by Chris Powell of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee

National Geographic’s January issue has what has been the usual “global” sort of article about gold mining, written by Brook Larmer, accompanied by stunning photographs taken by Randy Olson, and predictably enough headlined “The Real Price of Gold.” The article’s thrust is that gold mining is a dirty business with enormous costs to the environment and human health and that these costs are borne largely by poor people.

This is, of course, only half the story, and National Geographic should tell the other half:

— That the environmental and health costs of gold mining can be remediated, but only with a higher price for the product.

— That government price-suppression schemes not only impede the development of poor countries with natural resources but also push the less-regulated gold mining there into the irresponsible practices cited in the National Geographic article.

— That gold is money and that the alternative form of money — government-issued currency without any direct convertibility into gold, silver, or some other valuable commodity — has infinitely greater environmental and human costs that somehow never get inventoried, including much easier resort to war, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which probably would not have been undertaken if it had had to have been financed by direct taxation rather than borrowing and printing; overconsumption; and the general expropriation of the producing class by the financial class.

You can find the National Geographic article on “The Real Price of Gold” here

Let’s see how long we have to wait for the colorful magazine spread on “The Real Price of Fiat Currency and Central Banking.”

Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

Read Catherine Austin Fitts’ response to an inquiry about precious metals