Barrick Decision Stuns Bullion Markets

[Spazito]

LONDON (Reuters) - Barrick Gold Corp stunned bullion markets on Friday by saying it was changing its hedging policy, and is no longer committed to selling the metal on forward markets as it is now awash with cash.

The commitment to hedging is gone...Hedging to us is no longer a requirement for running our business as it no longer creates shareholder value," Barrick Chairman and founder Peter Munk told reporters on the sidelines of a gold investment summit in London.

<snip>

ABOUT-TURN FROM PREVIOUS POSITION


On Thursday, Munk had extolled the virtues of hedging by Barrick, which has one of the largest gold hedge books in the industry.


In an address to the conference Munk had said hedging via forward sales was a key factor in funding exploration and development projects.

more

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=568&e=1&u=/nm/minerals_gold_hedging_barrick_dc

(Very weird, this guy takes a 180 degree turn between yesterday and today, why??? What happened that we don't know about?)

[Beetwasher]

1. What Are the Implications and Repercussions of This?

Maybe someone threatened his family?

[Spazito]

3. I am hoping someone will explain this too, I don't know exactly what

it means in the whole picture but a switch like that has to be due to something big, imo.

[UpInArms]

5. here is an explanation of "hedging"

http://www.usagold.com/gildedopinion/HedgingHathaway.html

excerpt:

Hedging limits the upside price swings that the mining industry once depended upon to offset these risk factors. Positioning a risky, capital-intensive endeavor such as gold mining as a spread business, similar to a bank or insurance business model, is ludicrous. In so doing, many producers, and especially the financially weaker ones, have taken on a form of hidden financial leverage due to their inability to generate capital internally or enjoy normal access to capital markets. For them hedging was a bargain with the devil that allowed deferral of difficult operating decisions, thus prolonging a state of limbo which precluded prosperity by diminishing the single variable which could restore financial health, a much higher gold price.

[Spazito]

9. Thank you! The link is very helpful!

I wonder how the probability of higher gold prices will affect the value of the US dollar?

[Beetwasher]

12. So if I read this correctly

It means that this would effect how high gold prices can go? In other words, any caps on the price would be removed?

[Spazito]

15. I am reading it that way as well...

there is another influence on the price of gold that I will be interested in following and that is the sale of gold by various countries" central banks. I understand there is, or soon will be, a multi-national agreement as to when those sales can occur, a schedule for sales.

[54anickel]

13. I think it may not be good news. The Fed is walking a tight-rope now

trying to let the dollar down nice and easy. Depends on how much $ gets put into Gold along with other commodities. There are so many controls on the Gold market these days. Central Banks seem to do their share of manipulizing the value of the green-back as well.
JMHO I am by no means an economic specialist...I'm lucky to balance my checkbook.

[UpInArms]

2. now that Poppy's out of Carlyle

I guess that he has returned to some of his other roots

http://www.davidicke.net/tellthetruth/reststory/bronfmangold.html

In announcing the creation of Barrick Gold Corp.'s international advisory board on May 3, 1995, Barrick Chairman Peter Munk said, "They will be providing strategic advice on geopolitical issues affecting Barrick.'' In fact, they are components of the geopolitical dirty tricks apparatus centered around former President George Bush. The following is a brief profile of key members of Barrick's international advisory board and its board of directors:

George Bush:
serves as "Honorary Senior Adviser.''

Brian Mulroney:
prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993. Mulroney became prime minister after backers of the Nicaraguan Contras helped knock out his competitor, Joe Clark. There were no serious investigations of the `Iran-Contra' Canadian connection. Mulroney sacrificed his political career by talking Canadians into accepting Bush's North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Though Canadian banks benefitted, 350,000 industrial jobs were lost, and Mulroney became the most hated man in Canada. In the 1993 elections, Canadians voted out all but 2 of his party's 169 members of Parliament.

In 1994, Mulroney's phone calls to the Presidents of Chile and Argentina, and the prime minister of China, helped Barrick move into gold mines in those nations. His "advice'' was rewarded with $1.2 million in stock options and $300,000 in fees. Rev. Sun Myung Moon rewarded Mulroney and Bush for their vouching for him in Ibero-America in November 1996. Mulroney, a board member of Archer Daniels Midland, ran ADM's internal "investigation'' of its price-fixing scandal.

Howard H. Baker, Jr.:
(R-Tenn.) served in the U.S. Senate from 1967 to 1985, and was Reagan's chief of staff during 1987-88. He is on many corporate boards and runs a lobbying firm, which includes Barrick among its clients.

Paul G. Desmarais, Sr.:
is the richest man in

Canada, and a member of Her Majesty's Council for Canada. He runs Power Corp. of Canada-- which generates political power. He serves on many boards with Maurice Strong, a top operative of Prince Philip's World Wide Fund for Nature. For example, Desmarais and Strong are Honorary Director and Honorary Chairman, respectively, of the China-Canada Business Council. Desmarais used his contacts in China to win electricity-generating contracts for Power Corp., and to obtain gold concessions for Barrick. Desmarais is part-owner of Europe's largest private TV network, the banking Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, and Belgium's Petrofina oil giant. As a Commander of Belgium's L'Ordre de Leopold II, it seems natural for him to be involved with Barrick in recolonizing the former Belgian Congo.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[Bushfire]

6. Let's not forget the Palast article in the UTNE Reader

Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 1997-2000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation. The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian’s U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.

They could well afford it. In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush-era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could “perfect its patent” on the estimated $10 billion in ore—for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $ 10,000. Eureka!

more...

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=207&row=1

[4dog]

38. The Western Shoshone got the shaft in this deal.

If you will Google on 'Western Shoshone' you will find plenty of links about Native rights and this land deal.

[seemslikeadream]

4. George Bush Sr. gave Barrick $10 billion

in mining rights on US public land citing an 1870's gold mining law during the last days of his presidency.

And Adman Khashoggi gave the money to start Barrick. That's what I read from Greg Palast.

[Bushfire]

7. Great minds think alike

:hi: seemslikeadream

[seemslikeadream]

8. Gee thanks

This story has haunted me since I first read it. So I had to find out as mush as I could about Barrick.
Like this:

As we look back we should have known gold was being accumulated by the elitists. Bush, Mulrooney and Margaret Thatcher's husband, Dennis, are on Barrick's board. They wouldn't have been on there unless something big was in the making. Barrick is very close with Hollinger and Conrad Black. Both Monk of Barrick and Black are very close with Britian's Royal Family. Over the past five years central banks bave been selling 500 to 1,000 tons of gold a year, which was purchased by elitist's and their institutions. Barrick received first right of refusal to mine Bre-X through the good offices of their puppet Suharto. Before it was discovered to be a hoax it was supposed to be the largest gold mine in the world. After the debacle gold prices headed lower. Barrick et al, had to know down the line that gold was headed higher eventually.

http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_99/chapman101999.html

[seemslikeadream]

11. British Paper Sued over Story on Mining Co's Rights Abuses

June 29, 2001 - In retaliation for the investigative story about the finances of the George W. Bush campaign, Barrick Gold Mining of Canada has sued my paper, the Ovserver of London, for libel. The company, which hired the elder Bush after his leaving the White House is charging the newspaper with libel for quoting an Amnesty International report, which alleged that 50 miners might have been buried alive in Tanzania by a company now owned by Barrick.

http://www.corpwatch.org/bulletins/PBD.jsp?articleid=420

[seemslikeadream]

16. War is Golden for the Bush Administration

The opening of a long-delayed civil suit in a London courtroom; a brief buried article on a judical nomination; a fluctuation in the commodities market; three mundane, seemingly-unrelated items in the news last week that combined to give a fleeting glimpse of the ugly reality behind the frantic, diversionary facade of the "civilized world."

The Italian bank BNL was one of BCCI's main tentacles. BNL's Atlanta branch was the primary funnel used by the first Bush Administration to send millions of secret dollars to Saddam for arms purchases, including deadly chemicals and other WMD material supplied by the Chilean arms dealer Cardoen and various politically-connected operators in the US like, weapons merchant Matrix Churchill.

As soon as the BNL case broke, President Bush I moved to throttle the investigation. He appointed lawyers from both Cardoen and Matrix to top Justice Department post--where they supervised the officals investigation their old companies.

Which brings us to the judical appointment. One of the White House aids who unlawfully intervened in the BNL prosecution was a certain factotum named Jay S. ByBee. Last week, said factotum was nominated by the current warmer of the Oval Office seat, George W. Bush, to a place on the federal appeals court--a lifetime sinecure of perks and power. (ByBee was confirmed on March 13,2003)

And the commodities connection? President Pretzel's relentless hissy-fit for war on Iraq has of course goosed the price of gold enormously-- and that's set Bush Family coffers a clinking.
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd02152003.html

[suegeo]

21. Khashoggi

This Khashoggi guy is always up to something shady. You may already know these tidbits about the dude:

--He's a Saudi billionaire, or he may simply be a millionarie by now, but he was once one of the richest men in the world.

--He was one of the reasons the entire Iran-Contra scandal blew open (Remember, before the traitor Ollie North set up his illegal financing scheme, the Saudis financed Ronnie Reagan's contra killers to the tune of some $32 million.)

--He employed Therea LePore (of the Florida botched ballots infamy) on one of his airlines, as a flight attendent. This was reported in Slate, or maybe Salon.

--He had a company (Stock symbol GENI) meltdown right around 9.11.01, leaving some to believe he might have been behind the unusual airline stock buys that we never hear about today. His company meltdown caused the largest brokerage failure in 30 years (MJK Clearing, a part of StockWalk in Minnesota)

--He had "lunch with the chairman" (The Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle) as reported by Sy Hersh (sp?) in the New Yorker mag. This lunch was held in France (?) Perle was whoring for some funds for some money-stealing scheme that Perle was cooking up -- just before or just after -- Bush, Inc.'s unprovoked invasion of Iraq. Global Crossing was mentioned.

On DU version 1, an entire thread was devoted to shining a little light on this Khashoggi creature.

[arcane1]

10. Poppy Bush has a stake in Barrick now too

IIRC

Palast has some info on this

[MetaTrope]

14. Barrick gets its gold from some interesting places

But to each their own.

Edit: To be fair, the problems started only after rebels captured the gold mine.

[seemslikeadream]

17. Billions of Dollars at Stake

American Minerial Fields (AMFI), a consortium based origninally in Hope,Ark.--yes, Bill Clintos's hometown--is a big player in exploiting Congo's mineral wealth. In 1997, just a month before Mobutu fell, it signed contracts with the Kabila-Rwanda-Uganda alliance forces for almost a billion dollars investment in copper, cobalt and zinc mines and processing plants in Kolwezi and Kipushi.

This project is part of the $60 billion so-called National Missle Defense system that George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donalc Rumfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice-President Richard Cheney are pushing so vigorously. Building the space station will require many rare metals found in eastern Congo.

Another big player in the eastern Congo is Barrick Gold Corp., headquartered in Canada. It is the world's second-largest gold producer after Anglo-American of South Africa.

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/kabila1.htm

[seemslikeadream]

20. The Lost World War

The war on Iraq is not the only war in the world and it is not the only war being fought for our material benefit. Western consumers' seemingly insatiable demand for mobile phones, laptops, games consoles and other luxury electronic goods had been fueling violent conflict and killing millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo(formerly Zaire).

The Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC) is possibily the most minerial rich place on Earth - though this has proved a curse to the people of the Congo. The Congo holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium, (the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki werre built using Congolese uranium), and coltan. Coltan, substance made up of columbium and tantalum, is a particularly valuable resource - used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and mirco-capacitors.

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue13/issue13_part3.htm

THREE MILLION LIVES HAVE BEEN LOST SINCE 1998 IN CONGO

[glitch]

23. thank you for this link nt

[seemslikeadream]

25. Barrick Corporation and Cynthia McKinney The Real Reason

The real reason McKinney was trashed.

Was Barrick Gold Mining funding both sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody conflict?

Top human rights investigators had evidence that a mine bought by Barrick in 1999 had in clearing their Tanzanian property three years earlier bulldozed mine shafts burying 50 miners alive.

Tundu Lissu was one of those investigators and McKinney was trying to save his life.

Only one Congressperson demanded hearings on the matter.
In 2001 Cynthia McKinney convened a special congressional panel to explore the role of US covert forces and private interest in Central Africa.

But maybe ther was another reason Andrew Young and Vernon Jordan let McKinney swing, Remember Barrick? Did I mention to you that Andy Young and Vernon Jordan are both on Barrick's payroll? Well, I just did.
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/unitedstates/democracy/700.html.pf

[nannygoat]

24. Anybody read the book, King Leopold's Ghost

by Adam Hochschild? I just started it. It's about the Congo and the slave trade under King Leopold II of Belgium which killed between 5-8 million people. The author's point is that most of us have heard very little about this holocaust and the worldwide movement that happened to stop the slavery trade there in the late 1800s.

The author also mentions an encounter he had while on a trip through the Congo in 1961 and how a CIA agent who had had too much to drink described how Patrice Lumumba--the newly independent country's first prime minister, had been killed a few months earlier--someone the US regarded as a "dangerous leftist troublemaker".

Another event to make Americans proud...

[WillyT]

29. Try 'King Leopold's Soliloquy' By Mark Twain !!!

That book will kick your ass up around your shoulders!

Twain went to the Congo reluctantly at the urging of others who were worried about the human rights abuses going on over there. He wrote this book, and pissed off the powers that be mightily! This was a holocaust we were never intended to know about.

I suggest everyone read it.

:grr:

[seemslikeadream]

31. Thanks

I have the complete works of Twain, but have not read King Leopold. I'm going to look for it now.

[slaveplanet]

27. Didn't the Genocidal Rwandan PAR Hutu

pullout to Congo/Zaire under French protection in the summer of 94'. How do they fit into the mix? And perhaps the UN decision that let the killing go on has more to it than meets the eye?Any More on Clinton's involvement?

[seemslikeadream]

44. Indeed, diamonds are Bill Clinton's best friend

Throughout his tenure in the White House, Clinton personally profited at profound human loss of life from Congo connections tried and true. For years influential with the brutal Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese-Seko, Cia operative Lawence Devlin used his Congo network to access diamonds and cobalt for Clintonite diamond kingpins Michael McMurrough, Jean Raymond-Bouelle, Maurice and Leon Templesman, and their companies: American Mineral Fields International (AMFI) headquatered in Hope, Arkansas in 1995; and Lazare Kaplan International.

Counted among Barrick directors is Brian Mulroney, former Prime Minister of Canada. Another is Edward Neys, former US Ambassador to Canada and chairman of Burson-Marsteller one of the world's largest and most secretive public relations firms.

Burson-Marsteller is a billion-dollar company that covers for organized crime. They are in the business of "perception management" the latter day term for propaganda. They covered for the Nigerian oil barons and Shell Oil during the Biafran War. They covered for Babcock & Wilcox and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the Three Mile Island nuclear melted down and irradiated the American landscape. They managed the public and their perceptions as the Exxon Valdez supertanker greased the Alaskan wilderness with black crude. Burson-Marsteller covered for Union Carbide after the gas massacre in Bhopal in 1984. Burson-Marsteller has run public relations campaigns to shield extensive, state-orchestrated terror by the "governments" of Argentina, Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Singapore.

http://www.audarya-fellowship.com/showflat/cat/WorldNews/48471/3/collapsed/5/o/1

[bemildred]

18. Does this mean Poppy has given up on the Russian oil?

[seemslikeadream]

22. Barrick boosts Russian exposure

The 31.7% stake in Alternative Investment Market-listed Highland Gold, formerly Harmony Gold, has been picked up by Barrick Gold and an international group of institutional investors.

Barrick has acquired 10% of the equity from the placing and Highland Gold has also conditionally agreed to issue a further 29.58 million shares at the placement price of 235p per share.

This would give Barrick in total 29% stake in Highland Gold

"This agreement with Barrick marks a new phase in the progress of Highland Gold and we are excited about the prospects of developing a relationship with them in Russia."

http://www.miningnews.net/storyview.asp?storyid=19417§ionsource=c18

[bemildred]

30. Thnx. nt

[pescao]

39. don't forget Gustavo Cisneros is on board

http://www.petroleumworld.com/issues513.htm

[seemslikeadream]

40. Nice guy, Cisneros

President Hugo Chavez has accused Venevision TV owner Gustavo Cisneros of being a fascist and of conspiring to remove the President from power, he has said he will not give up until Hugo Chavez is removed from office or is dead.
www.indybay.org/news/2003/01/1560075.php

[bemildred]

43. Euuuuwwwwww...

Had not seen that.

[teryang]

19. When the price of gold is going up

...putting foward contracts is not a good idea. Of course one mostly gets to see this in hindsight. I think Barrick's profit margin is being held back now that the lid has partially come off the price of gold. American Anglo manipulation of the gold markets had been very successful until recently. Now that many of the banking class machinations may be played out in terms of world market currency movements, gold's glitter is looking a lot brighter. Real estate has been a better tangible investment over the long haul.

[grasswire]

26. all of this explains...

...why life is so cheap to the Bushies. What does the life of a GI or a poor slob in Texas' death row mean in the grand scale of their adventures? What does it matter if a grandmother has to choose between diabetes meds and dinner? What does it matter if the brown children of the colonias in Texas have to dig a hole in the dirt to defecate? What does it even matter if 200,000 people march in the street, or a million sign a petition?

We are but pixels. And now they've lined up everything in their favor. And just yesterday we learned that Tommy Franks predicts a MILITARY GOVERNMENT in America.

And people wonder why George smirks.

[teryang]

36. Didn't read about the Franks statement

Frank Gaffney, one of the neo-con bone head security "experts," ran an analysis on his web site about two years ago concerning the need to prepare the US Armed Forces to suppress riots and rebellion in US urban centers.

His contention was that economic and social tensions would become so great that violent uprisings against the government in US cities were to be expected and that posse comitatus and outmoded ideas that the armed forces shouldn't be used for domestic law enforcement were passe.

I came across this report (evidently prepared as advice for the Pentagon) before I knew who he was and thought gee this guy is a nazi fruitcake! They a few months later in the fraudulent tv buildup to war, I saw him being interviewed on cable, as an "expert" on security advocating war on Iraq. I went back to his web site then to save the extremist vision of civil war in our cities. It was gone of course. Couldn't find it on the google cache, either. The fact that this guy is taken seriously or that people like Pipes or Perle are for that matter scares me more than I care to admit.

[sandnsea]

42. Those are power and control issues

What they use to sway voters. They obviously don't care about spending money, look at our deficit and the money that is knowingly thrown into projects that are total wastes of money. A cheap labor market is convenient, but if it was necessary to throw a little money at that labor market in order to keep their grander schemes going, they'd do it happily. It's all about complete and total control of money and resources that make money. It's hard to comprehend people that actually live their lives to that end, but nothing else explains the bizarre things that are done.

[PurityOfEssence]

47. "We are but pixels"; oh how eloquently put

History teaches us that this flagrant inhumanity is nothing new in the ongoing commodification of those of inferior economic classes, but history can help little as we head into truly uncharted territory: a net energy dropoff, environmental degradation, overpopulation and the availability of truly frightening weapons.

You put this beautifully, but it's sort of like musing at the beauty of a rose on the other side of the barbed wire. Thanks, though.

[tom_paine]

28. kick

[wherewingstakedream]

32. kick

:kick:

[wherewingstakedream]

33. kick

:kick:

[wherewingstakedream]

34. kick

:kick:

[suegeo]

35. Another kick

[aquart]

37. Kick

[kimchi]

41. Kick!

One for the bookmarks.

[loudsue]

45. Thanks for kicking this....I hadn't seen it.

My intuition is telling me that uncapped gold prices are going to hurt world currencies that are not pegged to gold. I'm not a financial wizard, by any stretch of the imagination. But something in my gut tells me something with big economic implications is about to go down, globally, in the next few months.

:tinfoilhat: A global GOLDfoil hat here. Wondering if shrubs visit w/ the Queen didn't have some sobering moments of commiseration.... if the chimp managed to remain sober at all??!! Maybe it was just a celebratory meeting of the monied members of the global elite.

Why do I have a really nasty feeling about this?

:kick::kick:

[lostnfound]

46. kick n/t