What the heck, who cares, as long as you make money.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article322302.ece

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article322303.ece

I first heard this headline on ITV late news with the round-up of the next days front pages.

Bit of an extreme reaction don't you think? Front page news??? What's the independant trying to achieve with this? To take the shine off gold before the right people have had time to shift their money into it??

I'm surprised Cgnao and Bubb haven't commented...

It may well be that gold extraction could be made cleaner. It seems to me there's a bandwagon developing to "have a go at gold mining" just because gold is getting some attention and gold miners are easy tagets and people who buy gold are also an easy target. We wouldn't want to target mobile phones, tyre manufacturers or abattoirs now, would we?

When the motoring section is castigating people for wiping out child pedestrians on residential streets, I might begin to take such "concern" seriously, until then I will put it in the "you thick hypocrite" tray.

Agree with you in sorts Malco, though it's arguable that motorists are indeed targeted as pedestrian killers nowadays. Just consider all the traffic safety ads, speed cameras, etc...

The report was originally posted in the NY Times and was comprehensively ripped to pieces here:

NY Times Continues Incoherent Assault on Gold Mining

In my opinion, this is not a problem for gold, this is an incredible opportunity, and I thank you for bringing it to my attention. Just another reason to accumulate gold.

Here's my thinking. If environmentalists and governments take on gold production, I can't see how it won't cause the price of gold to increase...either by reducing the incentive for companies to extract due to increased costs and thus reducing new supply, or, in forcing companies to pass along increased costs in terms of a higher gold prices.

Unlike the fur and whaling industries, I really don't think the majority of the world will simply abandon the gold industry. And if it tries, let it, it'll only help push the gold price up.

So yes, let's clean up that filthy gold mining business!

I say a permanent ban on all mining can't come too soon.

The powers that be in the western world cannot control true money (gold) because they cannot print it. They want us to use their fake paper money.

So they manipulate the gold price to make us all believe that paper money is good as gold. But they still require physical gold to satisfy demand and keep a lid on the gold price because there are always some individuals and countries who know the true value of gold and accumulate it at the giveaway manipulated prices.

There are many indications that western central banks are running out of physical gold to sell to keep the price down - which is probably the main reason behind the recent price run up. See http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...showtopic=12868

Well they must be desperate if they think articles like this can curb demand. They did not mention either that there there are about 70 years worth of gold production in above ground stock. This is because most of the gold ever mined is still around being recycled over and over again. So yes it takes lots of chemicals to produce, but most of the gold traded is just old stock.

Don'trust paper money. Trust gold which was, is and will always be true money.

EDIT: new interesting article on inflation and paper money: http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/2005/1028.html

The only study I've seen (by the Transport Research Lab a few years ago, who do a lot of research for the government) showed that in about 80% of cases where pedestrians were killed by cars the pedestrian was at fault, and in about half the cases the pedestrian was drunk.

Of course when I was a kid we were bombarded with propaganda pointing out that roads were for cars and other vehicles, and not playgrounds... and we even had Darth Vader showing us the correct way to cross the road without getting killed. It's only in recent years that kids have been _encouraged_ to think that roads are places to play, and it's therefore no surprise that they get squashed on a regular basis as they 'exert their right' to the road.

Back on topic, I agree: I'd love to see an end to gold mining, as my gold would be substantially more valuable . It's also nice to see the current drop in the price, I'd been hoping to find a decent sell-off to buy into at a substantially lower price.