Reviews for Montana Pay Dirt: Guide to Mining Camps of Treasure State

The average rating for Montana Pay Dirt: Guide to Mining Camps of Treasure State based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-08-27 00:00:00 Marcelino Padilla At first, I thought this book was going to be on the anti-mining side of things - but hats off to GB for presenting a very even keeled, unbiased and great look at the Mining Law. This is really about the only book that I could find on the Mining Law, so you don't have a lot of choices if you want to learn about it. It is fairly well done - and I did learn a lot. My complaints were however, that it was obviously written by a man who is used to turning out lots of books and therefor you didn't get the sense that he put a lot into it. There was many typo's, an obviously accidentally repeated passage, and a general sense of rushed writing. Way to many ideas were presented unexplained. He throws events from mining law history out as if you are already very familiar with mining law cases....without ever bothering to explain what happened with them. That being said, there was also a lot to learn from this book, and I came away with a much better sense of something that is oft talked about in mining, but little understood(on my part). I still have a lot of questions - things that I think should have been covered. But overall, I think it was a very approachable interesting read. I am glad that it covered the past as well as current (up to 2007 anyway), proposed bills/acts/amendments considered. A good read, and perhaps the only read, to get a view into mining law. I definitely recommend, but think it could have been written much much better.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-12-20 00:00:00 Ron Stransky A lot of this just isn't or can't be sufficiently verified and there's some outright dumb claims in here. All the goldbug tinfoil hattery detracts from the otherwise more valuable information... the interesting first fact is that a lot of people in the American government and intelligence agencies sure believed in a lot of this. Records of the loot. Of course, the Japanese records have vanished as is reported by the Interagency task force charged with the review of records under the Japanese Imperial Disclosure Act, Interim Report, reproduced in full on our CDs. This of course fails to take into consideration documents that never reached Washington like those given to Herbert Hoover. General Bonner Fellers, MacArthur's assistant in Tokyo wrote on June 23, 1967 that "[Herbert] Hoover had no trouble in securing …a tremendous amount of documentation from the Japanese War Office… He sent back an enormous number of documents from Japan." These too have disappeared. A lot of documents may exist if you're willing to really look around in more locations. An interesting claim not sufficiently dug into: One deal said to have resulted is the so-called China Mandate. Our Marcos family source insists that in 1972 President Nixon and Henry Kissinger made a secret deal with Premier Chou En-lai to keep China out of conflict with the United States over Taiwan, in return for access to a large quantity of gold provided by Marcos. We have not been able to confirm the political details. However, bank documents that have surfaced over the years clearly demonstrate that large quantities of gold bullion were moved into Chinese mainland banks during this period, including bullion accounts in the names of Santa Romana, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and other members of their family and circle of rich cronies. Since all these people were loudly anti-communist, there is no plausible reason for them to transfer gold bullion to Chinese banks in the midst of the Cold War. For that reason alone, the story may well be true. According to this source, in 1971-1972 the economy of the People's Republic was in very bad shape, its foreign currency reserves were flat, aggravated by the worldwide oil crisis and famine in the countryside, all of which is correct. As pressure mounted on the Politburo, party hawks gained a stronger voice, pushing for invasion of Taiwan to gain control of its assets, and as a much-needed distraction. CIA and Pentagon analysts concluded that Beijing was about to invade, while America had its hands full in Vietnam. This could lead to nuclear war. A way had to be found to defuse the situation, and a novel solution proposed by a CIA analyst was to help Beijing stabilize its economy with a huge infusion of black gold from Marcos, reducing the pressure for war. If America helped China out of this domestic crisis, it could bring a period of peace that would benefit the Philippines as well. As our source tells it, Nixon and Kissinger secretly offered Beijing $68-billion in gold (an amount they knew Marcos had), to be moved into PRC banks in a number of tranches over several years. This would not be an outright gift. It would be deposited incrementally in various PRC banks in Hong Kong and major cities inside China. There the bullion would remain as an asset base, earmarked for various purposes negotiated in advance. The Chinese banks would be strengthened, the PRC economy would be stabilized, moderates in the Politburo would regain their leverage, and hawks pushing for an invasion of Taiwan would be silenced. No U.S. funds were involved.