The Gold Economy

According to Roskill, global production of rare earth products was approximately 119,220 mt of REO in 2008. China accounted for approximately 96% of this total. The majority of the remaining production in 2008 was from Mountain Pass and Russia. Although exploration programs for REEs exist outside of China, Russia, Mountain Pass and Australia, none of the deposits that are the subject of these programs is currently in production. In addition, the April 2010 U.S. GAO briefing stated that, for a typical exploration-stage mine, once a company has secured the necessary capital to start a mine, government and industry officials said

July 29, 2010 – Much has been made recently of the news that the BIS last year completed a 380-tonne gold swap with an unnamed commercial bank. This BIS transaction intuitively strikes me as being hugely important.  Unfortunately, the BIS and the bank involved have disclosed too little information for any of us outside the inner circle of central bankers to truly understand what is happening behind the scenes. 

Consequently, there have been various interpretations by market participants of what the swap means, but the fingers kept pointing at Portugal.  First, Portugal reports owning 382 tonnes of gold, which is