New Gold Inc has hedged nearly all of its remaining 2016 gold production to ensure cash flow for its Rainy River project, the company said, an unusually large amount for a miner after bullion made its biggest rally in 4-1/2 years.

The miner said on Tuesday that it hedged 270,000 oz of gold for the remaining nine months of the year through options contracts at a cost of $2 million, starting in April, giving them a minimum price of $1,200 an ounce and maximum at $1,400 an ounce.

Zuma’s decision to fire respected Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene drove the rand to a record low, instantly reducing labor and other costs in the local currency for mining companies, relative to the U.S. dollars they earn by selling gold.

Nevertheless, analysts make a living placing a value on the in-situ value of gold – numbers that dictate the value of a project and a company.

From our analysis, an international gold producer typically trades at a 20% discount to its in-situ value (reserves and resources).

Caterpillar, the world’s No.1 heavy machinery maker, put another nail in the mining industry’s coffin after reporting that its sales declined again in October, marking the 35th straight month of sustained drops.

While commodities are mired in the worst slump in a generation and all the market wants to hear is that the worst is already over, Goldman Sachs warns prices may fall even further.

Unless demand picks up or more miners cut output, prices for raw materials are set to stay low for years, or worse, continue to drop, it said in a note on Thursday

The scale of an open-pit copper mine feels impossible; it is a Bible-grade phenomenon made by machines. Vehicles called bucket-wheel excavators, nearly five times the size of the largest dinosaurs, rip up the surface and gradually descend, piling 200,000 cubic meters or more of rock behind them every day. Once the copper is extracted, waste products and unrecoverable metals stream out as tailings, snaking tributaries that turn psychedelic-looking as they oxidize in open air for the first time in millions of years. Each excavator, meanwhile, turns the land it is standing on into a ledge and leaves a succession of these steps, or ‘‘benches,’’ behind it as it goes. The Chino Mine, for example, in Grant County, N.M., has been excavated persistently for more than a century and now stretches almost two miles across and 1,350 feet down. It’s a chasm, a void, a deep and disordered amphitheater built around an abyss. It gets four out of five stars on TripAdvisor.

“If and when that happens, Mr McLean and Mr Treacy plan to introduce crowd-funding as a means by which junior exploration companies could source seed capital.

“Early-stage explorers typically tap networks of industry insiders and connections for their initial funding, with those entry-level investments often enjoying significant returns if those ventures ever make it to the Australian stock exchange.”

The latest major gold miner to suffer the indignity of its credit rating being downgraded is Barrick Gold (ABX) – the world’s largest gold miner. Moody’s has downgraded its debt to Baa3 (but with a stable outlook), only one notch above what is reckoned to be ‘junk’ bond status.

In announcing the downgrade, Moody’s VP and Senior Credit Officer, Darren Kirk, stated, “Barrick has been downgraded because its leverage will remain elevated even after announced asset sales, material organic debt reduction is unlikely, and production will start declining in the next several years.”

Barrick's market value is down 50% over the last three months and is now worth some $8 billion in New York. That compares to a $64 billion capitalization when gold was at $1,900 in 2011.

Barrick cuts its gold production forecast to between 6.1m – 6.4m ounces as it disposes of assets including 50% of its Zaldivar copper mine in Chile for $1 billion, the Cowal mine in Australia for $550 million in cash and $298 million for its Porgera mine to tackle its crippling debt-load of more than $13 billion.