Stay Gold Phony Boy

“This is an illegal mine in Madagascar. Its gold is banned from the world’s legitimate marketplace. Thousands of children work in these mines, in violation of international law. Yet Madagascar’s gold flowed easily to market. And the world’s gold authority helped cover it up.” A special investigation from the NYT (Gift Article): The Cover-Up: How a Trillion-Dollar Industry Launders Illegal Gold. “The divide between ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ gold is an industry fiction. There is just gold. And as Wall Street, central banks and investors stockpile and trade the precious metal, they’re profiting off a supply that includes gold from illegal sources. That matters now more than ever. Two decades ago, when gold sold at about $600 an ounce, it was not profitable to drive mining barges into the deepest parts of the Amazon or use bulldozers to tear up acres of Madagascar rice fields to find gold. The price this year crossed the $5,000 mark. That has made it profitable to mine in inefficient, destructive and politically destabilizing ways.”