"Intellectual Muscles."

Baltic Dry Index. 2991 -07

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.

“When I am asked for a detailed forecast of what will happen in the coming months or years I remember Sam Goldwyn 's advice: "Never prophesy, especially about the future." (Interruption from the floor) Never mind, it is wet outside. I expect that they wanted to come in. You cannot blame them; it is always better where the Tories are.”

Margaret Thatcher. October 1980.

We open for the day readying for trouble in South Africa. South Africa appears to be heading off on the road to Zimbabwe. Bad news for mining companies in South Africa is very good news for competing mining companies in safer more stable countries elsewhere. My guess is that Canada, Australia, and Latin America will gain at South Africa’s expense. My guess is that excellent mining companies like Canada’s SEMAFO (TSX: SMF) operating in west Africa will be prominent among the gainers. Interestingly, SEMAFO is in the early stages of exploring with governments in the region the possibilities for solar power. While it’s too early to say if this “green energy” possibility will lead to a pilot project, it’s another sign of our world on the threshold of great change. Below, the Telegraph covers South Africa on the edge of resource nationalism abyss.

“We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.”

Cecil Rhodes.

Mining groups fear backlash in South Africa
London-listed mining companies are bracing themselves for a wave of ethnic violence in South Africa as tensions escalate following the murder of notorious far-right politician Eugene Terreblanche.
By Garry White Published: 10:05PM BST 04 Apr 2010
The white supremacist leader was hacked to death at his Transvaal farm on Saturday – the same day that a senior member of the African National Congress (ANC) called for the nationalisation of all South Africa's foreign-owned mines.

Speaking in Zimbabwe on Saturday, Julius Malema, leader of the influential ANC Youth League, said South Africa's mines should be returned to black ownership.

"They have exploited our minerals for a very long time. We want the mines, now it's our turn," Mr Malema said.

Most of the UK-listed miners have significant interests in South Africa, particularly Anglo American, but Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Xstrata all have major assets within the country. Anglo American has majority stakes in many of the country's miners, including Anglo Platinum and Kumba Iron Ore. These four mining companies make up more than 10pc of the FTSE 100.
Widespread violence could lead to disrupted mine output, analysts said, potentially causing spikes in some commodity prices.

"This is one of the biggest threats to the South African mining industry today," one senior executive told The Daily Telegraph, although they declined to be named.

According to the South African Department of Minerals and Energy, the country has about 85pc of global reserves of platinum, which is used to make catalytic converters for vehicles.
It also has almost 80pc of the world's reserves of manganese and 73pc of global chrome stocks, which is used in the manufacture of stainless steel.

The country also has significant reserves of gold, zirconium and titanium.

"If South Africa adds to the problems it already has, investment is going to go elsewhere," John Meyer, head of mining at broker Fairfax said.

-----The outspoken Mr Malema, who has praised the farm seizures of Robert Mugabe, is widely blamed for stoking violence against white farmers after singing a controversial apartheid-era song which includes the line "kill the Boer".

He has been calling for nationalisation for the last three months, prompting Susan Shabangu, South Africa's respected mining minister, to say that a state takeover of the industry would not happen "in her lifetime". She said that Mr Malema was merely stretching his "intellectual muscles".

In the face of rising concern among foreign investors, Jacob Zuma, South Africa's president, refuses to rein in Mr Malema. He argues that South Africa is a free country and all citizens and can do and say as they please.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/7554120/Mining-groups-fear-backlash-in-South-Africa.html

In other news this morning, the IMF is about to recommend the G-20 adopting and implementing a bankster “excess profits tax.” PIIGS will fly first I suspect. The banksters, who’d sell their own granny for the fat she would yield, will move heaven and earth to change any government rash enough to do any such thing, I suspect. Below, the Telegraph covers the IMF’s “pie in the banksters eye” fantasy, to mangle a metaphor.

The bankster Duke of Dunstable had one-way pockets.
He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel an orphan out of tuppence.

With apologies to P.G. Wodehouse.

IMF targets banks with 'excess profits tax'
The International Monetary Fund is poised to recommend an unprecedented new "excess profits tax" on banks worldwide.
By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor Published: 10:24PM BST 05 Apr 2010

The Fund is expected to suggest the tax – which is effectively on banks' cashflow – as one of the best ways governments can raise significant amounts from banks without drastically distorting the financial system.

The tax will be announced alongside the Obama-style banking levy, which the IMF will also rubber-stamp in its report, to be published at its spring meetings this month.

The IMF was commissioned by the Group of Twenty leading economies last year to investigate new taxes on banks.

Although most attention initially was on so-called Tobin taxes, which levy small charges on banks' financial transactions (a model promoted by campaign groups as the Robin Hood Tax), the Fund is likely to rule them out as a serious prospect. The move is likely to frustrate Gordon Brown, who threw his weight behind the transactions tax in the early stages of the research.
Most had assumed that this would mean the Fund would give its central recommendation to a form of balance sheet levy, which has already been implemented in Sweden, and which has been proposed by the Obama administration.
However, the Fund is also considering giving an equally-important recommendation to a less well-known type of tax which simply levies a charge on bank profits, beyond a certain level.
The advantage of the balance sheet levy is that it should encourage banks not to build excessively large stocks of assets, as Royal Bank of Scotland famously did ahead of the crisis. The benefit of the excess profits tax is that it is thought to be the most efficient way to raise money from banks, and could in time replace regular business taxes as the best way of generating revenue from financial institutions.

-----Peter Spencer, economic adviser to the Ernst & Young Item Club, said: "The problem with an excess profits tax would be that it is very difficult to draw a dividing line between one kind of industry – which does pay the tax – and another that doesn't. Migration and effectively avoidance are the things which would make it very difficult. Also, the last thing you want to do is to deter people from making profits."

Britain toyed with an excess profits tax during the Second World War, although the use of such a system in a specific industry would be unprecedented.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/7557409/IMF-targets-banks-with-excess-profits-tax.html

Far away in a land where taxes and work are optional, most jobs are no-show jobs provided by the government and paid for by Brussels levies on hardworking Germans and Brits, and the sun never stops shining, the locals have started moving their money to the gnomes of Switzerland, home of the mega bank UBS, the Scarlet Pimpernel banksters with a contempt for other countries tax laws. Easy going, slothful but filthy rich Greeks might want to reconsider their choice of safe haven for their tax free, ill-gotten gains. Faced with going to a US guillotine or ratting out their US tax evading clients, the Scarlet Pimpernel in this 21st century edition, has just done a deal to walk away and rat out the American tax cheat aristocracy. I doubt that the Greeks will fare much better, when the German’s get forced into bailing out tax shy Greece.

They seek him here, they seek him there
Those taxmen seek him everywhere
Is he in heaven or is he in hell?
Or is he in a Geneva tax motel?

With apologies to Baroness Orczy. (Charles Dickens surely!)

Greek banks hit by wealthy citizens moving their money offshore
Greek banks are being hit by a wave of redemptions as the country's most wealthy citizens and corporations look to move their money offshore or to international financial institutions perceived as safer homes for their assets.
By Harry Wilson Published: 10:13PM BST 05 Apr 2010

Wealthy Greeks and companies have been clamouring to move their cash deposits to banks such as HSBC or France's Société Générale, which operate large branches in the country. They are among those to have received several billion euros of new money in recent weeks.

HSBC's private banking in the country is understood to have been flooded with business, while the local operations of several other major international banks have already seen large inflows of money. A spokesman for HSBC declined to comment.

Eurozone countries are still at loggerheads on bailing out the southern European nation, with Germany believed to be in conflict with other countries in the single currency over how much interest to charge on the emergency loans package. Germany wants interest rates of 6pc to 6.5pc, with other countries willing to accept 4pc to 4.5pc interest.

More than €3bn (£2.6bn) of deposits held by Greek households and companies left the country in February, while in January about €5bn of deposits were moved out, according to the latest figures available from the Bank of Greece.

Switzerland, the UK and Cyprus have been the largest recipients of the money, with the wealthiest Greeks looking to move their deposits to Swiss banks accounts to escape the more punitive tax measures many fear will be introduced in the wake of the country's economic crisis.
John Raymond, a banks analyst at CreditSights, said that on a visit to Athens last week capital flight was the number one issue worrying most Greek bankers.

"The banks themselves are concerned by it because they can't get funding elsewhere at the moment," he said.

"Greek banks won't be able to increase lending volumes if deposits don't increase, and a continued deterioration in their deposit base will lead them to cut back lending even more, stifling real economic growth."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/7557213/Greek-banks-hit-by-wealthy-citizens-moving-their-money-offshore.html

We end for the day with “the man who saved the world” twice, heading over to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve “the Crooked Parliament” of 2005-2010, to be renamed Brown Palace in the Old Labour plans for a socialist people’s republic, in the unlikely event that Stalin MacBroon and Bob Crow, leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, get returned to power in the coming general election in Britain. Stay long precious metals, but outside of UK jurisdiction.

They're changing PM at Buckingham Palace -
Gordon Brown went down with Alice.
A face looked out, but it wasn't the Queen’s.
"She's much too busy packing things,"
Says Alice.

With apologies to A.A.Milne.

April 6, 2010
Fiercely contested election campaign begins today

Gordon Brown will travel the mile from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace today and launch the most fiercely contested election campaign for a generation.

He will ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament next Monday and will name May 6 as the day voters decide his fate.

Within minutes the frenzy of electoral combat will begin. Mr Brown will make a symbolic trip to the South East, showing his determination to hold on to new Labour gains of 1997. David Cameron will head in the opposite direction, taking the fight to Labour in the Midlands and the North.

The formalities between the Prime Minister and the monarch will take only a few minutes but will trigger the most eagerly awaited showdown since Tony Blair swept away 18 years of Conservative rule in 1997 and what promises to be the most closely fought election since John Major defied the polls and Neil Kinnock in 1992.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7088375.ece

Personally, I think dissolution is too good for Her Majesty’s House of Crooks and suggest reintroducing the stocks, the pillory, and bringing back being hung drawn and quartered for quite a few. Sadly our false prosperity is coming to its end. Sometime after May 6th, 2010, economic reality is about to intrude into most hapless Brits, downwardly mobile life. Shortly ahead for modern Britain’s serfs, a taste of Icelandic, Irish and Greek style austerity, although if the people’s republic gets returned to power a post Soviet Union style economic collapse seems highly probable to me.

They're changing PM at Buckingham Palace -
Gordon Brown went down with Alice.
"Do you think the Queen knows all about me?"
"Sure to, dear, but it's time for DC,"
Says Alice

With apologies to A.A.Milne.

At the Comex silver depositories Monday, final figures were: Registered 53.77 Moz, Eligible 62.29 Moz, Total 116.06 Moz.


Crooks & Scoundrels Corner.

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today, the views of disgraced, fallen former economics guru Greenspan, the Bernie Madoff of Federal Reserve serial bubbles built on securities fraud and Wall Street flim-flam. An economist who never saw a bubble he didn’t like, nor ever saw an approaching pin for every bubble. Perpetually gun shy, after the stock market crash of 1987, he threw ever increasing amounts of fiat dollars at every problem that surfaced, until Wall Street’s “finest” packaged up hundreds of billions of “triple-A” rubbish and foist it on a brain dead unsuspecting world, even as they created derivatives instruments that allowed them to bet against their mugs. Run immediately to precious metals, “Bubbles” is now bullish on the US economy. What could possibly go wrong?

Alan Greenspan upbeat on US economy
The former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has said there is "momentum building up" in the US economy.
By Garry White Published: 9:44PM BST 04 Apr 2010

He added that the odds of the US economy stalling had "fallen very significantly".

"There is a momentum building up which is really just beginning and it's got a way to go," said Mr Greenspan, adding that the country was on the edge of a "significant build-up" in inventories "and that was a self-reinforcing cycle".

His comments, in an interview with ABC news, followed last week's figures that showed US employment growing in March by the largest amount in three years.

The Labour Department said that payrolls over the month increased by 162,000, the third gain in the past five months and the most since March 2007.

Mr Greenspan also said that corporate investment in new equipment was starting to come back "in a fairly substantial way".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7554158/Alan-Greenspan-upbeat-on-US-economy.html


"Were we to be directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread."

Thomas Jefferson



The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March:

DJIA: +168 UP. NASDAQ: +370 UP. SP500: +196 UP. The great Bull market goes on with the all three continuing higher in positive numbers.



Help the LIR fight Banksterism, the EU, and for sound money.
If you can, help the LIR stay around and make a difference. Please make a donation at the PayPal link on the website or better still become a sponsor for what looks like an exciting 2010. Capitalism not banksterism.


Sunspots – A 22 year colder world? (From 2004?)

Spotless Days April 04 Current Stretch: 0 days
2010 total: 6 days (6%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 776 daysTypical Solar Min: 485 days
http://www.spaceweather.com/

The long minimum seems to have ended.

New Solar Cycle Prediction
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/29may_noaaprediction.htm
Is the Sun Missing Its Spots?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/space/21sunspot.html?8dpc

Are Sunspots Different During This Solar Minimum?
-----But something is unusual about the current sunspot cycle. The current solar minimum has been unusually long, and with more than 670 days without sunspots through June 2009, the number of spotless days has not been equaled since 1933.

----During the period from 1645 to 1715, the Sun entered a period of low activity now known as the Maunder Minimum, when through several 11- year periods the Sun displayed few if any sunspots. Models of the Sun's irradiance suggest that the solar energy input to the Earth decreased during that time and that this change in solar activity could explain the low temperatures recorded in Europe during the Little Ice Age.

----The same data were later published [Penn and Livingston, 2006], and the observations showed that the magnetic field strength in sunspots were decreasing with time, independent of the sunspot cycle. A simple linear extrapolation of those data suggested that sunspots might completely vanish by 2015.These observations caused researchers to wonder whether the characteristics of sunspots are different now than in other solar cycles.http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009EO300001.pdf

Big freeze could signal global warming 'pause'
The Arctic conditions which have brought Britain to a standstill over the past week could be the start of a "pause" in global warming, some scientists believe.
Published: 9:20AM GMT 11 Jan 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6965342/Big-freeze-could-signal-global-warming-pause.html

Sunspot cycle 24: Together with sunspot cycle 25, the next two global cooling cycles. The new “Dalton Minimum?” Twenty Nine months now with low sunspots numbers, and counting. March was the 29th month of yet another low number of 15.4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum
Smoothed sunspot numbers (SSN). 2007, Oct. 0.9. The end of cycle 23.

Sunspot cycle 24: Nov 1.7. Dec 10.1. Jan 3.4. Feb 2.2. Mar 9.3 April 2.9. May: 2.9. June 3.1. July 0.5. August 0.5. Sep 1.1 Oct. 2.9. Nov. 4.1 Dec 0.8. Jan 1.5. Feb 1.4. Mar 0.7. Apr 1.2. May 2.9. June 2.6. July 3.5. Aug. 0.0. Sep 4.2. Oct 4.6. Nov 4.2. Dec 10.6 Jan 13.1 Feb 18.6 Mar 15.4.

Sunspots. http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml

The count. http://sidc.oma.be/products/ri_hemispheric/

Why a New Minimum. http://sesfoundation.org/dalton_minimum.pdf

The “Carrington Event,” September 1, 1859.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm

Current Space Weather.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

What happened to global warming?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8299079.st

This week’s featured links: Silver & Gold Miners + Rare Metals.

With US trillion dollar deficits stretching as far as the eye can see, and voodoo economics the order of the day at the central banks, I think it is now time to begin selectively scaling into precious metals companies that mostly meet the following criteria:

Adequate cash reserves. Good management. Strong in-ground reserves or prospects. NAFTA based, or else located in countries with strong rule of law.

Endeavour Silver Corp. TSX: EDR. http://www.edrsilver.com/s/Home.asp

Semafo TSX: SMF http://www.semafo.com/home_company_intro.php

ATW Gold Corp. TSX.V: ATW. http://www.atwgold.com/

US Silver Corp. TSX.V: USA. http://www.us-silver.com/s/Home.asp

Excellon Resources Inc. TSX: EXN. http://www.excellonresources.com/

First Majestic Silver Corp. TSX: FR http://www.firstmajestic.com/s/Home.asp

New Jersey Mining Company. OTCBB: NJMC
http://www.newjerseymining.com/index.html

Atna Resources Ltd. TSX: ATN. http://www.atna.com/s/Home.asp

Barkerville Gold Mines TSX.V: BGM. Formerly International Wayside Gold Mines Ltd.
http://www.barkervillegold.com/s/Home.asp

Shoreham Resources Ltd. TSX-V: SMH
http://www.shoreham.ca/

ATAC Resources Ltd, TSX.V: ATC. http://www.atacresources.com/s/home.asp

Evolving Gold Corp. TSX.V: EVG http://www.evolvinggold.com/

Lydian International Ltd. TSX: LYD. Note: LYD operates in Armenia, a region carrying higher risk than our usual safer picks in NAFTA lands. http://www.lydianinternational.co.uk/

The story of rare earths and metals is mostly one of China producing and exporting, Japan, America and everyone else importing. Vital to our new technologies, and lifestyle, and critical to hybrid and electric cars, Rare Earth Elements and Heavy Rare Earths, are a strategic choke point held in China’s hands. Lately China has been squeezing that choke point. I think that AVL at Thor Lake Canada, has a property of global importance. A property with the ability to offer NAFTA access to REEs and HREs for the decades ahead. As America and the west move to reduce over dependence on oil from unstable regions, we will see demand for rare metals take off.

Avalon Rare Metals Inc. TSX: AVL. http://www.avalonraremetals.com/

We will be adding more REEs as appropriate.

Warning.

Sadly we are all in unexplored territory. The world has never before suffered a severe recession/depression while operating on fiat currency. As is widely apparent, the central banks haven’t a clue and are making up the rules as the flounder along. They never saw it coming they claim, although it was obvious to many fine writers though not unfortunately in the mainstream media, that a giant financialised derivatives gambling economy would always end badly. There are no experts now, for the simple reason that we have never before faced such a sudden synchronised and deep collapse in the global economies.

The unfortunate fact that we are operating on fraudulent currencies is highly likely to mean it all ends many months from now, in a fiat currency revulsion, but only after the monetary authorities have first tried pouring in endless amounts of newly created money. A derivatives gambling world with an estimated quadrillion dollars of face value has to be unwound and the losses absorbed. In this sort of investing environment, cash, gold and silver and tangible assets are favoured over stocks and intangible assets.

As always if thinking about making an investment, it’s important to do one’s own due diligence. No one has more at risk in an investment than you do yourself. In these difficult economic times, there will likely be several false bottoms before the real one arrives and hindsight allows us to confirm that the bottom is in. Even then, a “V” shaped rebound is highly improbable. A double dip recession seems likely. Beware the false "statistical" government subsidised "recovery." It is a "recovery" bought from a future of fiat currency collapse.

Graeme Irvine

London Irvine Report: www.londonirvinereport.com/
Graeme@londonirvinereport.com