The management of water resources at Goldcorp's (GG) Penasquito mine in Mexico is far from the only challenge facing the company at the mine, as a court in the Mexican state of Zacatecas has voided the lease on some of the land, while "ordering the territory be returned to the farmers."
Of the 23,000 acres included in the gold mine, approximately 1,483 acres have been ordered to be returned to the farmers.
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The last time gold was as hated as it is today was in October 2008, and it was thought at that time by investors we were unlikely to see an opportunity to buy gold stocks like that again in our lifetimes. We were wrong. Gold today is more undervalued than it was at that time, a time when 12 months later gold stocks had jumped 200 percent.
In John Doody's May 1 issue of his Gold Stock Analyst letter, it was noted that gold stocks were undervalued by 44 percent. They've fallen even more since that time, making them even further undervalued.
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An article at CNBC was recently run suggesting gold may have hit a floor, citing HSBC, which offers three reasons why that may be the case, including retail demand from India and China, slowdown in exchange-traded fund (ETF) gold liquidation, and continued acquisition of gold by central banks around the world.
In-depth look at how physical gold will affect prices.
The conservative Swiss People's Party (SVP) has garnered enough signatures concerning a ban on the selling of gold reserves in the country to force a referendum on the issue.
Called "Save our Swiss Gold," the proposal would disallow the central bank of Switzerland from selling any of the gold it holds in reserve, as well as keeping a minimum of 20 percent of its assets in gold.
"Gold reserves aren't speculative objects for the SNB or politicians. They belong to the people," said SVP politician Luzi Stamm.
During 2007 through 2008 the Swiss National Bank (SNB) sold about 250 tons of gold, resulting in an outcry from citizens. While promising it won't sell any more of its gold holdings (laughter in the background), it still is threatened by the idea of rules being put into place which would hinder it from taking steps in shaping the monetary policy of the nation.
SNB spokesman Walter Meier said this: "The SNB has considerable concerns, in particular of a monetary policy nature, about the initiative's demands."
Of course if the SNB had no intention of reneging on its promise, it makes one wonder why it is it's concerned about the demands of the SVP.
Near the close of 2012 the SNB had a total of 1,040 tons of gold in reserve. That equaled about 50.8 billion ($54 billion) Swiss francs at the time.
Another provision of the initiative is that the Swiss National Bank must store all of its gold reserves within the borders of the country.
At this time it is alleged most Swiss gold is stored in the country, although some is stored in other parts of the world in light of crisis scenarios envisioned by the bank.
I wonder if Swiss citizens look at Germany's demand for the repatriation of its gold from America, which it'll have to wait years to get.
In what was undoubtedly a plant in the latest notes from the Fed meeting, along with the so-called big beat in jobs creation, it makes you wonder why the price of gold, and silver for that matter, shrugged off the news and not only held steady, but moved up a little.
The obvious reason is investors know that this is a bunch of nonsense. The Federal Reserve isn't going to stop printing money, and the jobs number were so fudged it's almost a certainty that they will be downwardly revised; probably in a big way.
Concerning the Fed notes, that was an attempt to keep investors in gold and silver at bay while the central bank kept its loose money policy in play. While those in the know understand the ploy, the mainstream financial media are now using the comments in the notes as talking points, repeating the mantra of the possibility of the Fed stopping its stimulus strategy. This is all orchestrated, again, for the purpose of planting uncertainty in the minds of investors, whom the Fed and government want to have believe the economy is growing at a strong pace.
Part of this is for the reason of manipulating commodity prices so inflation doesn't overwhelm the country in an obvious way, in which even the uninitiated could be confused as to whether or not it was economic weakness and the consequences of the failing Keynesian monetary policy implemented by the central bank.
So hopefully most of you reading this won't believe for a moment that the Fed is going to stop stimulating. It's not going to happen any time soon, and that can be absolutely counted on, no matter what tactics are used and what the mainstream media reports. Neither can be trusted in these matters.
As for the jobless numbers, they're somewhat laughable.
Dave Lutz, the head of exchange-traded fund trading and strategy at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore, and one of a number of experts who put the numbers in perspective, said, "Today’s report showed the so-called participation rate, or the percentage of working-age people in the labor force, slipped to 63.5 percent, the lowest since 1981."
Another say this:
According to the household survey (on which the unemployment rate is based) the economy added a healthy 170,000 jobs. However, a whopping 446,000 of those jobs were part-time jobs. Simply put, the economy shed 276,000 full-time jobs.
The BLS labeled those 446,000 part-time jobs as "voluntary". I am not so sure.
A Gallup Survey yesterday on Jobs show the percentage of workers working part time but wanting full-time work was 10.1% in February, an increase from 9.6% in January, and the highest rate measured since January 2012.
Gallup notes "Although fewer people are unemployed now than a year ago, they are not migrating to full-time jobs for an employer. In fact, fewer Americans are working full-time for an employer than were doing so a year ago, and more Americans are working part time. Although part-time work is clearly better than no work at all, these are not the types of good jobs that millions of Americans are still searching for."
The propaganda has turned openly laughable. On the popular major financial news networks, the recent decline in the so-called Gold price has prompted quite the parade of clowns on the ship of fools to trumpet nonsense.
The widely published and posted Gold price is dominated by futures contracts, and thus as corrupted as meaningless. The entire global financial structure is crumbling before our eyes.
The gang of central bankers has applied their monetary policy for four and a half years since the implosion of Lehman, Fannie Mae, and AIG. The first is dead, while the second has transformed into a sanctioned subprime lender again, and the latter is a sinkhole.
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Arizona state senators voted to allow gold and silver to be used as legal tender in the state.
Privately minted gold and silver will now be given the same authority and status as paper money in Arizona. That means the residents of Arizona will be able to pay their bills within the state boundaries using the two precious metals.
Along with Arizona, other states have already implemented or are looking into similar proposals. While the constitution doesn't allow states to create their own currencies, there is nothing to suggest a state can't allow coins minted by private companies to be used as legal tender.
There was some additional drama in the process of confirming the bill, which came of course from a Democrat, this one being someone named Sen. Steve Farley from Tucson,
I will hand him this, he got it right on when he attacked the approval of the proposal, seeing how it makes the failing U.S. dollar look. Farley said, "I believe the bill itself ridicules our financial system." Right you are Steve. It does all of that for sure.
What he's of course referring to is the implementation of an alternative underscores the disastrous and monstrous policies of the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke, where they work together to debase the currency in the name of saving the economy.
The inclusion of gold and silver as a currency, every day points to these failed policies and teaches those willing to listen that Keynesianism is dead, and printing or digitizing endless amounts of dollars to prop up an economic system that should be allowed to flush itself out so it can be really healed, is what people like this Farley oppose.
In order to work out the details of the initiative, the effective date to implement gold and silver as legal tender in Arizona was pushed out till after the 2014 legislative session.
After a couple of days of gold futures surging, investors decided to take some profits off of the table, as gold for April delivery dropped $19.80, or 1.2 percent, to close at $1,595.70 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Some media outlets suggested it was positive macroeconomic data out of the U.S. and Europe that resulted in the downturn, but that's doubtful after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated he has no intention of stopping stimulus measures, which of course confirms the extreme fragile global and American economy.
Another thing is any investor that believes in any way that Europe has anything positive economically to base an investing decision upon, is setting themselves up for failure, as Europe is and will continue to be an economic basket case no matter what positive spin the financial media attempt to put on it.
For example, some news reports said gold futures fell because Italian political parties are starting to work on the possibility of forming a government. So what? Italy is working on forming a government. That's meaningless. Italy is going to have a government no matter what the news reports say. So the idea is put forward that they are working on it is considered news and a reason for gold investors to sell. That would mean gold investors bought gold because there were concerns over whether or not Italy would form a government. It's irrelevant of course.
Britain also continues to be an economically challenged area, where its economy contracted by 0.3 percent from the last quarter.
The only positive economic news in the United States continues to be the housing sector, where pending home sales in January were up a little more than expected. Other than that, most of the economic news in America is dismal.
Durable goods orders were reported as having fallen in January, a nod towards extremely weak manufacturing sector. Durable goods orders in the U.S. plunged 5.2 percent last month, where economists were looking for a drop of about 4.0 percent.
As for currencies, the euro U.S. dollar rose to $1.3101. The dollar index, which measures the U.S. dollar against a basket of currencies, was also down on the day.
Gold could be about to soar after recent heavy downward pressure, based upon the probability the huge number of shorts will be forced to cover their positions, resulting in a huge, upward move in the yellow metal.
Gene Arensberg, editor of the Got Gold Report, noted this in an email:
“The producer merchants, the category that includes the natural hedgers, are at their lowest net short position since 2008 at the same time that the managed money traders, the funds, are record short and at their lowest net long position since Nov. 18, 2008.
“I have not seen the COT ‘rubber bands’ so over-stretched in opposite directions as they are now,” Arensberg said, noting that extreme lows for the managed money net long positions are “usually associated with important bottoms for the price of gold.”
Arensberg added that together, funds have slashed their long gold positions by almost 36 percent to a 42,810 contract net long position.
It is also thought the short position is much larger because this data only represents Tuesday of last week.
Gold for April delivery settled Monday at $1,586.60 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, up $13.80, or 0.9%. That's the largest one-day move for gold futures in February.
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