Seitz started the parties in 2006, midway through gold’s rally, and they became something of a barometer for the industry. After collecting C$3,000 for local charities in a downtown bar that first year, he raised C$100,000 in 2010, when Murdigras featured a gold-painted Camaro and gold medal-winning athletes from that year’s Vancouver Olympics. Once Seitz added up the donations for 2011, he realized it was a warning sign: they slipped to C$60,000.
“It was already starting to happen,” he said. “It’s been a slow, continuous slide.”
Era’s End?
What’s been good for the economy has paradoxically been bad for gold. The U.S. jobless rate fell to 7.4 percent in July from a 2009 peak of 10 percent, helping push the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to a record high. The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation has undershot its 2 percent target for 14 straight months, even as the central bank kept interest rates near zero.
In April, the French bank Societe Generale SA declared “the end of the gold era,” and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecast a price of $1,270 by the end of 2014, contributing to the price plunge. Goldman has since lowered its 2014 target to $1,050.
Seitz went to London in April to raise money for his newest venture, a developer of Kazakhstan gold assets called IRG Exploration & Mining Inc. He met with eight analysts and bankers. Six weeks later, four of them had lost their jobs, he said.
“In my professional career, it’s been the toughest couple years of my life,” Seitz said.
The 2011 Murdigras was the last.
Miners’ Woes
“I wasn’t going to ask people who were losing their jobs or put on partial salary to pay C$500 per ticket,” he said.