Member Info for goldgnome

Corruption in Nigeria operates at Olympic gold medal standards. Endemic, Systemic, entrenched. They were taught well.
Despite several "invitations" I have never invested a cent, and never will. Its pleasing to note the legislative changes now in effect in UK, Canada, and USA which places corruption and bribery in the spotlight...but the penalities are still too slight...will make it far more difficult for any company to do business in this country.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/23/contents
Nigeria rans only 146th in the world, but then perhaps someone took some money on this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

regards
the gnome

Do you have any details on the bribery and corruption charges, I can find a few...but lik to get more handle on what is has happened ...

French CEO Charged for Shady Deals in Namibia

Corruption charges against former head of French energy conglomerate Areva in regards to a corporate acquisition have also revealed potential illicit payments made to a Namibian mining company and the country’s president.

One of French energy firm Areva's offices. (Source: Janericloebe, CC BY 3.0)
Sebastian de Montessus was charged in late March along with three other company employees for allegedly overvaluing the 2007 sale of the Canadian mining company UraNim to conceal its falling market value among other shady dealings in Central Africa, according to a report by the AFP, released Saturday.

The charges list embezzlement, bribery of foreign officials, and breach of trust for the group’s conduct in the transaction and related projects in Namibia, South Africa, and the Central African Republic.

The focus of the court is on two contracts in which Areva disbursed almost US$6.9 million in 2009 and 2010 in favor of the Namibian mining group United Africa Group (UAG).

Prosecutors are also seeking answers for monthly payments of USD$10,000 in 2008 and 2009 to current Namibian President Hage Geingob while he was the Minister of Commerce and Industry.

Sébastien de Montessus also allegedly received a transfer of 750,000 euros for facilitating the sale of a luxury yacht.

This is not the first scandal Areva has been implicated in. In March, the company agreed to pay US$554million to a Finnish nuclear company for cost overruns and delays in the construction of a reactor.

I have a particular strong interest in this kind of behaviour, as essentially it robs the poor to pay the rich

best
the gnome

Unprecedented surge in debt-to-GDP ratios ahead: As
social distancing becomes the norm across most mature economies, global recession looms: a recession which would begin with $87 trillion more in global debt than at the onset of the
2008 financial crisis
Global debt across all sectors rose by over $10 trillion in 2019, topping $255 trillion. At over 322% of GDP, global debt is now 40 percentage points ($87 trillion) higher than at the onset of the 2008 financial crisis—a sobering realization as governments worldwide gear up to fight the pandemic.
• With the COVID-19 fiscal response in full swing, the global debt burden is set to rise dramatically in 2020; gross government debt issuance soared to a record high of over $2.1 trillion last month, more than double the 2017-19 average of $0.9 trillion.
https://www.iif.com/Portals/0/Files/content/Research/Global%20Debt%20Monitor_April2020.pdf
Global debt just (2 days ago) hit a record high of 331% of GDP in the first quarter of 2020: IIF...$260 TRILLION.

Overall gross debt issuance hit an “eye-watering” record of $12.5 trillion in the second quarter, compared with a quarterly average of $5.5 trillion in 2019, the IIF said. It noted that 60% of those issues came from governments.

So people dont get confused: Governments create debt by issuing government bonds and bills. Less creditworthy countries sometimes borrow directly from a supranational organization (e.g. the World Bank) or international financial institutions.

good luck punters...we may need a trillion buckets of good luck!

the gnome

Well the world debt HAS CLOCKED IN AT ABOUT 390 TRILLION GIVE OR TAKE 5 TRILLION. ITS ABOUT 340% OF GLOBAL GDP.

ONE OF THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS IS WHO IS OWED THIS DEBT. IF YOU CAN'T ANSWER THIS QUESTION YOU ARE IN THE WRONG CLASS, PROBABLY HAVE NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION. YOU SUSPECT WHO HAS TO PAY THE INTEREST ... and pay it back in tota!

OK, HINT. MONEY IS CREATED NOW OUT OF NOTHING. PERHAPS A GOOD IDEA. PERHAPS A SNEEZE. CANT TRUST GOLD TO SHOW THE WORKINGS OF THE SYSTEM IN A TRANSPARENT MANNER. TRANSPARENCY IS WHAT YOU THE OTHERS SHOULD STRIVE FOR. DEFINITLEY NOT YOU. . BUT OF COURSE IT IS HIGHLY REGULATED AND CAN BE DONE ONLY BY THE .... CENTRAL BANK....WELL THE "MOST CENTRAL" BANK IN THE WORD IS NOT A PHILANTHROPIC ORGANISATION, OWNED BY DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED PEOPLE. BUT RATHER A PRIVATE GROUP OF PERHAPS SIMILARLY MINDED INSTITUTIONS. THE DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT OF 100_+ YEARS AGO WENT BROKE. YOU WOULD SUSPECT WHY (HISTORY DOES REPEAT ESPECIALLY IF ONE DOES NOT LEARN). YOU WOULD SUSPECT OF WHAT THEY NOW WANT..THEIR CAKE AND THEY WANT TO EAT IT AT THE SAME TIME.

GOOD LUCK
THE GNOME ....

Companies are making good coin mining gold in West Africa, and there are some excellent orebodies recently found and more to find. See the discovery and mining of the Fekola deposit in Mali for example. One of the more underexplored areas in the world. However managing a company in French West Africa does require relevant experience and excellent management systems and managers in place.
It would seem to me however that Egypt also is very underexplored with possibly as good as potential endowment, and given that CEY has the management systems, relevant experience and social license in Egypt, that this would be a far better arena to invest their capital than to try and open up new battles in.

So this leaves what to do with the assets in West Africa. An IPO, with in-species distribution to existing share holders?

best
the gnome

Newcrest — up 50% since 13 March
Northern Star Resources — up 70% since 16 March
Alacer Gold Corp — up 129% since 23 March
Oz Minerals — up 67% since 23 March
St Barbara — up 101% since 13 March
Ramelius Resources — up 137% since 13 March

LOTS HAPPENING
Ghana gold explorer Cardinal Resources (ASX: CDV) is now the target of a takeover battle between powerful Russian and Chinese bidders.

London-headquartered — but Russian-controlled — Nord Gold (Nordgold), which has gold interests in Russia, Canada and French Guiana, is offering $0.66 per share in cash to Cardinal shareholders. This offer is 10% higher than the existing $0.60 per share bid from Chinese major Shandong Gold Mining.
Nordgold is controlled by Alexey Mordashov, and his two sons Kirill and Nikita. They own 99.94% of the company.

Cowichan
From what I can see. Capital is an entrepreneurial drilling company which generates good quality free cash flow, principally from its drill and blast ops. They use portion of the drill and blast free cash flow to try and expand into other areas, such as exploration drilling. A point of difference with their business (not unique) is hat thy will provide capital to juniors (selected) on the basis that the capital buys shares and then is used only for exploration drilling, which (of course) Capital provide exclusively. So they channel the money in, get equity in Juniors, and get their money back, plus a bit. They can repeat/top up for the next drill raise, or sell the equity...If you pick the right Junior mngt team you can make a lot of $$

best
the gnome

Continuing on about SP's and broadening somewhat
The world’s most influential PMI, the Institute for Supply Management’s Report on Business (ISM), points to contraction at 47.2, freight volumes are down, year on year, every month for the past two years, and even the most lagging of economic indicators like jobless claims are in a bearish trend moving into the new decade.
As the U.S economy continues to falter, a decline in global economic activity continues to emerge: Germany has narrowly avoided recession after posting -0.2% and 0.1% GDP growth in respective quarters. The Chinese economy has hiccups as financial institutions continue to be bailed out and taken over by authorities, and the U.K narrowly avoided recession despite delaying a “no-deal” Brexit. Whats happening? simply, share prices and stock markets are no longer a barometer for economic fundamentals.
According to a recent FactSet report, the EPS growth of S&P500 companies in 2020 is set to decline by 1.4%. The biggest weighting of the index, Apple, has achieved no increase in earnings growth for over a year. But despite that, its stock price continues to climb higher! Price-earnings (PE) ratios also tell a similar story. The mind-boggling valuations of companies like Square and AMD that sport PE ratios of at least 200 times, remain in high demand and the market still deems them to be cheap. The truth is the stock market is no longer a barometer for the value of companies, instead, its a barometer for liquidity within the financial system, and, right now, there’s an excess supply.To counter the poor global economic data, Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, announced recently that the Fed will continue to prop up markets in 2020 by injecting billions of dollars, daily, into the financial system. And although he insists it’s not QE (quantitative easing), in reality, it’s a repeat of the same process: the rapid re-expansion of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.
The liquidity “Not QE”enables public companies to inflate their earnings, inflating their stock price. By buying their own stock in the open market , this once illegal practice has contributed to some of the biggest stock market bubbles in recent history. It allows any company on the verge of negative earnings to borrow money and buy a part of their company, masking the damage of any short term economic downturn. Then theres politics, and we have a rea estaer as President .. an attraction to ultra-low interest rates such as Trump.. Every time the stock market falls to an unsatisfactory level, the President protests, and the Federal Reserve lowers rates. So the greatest economy ever? is but a euphemism for the highest stock market ever, others would call it a bubble...an economy based on maintaining liquidity to prop up asset prices instead of trying to create real, organic growth. It’s been the status quo for so long that we accept ... good luck all...Reversion to the mean...
the gnome

It is estimated that over the next 20 years, the Baby Boomer generation will transfer approximately
$3.5 trillion in wealth to their children. This will see the biggest intergenerational wealth transfer in
Australia’s history and many of the younger generation will be the main beneficiaries. It has been dubbed
‘the economic tsunami’.
In a study conducted over 20 years by The
Williams Group in the US, 70% of families failed
to successfully transfer their assets from one
generation to the next. The top three reasons
being: lack of family communication, beneficiaries
being inadequately prepared to manage the
inherited wealth, and the absence of a planned
purpose for the family’s wealth. As such, the
common factor highlighted in almost all of the
successful wealth transfers was communication.

Some of the transfer is happening now, and what is happening is that some of the young recipients, put the money into the market, with a flitter and a flutter...sometimes not that wisely, mostly without thoroughly understanding investment in equities and what really happens in the market.
So what seems to be happening now in Oz market, is that the professionals are going to cash, whilst the newbies are coming into equities ...

best
the gnome

Yes interesting SP reaction.
In Oz we see some v unusual action when the Mums, Dads and "locked-ins" engage on a stock. I can see this in some of the reports I get on trading. I don't have access to this info on CEY trading.

regards
the gnome

In Oz the prediction of Coronavirus deaths by some was very high 4 months ago.

"Australia's Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly has said the best case scenario in Australia is to expect about 50,000 deaths as a result of coronavirus, with the worst case scenario sitting about 150,000."
So far 110 have died.

In contrast.
It is estimated that there are over 77,000 hospitalisations of pneumonia each year (Poulos et al. 2014; Medianet 2019). There were 4,269 pneumonia deaths in Australia in 2017, making it the 9th leading cause of death that year (ABS 2018; Medianet 2019).
In Australia, influenza on average causes 1,500 to 3,000 deaths, about 18,000 hospitalisations and 300,000 GP consultations each year.
Alcohol causes nearly 6,000 Australian deaths in one year, cancer responsible for one in three. Almost 6,000 Australians died from alcohol-attributable disease in a single year, about one every 90 minutes, according to new research being released today.

Good grief. These figures are excellent! What an unbelievable myopic market. Have a look at the figure for the FED. Many of the Industrials....As Dylan used to sing, its going to be a HARD rain, and CEY is not going to have a large rain falling on it...

What a dismal market
knows not a lot, time horizon myopic...

best
the Gnome

Prof

The virus matters down south are intriguing, and seem to be lost in a fog of the government and medias (always good money to make in a crisis) own making. Lots of new infections and the latest 3 fatalities?

...the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed that two Victorians have died from COVID-19 since yesterday. The man and woman – both aged in their 80s – died in hospital. The other was in his 90's.

It does make one think about the strategy of crippling the country for 20 years in the future.

best
the gnome.

Prof
Sun you ask? We have been immersed in fog for the last 48 hours ... and beyond that and to the south they are still immersed in viruses. I will stay with the fog!

Yellen is v worried about the next wave of fiscal support ... another concern, as the US government’s debt pile grows ever larger.
“I’m very worried about the degree of fiscal support, which we truly need to keep the recovery going. And I don’t know if that’s going to be there.” !??
The US budget deficit widened to a record-high $US864 billion ($1.2 trillion) last month due to the federal government's extraordinary response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Treasury Department said on Monday (Tuesday AEST).America spent about $US2 trillion more than it took in in tax revenue from April to June alone, and we should be reducing tax to stimulate...
...
Investors are wrong to celebrate the 40 per cent correction in global sharemarkets since March as widespread economic destruction and a "third wave" of infections is still possible, billionaire fund manager and Magellan chairman Hamish Douglass has warned.

Magellan, which manages $97 billion on behalf of retail and institutional investors, has moved to hold about 15 per cent of its portfolio in cash and dumped holdings in high-profile global brands as it reveals its bearish outlook on the global economy's emergence from the coronavirus crisis...and on the back of this bearish sentiment we have a majestic run on Iron Ore and Copper. Something does not add up and I suspect it wont add up much longer...

If Iron Ore stops propping up the moribund Australian Economy, then with Tourism gone, and the Universities teetering on insolvency, we could well end us as a wind swept, barren place at the end of the world!
Perhaps there is more to the fog for 2 days than I think? men

Back to my double malt, yoga and deep meditation

best
the Gnome.

Prof
I reckon that the new mngt will have learnt from the sins of the past mngt, and will be firmly on the "under-promise, over deliver" mantra
Just my guess though
best

the gnome

..... Ms Yellen explained that her “little club” of Fed veterans – including her next door neighbour and predecessor Ben Bernanke, and the former Fed vice chairman Don Cone, who lives two doors down – had been asked by a consultant for advice about whether the Fed would ever lend to municipal governments.
The group’s response was simple: No way. But two days later, the Fed announced it would do just that. Yellen said it was “a line I never thought the Fed would cross”.

But she warned that there are limits to the central bank’s firepower, particularly in risky pockets of financial markets such as high yield debt and emerging markets.
...

But her biggest concern is what will happen to the labour market in the US, where the loss of 20 million jobs hangs heavy over the potential for a recovery.

Yellen says surveys suggesting that 75 per cent of workers expect to get their pre-pandemic job back. But that means a quarter of workers are bracing for employment pain – and Ms Yellen does not expect all of those workers who expect to regain their jobs will be that lucky.

“I worry about the permanent job losses and how those people are going to get re-employed,” she says.

In Australia the Mums, dads and "locked-ins" are providing the push on the equities market, as the professionals head for the door...time to be worried..come September their could be blood in the streets ...and in the market

best
the gnome

Looks like a good start to the new management team, if not a very exciting start. I note the reference to dilution coming under better control for the underground operation, and it reads as they will be in a good position to continue this performance all beit at greater tonnes and less grade in the u/g op.

John "Howard" Bills joined the Company in Q2 as Group Exploration Manager, and this is an excellent move. I think the company has been a bit rudderless in its exploration efforts and to have someone who

1. has been a discoverer
2. has 40 years experience in West Africa
3. has been part of a development team that put the discovery into operation in West Africa

I think it bodes well for turning the West Africa resources into real assets for the company, if not a mine in the next 2-3 years. It is obvious their main hopes are pinned to the assets in Cote I'Voire, and it noticeable that the 3-4 m ounces on Burkina Faso failed to get a mention (again).
By my reckoning there must be about 7-10 m ounces of refractory gold (includes some from the adjacent Hounde belt) in the southern part of gold, and surely that's enough to get some traction/action? Extracting gold from refractory ore has and is being done
https://www.outotec.com/references/robust-low-cost-biox-process-at-fosterville-gold-mine/
Just needs a fresh set of eyes and some innovative thinking?

cheers
The Gnome

The Chinese play the long game very well, unlike the US, with their fire and brimstone and off for anther war on whatever takes their fancy. One thinks that the US foreign policies and actions have burnt their social license, and the chap in charge is just adding more fuel...and providing the world with a clear message that the USA is to be nos 1 (and 2 and 3). His team could have worked on a more subtle and strategic messaging, but that's under the bridge now.

The Chinese game would be to gradually (not to shoot themselves in the foot) par back their US treasuries and $ exposures, and to replace them with a more stable, sustainable and better international currency. No need to rush, the US will shoot themselves in the both feet, which is a lot better than shooting everyone else, say y'all.

Given the Chinese positioning on GOLD, one would not be surprised to see a Chine and GOLD backed international currency emerge in the next 3-5 years.... The IMF and the World Bank have shown that their ship load of academic ideological economists have failed in providing any sustainable development outcomes let alone narrative of note since birth and are clearly in need of a sharp reset (there is that word again). Trumps shown his hand with WHO and the UN is just a bureaucratic bungle after another, and I suspect we know Trumps view on them. RESET
The world needs some better financial structures that deliver a better financial model for development...esp for developing countries. Although some marvel that so many have been lifted out of poverty in the last 70 years, there needs to be a lot more openness and frankness about just what the full report card of the last 70 years has really been, and not forget the serious matters that have been kicked down the road..galaxies of debt, millions of acres of wasted agricultural land running on chemical and mechanical agricultural management practices, astronomical investments in arms and military madness ... etc

So the US booted GOLD pegging of the USD out in 1971...there was not enough gold in the world for what was forseen...the other view would have been that gold is a dead certainty to appreciate wildly and be very obvious a metric of the shenanigan's of the future? and I suspect that gold will again re-appear as a basis for the currency of the future. After it is real, humans still cannot create it nor destroy it (a worry?), and it does appear firmly stuck in our DNA.

We live in interesting times!

best

the gnome

Thanks, the bit I liked, the Gold ETF's doing v well

"..... smashes the first-half record punched back at the height of the financial crisis in 2009. Then gold-backed ETFs witnessed inflows of 646 tonnes at a total US dollar value of $23bn. The value of inflows during the first half of 2020 by comparison stood at $39.5bn.

These numbers are clearly quite staggering. And the WGC put them into context by commenting that inflows during the six months to June 2020 were “significantly higher than the multi-decade record level of central bank net purchases seen in 2018 and 2019, and could absorb a comparable amount of about 45% of global gold production in the first half of 2020.”

enjoy the weekend
wet and windy down here

the gnome

so RESET 1922? ...what was the outcome and the judgement...the summary..."There was too little detailed preparation, too much generalized optimism, too many disparate issues muddled up with one another. In many ways, it was a parody of summit diplomacy at its worst" Br Historian K O Morgan

Reset 1944 ... The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, Australia, and Japan after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent states. The chief features of the Bretton Woods system were an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained its external exchange rates within 1 percent by tying its currency to gold and the ability of the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments. Also, there was a need to address the lack of cooperation among other countries and to prevent competitive devaluation of the currencies as well...etc
Gold seemed to be a common ingredient, and it wil be very surprising if there is not another more serious reset, possibly delayed until 2021, so there can be more thorough preparation (see above about reset 1922). One can argue that this has been coming for a while, but the chaotic responses of the governments to the Virus (NOT the virus itself of course) has brought things to a head.
What has been interesting, has been the prolonged buying of gold by various Central Banks over the last few years. In fact the buying spree started when the GFC happened, and Central Banks went from net sellers to net buyers of gold. Central banks added 650 tons to their reserves in 2019, the second highest shift in 50 years, after the 656 tons added in 2018. Before the 2007-09 financial crisis, central banks were net sellers of gold worldwide for decades. Leading the recent spree has been China, Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
China is the worlds largest gold producer.
We have also seen a large effort by central banks to repatriate their gold from other countries, mostly from storage in New York and London.
So the GFC was the tipping point, and start of the prep for the next RESET. The RESET will now crystalise in response to the incompetent management of the virus plus related factors. The question, where will gold sit, and will it provide the stability to the very unstable system we have now?

I am staying on gold

good luck all...
the gnome