Press release for GATA African Gold Summit

12:49p ET Saturday, May 5, 2001

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

There's a fine essay at Gold-Eagle by Steve Saville, writing
from Hong Kong, that concludes with a point GATA has been
making for a couple of years now, and so I can't resist
thrusting it on you:

quot;The gold mining industry needs to wake up and
realise that its product is money, not an industrial
commodity. The more the miners and the World
Gold Council try to promote gold for its jewelry or
industrial applications, the more harm they will do
to the gold price.

quot;This is because by playing up the non-monetary
applications of gold, they are potentially reducing
its appeal as an investment. If they really want to
increase the overall demand for gold, they should
talk about the great inflation that is under way in the
United States, the consequential vulnerability of the
dollar, and how gold can provide an effective hedge
against the inevitable loss of confidence in financial
assets.

quot;If they can't or won't do that, the next best thing for
them to do is nothing.quot;

I would add that, in recognizing that their product is less jewelry
than an independent form of money, miners should realize (no quot;squot;
in quot;realizequot; in the English used in my part of the world!) that
their product competes less with diamonds and silver and platinum
and rubies and anything else that can be incorporated into baubles
and worn around the neck or wrist or on fingers than with
government-issued currencies, and that governments inevitably are
their main competitors and thus do not wish gold well. Indeed,
not wishing gold well, governments and bankers may be expected
to do harm to gold.

Of course such a realization may be terrifying to mining companies;
governments and their allies (or, as the case may be, their masters),
the bankers, are powerful. But miners have no choice; they will
realize this eventually and stand up for themselves and the great
moral virtue of their product, or they will be destroyed. They are
close to destroyed already.

GATA hopes that mining company shareholders will try to impress
this point on company managements. The World Gold Council surely
doesn't get it or simply lacks the courage to act from such an
understanding.

You can find the Saville essay here:

a href=http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_01/milhouse050201.htmlhttp://www.g...

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer