FYI, There is a Modern Day Gold Rush Happening in South Carolina as We Speak

A Canadian mining company and a tiny South Carolina town are leading what could be a modern gold rush to the southeastern United States.

Romarco Minerals Inc. reopened the historic Haile Gold Mine near Kershaw, S.C., this year and expects to pour its first gold bar there in early 2014, Chief Executive Diane Garrett told Reuters this week.

Once environmental impact studies and permits are complete, Haile will be the only modern gold mine east of the Mississippi River, Garrett said, and the first since the Kennecott Minerals mine closed in Ridgeway, S.C., in 1999.

Based on the proven gold reserves found in samples, the Toronto company estimates it has 3.1 million ounces of gold at Haile. The mine will produce an average of 150,000 ounces of gold a year for five years, according to its website.

“It sits on one of the most significant trends of gold in the United States,” Garrett said. “A lot of people had forgotten just how significant the gold production was in this area.”

Romarco’s success at finding the gold left at Haile has sparked renewed industry interest in the southeastern United States.

The gold is embedded in microscopic flecks in volcanic rock along what geologists call the Carolina Slate Belt, which winds from northern Georgia through the Carolinas and into Virginia.

Vancouver’s Revolution Resources Corp. said in early October that it had begun drilling at several historic North Carolina gold mine sites along the Slate Belt.

Strongbow Exploration Inc., also of Vancouver, said this summer that it had bought mine properties in South Carolina and had begun drilling at North Carolina’s historic Parker Gold Mine.

Erin Ventures Inc., another Canadian company, also is prospecting for gold in North Carolina, according to its website.

The “unprecedented climb into the stratosphere” for gold prices has spurred the eastern development, said Michael George, gold commodities specialist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va.

“We may have three or four mines started up in the next 10 to 15 years” in the southeastern United States, he said on Friday.

Gold prices this week posted their biggest gain in six weeks, buoyed by optimism about European plans to contain the region’s debt crisis. U.S. gold futures for December delivery were up $14.50 at $1,683 an ounce.

LONG TRADITION

Gold was first discovered in the United States in 1799 when a 12-year-old boy found a large nugget in a North Carolina creek. The story goes that his family used the nugget as a doorstop until a jeweler bought it for $3.50, said Kenneth Taylor, North Carolina’s chief geologist.

“There are hundreds of old gold mines all over North Carolina,” Taylor said. “When the gold rush in California came in (in the 1840s), the experienced miners were here in North Carolina, so they went west.”

Gold was first found on the Haile property in South Carolina in 1827. Mining continued off and on into the 1990s.

Romarco owns about 10,000 acres that include the 4,200-acre mine site. The company has spent about $350 million on site preparation and hiring and, by the time it produces gold, will have spent about $650 million, said Garrett, the chief executive.

“Mining is a capital-intense industry,” said Garrett, whose company also owns two gold exploration sites in North Carolina. “When you look out West, this mine is quite small. Out there you’ve got mines that go for 20 miles and go thousands of feet deep.”

The microscopic gold at Haile will be extracted by crushing tons of rock into dust and using a cyanide solution to separate the gold.

The Army Corps of Engineers requires an environmental impact study from Romarco on how it will replace 160 acres of wetlands it plans to destroy.

Environmentalists also are concerned about an endangered freshwater mussel, the Carolina heelsplitter, found in creeks near the site.

Garrett said the company, which expects to be at Haile for at least 13 years and likely 20, would propose land restoration and creating wetlands to replace those destroyed.

The environmental impact study will take about a year and has set back groundbreaking and hiring, she said. The mine has 106 employees, she said, and Romarco expects to hire up to 800 mostly local workers.

Kershaw Mayor Wayne Rhodes said the company would have a huge impact on his economically depressed town of about 1,800 people, and he is concerned about the delay in hiring.

“People here are begging for jobs,” Rhodes said.

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A two-hour Occupy Denver march by at least 2,000 protesters through downtown was peaceful today — but, four hours later, chaos reigned in the heart of Denver.

Most protesters had left after the march ended at about 2 p.m., but a small group of demonstrators blocked Broadway and tensions rose after dining tents were pitched in the corner of Civic Center park.

Officers began making arrests at about 6:20 p.m. and by 7 p.m., police used pepper spray as they knocked down the “Thunderdome” dining tents. Some people screamed as the tents fell and handcuffed protesters soon lined East 14th Avenue. At least two police vans carried off those in custody.

Officers in riot gear first cleared Lincoln Park at about 5:30 pm

(Denver police officers keep watch on the march in downtown Denver on Saturday. (Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post)

and then formed long lines along Broadway and across the middle of the intersection of Broadway and East 14th Avenue.

Across from them, in Broadway and in Civic Center park, were about one hundred remaining protesters — more than one dozen sat with linked arms.

Some screamed at the police and shouted “shame” at the officers.

STORY HERE 

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The world’s leading economies pressed Europe on Saturday to act decisively within eight days to resolve the euro zone’s sovereign debt crisis which is endangering the world economy.

In unusually direct language, finance ministers and central bankers of the Group of 20 major economies said they expected an October 23 European Union summit to “decisively address the current challenges through a comprehensive plan”.

French Finance Minister Francois Baroin, who chaired the meeting, said Berlin and Paris, the leading euro zone powers, were well on the way to agreeing a plan to reduce Greece’s debt, stop contagion and protect Europe’s banks.

Non-euro countries highlighted the damage the European crisis was already doing to their economies and underlined the urgent need for action by the 17-nation single currency area.

“Europe needs to get its act together because unless the crisis is put to an end, it will start to affect emerging economies which have enjoyed strong growth,” Japanese Finance Minister Jun Azumi said.

His Canadian counterpart, Jim Flaherty, said the risk of a global recession would be dramatically higher if next Sunday’s European summit failed to deliver.

British finance minister George Osborne told reporters his continental euro zone colleagues “will have left Paris under no misunderstanding that there is a huge amount of pressure on them to deliver a solution to the crisis”.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told reporters he was encouraged that the latest EU moves toward an overall strategy to tackle the two-year-old crisis contained the right elements, notably a recapitalization of European banks.

“They clearly have more work to do on the strategy and the details, but when France and Germany agree on a plan together and decide to act, big things are possible,” Geithner said.

“I am encouraged by the speed and direction in which they are moving.”

The communique urged the euro zone “to maximize the impact of the EFSF (bailout fund) in order to address contagion”. EU officials said the most likely option was to use the 440 billion euro fund to offer partial loss insurance to buyers of stressed member states’ bonds in a bid to stabilize the market.

Efforts by some countries to increase the IMF’s warchest to fight the crisis ran into resistance from the United States and others on Friday, burying the idea for now and putting the onus firmly back on Europe.

Geither said the IMF already had very substantial financial firepower and Washington would support committing more of the existing resources to supplement a well-designed European strategy with more euro zone funding.

As the G20 finance ministers and central bankers met in Paris, anti-capitalist protesters rallied around the world, shouting their rage against bankers and politicians accused of ruining economies and condemning millions to hardship through greed and bad government.

Many of the protests, galvanized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, were small and peaceful. But in Rome hundreds of hooded rioters burned cars and smashed shop and bank windows in some of the worst violence in the Italian capital for years.

RESISTANCE FROM BANKS

Germany and France are trying to put flesh on the bones of a crisis resolution plan in time for the EU summit.

It will involve plans to recapitalize banks, make Greek’s debt mountain more sustainable and ramp up the firepower of the bloc’s rescue fund.

For once in the long-running crisis, the timetable is ambitious. But analysts see risks that forcing banks, the main source of business investment in Europe, to raise more capital could doom the region’s faltering growth, and that the reduction in Greek debt may be too small to avoid a default.

There were growing signs that Athens’ creditor banks will fight any attempt to make them shoulder a bigger burden in restructuring Greece’s debts. The lead negotiator of the banking lobby representing private bondholders said there were no grounds to impose bigger “voluntary” losses on their debt than the 21 percent agreed in July, which looks insufficient.

“We do not see that a compelling case has been made to reopen the (July) deal. A deal is a deal,” Charles Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance (IIF) told the Financial Times.

The G20 statement pledged to ensure banks are adequately capitalized and have sufficient access to funding, and said central banks would continue to provide liquidity to banks as required.

Fears of a Greek default have undermined confidence on volatile markets since late July, with global stocks falling 17 percent from their 2011 high in May.

But they have picked up since the leaders of France and Germany set an end-October deadline for comprehensive action.

NO CHANGE ON YUAN, FOREX LANGUAGE

While the European crisis was the main focus, Washington and Beijing continued to spar over China’s currency.

Geithner said China should let the yuan rise more rapidly to benefit global growth.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao rebuffed U.S. pressure for a more rapid appreciation, assuring exporters at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou on Saturday that China’s exchange rate would remain “basically stable” to protect them.

Chinese negotiators prevented the G20 from going beyond wording issued at their last meeting in Washington on the need for emerging market nations’ currencies to be more flexible.

Ministers agreed that advanced economies would cut deficits while emerging economies would continue their move toward greater exchange rate flexibility and boost domestic consumption.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants progress on bigger goals such as setting parameters to measure global imbalances and reining in speculative capital flows at a November 3-4 summit in Cannes, where France passes the G20 baton to Mexico.

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SOURCE: NY DAILY NEWS 

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Much different than potluck vegan dinners and veggie burgers washed down with free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream at Zuccotti Park.

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It’s still on the table:

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMLUC1tZ9q0 450 300] [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lrxTXTSo24 450 300]

Something to complain about

The party is getting started; get out your marshmallows and hot dog sticks.

Gross sees no growth for developed economies as he bets the long end of the yield curve…

Dead and bloated 

A 100 “combat equipped” forces have been dispatched to Uganda to help the rid the countrie’s Lord’s Resistance Army which has been active for 20 years. This action is short of military intervention; and is in force to defend against said crimes against humanity.

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Herman Cain’s rise in the polls this week doesn’t change the fact that Mitt Romney is still the most likely Republican nominee for president, but it does underscore the biggest remaining question mark about him: If he wins the primary, will that kill the Tea Party?

In other words, will the conservative grassroots turn out in force for a Romney ticket — not only to vote, but also to organize and recruit supporters — like they did in the 2010 midterm elections? Romney’s critics argue they won’t.

FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe raised the prospect of a third party candidate if the former Massachusetts governor is the nominee, telling The New York Times this week that at the very least, a Romney candidacy would discourage conservative activism in the 2012 election.

Advisers to Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), whose $15 million war chest will keep him around as a challenger to Romney despite his recent stumbles, are beginning to latch on to this argument.

“The fundamental problem Mitt Romney will have will be to sell his East Coast, government-knows-all views to the base. He’s the modern day equivalent of Nelson Rockefeller trying to sell himself to Ronald Reagan’s party,” said Bob Haus, a co-chair of Perry’s Iowa campaign. “Carbon taxes, government-run health care and repeated flip flops are going to make that sale hard.”

John Stemberger, a former Florida GOP official and Rick Perry supporter, wrote Thursday in Newsmax, “Mitt Romney is another John McCain waiting to happen. There is no way the base is going to be excited about and pour themselves into a Romney campaign.”

Interviews with several Tea Party activists and conservative officials in early primary and swing states showed some agreement with that sentiment. But there were a surprising number who said they would work for the Republican nominee no matter who it is, even if it is Romney.

“Most people do not like Romney,” said Dave Zupan, a Tea Party leader from the Cleveland suburbs. But, Zupan told The Huffington Post, “our goal is to beat Obama and flip the Senate. So if [Romney]’s the candidate, we’re going to beat Obama with him and we’re going to flip the Senate.”

“The Tea Party’s going to show up for whoever’s the candidate. We’re focused on a goal,” said Zupan, who is active in two local Ohio groups and is also on a 12-member Tea Party Debt Commission organized in part by FreedomWorks, a D.C.-based national organization that works with grassroots groups around the country.

Zupan said that giving control of the Senate over to Republicans would be a way to hem Romney in, helping ensure he fulfills promises to conservatives such as repealing Obama’s health law.

The Romney campaign believes that unlike the 2008 election, when Democratic voters were spurred by passion for their candidate, Republicans will be motivated in 2012 not by personality but by their view of current circumstances. Many Tea Party activists believe that the country is at a crisis point and that a second term for Obama would make it impossible in the future to reduce the size of government.

“We have one last opportunity to turn this country around,” said Ana Puig, mother of four and a Tea Party activist from the Philadelphia suburbs.

Romney’s brain trust is betting that conservatives like Puig will make up for what their candidate lacks in personal dynamism and conservative orthodoxy.

“If Mitt Romney becomes the nominee, the entire party will rally behind him as the strongest leader on the paramount issue of our time — putting America back to work,” top Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told HuffPost. “He will then go on to defeat President Obama and begin the task of turning around a very troubled economy.”

Despite the conservative angst about Romney’s authenticity, he has performed well as a candidate. In addition, a long list of potential rivals have decided not to run, and the other candidates who are in the race have failed to mount a serious challenge to Romney. So he remains in a strong position. Republican pollster Ed Goeas said he could see Romney’s poll numbers, which have not broken above 25 percent for most of the campaign, getting into the high 30s or even low 40s in the next month.

Even Kibbe, during an interview with HuffPost last month, gave off evidence that he was resigning himself to a Romney candidacy. But a Republican party whose most active participants have simply settled for their nominee will not be enough to defeat Obama, who holds the formidable advantages that come with incumbency.

“If Romney is the nominee I think you end up with the pure question on the ballot on election day, which is, ‘Are you firing Barack Obama?'” South Carolina state Rep. Kris Crawford (R), who organized a movement to encourage New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to run earlier this year, told HuffPost.

Crawford, who has not endorsed any of the presidential candidates, said Romney would “take some of the heat out of the game” for conservative activists in the Palmetto State. But he added that South Carolina will go for the Republican nominee no matter who it is, so the Romney impact would be negligible there.

Bob MacGuffie, a Tea Party activist from Fairfield, C.T., said that even though he would support Romney if he won the primary, such a scenario would produce “a lot of idle engines” in the general election.

“There’s no short answer to it. Obviously we don’t move as a monolith,” MacGuffie told HuffPost. “There will be a good chunk who will sit on their hands, others will turn to anti-Obama activism and there’s a good chunk who will say, ‘He’s our nominee and we’ve got to help him win.'”

Jerry DeLemus, who leads a Tea Party group in Rochester, N.H., was the only activist who spoke to HuffPost who said categorically that he will not campaign for Romney, though he said he didn’t rule out voting for him.

“Everybody in the Tea Party movement wants to see Obama not win a second term, for a variety of reasons. And there are those in there who may go ahead and support Romney. I’m not one of those guys who will say that,” DeLemus said.

But several other Tea Party activists and conservatives, like Zupan, were just as adamant that they will work for Romney if he beats the other Republican candidates.

“If he’s the last man standing, would you see people charge up the hill — maybe myself included — to try to beat Barack Obama? Probably,” said the leader of one of the most influential national Tea Party groups who asked not to be identified. “I admitted to my wife, there are far worse things than Mitt Romney being our nominee.”

Puig said skeptics are “going to be surprised.”

“I think we will be energized no matter who it is,” she said. “The Tea Party movement started because of the election of Barack Obama. So now is the time to take him out.”

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Make that two for the day.

Developing…

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We’re in this for the long haul. There are no “solutions” that can be presented quickly to make us go away. And so there will be moments where our presence is no longer an uncomfortable and unknown variable, but rather is normalized and integrated. It’s in those moments that we have to push the envelop [sic], pry open the space of possibility even farther. We go as far as we can to destabalize [sic], but maintain momentum. And when that’s the new “normal” then we go farther. That’s how change happens, how we shift the terrain and the terms of the game.

– Email in “Occupy” archive, “Re: Can OWS be turned into a Democratic Party Movement?”; Wednesday, October 12, 2011

In keeping with the new media notion of crowdsourcing–enthusiastically embraced by the mainstream media when trawling through Sarah Palin’s emails–Big Government will be providing readers later today with links to a document drop consisting of thousands of emails.

The email archive, created by a private cyber security researcher, appears to contain messages shared by the left’s anarcho-socialist activists during the strategic and daily tactical planning of the “Occupy Wall Street” and broader “Occupy” campaign this fall.

Big Government received a tip about the existence of the archive, and we were able to contact the individual who compiled and posted it. He will describe the archive, and how he obtained the emails, later this morning exclusively on Big Government.

Through “crowdsourcing,” the media and the public will then be able to discover the truth behind the “Occupy” movement.

The archive includes emails, for example, from radical anarchist organizer Lisa Fithian, who was profiled earlier this week at Big Government, and who is one of the leading organizers behind the Occupy movement.

In one email, dated October 1, Fithian applauds the launch of “occupations” throughout the country. She also highlights an ACORN-style illegal home occupation in California, linking to a television news story that reveals the involvement of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which is apparently the reconstituted version of ACORN in California.

Read the rest (and crowdsource  the emails) here.