Wallace Street Journal
Odds, Ends, Beginnings and Middles
David Bond
Archives
Editor, Silver Valley
Mining Journal
March 24, 2005
Wallace, Idaho -We have a get
rich quick scheme in mind that will make all of us very wealthy
this year. Stay tuned in this column for details. But first we
must digress. Last week's rant, Swift Thinking, on the Jonathan
Swift Mining Company's effort to mine-lease all those heavy metals
the greenies allege exist in the Coeur d'Alene Basin drew an
impressive quantity of emails - many as tongue-in-cheek as the
article - from folks wanting to buy stock in Jonathan Swift.
Sad to say, there's no way (yet) to invest in Jonathan Swift.
But an investment in the future of this nation's ability to continue
to hard-rock mine strategic resources can still be made. Whether
they like to admit it or not to their shareholders, America's
miners are locked in a life-or-death battle with the Environmental
Protection Agency, whose national policy seems to be nothing
more complex than the eradication of all extractive industry
in the United Snakes. The Shoshone Natural Resources Science
Committee, comprised of the best and the brightest of this mining
camp, is literally the little Dutch boy with his finger in the
dike. They've brought more than Jonathan Swift to life; they
single-handedly raised such a credible fuss over the EPA's corrupt
methodology and fraudulent "science" and modeling that
it got the attention of the National Academy of Sciences which,
if there's a God in Heaven, will issue a scathing rebuke of EPA's
scare tactics at mining sites sometime in July.
The Science Committee meets every week to pour over the latest
cretinous volumes of utterances by the EPA; they actually read
this drek and have found so many holes in EPA's logic, rhetoric
and scientific protocol as to make Swiss cheese look like battleship
armour. It's tireless, thankless, and brain-wracking work. The
Science Committee are up against the report-writing juggernaut
of CH2M Hill and the not inconsiderable Capitol Hill clout of
Morrison-Knudsen and the Washington Group International, who
are the prime beneficiaries of EPA's self-perpetuating largesse.
You can follow the Science Committee's latest efforts - along
with those of Jonathan Swift Mining Company - on Bunker Hill
Mine owner Robert Hopper's daily broadcasts on KWAL radio here
in the Sleepless Silver Valley. We webcast his daily rants on
silverminers.com, for those you out of range of KWAL's flea-power
transmitter. If you like what you hear, or what you've learned
about the Science Committee in these rants, make an investment
that will pay only intangible dividends, but huge ones, and send
the Science Committee a check for 5 or 10 bucks, care of Robert
Hopper, The New Bunker Hill Mining Company, PO Box 29, Kellogg,
Idaho, 83837. These are the good guys. Imagine what they could
do with a budget.
***
A late-night telephone conversation yesterday with Hugo Salinas-Price,
architect of the Silver Revolution in Mexico, convinces us that
salvation from fiat currency may best be found south of the border.
Yes, Mr. Salinas said, the Mexican government is as corrupt as
can be. The Central Bank of Mexico buys and sells votes on the
powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and they sold Mr. Salinas
right out. That committee have killed, for a short time anyway,
his hugely popular drive to re-monetize silver and put some credibility
and passion behind the peso. It defied the will of every state
governor in that country; defied the will of the Mexico Congress
itself, which in polling supports silver money; defied the desires
of the nation's most astute journalists.
At age 73 and one of Mexico's most successful businessmen (Electra
specialty retail stores; Mexico's second-largest television network,
etc., etc.) Hugo has seen the tides ebb and flow. He is undaunted
in his drive to empower the Mexican people with silver, an honest
reward for their labours, even as he describes the Central Bank
there as a "sovereign power unto its own." We invited
him to move to America, where the Central Bank here wields no
influence whatsoever on Capitol Hill and would forego its fiat
currency and jump to a gold and silver standard in a heartbeat,
the charge being led by Alan Brownspan, and where no congressman
is corrupt. Hugo demurred. The conversation turned serious. "I
live in a city of 25 million people. We have lost our bearings,"
he said. "The story of mankind is its sublime lack of logic."
What does this have to do with silver? Everything. When a man
is deprived of the honest reward for his honest labours, at the
whim of a Central Bank, he is no longer a man. He is reduced
to the lot of the slave. Mexico is of no consequence on the national
stage, says Mr. Salinas. It's just a country of good people trying
to get by, governed by thieves. We see it differently: the Rio
Grande is a mirror.
We never met Mahatma Gandhi, but one can hear, in the quiet reflections
of this gentleman of Mexico, the revolutionary power of quiet
truth. Hugo is Silver's Gandhi, a peaceful man looking for a
peaceful end to the slavery of the Central Banks. It will not
come from today's collusion between Bush, Mexico's Fox and Canada's
Martin in Waco, Texas. It will come from the quiet persistence
of we slaves.
***
Well, you've hung with us so far, and now onto that get-rich-quick
scheme we have in mind. Here are the steps:
1. Open a currency trading account.
2. Send us $10,000 (care of that same offshore bank that sends
you emails all the time about how they'd like to transfer a bazillion
dollars from deposed despot into your account, but they need
your account number).
3. In return for $10,000, we will send your our confidential
travel itinerary for the next 12 months. This itinerary involves
a number of continents and nations.
4. Upon receipt of our travel itinerary, open your currency trading
account and go long the currency of our destination country 48
hours ahead of our intended arrival. We have a spotless record
on this matter. Last December, while we were in London, the pound
hit nearly $2 US; beers were costing $40, and cigarettes nearly
$80 a pack in U.S. terms. Earlier this March, the Tuesday of
the PeeDack show in Toronto, we learned from the CBC that the
Canadian dollar had hit a 7-year high against the USD. The last
time the Canadian dollar was that high was the last time we were
in Canada, in May of 2004. Venezuela's Bolivar was never more
powerful than when we were in than lovely armed-to-the-teeth
nation last autumn. We venture into Europe next month to perform
forward recon for a Silver Summit with some friends, thence to
the Zurich Denver Gold Forum, so here are your first two trading
hints, gratis: Go long Euros and Swiss Francs next month. We
are God's gift to foreign currency traders, if only they could
affix one of those ankle bracelets upon us. You can. Send money.
Cash in.
***
So where does all this leave us? Comparing US dollars to Euros
is akin to trying to solve a two-variable equation. Can't be
done, albeit we amuse ourselves endlessly doing so. All that
fiat currencies can really do is compare themselves to the price
of silver and gold, stare at their reflections in the Rio Grande.
It's not the price silver or gold going up or down, it's the
creditworthiness of the currencies they're priced in. Given the
doubling of the "price" of gold and silver in terms
of established reserve currencies since this new millennium opened
its gates, what's really implied is that the value of the currencies
has cratered by half. Which means that your $20-an-hour gig is
now paying you $10 an hour, but nobody cut your pay. But an hour's
work buys a lot fewer eggs, a lot less gasoline, than it did
in 2000. And the velocity is accelerating. Somebody gave you
a pay-cut. Was it your boss? No, because he's sliding down the
same banister with the slivers pointed the wrong way as you are.
He has no more control over the Central Bank than you do - even
if you work for the United Snakes government. No more control
than Hugo's 25 million fellow citizens of Mexico City.
Until Hugo prevails over the Mexico Central Bank and we are free
to be paid in silver Mexican Pesos, we are converting 10 percent
of our monthly wage paper to silver. We will not sweat the momentary
price fluctuations; they are a mere distraction. In our meager,
contrarian way, we are accumulating real wealth. There is a particular
delight in trading the product of the printing press for the
product of the hard-rock miner. Even should silver be manipulated
to $3, and gold to $200, at least we have something at the end
of the day that will buy bread and gasoline in any country.
Selah.
Mar 23, 2005
David Bond
email:deepee@usamedia.tv
Archives
Editor: Silver Valley
Mining Journal
David Bond covers
gold and silver mining equities for a number of national and international
publishers, including Platts Metals Week, a division of McGraw-Hill.
He lives in Wallace, Idaho, heart of the planet's richest silver
fields, the Coeur d'Alene Mining District. He is former editor
of the Wallace Miner, and holds regional and national firsts in
investigative journalism from the Atlantic City Press Club (National
Headliner) and from the Society of Professional Journalists (SDX/SPJ)
and has edited or written for newspapers on both coasts, Canada
and Alaska.
321gold Inc
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