the gold standard, he said.

* * *

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Prophecy Platinum (TSXV: NKL) and Ursa Major Minerals
Sign Combination Agreement

Company Press Release
Friday, March 2, 2012

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada -- Prophecy Platinum Corp. (TSX-V: NKL, OTC-QX: PNIKF, Frankfurt: P94P) and Ursa Major Minerals Inc. have signed a binding letter of agreement for a business combination through a proposed all-share transaction. In doing so Prophecy and Ursa have acted at arm's length and the transaction has been negotiated at arm's length.

Prophecy will issue one common share in exchange for every 25 outstanding common shares of Ursa. Ursa options and warrants will be exchanged for options and warrants of Prophecy on an agreed schedule.

Prophecy's offer represents a value of about $0.15 per each common share of Ursa based on Prophecy's share price of $3.70 as at March 1, representing a premium of 130 percent to Ursa's March 1 closing price of $0.065.

Prophecy is to subscribe for $1 million common shares of Ursa by way of private placement financing at $0.06 per share, subject to regulatory approval. Upon placement completion, John Lee and Greg Hall, current Prophecy directors, will be appointed to Ursa's board.

Prophecy thus will become a mid-tier resource company with a robust and
diversified pipeline of platinum nickel projects, including:

-- The fully permitted open-pit Shakespeare PGM-Ni-Cu mine close to Sudbury, Ontario, infrastructure with near-term production capabilities.

-- The flagship Wellgreen (Yukon) PGM-Ni-Cu project with more than 10 million ounces of Pt-Pd-Au inferred resource. Drilling is under way and a preliminary economic assessment study is pending.

-- Manitoba's Lynn Lake Ni-Cu project with more than 262 million pounds Ni and 138 million pounds Cu measured and indicated.

For the complete announcement, please visit Prophecy Platinum's Internet site here:

http://www.prophecyplat.com/news_2012_mar02_prophecy_platinum_ursa_major...