The past year was a difficult one overall for the metals, with the main standouts to the upside being a geopolitical risk-driven gain in gold, a China-driven rise in iron ore and a surge in uranium on broadening global support for nuclear power (Figure 1). A jump in global interest rates to near two-decade highs saw recession fears persist all year, and while one still did not actually eru...Read More

This year the post-global health crisis boom was brought to an end by a surge in inflation to forty-year highs, a major rise in global interest rates in an attempt to curb the rising prices and surging geopolitical risk after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While precious metals held up reasonably well as markets turned to them as a risk hedge, by Q2/22 the higher interest rates put an end t...Read More

Chile is the world leader in copper production, at 28.5% of the total in 2020, and this looks set to continue, with the country having the largest global reserves, at 23.0% of total. It is also the global leader for molybdenum, which is often found along with copper, and is a major lithium player, holding 51.1% of global reserves. Read More

Newfoundland has become a gold exploration hotspot over the past few years, with the sector seeing some of its strongest activity ever. While the province remains a small contributor to Canadian gold production, it has a substantial mineral industry well supported by the government, focused on iron ore, copper and nickel, and the surge in exploration suggests that gold output from the...Read More

Nevada is the core of the U.S. gold output, accounting for by far the majority, at 75.4% on average for the past year. The state looks set to remain a dominant player in U.S. gold, as it accounts for 49% of total U.S. reserves, with Alaska slightly ahead with 51% of reserves, but just 8.6% of current production. The U.S. accounts for 6.1% of global gold output, making Nevada one of the largest gol...Read More

The Golden Triangle in northwestern British Columbia has historically been a major site of Canadian gold production, beginning as early as the mid 1800s. There was a wave of production in the 1990s which cooled as the gold price declined, but larger scale production resumed in 2017, and the area has seen surging exploration interest over the past year, given that the region has some of the largest...Read More

In this report we outline the Quebec gold mining industry, including its major producers, and a survey of many of the junior miners focused on the province. Quebec accounts for 34% of Canadian gold production (second to Ontario, with 44%) and remains a major focus for both producers and junior miners.Read More

Red Lake has been one of the most prolific gold mining districts in Canada and the world, with exploration having started in the 1920s, and production, which began in the 1930s, continuing to the present day. The district is known for the high grade of its gold, its infrastructure, and strong institutional support, given the long history of mining in the area.Read More

The United States economy is largely a "financialized" economy.Financialization: "The increase in size and importance of a country’s financial sector relative to its overall economy."Is financialization a sickness of corroding empires? Do previous examples exist?These are the questions we tackle today.The financial industry represented 10% of the gross domestic product in 1970.By 2010 the fi...Read More

As soon as Greg Ip wrote his asinine "What's Wrong With the Economy? It's You, Not the Data" piece in The Wall Street Journal last week, I had a funny feeling Karma was about to bite The Establishment in the ass.Well, Karma acted like a real Karen yesterday when the inflation numbers came out.In a showing that surely made Joke Biden take a deep sniff, the CPI rose 3.5% in March. Core prices, which...Read More

Treasury Secretary Yellen recently took an airplane to China.To our everlasting astonishment the aerial machine arrived intact.It was after all "constructed" by Boeing.In China the American potentate read her hosts a severe lesson... and wagged a lecturing finger in their stern faces.She bellyached and moaned about Chinese economic "overcapacity."China in Ms. Yellen's telling is overproduc...Read More

Let's say that Trump wins the November election. What would a second Trump presidency actually look like?Today we're going to investigate that question. Let's first back up to the 2016 election.Trump ran the most incompetent presidential transition process in my lifetime and perhaps the worst in history. The problems began with the fact that none of Trump, his family members and inner circle actua...Read More

As Bitcoin once again approaches new highs this week, let's take a moment to dissect crypto's incredible 2024 rally and where it might go from here.First up: some eye-popping statistics:Bitcoin has rallied 70% year-to-date, and nearly 160% over the trailing 12 months. It finally posted a new high in March after eclipsing $73,000, its first all-time high following the ugly "crypto winter" bear ma...Read More

If your situational awareness is well-tuned, you can put together a political weather report from the swirl of events that otherwise seem to confound the degenerate simps who pretend to report the news.Events are tending in the direction of self-reinforcing, ramifying chaos, and the people running the show are obviously insane as they do everything possible to hurry chaos along.Case in point: Anto...Read More

The New York Times has published a strange article by Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan. The headline is that his economist brain makes him say with regard to inflation: "Don't worry, be happy." The article gives the reader as much reason to trust economists as you do epidemiologists, which is to say none at all.The idea is that if both prices and income go up together, it...Read More

The man's name is Andrew Zatlin.The Wall Street Journal labels him "the Moneyball Economist."Why the "Moneyball" economist? Answer shortly.Meantime, Bloomberg heaps praise upon his economic forecasting.That is because his crystal ball is remarkably and reliably clear.He routinely runs his circles around crackerjacks from Goldman, Morgan Stanley and the rest of them.And today we are mightily please...Read More

In this little-known part of Africa, France and the United States are in the process of getting kicked out.Usually, no one would care other than the pearl-clutching elite wondering why the natives rejected their particular brand of imperialism. But this casting out has far-reaching implications, as nature abhors a vacuum.Of course, Russia and China will fill that vacuum.But first, let's name and d...Read More

"Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur" the world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.We believe there is vast justice here. The world yearns to be deceived, eternally and infinitely deceived.Why else sisters and brothers do people attend magic shows... consult psychics... or read New York Times editorial columns?Why, indeed, do people vote?The answer, so far as we can discern, is beca...Read More

I know that April just started, but the November election will be here before you know it. And the upcoming months are going to be fascinating and not necessarily in the positive sense.We all know that wild cards from a possible criminal conviction of Donald Trump to a strong third-party showing by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to a sudden withdrawal by Joe Biden due to his visibly impaired physical and...Read More

The US Dollar index pushed toward its February highs during a strong April Fool's Day rally.No, this isn't an elaborate practical joke. The buck is on a tear again after bouncing off its March lows. It's now threatening to sneak back toward its November highs, erasing the steady drawdown that helped trigger the melt-up rally in late 2023.If traditional market relationships hold true, these develop...Read More

Who was not impressed seeing the sudden and total collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge after getting its pylon bonked by the container ship Dali a few hours before the dawn's early light in Baltimore harbor?The symbolism was hard to miss.In America's ongoing death-of-a-thousand-cuts, that one literally severed a major artery, but it may take a while to know how badly the wounded coloss...Read More

A lot of people seem to have forgotten about the war in Ukraine. That's a mistake.Russia is slowly but steadily defeating Ukraine, which is becoming increasingly obvious to everyone except the most anti-Russian diehards.That's leading to desperation in elite Western circles determined to stop Russia one way or the other. In their minds, they simply can't let Putin win. They think that if Putin win...Read More

On May 5, 2021, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki issued a mob-like warning to social media companies and information distributors generally.They need to get with the program and start censoring critics of COVID policy. They need to amplify government propaganda. After all, it would be a shame if something would happen to these companies.These were her exact words:The president's view is that...Read More

Share this article VANCOUVER - Lithium South Development Corp. [TSXV-LIS; OTCQB-LISMF; FSE-OGPQ] announced the successful completion of a series of advanced test work aimed at exploring alternative lithium production methods, to potentially enhance the value of its Hombre Muerto Norte project (HMN Li Project) in Argentina.Approximately 20,000 liters of representative brine samples from the Tramo w...Read More

I gave you ten steps to build your Free State of Me a few years ago. (Feel free to read or reread that article, as it's been a while.)One piece of advice is to start an online business, but many people don't know how to do that.With that in mind, I thought I'd briefly shift our focus to microeconomics.Microeconomics deals with the behavior of individuals and firms in making decisions about allocat...Read More

The Fed kept the fed funds rate unchanged at last week's meeting, as I predicted.That makes 17 Fed meetings in a row going back to March 16, 2022, when I got the Fed forecast right. Events remain uncertain from here, but it's so far, so good for my forecasting (that's not because I have a crystal ball but because I know how to read them).Jay Powell's press conference following the FOMC meeting was...Read More

What's the best way to survive a financial crisis with your wealth intact? The answer may surprise you.Many investors would say, "Sell everything, and wait until it's over!" That's almost never good advice.In the first place, some assets perform well in crises, and you should hold onto those. Secondly, how do you know a crisis has actually started?What seems like a crisis may just be a short-term...Read More

James Howard Kunstler's Saturday reckoning drew a heaping mail.Did you read it? Go here if you did not.James claimed that America's governing class is insane.On vaccines, on mass immigration, on "lawfare" against Donald Trump, on the Ukraine bloodletting and more...Meantime, James contends America's non-governing class "normal" Americans is sane.Perhaps James stretches the facts. Perhaps James...Read More