Oldtent Archives 2007 - 2008

Weather here has been warm lately, so I’ve been spending more time outside, enjoying my time there immensely, as the new leaves open from their buds, and the songbirds greet each other.    Yesterday I put a little mineral oil onto the garden tools, and today I painted over the oil with some dark green paint.   I have some rather nice garden forks, hay forks, rakes, harrows, and shovels, which I have collected over the years, but until the past two days never made the time to do more than wire brush and oil them.

Painting them today I found myself musing about the skill and knowledge possessed by those who had manufactured these fine tools.

I apologise for not getting back to you about the soil site you had linked, and what you posted.  I find that it takes longer the past few years to turn the compost pile, and to deep till the soil.  I also spent some time putting up some firewood.

I have slowly been working my way through the Rothamsted research.  The following link has a little about the use of compost and its effect upon soil fertility and crop production.

www.rothamsted.ac.uk/resources/TheRothamstedArchive.html

Should you come across other studies please post a link.  I am particularly interested in current studies of crop production and nutritional quality.

C heers, TQ

I  RESEMBLE THAT! 

p.s.  (if Floradagold can be from Tennesee)

F l o r i d a

T e n n e s s e e

US Housing Inventories Reach Record Highs

by: Grace Cheng posted on: May 23, 2008
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Housing sales declined less than expected at 1% in April, but inventories grew to record highs. In yesterday’s post about the possibility of an oil bubble, we mentioned how high inventories in housing - the last big bubble - and record foreclosures, are dealing a double whammy to the real estate market. Today we saw just how big those inventories were. There are now 4.55 million single-family and condo units for sale, the most since combined tracking began in 1999, and enough to last 11.2 months at the current sales pace. For single family homes the index stretches further back, and we now have the most inventories - relative to sales - since 1985.

This huge backlog of housing inventory can only depress housing prices further and combined with foreclosures will make it very difficult for financial institutions holding mortgage backed securities to get much value on their holdings. Of course they won’t be the only ones affected, as was seen with Home Depot’s (HD) earnings a few days ago, people are buying less from them as less houses are being bought and refurbished. Then there are the construction companies which have been under pressure since the start of this crisis that won’t be able to pick up as long as there is such an overhang of inventory waiting to be sold. All in all, it looks like the housing market still has a long way to go before it hits bottom and along the way we will see fallout from a lot of the companies who were heavily invested in this last boom.

Naturally, the market is feeling the heat today from the continued housing slump. AIG (AIG) has had its ratings cut by Moody’s to Aa3 from Aa2 on concerns about its huge exposure to US mortgage debt and credit derivatives. In Europe, Airbus was valued below $0 as shares of parent company EADS declined on the back of high oil, the low US dollar, and of course the continued delays in Airbus’s manufacturing and delivery of planes.
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Well I guess if Floradagold can be from Tennesee…..Kentucky could be from Mexico

That would, of course, place Canada “far north” on the moral compass, a different region altogether.

Although the concept of a compass which indicates “morality” escapes me anyway.

FGC’s location finder, so your observation is a good one, namely that Kentucky was posting from Mexico when he made the statement at 6:29, 26 May, that “there appears to be no moral compass up north of the border”.

Thanks for your geographic acuity.  Equiz.

earlier today.  When you are in the drier forested ecosystems in Oregon, eastward of the mountain range that separates the coastal region from the interior - in area where you find ponderosa pine in the driest part of its range, watch for the pretty yellow lichen, Letharia vulpina.  But just take a picture of it.  Dont eat it or let your dog eat it.  The vulpina in the species name is because this lichen was historically used in Europe to poison wolves, whose genus name is Vulpes.  Letharia is pictured below.  It grows not only on the dead lower branches of ponderosa pine but also on dried, well-weathered old fenceposts in the drier forested parts of several western states and British Columbia.

I am pleased you have expressed your appreciation of our natural environment on this special weekend.  Equiz.

http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/potd/2005/05/letharia_vulpin.php

Tulips,, and Tract Homes

Four lessons learned from the Biggest Mania of all.

Snip:
A single exotic bulb went for 5,200 guilders
– about 21 years’ — salary for a carpenter.

tinyurl.com/4kdfy3

Gidddyy Uppppp,, $ilver..

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tinyurl.com/2kyesr

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The man who located the wreck of the Titanic has revealed that the discovery was a cover story to camouflage the real mission of inspecting the wrecks of two Cold War nuclear submarines.

When Bob Ballard led a team that pinpointed the wreckage of the liner in 1985 he had already completed his main task of finding out what happened to USS Thresher and USS Scorpion.

Both of the United States Navy vessels sank during the 1960s, killing more than 200 men and giving rise to fears that at least one of them, Scorpion, had been sunk by the USSR.

Dr Ballard, an oceanographer, has admitted that he located and inspected the wrecks for the US Navy in top secret missions before he was allowed to search for the Titanic.

Only once he had used his new underwater robot craft to map the submarine wreck sites was he able to use it to crisscross the North Atlantic seabed to pinpoint the last resting place of the luxury liner. It meant he had only 12 days to find the Titanic.

“I couldn’t tell anybody,” he said. “There was a lot of pressure on me. It was a secret mission. I felt it was a fair exchange for getting a chance to look for the Titanic.

“We handed the data to the experts. They never told us what they concluded – our job was to collect the data. I can only talk about it now because it has been declassified.”

Dr Ballard said what he had seen during the inspection of the wrecks gave him the idea of finding a trail of debris that would lead to the main sections of the Titanic. Thresher, had imploded deep beneath the surface and had broken up into thousands of pieces and Scorpion was almost as completely destroyed. “It was as though it had been put through a shredding machine. There was a long debris trail.” Dr Ballard developed a robotic submarine craft in the early 1980s and approached the US Navy in 1982 for funding to search for the Titanic, which sank in 1912 with the loss of 1,500 lives after hitting an iceberg.  Read more

Most (about 70%) silver is a by-product of lead, zinc and copper production.  All those little producers Hommel mentions don’t even total the output from just one of BHP’s lead/zinc mines in Oz.  So if there is a 10% increase in base metal production, there’ll be an extra 55m oz of silver produced.  Conversely, if base metal demand falls, so will silver production.  The supply side of silver, and therefore the price, is dependent principally on base metal demand.

Airlines are being forced to pay cash in advance for jet fuel as the major oil companies tighten the screws on an industry that is being crushed by an extraordinary surge in the price of crude oil.

Sources within the airline industry indicate that credit is being denied to most of the leading American carriers and the practice is moving to Europe and Asia. So uncertain is the cash solvency of the industry that jet fuel suppliers insist on prepayments into special bank accounts.

http://tinyurl.com/6amc24
 

www.silverstockreport.com/2008/cpmgroup.html

Forgotten Near-Term Silver Producers

(See miningpedia.com)
Silver Stock Report

by Jason Hommel, May 26th, 2008

The CPM Group’s 2008 yearbook is available for $75.
store.cpmgroup.com/

The yearbook is 185 pages and filled with data about the supply and demand fundamentals of the silver market, and is a very reliable source of primary data.

On page 29, the yearbook lists Near-Term Mine Development Projects, annual production, due within 5 years. Many on their list were major companies, but they forgot a few, which is understandable, since the junior mining sector is not their primary area of expertise; they are primarily consultants. But I follow the junior mining stocks a bit more closely, of course; that is my primary business.

The public is tracking many companies at our wiki, www.miningpedia.com. So, I took about an hour to go over our publicly available data, and found many junior mining companies that have silver projects that the CPM group didn’t list. This is a good list of companies to review as possible investments if you are bullish on silver. I own a few of them, but not all of them.
miningpedia.com/?s=silver

Project, Company, Country New Silver Supply NOT listed by CPM Group:

Caribou, Blue Note, New Brunswick: 1.4 million oz. silver, 2007
Galena Silver, USA Silver, Idaho: 2.3 million oz. silver, 2007
San Jose Project, Minera Andes, Argentina: 3.1 million oz. silver, 2007

Sunshine Mine, Sterling Mining company, Idaho: 2.8 million oz. silver, 2008

Miguel Azua: Calvario, Silver Eagle mines, Mexico: 1.0 million oz. silver, 2009
Prairie Creek, Canadian Zinc, NW Territory, CAN: 1.2 million oz. silver, 2009
Jerusalem, Dynasty Metals and Mining, Ecuador: 0.5 million oz. silver, 2009

Fuwan, Minco Silver, China: 6.4 million oz. silver, 2010
Tejamen, Oremex, Mexico: 4.2 million oz. silver, 2010
La Guitarra, Genco, Mexico: 5.2 million oz. silver, 2010

Rosemont, Augusta Resource Corp., Arizona: 1.5 million oz. silver, 2011

The trading symbols of these companies are all listed at miningpedia.com, or Yahoo! Finance.

Further notes for CPM Group, and their readers:

Minefinders will probably produce 4.2, not 4.8 million oz. of silver per year, due to an extended mine life.

Barrick’s Pascua Lama project can probably be safely pushed forward, indefinitely, or at least out another 10 years and not be seriously considered.

What does the new silver mine supply mean for silver prices going forward? Probably very little.

Total mine supply was about 550 million ounces. New mine supply in 2007 that might have been overlooked by the CPM group, was about 1%.

New investor demand was much larger than new mine supply.

Silver Investment demand for 2006, was about 50 million ounces.
Silver Investment demand for 2007, was about 75 million ounces.

Silver Investment demand for 2008, for Silver Eagles, has doubled, from 10 million ounces, to a pace of over 20 million ounces, and probably would have been higher, if there were not shortages and rationing.
www.silverstockreport.com/2008/rationing.html

Many coin shops have told me that their business volumes increased about 10 times in January and February, prior to when there were many reports of shortages starting in March.

I would estimate that 2008 might see silver investment demand of about at least 150 million ounces, as a conservative estimate, and investment demand would have to decrease in the second half of the year to get under about 150 million ounces, and that is not very likely.

Therefore, I’ll project that new silver investor demand for 2008 will be about 75 million new ounces, for a total of 150 million ounces.

Whereas, new silver mine supply for 2008, according to the CPM Group’s 12 listed mining projects, and including my adjusted numbers, is about 42.5 million ounces. (This does not take into account old silver mines that may be shutting down, reducing ore grades, and thus reducing supply).

The four largest new projects for 2008 are:
Apex silver, to produce 17 million ounces annually, from San Cristobal in Bolivia. (maybe?)
Coeur d’Alene, to produce 8 million ounces annually, from San Bartolome in Bolivia. (maybe?)
Minefinders, to produce 4.8 (4.2) million ounces annually, from Dolores in Mexico.
Pan Am Silver, to produce 4.1 million ounces annually, from Manantial Espejo in Argentina.

Bolivia silver production is at significant political risk, in my opinion, due to nationalizations, and continued threats of such.

Including new Bolivia production, the total new silver mine supply for 2008, (42.5 million ounces) is simply not nearly enough to meet existing and my projected 2008 investor demand (75 million ounces), and prices will likely continue to move up strongly.

The four largest new projects for 2009 are:
Goldcorp, to produce 31 million ounces annually, from Penasquito, Mexico.
Coeur d’Alene, to produce 10.4 million ounces annually, from Palmarejo, Mexico.
Silver Standard, to produce 9.6 million ounces annually, from Pirquitas, Argentina.
Harmony, to produce 4 million ounces annually, from Hidden Valley, Papua New Guinea.

In my opinion, it is too early to say what mine supply will mean for silver prices in 2009, since silver prices could well be $30/oz. or higher by then, with between 2-5 times more investor demand than today, or up to 400 million ounces demanded by investors due to continued inflation, war, etc.

But we can be sure that in the next year or two you will hear many false and misleading reports about how new mine supply ought to create some kind of “surplus” that investors won’t want to buy.

I was surprised to read a recent report by Eric Roseman, who does not appear to be a hired shill by the investment bankers, but who writes for the more trusted Sovereign Society, where he seemed to buy into the notions of those false reports in his recent article, “A Silver Divergence: Rising Supplies Begin to Weigh on Poor Man’s Gold in 2008″.
rosemanblog.sovereignsociety.com/2008/05/a-silver-diverg.html

He starts out, “silver will face the tacit test of price resilience under the growing bombardment of new production.”

But new production is no “bombardment” it is not nearly enough to meet rapidly growing investment demand.

He continues, “The bulk of global demand for silver going forward will have to come from investors.”

But that’s poorly phrased. The bulk of global demand for silver continues to be all forms of industrial demand (including jewelry and silverware) at over 900 million ounces. Investment demand for 2007 was 75 million ounces, and I expect 2008 investment demand to reach at least 150 million ounces. So, the bulk of demand for silver continues to be industrial, not from investors.

He notes, “Barclays believes mine production will grow by 6.5% in 2008, faster than last year’s increase of 3.6% and possibly the largest surplus of silver in over 20 years.”

According to the CPM Group and my figures, mine supply of 550 million ounces may increase by 42 million ounces (not including mines that shut down, which would reduce supply), so that figure of a 6.5% increase sounds a bit too much.

But with investment demand of 75 million ounces in 2007, already doubling in 2008, investment demand is far more than increased mine supply, and thus, there will be no surplus, but rather, a continued deficit.

Sincerely,

Jason Hommel
www.silverstockreport.com
www.miningpedia.com

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EUROPEAN STOCKS EXTEND LOSING STREAK, UBS FALLS

PARIS, May 26 (Reuters) - European stocks were slightly down around midday on Monday, falling for the fourth time in five sessions as fresh asset writedown fears at UBS knocked banking shares lower.

Crude oil prices, holding above $130, a barrel also continued to put pressure on stocks as concerns over rising inflation persisted.

Nokia retreated, down nearly 2 percent on market talk that the world’s largest cellphone maker may cut its handset prices by as much as 20 percent in a bid to gain a bigger slice of the market from players like Motorola.

Shares in Nokia’s Asian rival LG Electronics tumbled more than 8 percent on the rumours.

At 1050 GMT, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares was down 0.1 percent at 1,320.83 points, after falling 3.2 percent last week.

Both UK and U.S. markets were closed on Monday for a public holiday.

“The focus remains on oil prices, with concerns arising on how a number of sectors will cope with that. We’ve seen a sharp correction last week on airline stocks after company outlooks, citing high oil prices, disappointed the market,” said Benoit De Broissia, analyst at Richelieu Finance, in Paris.

“The pressure from rising commodity prices is now so great that it reignites fears of second-round inflation, with wage hikes,” he said.

The rise in oil prices aggravated existing worries among investors over inflation and stripped more than 2 percent off Japan’s Nikkei .N225 overnight.

WRITEDOWN FEARS RETURN

Banks were the heaviest negative weight on the market, with the DJ Stoxx index of European banks down 0.7 percent, led by a decline in shares of UBS down 3.1 percent after the Swiss lender said it continues to be exposed to U.S. mortgages in its prospectus for its upcoming $15-billion rights issue.

UBS “continues to hold positions exposed to the United States residential mortgage and may record additional losses to such exposures,” the bank said.

UBS will trade ex-rights on Tuesday and some traders said this was also already weighing on the company’s stock.

UBS is Europe’s largest subprime casualty so far, having written down $37 billion of assets hit by the U.S. subprime lending crisis.

Its stock has lost 42 percent so far this year, while the DJ Stoxx bank index has fallen 20 percent over the same period and the broad FTSEurofirst 300 has fallen 12 percent.

Banco Santander was down 1 percent, while UniCredit fell 1.8 percent and Credit Suisse lost 1.5 percent.

Around Europe, Frankfurt’s DAX .GDAXI was up 0.06 percent, while Paris’ CAC 40 .FCHI was up 0.3 percent, and the Swiss blue chip SMI index .SSMI was down 0.7 percent.

French utility Suez was among the top gainers, rising 2.4 percent after the company said it was looking to sell its Belgian natural gas trading arm Distrigas. The company said on Saturday it had entered into exclusive talks with Italy’s Eni.

Eni shares were up 0.3 percent.

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German DAX Composite Index

JBI

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ASIAN STOCKS SLIDE AS INFLATION FEARS RISE

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Asian stocks fell on Monday, with shares in Japan suffering their biggest fall in six weeks, as investors feared rising inflation and sluggish U.S. economic growth would seriously dent consumer demand in the region’s biggest export market.

Oil prices edged higher as the dollar eased, but trade in Asia was subdued with the U.S. and UK financial markets closed on Monday for national holidays.

Major stock indexes in Japan and China dropped more than 2 percent after U.S. markets last week chalked up their biggest decline in three months as oil prices rocketed to record highs, heightening concern about consumer demand and company earnings.

“The market is going to start thinking about real economies. China has held up somewhat but margins are getting squeezed by higher oil and higher materials prices,” said Garry Evans, pan-Asian equity strategist with HSBC in Hong Kong.

By 0600 GMT, Japan’s Nikkei share average (Osaka:^N225 - News) posted its largest single-day decline in six weeks, down 2.3 percent, led lower by exporters such as Canon Inc (Tokyo:7751.T - News) and clothing firm Fast Retailing Co Ltd (Tokyo:9983.T - News).

The MSCI index of Asian stocks outside Japan (^MIAPJ0000PUS - News) fell 1.4 percent.

China Mobile (HKSE:0941.HK - News) stock tumbled 7.5 percent, helping to knock down Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index (HKSE:^HSI - News) after Goldman Sachs downgraded shares of the world’s largest wireless carrier to “sell” following a sector-wide restructuring plan announced last week which will increase competition.

South Korea’s KOSPI (KSE:^KS11 - News) slid 1.5 percent to its lowest since April 24. Shares of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS), the world’s second-largest mobile phone maker, were the biggest drag on the index, tumbling 4 percent, on talk that Nokia (Helsinki:NOK1V.HE - News) may cut prices and re-enter the South Korean market.

Investors are also awaiting inflation data from both the euro zone and United States later in the week.

A persistent rise in commodity prices, led by oil’s 38 percent climb so far this year, has spooked investors and brought an abrupt end to a rally in global stock markets that began in mid-March when the U.S. Federal Reserve backed a deal to bail out ailing investment bank Bear Stearns & Co Inc (NYSE:BSC - News).

Still, the overarching trend since March has been a cautious shift from bonds to stocks despite higher volatility in both equity and fixed income markets.

Emerging market equity funds have received $16.7 billion in fresh investment since the beginning of April, recouping all but $3.3 billion of the losses incurred during the first three months of the year, according to data from EPFR Global, a firm that tracks global capital flows.

Meanwhile, investors have pulled money out of global bond funds for 15 consecutive weeks, racking up outflows of $10.5 billion so far this year.

BEAR MARKET IN BONDS

Inflation fears caused a stampede out of U.S. Treasuries last week, pushing up the yield on the benchmark 10-year note by 11 basis points. The sell-off quickly spread to Asia as well.

Japanese government bond futures on Monday edged up from nine-month lows plumbed last week, but gains were tempered by many market players, especially large banks, looking to cut their holdings.

“Market sentiment is pretty bad,” said Kenro Kawano, senior interest-rate strategist at Credit Suisse in Tokyo. “At least at the moment, it’s a bear market.”

Kawano said the surge in oil prices would ultimately hurt the Japanese economy. If so, that should cool some of the expectations for the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates in the coming year, which have weighed on the bond market.

June 10-year futures edged up 0.13 point to 134.48, up slightly from the nine-month trough of 133.93 struck on Friday.

The benchmark 10-year yield, which moves inversely to the price, was steady at 1.74 percent, off the nine-month peak of 1.755 percent reached on Friday.

Oil rose towards $133 a barrel on Monday, extending the previous session’s gains on a supply outage at the Statfjord oilfield in the North Sea and the weak U.S. dollar.

U.S. light crude for July delivery rose 54 cents to $132.73 a barrel, extending Friday’s gains of $1.38. It struck a record high of $135.09 in intraday trade last week.

Gold prices have crept higher in May, reflecting investors’ unease about inflation. Spot gold on Monday was up 0.3 percent at $927.10 an ounce.

The ailing dollar eased 0.1 percent to 71.888 against a basket of major currencies, hovering near one-month lows.

The euro rose to $1.5790, up 0.2 percent from Friday. It hit all-time highs above $1.60 last month.

The dollar slid 0.2 percent against the Japanese currency to 103.15 yen as a fall in Tokyo stocks prompted investors to unwind risky carry trades. In carry trades, low-yielding currencies such as the yen are used to finance purchases of assets offering higher returns elsewhere.

“The dollar continues to stay on a downward trend with many players just looking for a chance to sell it,” said Tsutomu Soma, senior manager of foreign assets at Okasan Securities in Japan.

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Japan’s NIKKEI 225 Index

JBI

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