Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Your secretary/treasurer has just returned from what seemed like a productive week in Suriname, the former Dutch Guyana in northeastern South America, a country whose foremost export revenue generator is gold, thanks to the Gros Rosebel mine operated by Iamgold.

The plunge in the gold price from $1,900 to below $1,200 over the last year and a half has been terribly damaging to Suriname, as it has been to many gold-producing developing countries. The difference is that, thanks to the clamor raised by Winston Wirht, president of the national mining company, Grassalco, Suriname seems interested in learning about gold price suppression by Western central banks.

Doing my best to channel Tom Paine and Ludwig von Mises, I delivered and explained the documentation of gold price suppression by Western central banks:

http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21

I did several national television and radio interviews, appeared with Wirht for 20 minutes on a nightly public affairs TV program, got reported about three times by the country's largest newspaper, made presentations to more than a hundred people at the University of Suriname and to a group of 15 civic, political, and business leaders, and met for two hours with five members of the National Assembly, including its majority leader.

The National Assembly members were profoundly concerned about what has been done to the gold price and, with it, to the government's budget. Indeed, while I was visiting, Iamgold and Newmont Mining announced postponement of plans to expand their operations in Suriname, on account of the decline in the gold price.

I repeatedly criticized the Central Bank of Suriname for having sold most of the country's gold reserves and for being the tool of the International Monetary Fund, which long has been a crucial part of the Western central bank gold price suppression scheme:

http://www.gata.org/node/12016

Why, I asked over and over, is Suriname a member of an organization that is dedicated to destroying the country?

The president of the central bank refused a request to meet with me to learn about the Western gold price suppression scheme but I got the strong impression that people would be pressing the issue with him when I left.

In any case I may have gotten more out of the visit than they did, Suriname being a most remarkable country -- perhaps more racially and ethnically integrated than any country and rich in both undeveloped natural and human resources.

Of course it didn't hurt that I was coming from a place with heavy snowfall and temperatures far below freezing and arriving in a place of perpetual summer. And yet the country is no resort. It is struggling. Many of its buildings are old and need major renovation. Unlike most Caribbean countries it has no beaches to speak of, and its tourism is largely the adventure tourism of expeditions into the Amazonian rainforest, expeditions a little too demanding for the typical tourist.

But with free markets for its resources and a little political vision, Suriname could become the Switzerland of South America. The country seems to have the least crime of any country in the Caribbean and its people made me feel more comfortable than I have felt anywhere outside my own country. I hope to return.

More about that at another time.

But since the monetary metals mining industry seems unwilling to do anything to defend itself and its investors, maybe the most prospective audience for overthrowing the gold price suppression scheme and the stealthy but still vicious imperialism it represents is in gold-producing developing countries. If enough of those countries started asking inconvenient questions of Western central banks and governments, they could make a lot of trouble.

As always GATA stands ready to assist them.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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 -- Published: Tuesday, 11 February 2014 | E-Mail  | Print  | Source: GoldSeek.com

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