I was a little baffled by the shenanigans last week over the copper price. Maybe it is something to do with some solar impetus related to the summer solstice. The price of the red metal might seem a trivial concern if it was not so critical, more than ever, to our global economy and civilisation. The price of … Read more
Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished…Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in inexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner metals. – Dr Johnson It is July since I last wrote a blog – about silver. You would think we had all the … Read more
Silver Thursday and the Hunt Brothers come to mind given the sudden spurt in the silver price. Over the last couple of weeks the metal has been playing catch up with its richer gilded cousin. Is the silver market still small enough for a rich megalomaniac to manipulate? It is forty years ago since Silver … Read more
Life is precarious. To risk is to live so you have no regrets. For some explorers there is a risk of falling from a lofty perch into the depths of the deepest chasm. Should we castaway plans and projections in these fragile times?. What we have left are little stories we tell ourselves based on what we … Read more
I mentioned global debt of $250 trillion in my “Anything but Paper” Blog on May 15th. Since then I came across this graphic below from Visual Capitalist https://www.visualcapitalist.com/. Exploration Geologists love images and drawings that make numbers concrete. We try to visualize the third dimension and what lies beneath from a map of only two dimensions. Anyway, I thought that it … Read more
Last Friday I mentioned gold and silver as interesting precious metals and referenced the historic price ratio between the two metals. I did mention that based on historical ratios that silver was undervalued significantly compared to gold. The same day the silver price climbed five percent in just one day from $14.67 to finish at $15.41. As … Read more
In mid-April the EU agreed a 500 billion euro stimulus package at zero percent interest rate to get Europe back on its feet after the Covid-19 pandemic. Two days ago Democrats unveiled a three billion dollar Covid relief stimulus package to be voted on next week. It looks looms large and but really beyond our … Read more
Three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse have reached our shores. Pestilence is in the vanguard, cutting a swath through our cities and villages and byways. In his wake rides War and Death. Malaria kills nearly a half a million people every year. Over 90 percent of these deaths are in Africa and two out of every … Read more
There are mines where silver is dug; There are places where gold is refined. We dig iron out of the ground And melt copper out of stones. Miners explore the deepest darkness. They search the depths of the earth And dig for rocks in the darkness. (Book of Job 28: 1-3[1]) Gold is gold … Read more
I vividly remember that lavish but gaudy five-star hotel at mid-day under the high African sun on the banks of a glittering Niger River. It was built with petro-dollars from Gaddfi’s Libya. I was sitting at a big round table which was shrouded in white linen. It was mid-day and I was dining with an influential man from … Read more