fantastic business , page-17

Why is it running anyway?

1. Massive US/European stimulus approaching - interest rates heading below zero, savers obliterated, great for precious metals.

2. Currencies are dying - fiat experiment since the break up of Bretton Woods in tatters, has never worked in all of history, gold and silver have for 5000 years been considered the only real money

3. Eurozone is hemorrhaging - PIIGS an utter basket case, German courts to vote on legitimacy of current and ongoing bailouts on September 12.

4. Experts agree gold is heading towards $3,500 and beyond, silver/gold ratio unrealistically high and a twisted reflection of silver's value as both money and an industrial metal. In essence, silver is CHEAP.

5. The Chinese buying tens of tonnes of gold every month, biggest producer yet biggest exporter. No gold is leaving China. Long term plan is to back the Yuan with gold, have all but ceased buying worthless US treasuries, will spell the collapse of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency.

6. Banks have hypothecated and rehypothecated customer's unallocated precious metals (as much as ten times) without customer's knowledge, if they don't physically have possession of the metal they DO NOT actually own it, now wise to these shenanigans, customer's are now demanding banks make good these metals, in some cases customers have had to wait months. In the interim, it means banks less able to manipulate prices lower if they have less metals with which to manipulate. Heck, cash is no longer safe (MF Global, PFG Best) as cash deposits in the US are, to all intents and purposes, considered to be commodities.

7. Central banks are buying humungus amounts of gold (while aiding to suppress its price and simultaneously printing humungus amounts of money out of thin air - conflict of interest, no?), in the same fashion as mega-billionaires George Soros and John Paulson, both of whom have invested hundreds of millions of dollars out of their respective hedge funds.

8. If metals prices must rise, well-managed and producing companies such as Alcyone should be the beneficiaries. As metals deposits dry up and finance becomes harder to come by, many smaller (and larger) companies will either merge or be swallowed up by sophisticated, value-seeking, mining sharks.

There's more I could go into, but that's probably a good start.