HERE, WE CAN REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Don’t Buy Fool’s Gold
Would we give up our gold chains to save Glacier National Park, Bristol Bay, Cabinet Mountains Wilderness and many other public treasures?
By Bill Schneider, 12-24-09
Editor’s Note: Wild Bill is off-duty for a couple of weeks. This is a re-posting of a popular column originally posted early last year (March 13, 2008).
During a bout of insomnia last night, I watched CNBC to see if any of the talking financial heads thought my retirement funds might stop disappearing, and there it was. Perhaps the biggest environmental, wildlife habitat and water quality problem we don’t like to discuss. Yes, it’s touchy, but that has never stopped me, so why start now.
We all need to stop buying fool’s gold.
That night gold hit $1,000 per ounce (up to over $1,200 per ounce in early December 2009); silver over $20, and most other metals at record levels. All this translates into more mines, large and small, new or re-opened or expanded, everywhere on our public lands. Mining companies have a dismal record of leaving environmental destruction and economic despair in their wake--poisoned watersheds, massive eyesores on scenic mountainsides, networks of roads into areas where there would otherwise be none, broken communities, and thousands of patented mining claims converted into private wilderness cabins, formerly public land now, usually, posted.
And with the price of gold over $1,000 per ounce and with the archaic Mining Law of 1872 still promoting public land giveaway and devastation, something needs to be done.
We could repeal the 135-year law, of course, as I’ve advocated this several times, but there’s also something we as individuals can do, something I haven’t advocated yet. And it seems like a simple solution. Let’s stop buying gold. Even at $1,000 per ounce, it’s fool’s gold.
The real gold is the wildlife, the drinkable streams, the invisible air, and the essence of wildness we’re losing from our society. That’s the 24-karat gold.
And the fool’s gold is robbing us of our real gold.
If we really needed it, this would be a different commentary. We can live without fool’s gold and not even miss it. But I’m not sure we can live without the real gold. I sure don’t want to try.
A small percentage of the total gold mined goes for legitimate industrial uses, but the vast majority (about 85 percent) goes to make gold jewelry and most of the rest is locked away in vaults as an investment, a hedge against inflation or to prop up currency.
So if we care about protecting public lands, we should stop buying fool’s gold. I’m positive we can survive without gold chains and earrings, and we have plethora of investment alternatives to buying gold, so there is no need for the vast majority of the gold we mine.
Clean water should be more valuable than gold because we can’t live without it, but it’s almost free in comparison. Go figure.
I’ve hardly a pillar of economic science, but I’m confident that if people stop buying fool’s gold (and silver, platinum, et al), prices will go down, which is precisely what we want to happen.
With falling prices, new mines won’t “pencil out.” To keep prices from falling even more, mining companies will mothball plans for new mines and perhaps close or downsize some we have. Even the weekend prospector with that portable sluice box will be less anxious to be out digging up public streambeds and not cleaning up his or her mess, which is the basic “business plan” for all miners, large and small, leaving reclamation to the taxpayers to pay--even those of us who have already decided to stop promoting the destruction of public lands by not buying gold jewelry.
I’ve recently written about two great examples, the Rock Creek Mine in the congressionally designated Cabinet Mountains Wilderness in western Montana and the massive Pebble Mine in Alaska, which threatens nature’s salmon factory, Bristol Bay. To partially cover this ongoing tragedy, I could write another one today about the big gold strike on the northwestern corner of Glacier National Park, which is certainly the start of years of debate on whether the park is more important than more fool’s gold we don’t need. In fact, I’d have to write hundreds more articles, all with the same bottom line--we’re giving up the real gold for the fool’s gold.
You’ve heard this before, but this time I hope it sticks: Let’s be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Footnote: For more of my articles on hard rock mining, go to The Mining Law Chronology.
[End of article]The hysteria over gold is something to behold. Look out for being the last guy to buy before the fall. Best to just look for 'diamonds in the rough' or in the wilderness. They are free.
Comment By Larry Kralj, Environmental Rangers!, 3-13-08Gold's OK, but dirt is better than gold! If you want to invest, buy yourself a nice chunk of Montana and SIT ON IT! There you go. My financial advice free of charge. SIT ON IT, pal! And some day, you'll be a gazillionaire!
Seriously, though, I really do suggest investing in land for the right purposes, if for nothing else but to protect. 'Course, Bill is right on with his comments.
Ah yes, fool's gold. Pyrite is no where near the reality of that moniker as those who pursue with abandon the attainment of the shiny metal.
The experienced know. Prices will drop like a politicians promises at the very moment the 'fool' dumps all he has in it.
History's path is littered with the legions of loss from every gold rush in existence; yesterday and today. Interest is never sparked in when the purchase is right. The fever only begins when the cost of entry is far more dangerous than wise.
That less than 1% of investors actually retain the gleam of their folly, is testament to the 'foolishness' the aurum of old creates.
Only the purveyors of the lurid dream are the ones to profit. The short list includes lawyers, politicians and those other unscrupulous dealers who seek to wrangle what control remains to protect the fragile lands in the scoop-scope in search of plunder.
My grandmother often compared the value of biting a gold coin and a good steak as a "...no contest action." Her proverb metaphor was not lost on me, even at my young age.
If we bite for the gold and loose the irreplaceable elements of the natural resource our loss will be - as the poets write: inconsolable.
Even if we are too blinded by the glitter today. Our hindsight - we should keep in mind - tends toward 20/20 after-the-fact. But then again ... 20/20 Hindsight and $2.05 will get you a venti bold at Starbucks: at least until black gold hits $120.
O'fieldstream
Dot-com, techy stocks. Flipping houses. Llamas, ostriches, emus, yaks, chinchillas. Roseville, Weller. Beanie Babies. Oak furniture. Shabby chic. Fiber optic cable companies. There is no end to hysteria, nor will there ever be. There is always someone to take the money and someone to let it go.
But, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater in the mining deal. I absolutely oppose mining where it impacts vast watersheds and the only intact salmon runs left in the world. Or in wilderness now protected. However, to keep our country viable, we do need minerals. We do have to mine those materials that are essential to our economic well being.
I have a friend who dabbles in mining around the world. He is a penny stock kinda guy who does all right for himself. He told me last month that China has 80% of the working geologists in the world. In particular, China is the destination of 75% of the tungsten in the world, has now forbidden export from China of tungsten, and with prospects out there now, will soon have 80
% of the tungsten. The rest of the world will have to exist on the other 20% available. That is not a good economic position for all but China. There are many minerals that we need to harden steel to make the machines that make the goods, transport the goods, to consumers. Vital and strategic. Tungsten is one. Nickel another. I often proposed that hydro power excess in high water times should go into aluminum, where most of the expense is the energy needed to extract it from bauxite. Aluminum ingots are congealed hydro power, and bankable. But our economy does not have those kinds of nationalized ideas yet. I do see them coming, and not all are "a good thing," Martha.
I could give a damn if Khalid has a gold chain or Ling Ng has a gold horde, or if Tiffany has to melt old silver to make new. Electronics can be salvaged for the precious metals they contain. Much of the steel now used is recycled material. But there are still minerals that are needed as catalysts, hardeners, for changes in nobility, for carriers of electricity. We have to have them to run the vaunted technical economy that is so trumpeted as clean, high wage, and green. Green mining might be an oxymoronic statement to some, but without it there is no green in some areas, there is no catalytic convertor for the auto without platinum.
I agree with you Bill, that mining excesses are bad for all, but no mining is not an option. Again, we have to protect the strategic interests of the country, if that is possible in a country in such political disarray as ours. Zealots abound, and radical is chic. I can see the hair getting longer, the clothes drabber, the eyeglasses more frumpy, the shoes more like jack boots. Sometimes urban tv news looks like the movie Cabaret.
In a deal like Pebble, the govt should give the "owners" or "prospectors" some sort of right to exploit when the govt deems it needed and necessary to our national defense or survival. They have the right to profit at that time. A chit, as it were, for that place. A title to the mineral rights, but not the abiltiy to operate without a clear and present national need imperative arrived at by recognition by Congress and signed by the President. A stockpile of opportunity to be exploited only as the last resort.
The value of gold will always be with us as it is portable wealth, recognized the world over. Poor people understand, and the rich also. It is disaster money. It is survival money. It buys your very life, perhaps. The currency of despair. And I suppose its value at this time represents an undercurrent of economic fear across the world. That, not the mining of it, is the real danger to the world. The very idea that gold has appreciated so much in value should scare the crap out of thinking people. That kind of unrest, distrust in banks and currencies, seems to go hand in hand with great loss of life, great dislocations, in the near future.
You need more readership in India. Increasing wealth and their appetite for gold jewelry is driving global demand, I hear. Of course, gold bugs driving the price into 4 digits will help throttle consumption, too.
If not buying is a good thing, would selling be even better? Am I helping the environment (as well as my budget) if I round up all the bits of gold around the house and cash it in?
I guess the problem is that sellers need buyers, though. "Don't buy virgin gold."
Or, for girls in India, "virgins, don't buy gold."
Comment By jwscotch, 3-13-08Good time to be a mortician (gold fillings)...always wondered about that when my mother died in '90.
China is also buying all the oil futures they can, combined with our debt which they own...they're about to own us!
Check out the horsefarmer in Romania who managed to derail the open cyanide leach pits that transnational gold mines bring with them. He turned to the 'net. So far, he's holding his own.
The smallfarmersjournal.com values horse powered farming above greed, corporations, industrial farming and oil-based enterprises.
Me? I remember the Romanian guy walking alongside his horse drawn wagon, telling an interviewer that all the wealth in the world could not buy his way of life.
Here here.
Right, pass an unworkable reform and our minerals prices will REALLY skyrocket, to the point where they are felt in every product. I don't wear gold, don't like it except in fillings (back teeth only, please) and electronics...and cool ski goggles.
As for useless jewelry, I remember few years back when Babbitt came to Great Falls for his Breaks dog and pony. I enjoyed seeing Gloria Flora take her star turn. My enjoyment wasn't from listening, but from looking at an anti-minerals advocate who had enough silver and turquoise adornment to keep Idaho's old Silver Valley booming for a month.
Ha! Gold, schmold. I own WATER RIGHTS! Gold is merely a drop in the bucket, literally, to what my water is worth. Right now in oh, say CO, NV, AZ...I can get more per ounce....
Comment By Lance Olsen, 3-14-08The price of gold is an index of anxiety -- the higher the price, the greater the anxiety about economic trends. Not that we need to check the price of gold to get a picture of economic dread, but it's as quick and as useful a measure as The Economist's Big Mac Index.
But the perception of gold as a "safe" refuge in troubled times is a bit of a mystery when major trends of energy and climate portend changes that no number of nuggets can divert.
Mokie, I like your thinking.
I have always avoided gold, and the gold sector, as a matter of principle. It serves no useful function beyond being ornamental and somewhat rare.
So why is polysilicon not as valued as gold (polysilicon is "purified" sand used in computer chips and solar panels)? Why is water, in its relative rarity of "potable quality" or even termed "fresh water", not as valued (traded in the same realm as gold)? I mean, even uranium, which presents at least as significant cost to the environment as gold (mining/refining/"recycling"/disposal after use/potential weapons use), holds more value for actual energy production than gold presents.
Silver? There are so many things that have tangible value, why does gold always get a spotlight when credit and paper money are less valued? Because it is pretty... and we always like shiny things. Oh, and pirates. We like pirates.
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Comment By mike baitel, 8-01-09Dear sir/madam,
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bullion gold bar, gold dust,precious stone,metals scrap,D2,JP54,
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Firstly , how lovely to see the obnoxious Spam postings creeping into the forums, especially from "Mike" Baitel offering to sell us all gold goodies. On Christmas Day no less.
Then there's Glenn Beck , who bankrolls his vaunted slot on Fox with ads from gold sellers. Beck then rabidly advises his listeners to buy gold as a hedge against Obamanomics . No conflict of interest there or any separation of editorial and advertising...exactly what we've come to expect from Fox.
There are ads currently running on cable channels advertising a gold clad Buffalo Nickel knockoff for only $ 20.00 ( Limit 5 ) , claiming this would be a fifty dollar value. The gold cladding on the nickel is stated to be 30 milligrams. That's right...0.03 grams of gold on a 'coin ' that could be stamped from any other metal but is probably a zinc alloy.
How much is 30 milligrams of pure gold worth at the moment ? Do the math . I used the $ 1200 per Troy Ounce figure. One gram of 24k gold is worth $ 42.17 , and 0.03 of that is---ta da!--- $ 1.26. A buck and a quarter. With stamping costs and base metal , it probably cost all of $ 1.40 to make that $ 20.00 coin offered to you gullible TV viewers at such a " special " price. Limit five per customer, and you must act in the next five days due to the volatility in the price of gold. ( They don't seem to tell you the markup is 1333 percent, and it's not even a real coin. )
Gold as a wealth standard and hedge against other economic factors is a retired notion. It seved us well till the mid-20thc entury , but in this age of electronic funds transactions and made up money , Gold is old fashioned and artifically valued. My advice: Don't bank on it.
And Skinner, the 1872 Hardrock Mining Act needs reform. It is an awful law, reeking of robber baron and robbery of public resources. Long overdue reform can and will be workable, affordable, and won't impinge your precious redneck ways in the least. Our entire need for gold as a technical metal can be met by recycling frivolous gold. So take your eyes off the shiny stuff. Gold is only worth what greedy bass-terds say it's worth . Speculation is a sin. And by the way , one small asteroid saturated with precious metal dragged into low earth orbit will totally deflate the market of precious metals worldwide in one swoop. All the gold in the world can fit in a cube 55 feet on a side. Really. I await the arrival of that asteroid minestock with great glee.
You shouldn't be so concerned about gold...there are other metals far more valuable and strategic...Gallium, the Rare Earth metals such as Gadolinium, Dysprosium, Neodymium, Europium, Ytterbium, and the likes, without which you can't play Blu-Ray disks or burn CD's, among other usefulnesses. ( Let's hope we can find a manageable asteroid full of THOSE ).
If you really want to see the vanity of Gold, visit China or Southeast Asia or India. You'll be shocked at the epidemic of gold disease. The lust for gold for centuries has been the secondmost harmful agent against human civilization , neck and neck with religion. The two often travelled together with the likes of Cortez, Pizzaro, Grijalva and their Conquistadore ilk on behalf of the Spanish Crown, to name but a few off the tip of my finger.
Gold is wickedly useful stuff, but the desire of it needs to be tempered.
Stop the Rock Creek Mine
No mining in the Cabinets Wilderness
Stop the Pebble Mine and the mine near Glacier we dont need em.
Tester supports drilling in the Cabinets Wilderness
Go figure.
The currency of knowledge is based on rare metals. The ability to create, store, and send knowledge is on the backs of miners and those willing to prospect and develop rare earth mines. Demand drives consumption, and consumption drives price. The good ole USA can drop out of the minerals exploration and mining on our land, but that does not in anyway stop it worldwide. SE Asian islands are being probed and explored every day beneath the tropical rainforest canopy, but world mining interests, and the kind of minerals being found have great value in the world of knowledge creation, storage and dissemination. Like it or not, H-P, Oracle, Apple, IBM, ad nauseum, drive the demand for precious metals and the mining to extract them. Even to the clays that coat the papers of those beautiful coffee table books and calendars the likes of the Sierra Club produce to gain the money to stop mining, come from mining.
I read the Vanity Fair story on GoldmanSachs this month, and when you examine what they are and what the world of wealth is about, Heller had it so RIGHT with Milo Minderbinder and "bidness" as it is called in Texas, and how the economics of the world is totally lacking in social, environmental and moral consciousness and direction. Greed drives the process. Including the election of Obama. The money from public employee unions is about their wages, benefits, and pensions, and it all went to Obama. The greed of the Government Class is no better or worse than the greed of GoldmanSachs, and both my Governor in Oregon and Obama have given public employee raises in a bad ass recession, a time of declining tax revenues to keep the schoolhouse door open, the potholes filled, and a time of much less need for regulators as there are fewer to regulate in the private sector. Far fewer. Nothing makes sense in this Milo Minderbinder world of today.
Bearbait, you can rightfully defend mining, but not the 1872 Mining Law. Mining provides; the 1872 Mining Law takes, like a serial rapist and pimper.
We can do it better.
I can defend it to death, really, when you take it in comparison to having all the money go to the US Govt in excess royalties and overbearing regulations, which would bollox the whole process. The US Congress was VERY suspicious of Government gaining control of natural resources, especially on public lands that were supposed to be disposed of and were not. Independent of Congress, the Executive Branch could control its finances with the income from extracting resources from the public domain. The 1870s Congress intentionally made it so private interests profited from mineral exploration, and the government would get their share in tariffs and taxes as needed. It was AFTER this Mining Act that we got into international excursions of war, and it was the availability of copper, lead, horse flesh, sheep and cattle, timber and lumber, that powered the US military's ability to respond outside our borders. And that went on even into the uranium era, and now precious metals are again worth more than our currency. The private sector made money, and paid taxes on the incomes of the corporations and the employees, all of which has to be distributed by the Congress in the budget process by the public process of taxation. No subterfuge and back door financing by means of the Executive Branch charging fees through the agencies under the WhiteHouse management.
Of course, if you carefully look at how America is run today, you would discover that Congress through tax law for trusts, foundations and charitable giving, has circumvented the public process of funding natural resource management with a quasi government running parallel to Congress with its own income stream of tax forgiven money, Government contracting, the Equal Access to Justice Act attorney fees of more than a billion dollars a year to the like of EarthJustice and various other "non profit" law firms who litigate every move the Administration and Agencies make in management of public resources. When you see Senator Baucus set up the Trust for Public Lands and The Nature Conservancy to be the vehicle to funnel Plum Creek Timber's land to the USFS and Montana, for a handsome fee and it all paid for by off shore drilling royalties, you can see the dangers the Congress saw in government acquiring revenues from resource extraction. Graft, corruption, pay backs, campaign financing, sweetheart deals (Weyerhaeuser getting $170+million from the 2009 Farm Bill from Finance Committee Chair Baucus is not a sweetheart deal?---at least Ben Nelson was getting Nebraska relieved of a non-funded mandate on States for Medicaid payments in the Health Reform bill which Montana will pay with what income?), all from royalties on off shore drilling. The reality of what the 19th century Congress knew would happen, has happened.
The reform of the Mining Act is not a wise or prudent action, as human nature, and the nature of our political class has not changed over the last two centuries. If they can steal it, the Congress will. Hey, just look at who has the best health plan and who is exempted from the just passed National Health Reform Act. Baucus, et al, to Montanans: ".....and the horse you rode in on." (in comparison to what Ben Nelson did for Nebraska)...
So I only have to open the Christmas Day newspaper to read of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonus payouts proposed, to executives of government controlled, financed, and regulated lending organizations. Those two organizations are now paying their CEOs $900,000 in salary, and $3,100,000 in bonus and another $3,000,000 in bonus if they meet financial goals, the Congress having lifted their Treasury backing from $400,000,000,000 to NO LIMIT!!!! Quasi Government corporations under Democrat control of Congress, with a super majority in the Senate, Obama in the WhiteHouse, and Goldman Sachs will somehow make another hundred billion on the deal.
Bearbait, you obviously know nothing about how the 1872 Mining Act really works.
Comment By bearbait, 12-25-09You're absolutely right. All I know is what my grandfather told me. He said about every grade of crook imaginable was out to steal whatever they could from the Public Domain, and it was our elected Congress who were the worst of the lot. He spoke from experience from inside the General Land Office, and later the BLM. He retired in 1950. He had spent most of his career after a bad start to his career in Rapid City, SD, in Portland, Eugene, and San Francisco building cases against looters of the Public Domain, and prosecuting them. He uncovered an ongoing plot to claim lands from the PD by Senators from Nebraska and South Dakota, aiding and abetting two meat companies, to feloniously convert public domain to private ranch lands. He took all his evidence to the head of the GLC, a crook from Oregon name Binger Hermann, who simply took his evidence, put it in a trash can and lit a match to it, and told him to go back to South Dakota and don't mess with the people that fund our agency. Grandpa quit. Moved back to Oregon. Then across the river to Washington. He homesteaded in Eastern Oregon, and he went back to work for the GLC as a land commissioner, the GLC who approved homestead patents. He was also a lawyer, and when WWI, a change in weather patterns to cooler and drier, and no more GLC work was available as most of the homesteaders froze out in July, he left and found a job as the investigator and prosecutor of crimes against the public domain. He recovered millions for the US Govt. I have the plaques, letters of commendation. Mostly it was phony mining claims after timber value, timber trespass, and railroads having logged outside their dedicated and patented rights of way.
He told me as a youngster that when you took someone to court for crimes against the Public Domain, you'd better be damned right, absolutely damned right, because there are going to be congressmen, senators, state legislators and local pols trying to get you fired, kicked off the case, whatever. They had vested interests in the interests of the private sector because that is who gave them money to run for office. Remember, this was a time when Oregon, by initiative, banned the railroads from giving fare free passes to politicians. They could be bought for very little money. And, there was no way for them to profit from the Public Domain except by graft, corruption or out right theft. The private sector would make any and all attempts to secure public land and resources by whatever means they could. But for Congress to help them, the pols had to take their money. The Govt. public resources could not pay the pols a dime, legally.
So, the Mining Act has served us for a long time, and both sides seem to be not happy with the daily workings of it today. Possibly that is because it still works. Not as a great funder of the Treasury or Congress, but as a slow, methodical process for putting natural resources into our economic stream. That eggs are broken to make an egg salad sandwich is a given. And land will be disturbed by resource extraction. Stop population growth, in-migration, subsidized child education, care, and the demand for resources will diminish. As it stands right now, it is not whether or not "clean" industry and energy production is wholly dependent upon mining to create the infrastructure of alternative energy and cleaner industries, but in which continent or country the resource extraction will occur. The impact on the environment will be equal or worse depending on the rules governing the extraction. We have just indebted this country to untold trillions in a health care bill nobody knows what all it contains. There is probably a half pound of paper devoted to health care reform, and five pounds of paper devoted to the pork attached to gain votes in the "compromise" that is legislation. Funny how that word is used for enacting legislation and also finding fault with human actions in others, including graft and corruption of those very same legislators..Ask Tiger Woods what the word "compromise" or "compromising" means, and his definition will work for our elected officials in all too many cases. Hear that, Max?
Yes to mining, No to mining in the cabinets Wilderness, and the pebble mine in AK, and the proposed mine near glacier.
Comment By Bernard Shakey, 12-25-09Essentialy
NO to mining in pristine wilderness the USA. The little bit of wild country we still have left is worth infinetely more than the minerals beneath it.
Someone said tumble weed is the next gold and earth worms will cost $3 dollars each.Course Fish and Game plan to raise fees again and again and again,so I think I will collect tumble weed now and I got worms for sale at $4 doolars a doz.Get em while they are hot and cheap...for now.Whats this world commin to.Let all just barter and grow your own.Might have to huh.
Comment By LFEHL, 12-28-09Bearbait has a point in that Congress is now made up of the largest collection of thieves outside of a federal penn...all operating right under our noses, shame on us. We want private industry in this country to make a buck...a fair profit, but we are entitled to better use of our public lands that we all own a piece of, than getting them back with permanent, horrific damage. We can and must demand reform in what damage is done and how it is repaired from mining and other resource extraction.
We must have enough mining to protect our national interests, but if we are destroying our landscape to export for profit, then we should draw a line there. Is that a little protectionist, well too bad. The balance of power is shifting and that great sucking sound you hear is China gobbling up every natural resource around the planet.
vote...vote out the morons in Congress who blatently sell their votes to each other rather than doing the right thing...vote with your dollars and don't buy gold...vote with your dollars and stop buying ever cheaper imported crap you don't need, won't want in a year and only supports economies that fully intend to eventually crush ours.
Clean water, clean air and our un-used land will eventually be the most sought after commodity...if we have the foresight to preserve it now.
Thanks for another great poke at our complacency Bill.
My name is Mike Baitel and I want everyone to know that I am not related to nor do I have any business ties with a company called CROWN INTERNATIONAL...out of the UK.
I HAVE BEEN SUBJECT TO PERSONAL IDENTITY THEFT AND FRAUD. AND HAVE NOTHING TODO WITH THIS COMPANY.
Please send me an email if anyone can assist me in resolving this matter to:
as I want no part of any business having todo with the people of this company
Even in presumably "moderate' cases the idea that you will continue to "own" your hoard of gold - rather than being required to immediately surrender it to the Committee - assumes a continuity of present assumptions which most likely would not hold. IOW, if you have caches of valuable items, they'd better be secret caches, and you'd better be prepared to risk your whole family being hanged for keeping them secret.
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