Dey needs to find de mudder lode, or de Los' Dutchman's mine...

They mean that the amount of gold they can make money off of is running out. Gold hasn't been destroyed to my knowledge, so current supplies are still there. Barrick just doesn't own them XD

I wonder if I should sell my stock if they don't plan to be around in the long term.

It's possible, but I can't see them being that patient. Usually if a company wants to buy their stock back, they just do it. Had a company do that to me already. RIM's doing that now with some of their shares on the NASDAQ; they just announced that they were buying the shares back, full stop.

I would still rather be on a metal standard than worthless fiat currency which they can inflate whenever they feel like it.

-=TK

One of the contributing factors to the French Revolution was that the money was worthless; there was no gold in the royal vaults to back up its value.

Aye, so it was, in effect, a fiat currency, and we come back to the same problem.

In Spain, they overwhelmed the market and had runaway inflation, so we need to control the influx, but the only real difference between that and doubling the ammount of a fiat currency that it is significantly easier to increase how much paper money you print. Look at Japan after World War II and Germany after World War I to see that in action.

At least, with a metal standard, there is actual money backing it up!

-=TK