Oldtent Archives 2009

Just a guess, but that tug in the belly could be your passenger hanging on to the seatbelt for dear life .

Hope your mission is  successful chief.

Pies ..mmmmmm..I have not eaten too much up here but I can feel the extra tug on the belly…there is poison in this crap now I know it….I can feel it in me system….
now we turn the corner again in metals…ya see the constant pressure is to the upside now…it is there..boiling right under the surface….this is better than saskcatoon berries or whatever those things were…up up we go….

positive opinions about Taseko. Next to Silver Wheaton and Iamgold, Taseko is my third favorite PM-related holding in our family portfolio. It is interesting, GoldenMaples, that you say you were attracted to this stock because of its gold-producing potential. I do not belittle that attraction to their gold reserves one bit. But in our case we were attracted to add this stock to our buy and hold group because of TKO’s involvement in restarting the Gibraltar mine and also because the company is operating in a part of our province that seems to be relatively free of aboriginal resource-sharing issues. I like Taseko as an investment. Cheers. Equiz.

tinyurl.com/qt5h2e

Small-Business Stimulus Loans Slow to Trickle
Matt Nager for The New York Times
Banks have created high hurdles for applicants and rejected many, like Mark Rusin, owner of the Loop in Arizona.

Published: August 12, 2009
Small-business owners hoping for some assistance of the sort given to the nation’s biggest banks applauded when the Small Business Administration unveiled a lending program in May.

Matt Nager for The New York Times
The Loop restaurant, near Tucson, has struggled in the recession, but a bank decided not to give it a federal stimulus loan.
Washington officials and some lenders predicted that the program, providing emergency bridge loans as part of the economic stimulus package, would save jobs and provide a lifeline for vulnerable businesses. Many in the banking industry expected it to be fully subscribed in months.

But the program is off to a slow start, and many banks, including some of the largest, appear reluctant to take part.

With $255 million, the program is prepared to make about 10,000 loans of up to $35,000 each. As of Monday, the agency reported that only 1,127 loans, totaling $36.8 million, had been extended.

While the agency maintains that the program is on track, some in the banking industry say the banks are moving slowly because they have little incentive. “There’s not a lot of profit motive in a $35,000 loan stretched over six years,” said Paul Merski, chief economist for the Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade association.

Bob Seiwert, of the Center for Commercial Lending and Business Banking at the American Bankers Association, says “stringent underwriting standards” will require as much work as larger loans, making these even less economical.

Alex Cooper, a counselor at the Pima Community College Small Business Development Center in Tucson, says he has helped nearly 30 clients apply for the loans. None has received one.

“It’s a disappointment,” said Mr. Cooper. “I thought the banks would be more interested in the community and try to help small businesses.”

Under the program, known as America’s Recovery Capital, a business owner applies to a bank for a loan and, if approved, can use the proceeds to retire existing debt. The borrower pays no interest on the new loan.

Instead, the Small Business Administration pays the bank two percentage points over the prime rate. After a one-year deferral, the borrower repays the loan over five years. The agency will repay the lender in case of default.

At the current rate, the program could have loans available through September 2010, when it is set to expire. “We like the fact, actually, that they will be spread out over time,” said Karen G. Mills, head of the Small Business Administration. “We have no doubt that we will make 10,000 loans.”

Not surprisingly, small-business owners are less pleased with the slow pace. Among the frustrated applicants is Mark Rusin, a client of Mr. Cooper’s whose restaurant business has fallen precipitously in the last year.

Mr. Rusin bought a franchise location of Uno Chicago Grill north of Tucson in April 2007 for $3.2 million. He dropped the franchise agreement because of fees and restyled the restaurant as the Loop Taste of Chicago.

Then came the recession. As the snowbirds left for points north this spring, sales tumbled. June revenue was $72,000, down 28 percent from a year earlier. “I’m bleeding out to the tune of 10 grand a month right now,” Mr. Rusin said. One of the new loans, he said, would see him through the next couple of months.

Part of the problem for borrowers like Mr. Rusin may be that Congress restricted loan eligibility to companies that are simultaneously struggling yet viable. That means the business must face an “immediate financial hardship,” meaning a 20 percent reduction in a critical operating number, such as revenue.

But the company, which has to have been in business at least two years, also has to have shown positive cash flow, if not an actual profit, in one of the last two years. It also must do a two-year cash-flow projection to show it can repay all its obligations.

The effort required to verify all of this probably explains why those banks that are participating in the program are lending primarily to existing clients. “From a financial perspective, it really is a loan that makes sense for an existing customer,” Mr. Merski said. “You’re not going to have to put out a lot of resources to do a very costly underwriting. You know the business.”

Mr. Rusin was fortunate in that the lender holding a first position on his commercial mortgage, M&I Bank of Milwaukee, is participating in the program. He hoped to use the loan to pay his vendors. But soon after he submitted his application, Mr. Rusin said, the bank told him he could use the loan only to pay down the earlier debt owed to the bank.

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at dealing effectively with all levels - local, indigenous, provincial and federal levels to move a mine into production smoothly and on schedule. In addition to the tremendous resources they have in the ground, they are well funded, well operated, and are simply getting better and better at efficiency in production. They are one of the few mining opps whose star is rising, and probably rising for a good long time yet.

Wish I owned more!!

Nice job on the pies..

Them saskaberry delectibles appear to be more elusive to me than an ice cube in Belize

What deflation??

My taxes, electricity bills, food,  fuel continue to go up at a time that my salary stays flat. Heck even cable TV  rates are going up. If we were in deflation then the purchasing power of your money would continue to go up not down.

Last year we experienced an organized deleveraging event driven by the criminalwho are running things. They had to do something to cap the huge inflation in the system.

I’d describe the current economy as stagflationary (ie. rising prices without rising wages) - same as the 70’s. I think we’ll eventually go into a blow-off peak in commodities same as back then.

Watch the long bond rates…

  Look what the other guy had to put up with.

right now. Should hyper-inflation take hold it will be an exogenous event, singular in nature.

Again. if you assume that the prices you are witnessing reflect liquidity or are fundamentally based you are just wrong. The health of a country is easily seen two ways, transportation and electricity demand, everything else is noise. Both are at depression levels.

Insiders sold one billion in stock last week. They aren’t seeing inflation.

Taseko Mines Ltd. (TSX:TKO) (NYSE.A:TGB) located in British Columbia. They presently operate the Gibraltar Mine, where they expect to produce 80 million pounds of copper in 2009 and just over 100 million pounds in 2010. Even though it’s not one of these new producer stories, it is a source of new supply in that it expects to be producing increasing amounts of copper within the next year or two.An interesting side story on Taseko is that it’s in the process of permitting its Prosperity project, which is also in British Columbia, and it seems to me that the market is not really giving Taseko any credit for this project. This is a copper-gold co-product open-pit deposit located close to infrastructure. It contains about 13 million ounces of gold which kind of attracted me to it in the first place. I think the market perceives significant permitting risk in Prosperity, but my personal view is that this project will get permitted because of all the local support for it.

There are two levels of permitting here, the provincial level and the federal level. The provincial permitting is required to be settled in October, because the province has 180 days from the date of filing to make a decision. The Federal decision is not required by law to fall within a certain timeframe, but the feds usually follow suit very quickly after the province has made its decision. Therefore, I would expect to hear something on the federal decision by the end of Q1 of 2010. That would allow the company to commence construction on the project next summer.

 The first catalyst to look for is granting of the environmental approval by the government of British Columbia. I think this then increases the probability that the federal level approval would also be granted.

Total resource estimates peg it at 5.3 billion pounds of copper, and at full production, they expect to turn out over 100 million pounds of copper and approximately 250,000 ounces of gold per year.

Love dem Potato Salad Sisters! 

Be nice if you would read the full BHP report. USA, Euro Land and Japan beginning to increase commodity stocks. And, if you insist on the Deflation scenario then WHY does Copper not agree.   Your Deflation theme is getting old.

MARKET PULSE

Aug 12, 2009, 7:31 p.m. EST

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — A 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck Japan early Thursday morning, the latest in a string of temblors to hit the island nation this month, reports said. The quake was centered off Hachijojima Island, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency, but was felt across much of central Japan, including Tokyo. No damage or casualties were immediately reported.

~ ~ ~ ~

JBI

you cannot go wrong with TGB - Taseko. They are going great guns.

DYODD. I own shares and do not plan to sell for some time.

One hell of an act……from 1944!

(HINT: Watch past the first 50 seconds or so, then Whoa! lookout!)

thefunnypage.com/potato-sisters/

JBI

GOLD’s 50 DMA has moved down now 4 days in a row a grand total of $2.01, while its 200 & 300 DMAs keep moving higher and closing in on ALL TIME HIGHS. Let not your hearts be troubled. We’re going higher. MUCH HIGHER!

JBI

$1,316.75 . . . . . . . . . . . .

In my mind there is no question that gold is a long term buy and hold.  No trading.  Just look at the chart.  The small amount of phyz i have is doing fine…..

It’s the shares that are the killer.  I have taken to becoming a trader (traitor?) with the shares and buying/selling.  Not a day trader but more like in terms of weeks as the stocks strengthen and weaken…

All the best to you on the west coast enjoying a beautiful summer!

PS

(we have had 8 months in a row with below normal temps…3 of those months are record lows)

Thanks goodness this climate change is helping out the needy.  National Geo this month shows how rains have come to the drought stricken africans and the sahara desert has shrunk by 300000 sq KMs (something like that) in the last few years…

So-called “capacity” for the refineries, and hence for all the products that come out of those refineries is, in my opinion, fine-tuned for manipulation of prices of various refinery products. I have no idea who the manipulators are, for even if I knew I could not make any rational investment decisions based on knowing who they are. For me, it is just like the silver and gold market and its manipulators. I just ride along with the tide, and hope occassionally I can buy a little and then sell a little and then buy a little again and then sell a little again, to eventually end up with some net gain. The previous sentence refers to my approach with holdings of silver and gold shares, but not to holdings of physical silver and gold. For the latter, I say BLAHH ! to those who say that the buy and hold strategy is a loser. We will long-term hold hold physical silver and gold we have bought, and will continue to do so, despite the so-called wisdom of posters who criticize the buy and hold strategy.

To go back to candykanes posting about petroleum products, our family accounts will continue to hold Canadian natgas income trusts. We have no idea where the oil and gas and refinery and government manipulators will take the price of natrural gas, but regardless of this uncertainty my gut tells me to retain a position in natural gas equities and Canadian natgas-based income trusts. In our case our holdings in this sector happen to be in natgas-based income trusts that pay us a very respectable monthly distribution, even though the North American market price for natural gas is very low right now. Cheers. Equiz.

in Bank of America.

Huge increase in GFI Gold Fields as well.

GFI goes down in extended hours trading BAC trades huge volume and goes higher. If this is a top in gold, shouldn’t more people be able to spell Johannesburg?

people think oil can go to the moon. It cannot. I don’t care what it is priced in. Gasoline and heating oil are largely domestic and if the spread gets too wide, no one will refine. Demand is absolutely nowhere for refined products and these guys are getting killed.

You think Congress was pissed last year where everyone said high prices was a lack of refining capacity, well what is the excuse this year?

http://tinyurl.com/ynl28s

It started telling us that in June.  About the time that BHP realised their June qtr profit would be down 65%.

I suggest you read Pup’s latest on refineries. Supply and demand in the end it works and the results can be disastrous.

Daily Mail
Blair bank targeted in £8.5bn FSA probe
By Ben Laurance
10th August 2009

The bank where Tony Blair is an adviser is the target of an unprecedented probe involving billions of pounds of customers’ funds, the Daily Mail can disclose.

JP Morgan Chase, whose chief executive Jamie Dimon last year recruited the former prime minister as an adviser, is being investigated by the City’s watchdog, the Financial Services Authority for allegedly failing to keep track of £8.5billion of clients’ money.

The FSA has called in a top firm of accountants to examine the bank’s London activities after evidence emerged that JP Morgan had mixed customers’ funds with its own.

Banks are meant to maintain a strict segregation of their own money from that which is held on behalf of clients.

But JP Morgan managers in London discovered last month that client and bank money used for trading futures and options - a way of speculating on movements in currencies, share prices and commodities - had apparently been put into a single pool.

They raised the alarm and notified the FSA. The scale of case is unprecedented, say City insiders. The FSA has penalised small firms in the past for mixing funds owned by clients and the banks themselves.

But this is thought to be the first case involving such a large household name.
JP Morgan Chase faces the threat of an unlimited fine if the watchdog decides enforcement action is necessary.

News of the FSA investigation will come as a huge embarrassment for the bank, which is valued on Wall Street at £100billion.

Jesse

Up almost 10%.

we didn’t get the hard down in gold today. I’d still be alot more comfortable if we could separate from the broad market.

Fed extends QE into October - dollar rallies. LOL