You are touching a very important point, Hobbers.
If open protest by the miners may seem a "blocked" option for some reason, there are other options which may hurt the "PM-suppression establishment".
To my great surprise and as I least expected one such option was recently chosen by Coeur d'Alene. All gold ore production from their recently opened Kensington mine (some 120.000 ounces per year) will be sold directly to a Chinese refiner. Apart from the much better deal they got than from traditional Western refiners, in this way they can be certain that the gold does not end up at the LMBA where it enters the metal pool used to suppress the price of gold.
Actually, when I was reading yesterday's news from ECU I also expected to read something in that direction, i.e. that they found a refiner which may channel the refined product straight towards one of the centers of demand for the refined metal.
