The Don Coxe conference call, July 9th

Here's the link. You know the drill.

Get yourself a free copy....

...of this. A quality white paper on a subject close to this author's heart. Making money is a good thing, but making it while protecting employees and the world around you is a much better thing.

So click through, sign up, get this sent to you free gratis and for nothing.

Receive Your Complimentary White Paper NOW! "Enterprise Risk Management: Keeping People, Assets, and the Environment Safe" Find out why operational risk management is a rising priority for monitoring disparate and disconnected efforts in safety, environmental compliance, and asset use to provide better enterprisewide control and management accountability. Making substantial efforts today will improve risk mitigation and create an enduring competitive advantage. Offered Free by: SAP Other Resources from: SAP

A room with a view (part 11)

Today's is slightly different. Reader TM as taken from the deck of his boat.

Both sail out of Penetanguishene (aka Penetang), Ontario.

If any readers would like to send in their shots, the address is over there on the right of the page.

UPDATE: i've been asked by the photo-taker to remove the photo, as it turns out that even though the image was sent in good faith with permission to share it might cause a conflict with his friend, something we don't want. No probs at all, it's done. TM

The Friday OT: Lou Reed; Perfect Day

On this timer the section between 2:09 and 2:39 is one of the all time great 30 seconds of modern music.

The version pasted here has no video, just Lou staring back at you. It doesn't need much visual help, y'see. He wrote this when he was 30 years old. Man, I didn't have the first clue what this contained when I was 30 and I'm only just starting to get it now. He wrote the damn thing at 30. In a world that overuses the word so much it's lost its gravitas, this song is still truly awesome.

Fronteer (FRG)

So the corp slogan sucks and they have one of those annoying deliberate typos in the name (EZ-Kleen!!). Who cares when the stock price roars?

Leaders lead, followers follow.

Small Silvers, year to date update

So after running a pretty sad looking five day chart on the small silvers earlier this week, your humble scribe gets a "Hey, how they doing YTD, Otto? How about an update?" mail from reader 'PT' yesterday. Yep can do, we haven't updated this one in a while, so here goes:

click to enlarge

Top spot is held by US Silver (USA.v). Although only 15% up YTD and way off the kind of returns this little basket of small silver producers were returning last year, that's a pretty fair performance in the face of some serious sector headwinds.

Number two post is significant. The silver bullion ETF (SLV) has outperformed all the producers on the list bar USA.v, which doesn't bode well at all, really. Third and fourth (well, a virtual tie) come MAG Silver (MAG.to) (MVG) and Bear Creek Mining (BCM.v).

All the rest are showing negative so far this year. Gulp. Worst of the lot is Great Panther (GPR.to), down over 20%. This goes to show you exactly how much stock scamster Jonathan Lebed knows.

B2Gold (BTO.to): The volume monster is waking up again

disclosure: long BTO

A reasoned critique of website The Business Insider

So you think this humble scribe gets a touch ranty sometimes? Click on this:



The vid comes from this site. Thanks to reader 'M' for the headsup.

Chart of the day is....

...gold monthly. Featured yet again today because.......

if

you
look
very
very
carefully
you
may
be
able
to
spot
a
trend

Do you honestly care about $20 movements in a thing priced at $1,200? You do realize your fretting over a 1.7% move either way, don't you? If AAPL drops 1.7% do you start reading the demise of the company into it? Right, so in that case get a life.

Catching up with Peru's fight against narcoterrorists

Peru terrorist scum Sendero Luminoso (shining path) used to be a good ol' fashioned revolutionary insurgent army in Peru. Since those days of the 80s and 90s it has been widely reported as morphing into a drug business, supplying cocaine to the needy noses of the North. Whether that's the whole truth or whether there's nuance to the situation is a post for another day, as this missive catches up on Peru's Dircote police force, spearheading the fight against these people and how they've been doing in their role of cleaning up the mean streets of provincial Peru. We hand over to Peru's RPP medium for the details (translated):

Thursday July 8th 15:57

Terrorist Escapes Because He Was Allowed to Go Out for Lunch, Press Informs

The terrorist Ulser Pillpa, who revealed the identity of active members of Sendero Luminoso in the VRAE region of Peru, escaped due to negligence by the Direction Against Terrorism (Dircote) department, according to press reports.

The newspaper La Republica has indicated that following his detention on March 6th, the subversive became a whistleblower via the "Law of Effective Collaboration", after which his custody was transferred to a Dircote specialist team that was transferred from Lima to Ayacucho and headed up by Colonel Arquímedes León Velasco.

According to the report, in the town of Huamanga, Pillpa alias "Comrade Johnny" won the trust of the police officers and that the custody of the terrorist was reduced to just a single officer. He was also allowed to go out shopping or have lunch in a restaurant close to the Dircote building.

However, according to police sources Comrade Johnny escaped on April 20th when allowed to go out for lunch. When police realized he had escaped they decided to keep it secret.

Gonas Pillpa Obregón, father of the member of Sendero, said that Dircote personnel came to his house to look for him and when they found nothing, stayed 15 days.

Later, a local of the nearby town of Huanta told police that he could provide information on the whereabouts of Pillpa for U$1,000. However this was not taken seriously by local police because they didn't know the terrorist had escaped. He then got in contact with officers in the town of Huamanga. Pillpa, who was in charge of recruiting students to the Sendero cause, was officially reported as escaped on April 26th.

You can imagine the same kind of thing at Gitmo, can't you?

"You want to go out for rice and black beans today? Sure, but be back by four, yeah?"

Trading Post (dime a dozen edition)

Fronteer Gold (FRG) (FRG.to) down 1.0% at U$6.11. Fronteer gets featured today cos there's a thing that been bugging me about the company. When it changed its name from Fronteer Development it went through one of those corporate makeovers, spruced up its website etc. All well and good, but the new company slogan sucks; "Where gold comes to life". GIVE ME A BREAK! How much shareholder cash did O'Dea waste by handing the brainstorming session on Corp ID over to a ponytailed committee of marketing experts?

Evolving Gold (EVG.v) down 9.3% at $0.78. According to the loopholes that run this market, when Goldcorp takes a 12% chunk of your junior exploration mining company it's a bad thing, not a good thing. I avoid this thing because they're mad enough to hire Peter HolierThanThou Grandich to promote the stock. Ugh.

Strathmore (STM.v) down 5.6% at $0.425. On October 9th, STM hired Grandich to pump the stock. That day the price was $0.67. Nuff said.

Radius Gold (RDU.v) down 7.5% at $0.31. Check out the six month chart.....
...with a floor at 30c and a ceiling at 40c or so. This time is different? YOU BE THE JUDGE!

Ventana Gold (VEN.to) down 4.2% at $6.67. After VEN issued a "nothing wrong around here, why are you asking?" NR to the market yesterday, the stock popped a bit. now it's given back the 24 hour gains and the slump continues. What gives?

Antares Minerals (ANM.v) up 0.4% at $2.34. The good news for Casey Research subscribers is that the very small portion of extra special duper duper privileged clients who got the buy reco on ANM at $2.20 are making a profit. The bad news is that the vast majority of subbers stuck on the proletarian list who were reco'd the stock at $2.78 or so are well underwater. FWIW, The IKN Weekly reco'd ANM at $1.42. Just sayin', Dave.

By the way, your author bought shares in one of the abovementioned stocks today. Subscribers know which one. DYODD, dude.

Andean cosmovision and the yield curve

The cosmovision

In the Peru/Bolivia altiplano region around Lake Titicaca, people know that just before a heavy storm all the frogs begin to croak. So if the wet season rains are late in arriving, the shamans and such gather together a few frogs and make them croak. This, according to the mystics, brings the rain.

The yield curve, according to Greg Ip:

"IF YOU'RE making a call on a double-dip recession, you must also make a call on the credibility of the yield curve. An inverted curve (with the ten-year Treasury yield falling below the three-month T-bill rate) has preceded each of America's last seven recessions. It has had two false positives, in 1966 and 1998, the Cleveland Fed notes. The lead time varies from a few months to two years. It is currently relatively steeply upward sloping.

"Is this time different? By definition, when short-term rates are at zero as they are now, the yield curve can’t invert, yet it would be ridiculous to say that means we can’t have a recession. A correspondent points out that Japan’s yield curve was positively sloped throughout the 1990s but Japan still had recessions.

"With that caveat in mind, for now I’m going to trust the yield curve..."

And now, as my English literature exams used to instruct; "discuss".


h/t salmon

News from Gammon Gold (GRS) (GAM.to)

Here's the link. Now, spot which paragraph is a direct paste and which is the Otto embellishment:

HALIFAX, July 8 /CNW/ - Gammon Gold Inc. ("Gammon") (TSX:GAM and NYSE:GRS): Gammon is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Corex Gold Corporation ("Corex") (TSX-V: CGE - News) to acquire 4,706,000 units of Corex pursuant to a non-brokered private placement. Each unit consists of one common share and one half of one share purchase warrant exercisable at CAD $0.90 for a period of 24 months from the closing date of the transaction. The subscription price for the units is CAD $0.68 per unit for an aggregate purchase price of CAD $3,200,080. Corex will place an additional 1,694,000 units, with other qualified investors, for total proceeds of $4,352,000.

Commenting on the deal, Rene Marion, President and CEO of Gammon Gold said, "As amply demonstrated in the last few quarters, we're really crap at mining. However we do have a shitload of cash so it makes sound business sense to buy into stocks that have a shot at making money instead of wasting it on our own pisspoor assets. On the other hand, our judgment on mining assets is so poor that this deal might turn into the kiss of death for Corex. We wish them luck." Continues here

Missed

needs a hangar like this one, methinks

Hey, remember that brand spanking new Presidential jet that Bolivia just bought for a tad under $40m? The one that was originally ordered by Manchester United but it turns out that debt ridden club didn't have the moolah? Well it's in the news again this week. Here's a direct translation from Prensa Latina:

Investigation Ordered into Bolivian Air Force Incident

Wednesday July 7th 2010 17:11

Bolivian Defense Minister Rubén Saavedra today ordered an investigation into the activation of a missile on a T-33 fighter plane that nearly impacted the Presidential plane, the Falcon 900 EX Easy.

According to preliminary reports, the missile was activated this afternoon (Weds 7th) at the Bolivian Air Force base in the city of El Alto, and passed one metre behind the tail of the Evo Morales' Presidential jet, of French construction, that was delivered last Thursday to La Paz.

The missile eventually impacted a house close to the air base without causing any personal injury.

"We have asked for a summary of information, in the charge of an official of the air force and expect that in 48 hours we will have the final result of this process", said Saavedra.

Regarding the house affected by the missile, located on Avenue Juan Pablo II in El Alto, Saavedra assured those present that the air force would pay all repair costs.

Imagine if it were an F16 and the Obamamobile?

Chart of the day is.....

...the gold/silver ratio, year to date.

Well apparently everything is fine now and the world isn't about to end. Hoodathunkit? So expect the GSR to drop as the industrial metal component of the Jekyll&Hyde metal (Ag) to get love.

Ahorita nomas

As noted yesterday, Lima Peru has a supply shortage of LNG natgas for fuel (cars, cooking etc). We now hear from Peru's Ministry of Enrgy and Mining that the problem will be solved "in a few days". Says minister Pedro Sánchez:

"We have a ship loaded with 17 million tonnes (of natgas) that can't be docked to deliver to the Zetagas and Solgas terminals in Callao (due to the current high seaswell).......this is a temporary problem and will be resolved in the next few days."

Therefore, IKN would like to remind people of observations made in a different context regarding timescales in South America many moons ago. Some terminology to note:

1) "Ahorita pues" (right now), means any time from now until past the next meal time.

2) "Dame un segundo" (give me a second), means exactly that, but it might mean a second that's embedded anywhere inside the next hour.

3) "Aqui nomas" (right here), used to tell you where the nearest bank/telephone/police station/taxi rank etc etc is, might involve a walk of between ten metres and six blocks

4) "Ya viene" (s/he's coming now), used by somebody's secretary to denote the imminent arrival of the boss. See definition of point 1) above for further details.

What could possibly go wrong? Spanish lesson complete, please enjoy your day.

Mining PRs and the Ottotrans™, Part 19

Another in our occasional series that tries to wade through the thicket of words junior mining companies love to present to the world and sort out their real meanings. Today's example is just off the wires, from Carpathian Gold (CPN.to).

This is what they wrote:

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - July 7, 2010) - Carpathian Gold Inc. (TSX:CPN - News; the "Corporation" or "Carpathian") wishes to provide a progress update on its wholly owned Riacho dos Machados ("RDM") Gold Project located in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil and on the Rovina Valley Project ("RVP"), located in west-central, Romania.

RDM Gold Project, Brazil

A Feasibility Study ("FS") is nearing completion and is following the guidelines of the NI 43-101 Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") that was announced on August 12, 2009. The FS will be released within the upcoming weeks. The updated resource estimate, reserve estimate, engineering studies, and permitting activities are all advancing in parallel with key progress points highlighted below.

--  Resources/Reserves and Geotechnical: An updated NI 43-101 compliant
  resource estimate to be used for the FS is near completion. Five drill
  rigs are presently on site, including 3 diamond drill rigs for ore
  definition and 2 geotechnical rigs. Following the ore definition
  drilling, the diamond drill rigs will be utilized for testing strike
  extensions and new exploration targets. A minimum of 6,000 m of ore
  definition and exploration drilling is planned for the present program
  and this follows the 32,000 m of drilling that has been completed to
  date on the RDM gold project.

--  Engineering/Metallurgy: All capital costs, operating costs,
  infrastructure, layout design and mining plans required for the FS are
  essentially complete with optimization work underway integrating the
  various studies to enhance the robust economics of the project. Recent
  metallurgical test work results support the earlier work performed for
  the PEA of 90% or better gold recovery. Indications from the ongoing FS
  support the PEA study results of low cost, near-term +100,000 oz per
  year gold production.

--  Permitting: As previously announced (April 14, 2010), the Corporation
  has already been granted the critical path time line license, the
  Licenca Previa ("LP") that allows the earthworks in the mine, water
  retention and tailing dams to be constructed. All technical
  documentation required for the Licenca Instalacao ("LI") that will allow
  construction to begin on the Project, has been compiled and will be
  submitted by mid-July to the state environmental agency, SUPRAM, for
  their review and approval. As previously announced on June 21, 2010, all
  surface lands required for the life-of-mine footprint for the open pit
  mining operation have now been acquired.

--  Project Financing: The project is well financed at this stage as a
  result of the Macquarie Bank Limited US$30 Million gold sale and
  purchase agreement that closed on May 21, 2010. Management is evaluating
  non-equity project finance options and is in continuous discussions with
  various financial institutions, with the aim of obtaining additional
  project financing upon completion of the FS.

Rovina Valley Project, Romania

Following the release of the positive PEA study (announced March 23, 2010), the Corporation embarked on a deep drilling program on one of its three gold-rich copper porphyries, the Ciresata porphyry. The PEA study indicated a long life project of 19 years, producing approximately 200,000 oz of gold and 50 million pounds of copper annually.

--  The results of the first deep drill hole (RDG-16) on the Ciresata
  Porphyry were released on May 11, 2010 and included 668 m at 0.70 g/t Au
  and 0.15% Cu and includes 208 m at 1.13 g/t Au and 0.19% Cu. This drill
  hole verified the geologic model in its upper part serving as an in-fill
  hole and more importantly has extended the Au-Cu mineralization
  approximately 300 m below the present resource estimate that was
  utilized in the PEA study.

--  Deep drilling has resumed on the Ciresata porphyry to evaluate
  mineralization depth extensions below the present resource estimate.
  This program will eventually be expanded to evaluate known mineralized
  targets lateral to the deposit.

--  The Corporation is continuing with its long lead EIA and SIA work,
  including its proactive local stakeholder engagement programs. These
  programs includes interactive local community hall public meetings and
  partnership programs with local NGO's (with European Union funding) and
  community leaders to implement community-based projects. The Rovina
  Valley Project has no legacy mining issues and the proposed mine site
  footprint developed from the PEA does not include any known protected
  heritage sites or archaeological occurrences.

--  As previously announced, a consortium of State-recognized independent
  consulting groups have been retained for the purpose of preparing a
  technical report to convert the Rovina Exploration License into a Mining
  License as per the norms of the National Agency of Mineral Resources
  ("NAMR"). This report includes preliminary evaluations of environmental
  factors, risk factors and economic benefits as well as defined
  resources/reserves along with mining and processing, all to be reviewed
  and approved by the NAMR for Mining License designation. The work
  program for this study and the report are progressing on schedule for
  the submittal of this document to the NAMR in Q4 2010.

Mr. Titaro, P. Geo., is the qualified person (as defined in National Instrument 43-101) responsible for preparing the information, including technical information, contained in this news release.

And this is what it means:

Dear shareholder. Although we don't have real news at present, we've decided to publish this because we will have some news in the future. We still exist. Please stop selling our stock down. Thank you.

New Gold (NGD): Sheer coincidence

You just know that this.......

New Gold Inc. (NGD)						As of July 6th, 2010
Filing Date	Transaction Date	Insider Name	Ownership Type	Securities	Nature of transaction	# or value acquired or disposed of	Unit Price
Jul 05/10	Jun 29/10	Gallagher, Robert	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	10 - Disposition in the public market	-350,000	$6.604
Jul 05/10	Jun 29/10	Gallagher, Robert	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	51 - Exercise of options	160,000	$3.210
Jul 05/10	Jun 29/10	Gallagher, Robert	Direct Ownership	Common Shares	51 - Exercise of options	190,000	$2.710
Jul 05/10	Jun 29/10	Gallagher, Robert	Direct Ownership	Options	51 - Exercise of options	-160,000	$3.210
Jul 05/10	Jun 29/10	Gallagher, Robert	Direct Ownership	Options	51 - Exercise of options	-190,000	$2.710

....has absolutely nothing to do with this:

"On July 7, the Fifth Auxiliary District Court in Mexico City denied the company's appeal against the September 2009 ruling by the Federal Court of Fiscal and Administrative Justice that ordered SEMARNAT, the Mexican government's environmental regulatory agency, to cancel the company's EIS in November 2009.

.........

""While we are disappointed by this most recent decision, we will continue to pursue all avenues to ensure the continuous operation of Cerro San Pedro," stated Robert Gallagher, President and Chief Executive Officer."

I mean, it's only 350,000 options with (pre-tax) net proceeds of $1.28m. Who would ever screw over their shareholders for such a measly sum?

A gold chart

By 'popular' demand.
DYODD, dude.

Chart of the day is.....

......the five day performance of nine small silver stocks and silver via its ETF (SLV):

(click to enlarge)

Pretty crappy, huh?

Arizoname!

To w00t the US Federal Government's long overdue move to block the institutionalisation of racism in Arizona today, let's run with La Familia del Barrio's awesome clip on the subject once again (with English subtitles):

This is not for under 18s or those offended easily. It is funny as hell.

World Cup Trivia

Ever since the first tournament in 1930, when the World Cup has been played outside of Europe a European team has never won it. That 80 year stat will end on Sunday.

And while we're at it, when it's been played in Europe a European team has always won except for Brazil in the Sweden hosted 1958 finals.

What's going on at Kinross (K.to) (KGC)?

Check the comparative chart of Kinross (K.to) (KGC) for yourself:

So what is it, Fruta del Norte problems? The fact that the market has finally recognized that Cerro Casale is an uneconomic dog of an asset? Paid too much for Underworld? Or perhaps something murky at Kupol? Whatever it is, N.Am's 4th biggest gold producer is seriously lagging its field. Inquiring minds, etc.........

pot, meet kettle

Bina makes for a good read this morning. Plenty of prose to chew at her post linked right here but I thought I'd get to the grain and go to the sources. Here's one:

Intolerant governments across the globe are "slowly crushing" activist and advocacy groups that play an essential role in the development of democracy, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday.

She cited a broad range of countries where "the walls are closing in" on civic organizations such as unions, religious groups, rights advocates and other nongovernmental organizations that press for social change and shine a light on governments' shortcomings.

Among those she named were Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia continues here

And here's the evidence Hillary is talking about...... errrr..... from the G-20 summit in Toronto.


Go read about how they treat Globe&Mail reporters, too. Cute.

How South America works (or doesn't)

This week brings a typical little tale of the exasperating side of life in South America. In Lima Peru at the moment, there is an acute shortage of LNG (natgas for retail consumption) which is affecting the daily life of citizens. For the last couple of years (largely due to the Camisea project and the new supply of the stuff) Limeños have been encouraged to switch their cars to LNG fuel, as it's cheaper and as most of Lima is pretty flat the resulting power loss (about 15% compared to normal fuels, i'm lead to believe) doesn't make much of a performance difference in urban areas. Result; many cars and vehicles now run on LNG fuel. Normal.

It should have been a great plan and so far it's been working, but this week the supply line has been cut. The reason is that the gas isn't piped anywhere close to Lima, but is moved to the coast at Pisco (250km South of Lima), loaded onto cargo ships and then shipped to the Callao port just North of Lima for distribution. As the last week or so has seen rougher seas than normal, the upshot is that a single large cargo ship hasn't been able to hook up to the supply pipes and then steam up North.

I mean...WTF!!! It's suddenly occurred to Peruvians that......that.....The Pacific Ocean has big waves every now and again! And because of that, the limited amount of LNG in Lima right now is being dedicated to home and building use, so all the taxis in a city of eight million people that have converted to LNG (and that's a solid percentage of the cars, people) are sitting at home, doing nothing. Meanwhile, people who need those taxis to do their normal daily doings are fighting for normally fueled cars that have hiked their prices.

This kind of shit is so typical of South America (not just Peru). A plan is put together, no risk analysis is ever performed, no weak links in the chain ever identified and when the obvious thing goes wrong the whole shebang just grinds to a halt. Remember earlier this year when half of Cuzco's hotels were emptied because Macchu Pichu was off limits because of a landslide that affected a bit of railtrack? Same thing.

• Nobody thought of a separate pipeline to directly supply the country's capital.
• Nobody ever took into account possible rough seas and built loading facilities to take care of that eventuality.
• Nobody....ever....thinks.

It happens a lot. Build a house in this continent and you get to see, close up and personal, just how improvised things are. Yer man will do about his work, build in a problem without ever telling you, then suddenly when the problem is discovered you hear the famous "And now what can we do?" while he looks at you directly in the eye, as if the blame is shared between him and you. Damn, it's at moments like those I'm fully reminded that I'm a gringo and always will be. It's also a moment when I'm happy not to have too many sharp knives laying around the place.

Rant over. Thank you for your patience.

Guess who's coming to dinner

This morning brings an eminent visitor to our humble corner of cyberspace:

VISITOR ANALYSIS
Referrer	No referring link
Host Name	cog-158.osc.gov.on.ca
IP Address	38.112.100.158 [Label IP Address]
Country	Canada
Region	Ontario
City	Toronto
ISP	Ontario Securities Commission
Returning Visits	2

Visit Length 21 hours 41 mins 50 secs

And if you're wondering which post interested the OSC to come visit, it's this one on Nautilus (NUS) (NUS.to) and Porter Scamsberry yesterday. Even more joyously, our friends at the OSC who have managed to convict just one serious fraudster in the last ten years also hung around the blog (21 hours!!) and decided to check out IKN's coverage of ATW Gold (ATW.v). Better late than never, guys........

US Gold (UXG) has a resource number

This morning, US Gold (UXG) (UXG.to) the junior headed up by Rob McEwen that seems to have missed on its first objectives in Nevada but struck quite nicely on its El Gallo project in Mexico, released a first resource estimate for said Rooster (if you know your Spanish translations). The news release is here and it's interesting.

So to pre-warn subscribers, we'll be taking a closer look at UXG via a NOBS fundamental report in IKN62, out next Sunday.

Charts of the day are....

...road traffic accident figures for 2009.

So yesterday there was a media splurge on the publication of The Andean Community (aka CAN, comprising of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) and the amount of road traffic accidents they'd all had in 2009. Here's the chart that comes from the figures, (example report here) which also compares each country to its year 2000 stats the same way as nearly all the reports did:

click to enlarge

We see that in 2009 Bolivia had the most accidents, with 410 for every 100,000 population. Then comes Colombia (though we note the rate has dropped in the last 10 years), then Peru and finally Ecuador. Sure enough, the anti-Evo media in Bolivia started on their 'world's gonna end' stuff thanks to the numbers.

Then the raw numbers for deaths were also published in the reports, but without any population count context. So this author decided to do the pro rata calculations himself, getting population figures for each country from the CIA Factbook (the best thing them spooks ever did was launch that site...great stats homebase). So here's how road traffic deaths per 100,000 look for the four countries and also as superduper extra context, the stats for Argentina, the USA and the UK (the sources are mentioned there on the chart):

click to enlarge

So it seems that although there are more accidents per 100k in Bolivia, they tend not to be as life-threatening as in the other countries....more prangs, less speed. On the whole, the Andean region is basically on a par with the fatalities rate of The USA (more or less, Ecuador pushing the envelope a bit). This might not be so, however, if we look at the different metric of deaths per km driven. That number isn't calculated down here, it is up there and I'm guessing (though not sure) that the USA's average would drop if we went with it. Meanwhile, in The United Kingdom they obviously drive like whusses.

But Argentina is the real context here. Man, I know how they drive and it doesn't surprise me to see double the death rate of Bolivia; total dumbasses behind the wheel who all think they're Fangio.

If you're interested, here's the dataset:

2009 deaths		pop. (100k) (CIA Factbook)	deaths per 100k population
Argentina	7885	413.43201	19.07
Ecuador	1998	147.90608	13.51
Colombia	5634	442.05293	12.75
USA	33963	3102.328630	10.95
Peru	3243	299.070030	10.84
Bolivia	973	99.47418	9.78
UK	2222	612.84286	3.63

Panama, South Korea, copper, mystery and disclosure

Yesterday in IKN61, we ran this below as one part of the 'Regional Politics' section of the letter. Now, I fully expected Inmet Mining (IMN.to) to make an announcement on this today, as an LOI of the multibillion dollar magnitude would need immediate disclosure if true, but here we are long after the bell and not a peep from IMN about this deal.

So is it a deal, or has the ADN news agency been making things up?

Panama: South Korea sends in the big guns and gets results

In Central America, SICA is an important working group of countries. SICA stands for the ‘Central American Integration System’ and the organization comprising of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, with The Dominican Republic as an associate member, along with Honduras that was suspended from membership due to the 2009 coup but has been allowed to rejoin as a full member after this meeting.

Last week it was Panama’s turn to host the SICA summit meeting and one of the guests of honour at the conference was South Korea’s President, Lee Myung-bak. He wasn’t there just for protocol photo shoots either, as his country is very keen on participating in the development of large-scale mining in Panama, particularly in the rich copper deposits the country has to offer.

Already he has seemingly met with success on his trip. Spain’s ADN newswire reports (6) that South Korea’s Eximbank, heading up a consortium of financiers, has this weekend signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Inmet Mining (IMN.to) to develop its ‘Panama Copper’ project in said country in conjunction with Korea Resources, LS-Nikko Copper and Korea Export Insurance (KEIC). The South Koreans will provide all or part of the financing necessary (details on that are not out yet) and will also have an option to acquire 20% of the project directly.

Inmet’s ‘Panama Copper’ is a very big asset, with resources that allow plans for 51,000 metric tonnes of copper per year over a 30 year mine life. According to the LOI agreement production would be slated to begin in 2015. Meanwhile, it’s already known that South Korea is also interested in Panama’s other big untapped copper deposit called Cerro Colorado.

Medoro Resources (MRS.v): Quick Frank, roll out the monkeys again!

You tell him, Thom

Well, it's not working is it Frankie? You tried back in April with the Can of Corn plus Thom Calandra trained monkey attack, but your ridiculously expensive, laughably overhyped and clearly undertruthed Medoro (MRS.v) just can't seem to keep enough Viagra in its system.

So c'mon Frankie, get on the phone! Tell them Zeds to do something! Offer yer man Thom a few more worthless warrants! You know it makes sense, man!

Dead reporters

Via the wires, we hear today that there were 59 journalists killed in the first six months of 2010, up from 53 in the same period of 2009, all this from the publishers, the Press Emblem Campaign. Top region for deaths was Latin America, weighing in with a full 24 of those killings. Here's the regional breakdown:

Top was Mexico, second that "now it's all back to normal, move along now, nothing to see here" bastion of wonderfullness called Honduras, third was Colombia, fourth Venezuela.

You probably only heard about the deaths in Venezuela.

Porter Stansberry plays the investment analyst community like a bunch of patsies

Here above is the chart for Nautilus (NUS.to) (NUS) and you'll note a pretty impressive climb in the last couple of days, up as much as 70%. The reason is this pump job linked here, published by scamster Frank Porter Stansberry and his crew.

Look the guy is a total scumball that preys on investing sheep, but I have to give him credit for one thing; he's smarter than the average scumball. Y'see, when Stansberry published his "OH MY GOD YOU GOTTA BUY BUY BUY THIS THING" promo pump last week, promising to reveal all on July 12th in a ConfCall or on July 8th to "special" clients who paid up moolah, he left so many breadcrumbs in his teaser that anyone who knows the sector could work out it was Nautilus he was talking about (gold a mile under the Pacific, 5000km from his hometown etc etc...this is a natch).

So what happens? The investment players think they're all smart, think they're getting a run on Stansberry's promo and buy into the stock now. They don't see what StansberryScumball is up to:

He's already bought in and he's selling into this move right now.

Or in other words, the people who think they're clever are the ones getting played like violins. DYODD.

UPDATE, two hours after the opening bell: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!!!!!

UPDATE 2: Reader 'B' sent in this mail and then allowed me to re-print here. I concur 100%.

You gotta almost feel sorry for the poor suckers that buy into such an obvious BS pump jobs--GOLD SANDS on the ocean floor, highest grade ever, worth billions of dollars and only Porter Stansberry can tell you about it--. The problem Stansberry faces is that each sucker is only good for one pump as anyone naive enough to believe this crap ain't got no money anyway. Now if Stansberry and Co. could really make 1,000 to 10,000% gains all the time and put $10,000 into one such GOLD SANDS each year, in five years they would be worth a billion dollars. Two more years they would be the richest men on earth. They obviously ain't and have to resort to pumps like NUS to scrape by a living bilking widows, orphans and tea-baggers.

Chart of the day is....

.......Mexico's Consumer Price Inflation (CPI), 2000 to 2010 measured monthly and indexed to 100 as at June 2002.

I was laying there in bed last night, wondering why you never seem to hear Mexicans complaining about inflation any longer. I mean, I remember all the Tequila episode and the fallout and everything else. So this morning I toddled off to the Mexico Cenbank site and found this dataset (in chart form here).

The answer seems to be that for sure there is some inflation in Mexico, but for one thing it's at moderate level and for another (and I'm guessing the most important), it's regular. That line just steadily moves up, doesn't make jolts to the upside or downside, holds no surprises for the people that it affects. It works like Prozac.

Brazil and the price of overconfidence

Mister Plá (for it is he)

Brazil's loss against Holland (or 'The Netherlands' if you like...you know which country I'm talking about anyway) has left a big dent in the country's footballing pride. It's also left a big dent in the pockets of its retail sector who, utterly confident of progressing to the final and winning the thing (again), have now been left rather overstocked with paraphernalia related to all things footy.

According to this report in O Globo today, Daniel Plá of Brazilian Getulio Vargas Foundation economics bureau says that unsold merchandise including team shirts, flags and those now infamous vuvuzelas amongst other items add up to a total of U$48m around the country. In Rio de Janeiro alone, unsold goods are worth U$4.8m.

Says Plá, "Retail outlets were expecting to sell a lot more green-and-yellow products in the two weeks that were left. Now it's very difficult to sell them, even with generalized 50% discounts on offer......Everybody expect Brazil to reach the final". He also noted that TV sales would suffer.

IKN sez: Y'see, I told you there's always a bright side :-)

A tribute to Diego Maradona

The IKN Weekly, out now

IKN61 has just been sent to subscribers. It has words, charts, tables and typos. Y'know, the usual mix.