Melt-Up Time for Gold & Silver: Monetize Your Future

Melt-Up Time for Gold & Silver: Monetize Your Future Dr. Atif Khan, Ph.D.

The dynamics of international trade and finance are undergoing vigorous transformation. Most particularly in the wake of the recent meltdown, the movement of precious metals against the pitfalls of various currencies and stocks have led many to believe that future world order will be highly dependent on the state of precious metals; their demand, supply and price will be the major determinant of global economic scenario.

Failing in substantial recovery has further led to a widespread debate as to whether the argument forecasted long before bears any resemblance to portray Gold & Silver as the future of money. The nature of both the precious metals though cater distinct purposes and therefore the route that each will adopt to the top will also vary inadvertently.

It may not hit right away and it may not conclude drastic measures such as Zimbabwe’s economic breakdown. But the inherent intrinsic nature of value present in precious metals is going to reveal a lot and will be a major indicator of the future trades and international monetary transactions, world over.

The nature with which these two metals may be treated will differ to a great extent. Gold as we know has the ultimate risk protection and will be the major financial tool and indicator of economic activity. Silver will be full of dramatic capabilities with respect to risk, appreciation and its ability to conduct transaction on prevailing level. This may constitute the quality and quantity domains and may cause substantial market chaos based upon the elasticity of its demand and supply.

History of Gold & Silver:

Experts call Gold & Silver real money; which itself is based on their long history of serving as currency & a mode of exchange. Since ancient times these two precious metals have been treated as something related to value or worth, whether it is religious purity or jewelry for the purpose of fashion & beautifying, these precious metals were always meant for valuables.

It could be their shine, color or shape that attracted human beings towards it but it was the people in the regions of Transylvanian Alps or in the territory of Mount Pangaion in Thrace who started mining it to use them for decorative purpose that exhibited their prosperity. Till today the financially educated and elites use it to ensure their continuous well-being.

The greatest opportunity in history - Gold Silver Mania:

The recent economic recession has raised concerns for many who thought that they fell prey to unsupervised economic plans and yet there were others who were shielded against it through precious metal buying which always indicated and preached about long-term profits.

Triggered by the success of the precious metal owners; now there is gold & silver buying mania everywhere; as they see these times as the greatest opportunity ever to rebuild on the mistakes of US & western fiscal policies. This way people were not only able to guard themselves but they were also able to capitalize on the profits created by the real intrinsic worth of precious metals.

Now people are converting and securing all their cash and liquid assets into precious metals by buying precious metals such as silver and gold, and there is a world-wide awareness campaign through which people are preparing themselves for future profits while covering up past losses.

Acquire gold, accumulate silver:

Gold is an expensive commodity and the most demanded precious metal. The measure of risk in Gold is bare minimum in longer run and is almost negligible in shorter run as investment compared to other investment tools such as currency & stocks. Even compared to other consumable precious metals, gold has stood its worth for centuries and persevered the tides of time. Many experts convert their fixed assets or long term investments in gold so that they can hedge timely against the inflation.

Silver on the contrary has a lesser price bracket but there is tremendous potential present in silver due to its widespread demand. People want to now accumulate silver for various reasons. One particularly is due to the fact that citing reference to the worst economic/hyperinflation scenario in Zimbabwe people have taken notes for a situation where the currency will lose all it purchasing power and then silver will be used as trading commodity for every day consumption. In this event the demand of silver is on an upward consistent curve and supply is speculated to drop due to its high demand in hi-tech IT & electronic industry. Thus silver is considered to carry more potential thus for price shoot.

Scrap & Melt Value:

An important part of gold/silver value is accounted for its melting price. Whether you are buying or selling gold/silver, the net price often includes the melting portion. Apart from the bars, the scrap form often ends up as a loss to individuals. If they are purchasing it in the form of jewelry, this cost adds on the basic gold/silver prices. And when selling (whether in form of scrap or jewelry) this cost is reduced or deducted by the gold/silver distributors. This particular melting price is often manipulated by the distributors and individuals fall prey to these technical aspects of precious metal evaluation.

Globally recognized standard:

The most vital feature of investing in Gold/Silver is its global penetration. This one investment tool is free from the burdens of governmental policies, regulations and geographical frontiers. All its price aspects are transported once these metals migrate with you, depicting a feature of consistency and constant price levels. However in many economies and cases (it is studied) due to political turbulence government does initiate its confiscation, therefore it is only wise to keep its possession the old fashion way. This investment device is easily liquidated in any part of the world through prevailing rates. In many countries such as UAE, governments have set-up gold bar machines, where you can retrieve gold bars through the use of cash or ATM/credit cards. Banks in China issues Gold Certificates as investment instruments and is planning to soon issue actual bars creating a widespread gold economy.

Opportunity Cost of Gold/Silver:

When these two precious metals are concerned, for once in the history is a critical time when the opportunity cost of profit and loss is highest. In simpler terminology, if you do not shield yourself through gold/silver, you are ultimately bound to fall in the vicious circle of poor fiscal decision on international trade/finance and governmental level. Following are few of these considerations that can help you achieve safety and can propel your monetary outlook in near future.

Power Quo between Dollar & Euro:

Since the launch of Euro there has been a major drift measured in the face value of the US dollar both as reserve treasury as well as trading currency.

Euro since its inception, which is relatively very new, has shown tremendous potency through its market movement and lack of volatility through stable appreciation most evidently against the British pound. The reasons for this are fairly simple, on a global basis, European countries are politically very stable and the concentration of power is evenly balanced with special reference to economic regulatory bodies and policies. While it has been widely criticized for increasing tax burned on citizens, EU has a history of standardizing social security and health care programs that enrich the purchasing ability of the consumer and their (often) "free" educational system leads to induction of skilled and educated consumers on a continuous level.

One area where the Euro nations are committing same mistakes such as US is their take on overcoming inflation. They too are printing Euro exhaustively without creating premises to further exports and/or optimizing domestic production policies. The growing cost of factors of production (land, labor, capital) is thus creating a further gap without facilitating possibilities to build domestic economy and thereby reducing the imports. This rally between Dollar and Euro had mostly paid off most profitably for Gold/Silver.

Double Dip:

Economists world over are now forecasting a major hyperinflation predicted to occur by the end of 2011. Many of them like Gerald Celente also predicted similarly for the last economic meltdown. Following are few of the reasons for everyone to have adequate amount of Gold/Silver as financial back-up to fall on in case of contingency.

Unemployment & underemployment:

Unemployment has hit its highest ever all across the globe. Even those who are employed are underemployed thereby the ratio of people quitting their jobs is increasing consistently, this is because there is no on-job satisfaction and the building cost of living is pushing the consumers against the wall. In this event investing in Gold/Silver is providing them a possibility to make profits against the rally of these two precious metals vs. currency and stocks. With Fed failing to provide phenomenal measures Gold is hedging the profits progressively with minor temporary corrections.

Food stamps:

In US alone (the biggest economy of the world) the number of Americans receiving food stamps reached 39.68 million in February 2010, the highest number since the program began in 1962. As of June 2009, the average monthly benefit was $133.12 per person. As of late November 2009, one in eight Americans and one in four children are using food stamps and the program rate is growing at 20,000 people a day. Recipients must have at least near-poverty incomes to qualify for benefits.

The current alarming figures of Food Stamp is the red alert indicator of the first step towards gold/silver predicted to become the substitute for hollow currency (dollar) in the future. Zimbabwe’s great downturn was also initiated by similar conditions. Infact all the major famines of the world were triggered by similar hyper-inflation scenarios. Sooner than later Federal Reserve won’t stay in the shape to support programs such as food stamp and the deteriorating value of dollar is going to force producers as well as consumers to switch to gold/silver in the wake of unrealistic phantom price tags.

Economists proclaim that even a 100% tax ratio won’t be able to cover the 1.6 trillion budget deficit in the national economy. With virtually no export and expensive domestic production conditions it will become way bleaker.

One can imagine the impacts of such scenario in Africa and Asia when US is affected on such a gigantic scale. Due to these reasons the gold/silver economy is boosting worldwide to prepare against the upcoming hyperinflation scenario which is going to swipe all over the world. Most economies in the world still rely fully on US dollar as their reserve currency all such economies will face similar catastrophes with uncontrollable outcomes. Gold/Silver will act as savior for those who capitalized on its accumulation and switched on it through converting their financial instruments into these precious metals.

Silver will play as the major currency worldwide due to its low price (as compared to Gold), easily exchangeable feature and ability to purchase everyday consumables. It’s demand is going to be much more vast as compared to gold, particularly in developing economies silver is going to be replace gold and will be main mode of exchange even on the higher level. Gold will be fundamentally used as saving instrument which will be cashed (for a smaller currency bill) to silver in order to make it viable/convertible for every day buying. Therefore the excruciating demand and limited availability and supply of silver are going to drive its value manifolds and its price will show dramatic movement in the times to come. Thank you for reading.

Atif Khan, Ph.D. Sunshine Profits Contributing Author

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Telling It Like It Is

Telling It Like It Is Roger Mason

Other presidents get the picture on paper currency. Obama should have his picture on food stamps. There are now 40 million Americans who choose to have the government feed them rather than feed themselves. This is almost 1 in 7 people who depend on government food. Now do you see how totally and completely hopeless things are? By Christmas 50 million Americans will be eating at the government trough. Yes, 1 in 6 people will refuse to feed them-selves and depend on the government to feed them. Now can you see how hopeless the situation is? The lemmings are too stupid, lazy, and incompetent to even feed themselves. YOUR tax money will feed them. YOUR tax money will support them. Yes, your hard earned money feeds these pitiful excuses for human beings.

Look at the chart. The same applies equally to silver, and equally to the Dow Jones Average. Silver and gold far outperform the stock markets in the last ten years. It's only going to get better and better for people who own silver and gold.

Fifty years ago (when your author was a kid) you could go to McDonalds and get a three course meal- hamburger, fries, and shake- for 45 cents. That was four and a half silver dimes. Today those 4.5 silver dimes are worth about six dollars. The 1960 dollar bill that would have bought two of those meals (with 10 cents in change) would not even buy you the fries anymore. Gasoline was a quarter a gallon. Those four and a half dimes will buy two gallons of gasoline. Silver is real money. It has held its value for 2,000 years now. Every single paper currency on earth has become worthless. Our Constitution defines money only as silver and gold. Ft. Knox is empty, and hasn't been audited, as required for federal law, for over 50 years now. The COMEX is the largest silver store in the world and is also probably empty. They are self auditing, which is the same as no audit at all. If you don't believe Ft. Knox is empty just Google "Ft. Knox is empty". Then ask yourself why no required audit has been done in over 50 years. There is no gold in Ft. Knox folks. That stuff in your wallet is toilet paper.

Here is a chart of the world famous Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA). Warren Buffett is completely senile. You can literally throw darts and make better stock picks than he does. Look at the above three year chart. His famed Berkshire Hathaway stock has fallen from 150,000 to about 100,000. Considering even the fake government 10% inflation figure, this stock would have to be up at least 10% every year JUST TO BREAK EVEN. It would have to be at least 180,000 today JUST TO BREAK EVEN. Yet the old fart is trotted out by every TV station to tell you to "buy stocks", and "invest in the stock market". He has scorned silver and gold as investments. He's just a government whore who sold out long ago. His father was a patriot, surprisingly.

Dow Theory works folks. Dow Theory says the industrials, transports, and utilities have to go up or down together to verify a trend. If they move together that verifies and validates a real trend. This predicted the Big Crash in 2007 which took the Dow from 14,000 to under 7,000. Well, all three (DJU, DJT, and DJI) are collapsing badly. We have warned you the stock markets are held up with duct tape and delusions. This market is going to crash and crash badly. Richard Russell says it's going to get very ugly very quickly.

In the last issue we asked you to go to www.inflation.us and watch the 54 minute video "Meltup". Please take the time to watch this so you'll know hyperinflation is your future. They understand silver is the best investment in the world. They do not want your money and have new videos all the time.

There is no "rebound", no "recovery", just continued collapse of our entire country. The housing market gets worse every day, despite the propaganda you hear that housing sales are up and all the rest of that. Now when banks repossess a house this is called a 'sale". www.zillow.com reports that 1 in 5 mortgage holders are under water. This is just getting worse every month. These people should just give the keys to the bank and walk away. All the statistics you hear come from the realtors associations and have no basis in reality at all. The median American home will sell for $120,000 and maybe even $100,000. The current price is about $180,000 and falling. A mere 600 ounces of silver will buy you that median home within the next five years. Maybe less. That's right, a mere 600 ounces of silver (which used to be worth $750 when we had real currency before 1965) will buy you the median American house by 2015 and maybe sooner. You can buy that 600 ounces of silver today for less than $12,000. Just think about that for a minute. A nice home for $12,000!!!

Obama will appoint extreme leftist Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. This will make two lesbian and three Jewish justices. Is that fair representation? When the American Jewish population is only about 3%, and they will now be 33% of the Supreme Court. That is ten times or 1,000% over-representation. This has nothing to do with prejudice or anything else, but simple unfair representation. Imagine the furor and outrage if Obama had appointed on single Muslim!!! The media would have had a collective heart attack. And why two lesbians? Kagan is an extreme leftist who worked with Clinton to help ban guns. The Republicans will approve Kagan, just like they approved that fugly (fat and ugly) extreme left Marxist lesbian Sotomayor. The Supreme Court is now going to "reinterpret" the Constitution and Bill of Rights with Marxists on the court. Your worst nightmares will all come true. Obama and his crew have almost succeeded in ruining what was left of America is less than 18 months. He has another two and a half years to go before being run out of office in disgrace. Electing Republicans this fall will do nothing at all. We have a one party political systems in this country- the Republicrats. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. The Republicans have caused half the problems in this country. By the way, please support Rand Paul for Kentucky U.S. senator. Contibute to his campaign. He is a true Libertarian running technically as a Republican. Notice the media is already attacking him because he is the real deal.

The radio and TV conservative talk show hosts are all disinformation agents. What is the real test of these people? Do they support our insane, murderous wars of aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan? Do they support more wars of aggression against countries like Iran and Syria? That is the test. Boortz, Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Savage, Levin, (Alex) Jones, and all the rest of them are just Disinformation agents. We should have no wars at all going on. None. Zero. We should have no troops whatsoever outside of America. The fact our National Guard is now overseas is prima facie insanity. We should have no military bases outside of America. We should put 100% of our money and troops right here in America on American soil. American spends half of all the military dollars in the world. WE have 5% of the population, so 10% of the total world military dollars would still be too much, yet we spend 50% of all worldwide military expenses. We are now the World Bully and most of the rest of the world hates us. The rest of the world used to look up to and respect American and see it as an inspiration. We have replaced Russia as the World Bully and lost our good reputation.

You are going to see riots in the streets when the scumbags on welfare don't get their government checks every month. The extensive system of FEMA camps was built to lock them up. Patriots will be locked up with them unfortunately. Yes, there is an extensive prison camp system, and you can Google this to find out more information about it.

Look how the National Debt was under control until about 1974. Now it has gone completely insane. Now can you see why it's hopeless? Real unemployment is over 20%, and not the 10% claimed by the government. It is going to 30% like the last depression and probably all the way to 40%. That is going to be a disaster when two out of every five workers has no job, can't eat, and can't pay rent. The American standard of living is going to be cut in half. That's right our standard of living is going down 50%. It's not just California that's bankrupt; every state is bankrupt. All 50 states are hopelessly bankrupt and deeply in debt. All unemployment funds have been bankrupt and are still robbing Peter to pay Paul. You are going to see higher and higher taxes all the time, even though people cannot afford food. You will see a national VAT tax. This will start out small so people don't bitch too much. It will grow and grow and grow- just like in Socialist Europe. You are going to see an Internet tax. You are going to see all taxes go up. You are going to see new taxes. You are going to see taxes on top of taxes. You are going to be taxed to death. The only way to pay for Big Government is tax everyone to death. This is just one of the endless reasons socialism and Marxism has always failed, and always will fail. Government doesn't work, never has worked, and never will work. Every time you give the government a dollar you get back 10 cents in products and services. 90% goes right down the toilet. Only the free market works. Obama called the free market, free enterprise "the enemy" in his book. Anyone who thinks the government can do a better job at anything is mentally ill. People who voted for Obama and think the government should run things should be in mental institutions.

The U.S. dollar is worthless. Lindsay Williams says the dollar will lose 30% of its value before Christmas. It is now at 87 cents on the basket of currencies. Your author is heavily short the dollars. All currencies on this earth are worthless including the Swiss franc (the stupid Swiss sold their gold, too). All paper currencies have failed and always will fail. Only gold and silver are real money. Silver is four times better than gold. Silver will return to the historical, traditional 15 to 1 ratio (e.g. $400 silver and $6,000 gold). Right now it is 67 to 1. The Big Banks are still short a humongous 83,000 silver contracts on the COMEX. This manipulation will end this year, and silver will finally take off in the free market. We are going to have capital controls, and you will not be allowed to take YOUR money out of the country. After you worked for it, saved it, and paid extortionate taxes on it, you will be fined and jailed if you try to take any money out of the country.

The HUI to silver ratio is about 25 to 1. When this improves to about 30 to 1 (when the stocks recover) we are going to sell all our silver stocks and go 100% silver bullion held personally by you in your own little hands. Why? Because all paper investments in Marxist America will be taxed and penalized heavily. Also because the good mines are basically in Mexico, and the Mexican government has collapsed. You cannot invest in central or South Americans mines like Silver Wheaton, Fortuna, etc.. Jason Hommel (www.silverseek.com) is now the premier expert on silver and he has also sold his silver stocks. He is now 100% silver bullion.

This year 78 banks have already failed. This is on top of the many banks that failed in 2008 and 2009. You are going to wake up one morning and find a "bank holiday" has been declared. Of course this will be in the interest of the public welfare and all that. Just like what happened in Iceland last year. Your credit cards, debit cards, checks and ATMs will all be useless. Keep a minimal checking account. Of course no savings accounts, CDs, or anything of the like. Any spare money should be invested in silver bullion. Keep some Monopoly money at home. Cash will be the only way you will buy food and gas. No one will pay their bills or get paid until the banks reopen. And your assets may be totally gone. Do not use an unsafe deposit box. This could happen next week or next year. No one knows, but it will happen. All the banks made insane housing loans since the housing bubble burst in summer of 2005. All these bad loans are coming home to roost and residential and commercials prices keep collapsing. And they will keep collapsing for another 2 o4 3 years. All the banks participated in the housing bubble. Don't look for a "good bank".

You must dump your IRA or 401K. The stock market will crash. The government is going to convert your savings into a worthless Treasury Annuity. Again in the best interest of the pubic welfare and all that. Yes, the government is going to confiscate your savings and turn it into completely worthless Treasury paper. This has been done by other countries and will be done by this one. Dump your stocks, your IRA, your 401K and buy silver bullion.

www.economicrant.com

Short Selling is Good

Short Selling is Good Dan Amoss

Get Ready to Profit from a Summer of Decline

First, let me make this perfectly clear:

Shorting a stock is NOT taking money out of someone else's pocket.

You are NOT doing anything to make the stock fall in value.

And you are NOT profiting from someone else's misfortune.

Instead, short selling is about taking a stand against unbridled greed.

Think about it - you buy puts or short a stock only if you think the price will go down. And the only reason the stock price will go down is if the stock price doesn't reflect the company's value. If a stock is overvalued, it's because investors believe the company's hype.

As a short seller, you're looking past the hype - glaring at the company itself. And if you see there's not as much value there as investors believe there is, you almost have an obligation to short the stock.

For one thing, shorting the stock may convince people to take a closer look...and see what others haven't. Short sellers publicized accounting frauds at Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco long before anyone else noticed. They prepared for the bursting housing and mortgage bubbles while everyone else was busy refinancing and flipping property.

So short sellers are really the market's early warning systems. And if investors refuse to pay attention, you can at least limit the stock's damage as it falls.

Remember, stocks are not a zero-sum game

There isn't a winner for every loser. If someone buys a stock at $20 and sells for $30, he's made $10. Nobody has lost any money, though, and his profit gets recycled into the economy.

However, if he buys the stock at $20 and it goes to $10, the $10 he lost is gone forever. At least, it is unless someone has shorted the stock. A short seller has a chance to recover some of that money. So instead of disappearing, it can be re-injected into other investments. Now then...how do we determine which stocks are in dire need of shorting? There are a handful of traits you have to look for...

5 Traits of an Overvalued Stocks

I've found that five things predict whether a stock is overvalued or not:

An expensive stock price A contracting customer base A history of making value-destroying acquisitions Aggressive accounting A very generous stock option program.

Let's take a little more in-depth look at these.

An expensive stock price

An accurate definition of an "expensive stock" is a stock that has increased far higher than the fundamentals justify.

Some bull markets, like the bull market in oil stocks, are justified. Earnings and cash flow have risen as fast, or faster, than the stocks.

Other bull markets are not justified. Consider the dot-com bubble. The huge runs in these stocks were not accompanied by growth in earnings and cash flow. Instead, momentum traders and psychological mania - hype, hope, and fear of missing out on the crowd's profits - held them aloft. (We saw the same psychological top in housing finance in summer 2005.)

You did not want to be shorting these stocks as long as the psychological mania and momentum held strong. Expensive stocks can always get more expensive. But make no mistake, the tide will eventually turn...and that's when you strike.

During the dot-com bubble, that turnaround came in spring 2000. The psychology turned, and momentum traders started bailing out. Experienced short sellers knew that these stocks had an awful lot of room to fall - in the range of 90 - 100% declines. You could have made a fortune shorting and buying puts on a basket of the most egregiously overhyped dot-com stocks. The classic examples: Pets.com, eToys, Ask Jeeves, TheGlobe.com, InfoSpace, Razorfish.

A contracting customer base

Obviously, companies need customers to survive. Companies that are suffering a contraction in their customer base will experience declining sales, earnings, and even balance sheet erosion. But the Street may often fail to recognize it, choosing to value a particular stock by assuming past sales and earnings trends will continue indefinitely into the future.

An example is this would be USG Corp., a leading manufacturer of Sheetrock for use in new home construction. It's a low-cost producer and has a good management team. It's owned partly by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. As a result, it has long been a favorite of value investors.

But building supply companies have suffered a huge contraction in their customer base. And the stock has fallen from $120 to $30. As new home construction has plummeted, earnings estimates for USG have, as well.

Company financial reports often discuss the customer base...but don't expect them to highlight it if the news is bad.

A history of value-destroying acquisitions

Some executives are "serial acquirers." They care more about building a personal empire than building shareholder value. They have the bad habit of constantly diluting shareholders with secondary stock issuances.

A classic example is Tyco Intl. in the late 1990s, when Dennis Kozlowski ran it. Kozlowski was a sweet talker who overpaid for a hodgepodge of industrial companies, yet he successfully marketed this conglomerate as "the next GE."

That is, until early 2002. That's when the seams fell apart as the Enron scandal and a recession combined to shed light on the real value of the hundreds of businesses Kozlowski had rolled up. All those acquisitions destroyed value because the negative of constant stock dilution more than offset any positive gained from the acquired companies.

Of course, expansion isn't a bad thing. Some of the warning signs to look for are acquisitions of companies unrelated to the business...paying a stiff premium for the acquisition...or acquiring a company that's on a downward skid.

Aggressive accounting

Companies work hard to make their earnings look as good as possible. But sometimes their number boosting schemes go too far.

Take Tyco. Its rollup strategy included an accounting tactic called "bootstrapping earnings." Here's how it worked: Tyco used secondary issuances of its high P/E stock to acquire low P/E companies in stodgy "old economy" industries. After the books closed of these acquisitions, Tyco would automatically show higher earnings per share. Throughout the 1990s, this conglomerate consistently produced investor-pleasing earnings growth.

How was this wave of acquisitions treated on Tyco's balance sheet? Whenever an acquiring company pays a premium above the target company's book value, the difference usually ends up as "goodwill," an intangible asset on the acquirer's balance sheet. Unlike physical assets such as plants, goodwill and other intangibles are hard to value and can, in fact, be worthless. Tyco's intangible assets swelled from $6.4 billion in 1998 to $35.3 billion in 2001.

This was a big red flag. How could investors possibly estimate the intrinsic value of the underlying businesses? Tyco is not a software company in which nearly all assets are contained in the minds of programmers and in lines of code. So the explosion of intangible assets was not justified.

"Bootstrapping" (and other merger-related accounting techniques) is just one of the many accounting red flags we'll look for in the Strategic Short Report. Others include capitalizing expenses, channel stuffing, related party transactions, and using off-balance sheet accounting to hide the true financial picture.

A very generous stock option program

Companies often offer stock options as an employment incentive - promising shares of the company in lieu of money. There's nothing wrong with that... in fact, giving staff a stake in the company is a perfect way to make sure it acts in the company's best interests.

But sometimes a company gets a little too generous with its options. It hands them out like candy, or backdates them to make them more attractive. Either way, it dilutes shareholder value.

Take the case of Broadcom. Back in 2000, the company issued many options when the stock was above a split-adjusted $100 per share. But when the market hit bottom in 2002 - 2003 and Broadcom's shares fell sharply, those options were worthless. So to make its employees happy, Broadcom repriced those options.

Forty-nine million options with strike prices in the range of $32 were tendered in exchange for options with strike prices in the range of $22. This ultimately amounted to $49 million less for future company operations or capital expenditures.

The result was a dilution of shareholder value and, ultimately, a lower stock price.

Figuring out if a company is playing games with its options can be tricky. But once you see the warning signs, you know you've found a company ripe for a fall.

Of course, a company doesn't need to have all five of these traits to be a potential loser. But it will have several of them. And once you've identified a target, it's simply a matter of choosing the best way to play it. In Strategic Short Report, we'll use one of two methods - shorting the stock or buying puts - and which will discuss in detail in coming issues of Whiskey & Gunpowder.

Regards, Dan Amoss June 4, 2010

Dan Amoss, CFA, is managing editor for Strategic Short Report and a contributing editor to Whiskey and Gunpowder. Dan joined Agora Financial from Investment Counselors of Maryland, investment adviser for one of the top small-cap value mutual funds over the past 15 years. As a buy-side analyst, Dan refined his value investing approach by meeting with corporate executives and sell-side analysts and writing proprietary research for the fund's management team.

whiskeyandgunpowder.com

Deepwater Horizon and the Technology, Economics, and Environmental Impacts of Resource Depletion

Deepwater Horizon and the Technology, Economics, and Environmental Impacts of Resource Depletion Richard Heinberg

Following the failure of the latest efforts to plug the gushing leak from BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, and amid warnings that oil could continue to flow for another two months or more, perhaps it's a good time to step back a moment mentally and look at the bigger picture - the context of our human history of resource extraction - to see how current events reveal deeper trends that will have even greater and longer-lasting significance. Much of what follows may seem obvious to some readers, pedantic to others. But very few people seem to have much of a grasp of the basic technological, economic, and environmental issues that arise as resource extraction proceeds, and as a society adapts to depletion of its resource base. So, at the risk of boring the daylights out of those already familiar with the history of extractive industries, here follows a spotlighting of relevant issues, with the events in the Gulf of Mexico ever-present in the wings and poised to take center stage as the subject of some later comments. Readers in the "already familiar" category can skip straight to part 5. 1. The Pyramid Scheme Perhaps it's best to start with the most familiar metaphor: resource extraction always proceeds on the basis of the low-hanging fruit principle. We typically go after the most easily accessible, highest quality portions of the resource first, and save the hard-to-get, low-quality portions for later. Geologists use a different metaphor; they commonly speak of a "resource pyramid." The capstone represents the easily and cheaply extracted portion of the resource; the next layers are portions of the resource base that can be extracted with more difficulty and expense, and often with worse environmental impacts; while the remaining bulk of the pyramid represents resources that geologists believe are unlikely to be extracted under any realistic pricing scenario, usually because of depth, location, or quality issues. There's a pyramid for oil, one for coal, one for iron ore, and so on. As we chew our way down the layers of each pyramid, starting at the top, some fairly predictable things happen with regard to technology, economics, and environmental impacts. These effects are often mutually interacting, and I will try to highlight those mutual interactions as we go. 2. Technology Some resources can be extracted, at least in initial stages, with very simple tools. Primitive mining was accomplished with stone and wooden picks and shovels, using reed baskets to carry ore (usually copper, gold, or silver) to nearby sites where it could be smelted in charcoal fires. Once copper, tin, and iron had been smelted in sufficient quantities, metal tools began to be used in mining. Early coal mining consisted simply of digging lumps from surface outcrops, but by the 18th century British miners were working in shafts over 300 feet deep. Many very early oil wells consisted of shallow pits (up to 100 ft deep) dug into natural seeps; the earliest known drilling for oil occurred in China in the fourth century, achieving depths of up to about 800 feet using bits attached to bamboo poles. As petroleum became a heavily traded commodity in the early 20th century, rotary drills using steel pipes and bits were developed, able to penetrate to depths of thousands of feet. The patterns are clear and unsurprising: As resources near the Earth's surface become depleted, we have to work harder and dig deeper to extract more of what we want and have come to need. Production problems lead to the development of new extractive technologies - which, in solving those problems, often also make more of the resource accessible. As a larger portion of the resource base becomes available to society, more uses for the resource are discovered. The new technologies themselves (starting with metal tools) also frequently wind up having other purposes - ones that may increase demand for the resource they were developed to extract. There is no more significant or instructive example of these trends than the story of the steam engine - which was invented to pump water out of deepening coal mines, but (when applied to other ends, such as providing the motive power for railroads) became a prime user of coal. Tellingly, iron rails were also first used in coalmines. And thus, of course, began the Industrial Revolution. Fast-forward to deepwater drilling rigs, satellite and seismic geological surveys, horizontal drilling, fracking, and Blowout Preventers (BOPs) for finding and extracting oil (and unconventional natural gas); Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) technology for obtaining oil from tar sands; long-wall mining, Underground Coal Gasification (UCG), and Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in the coal industry; and so much more. Each extractive industry boasts its own fleet of cutting-edge technologies, each consisting of a suite of tool systems all working together to make the production of some fuel or ore cheaper or more environmentally benign. The 21st-century search for useful non-renewable resources is testing the limits of science; and both the brawn and the intricacy of machines that have been developed to feed our growing human needs for nonrenewable resources are truly impressive. Watching some of these machines in action, it is tempting to think that human ingenuity has no bounds. Moreover, since we are still fairly close to the top of the pyramid with regard to many nonrenewable resources, it is also natural to assume that constantly improving machines will enable us to dig very far down indeed, so as to continue supplying our burgeoning collective appetite for energy and minerals for many generations to come. However, as we are about to see, the development of extractive technologies also involves tradeoffs and limits. 3. Economics Fancy extraction technology comes at a price. But investment in more expensive tools is often justified by greater efficiency of production, reduced environmental impacts, or by the ability to open more of the resource base to exploitation. The relationship between cost and payoff is captured to some extent by the simple ratio of Return on Investment (ROI), to which every drilling or mining company's bean counters pay vigilant attention. This ratio can easily go sour in situations where the resource isn't present in sufficient quantities (even using the newest oil exploration techniques, two out of three initial wells - each costing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars - still comes up dry) or where environmental problems get out of hand (note to self: at end of fiscal year, remember to review BP's balance sheet for Gulf of Mexico operations). But financial ROI is not the only return on investment that matters. If we're discussing energy resources (oil, gas, or coal) then we also have to keep track of the ratio between the energy invested in exploration and production versus the energy yielded by the resources extracted. This is commonly termed Energy Return on Energy Invested, or EROEI. Technology uses energy, and bigger and more complicated machines usually use more of it. Moreover, the mining and refining of deeper or lower-grade fossil fuels generally takes more energy regardless of what technology is used. When the amount of energy required to produce a given quantity of fuel equals the amount of energy obtained from burning it, that fuel ceases to be a net energy source. There may be financial reasons to continue the production process (including government subsidies or tax write-offs), but from an energetic standpoint the exercise has become pointless. The EROEI for fossil fuels is declining for all the above reasons. Since each layer further down the resource pyramid requires more expensive extractive machinery, while yielding lower-quality or more expensively produced fuels or ores, one would expect that the market price for resources would continually be rising. But this has not been the case in most instances - until recently. During the 20th century, most commodity prices (including prices for metal ores and, often, fossil fuels) actually declined in inflation-adjusted terms. Why? More areas for exploration were continually being opened, while payoffs from the ability of new technology to access lower layers of the resource pyramid trumped both the extra cost of the technology itself and the declining resource quality (a factor that must be overcome with increasing investment in refining or ore upgrading). Over the past few years, that situation has begun to change. A study, "Increasing Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity," by Chris Clugston tracks the production levels and price of 57 Non-renewable Natural Resources (NNRs). Clugston begins by pointing out that:

During the 20th century, global production levels associated with 56 of the 57 analyzed NNRs (98%) increased annually, while global price levels associated with 45 of the 57 analyzed NNRs (79%) decreased annually. Generally increasing global NNR production levels in conjunction with generally decreasing global NNR price levels indicate relative global NNR abundance during the 20th century. On the whole, global NNR supplies kept pace with ever-increasing global demand during the 20th century.

So far, so good. But that's changing.

Generally slowing or declining global NNR production growth in conjunction with generally increasing global NNR prices indicate increasing NNR scarcity during the early years of the 21st century... Annual global production levels increased during the 20th century, then decreased during the 21st century; while annual price levels decreased during the 20th century, then increased during the 21st century...

Case in point: for petroleum, between the years 2000 and 2010 production increased 9 percent, while prices rose by almost 400 percent. No, we're not "running out" of oil, but we are running out of cheap oil. Clugston echoes this conclusion more generally: "We are not about to 'run out' of any NNR; we are about to run 'critically short' of many." Something else we learn from petroleum: as production expands and high-quality deposits deplete, continually higher prices do not represent the full extent of the problems that arise. At some point, regardless of price, production reaches a maximum rate and begins to decline (this, of course, is what the whole "Peak Oil" discussion is all about). This "peaking" phenomenon has occurred with regard to the extraction of many different resources, and in many places and times, so its dynamics are now the subject of fairly sophisticated study. Standard economic theory holds that, as a resource becomes scarce, potential buyers will bid prices upward; and as prices escalate, increasing numbers of users will turn to substitutes. It's easy to point to historic examples where these things happened, but there have also been instances where prices responded in a highly non-linear fashion (more on that below), and where substitutes were unavailable or inadequate. In the case of fossil fuels, substitutes do exist; however, most have drawbacks of one kind or another (see Searching for a Miracle) and the scale of current global fossil fuel usage makes a full transition to substitutes a truly daunting prospect. It is important to know whether commodity prices escalate linearly as petroleum and other non-renewable resources become scarcer. If they do, then the invisible hand of the market will solve many of the problems that scarcity brings: in addition to making substitutes more attractive, higher prices will motivate efforts to increase efficient usage of the resource. But a recent historic example calls such rosy scenarios for painless, market-led resource transitions into question. In the years and months leading up to July 2008, demand for oil was increasing, but global production remained stagnant. Traders bid the price up to a record $147 per barrel - and global financial mayhem followed. While a concurrent derivatives/real estate crash was responsible for much of the bloodshed, dramatic slumps in the auto, airline, trucking, and shipping industries seemed closely tied to the oil price spike. These (along with the general economic convulsion) resulted in declining fuel demand, which in turn caused petroleum prices to plummet nearly to $30 per barrel in December 2008. This then led to curtailed investment in oil exploration - which, in due course, will provoke another rapid price rise as supplies dwindle. The cycle will presumably begin again; and each time it recurs, it will likely have an even more devastating economic impact. Not all non-renewable resources will provoke similar scenarios as they deplete, as very few are so essential to the economy that scarcity or price spikes could trigger a major recession. However, price volatility does seem to be a typical sign of depletion-led resource scarcity. Finally, perhaps the most significant economic factor with regard to the extraction of nonrenewable resources is growth. Modern economies depend on growth in provision of goods and services; meanwhile, world population continues to expand. As we make our way down the down the pyramid, increasing appetites (growing population times growing per capita consumption rates) translate to increasing dependence on depleting resources. If total consumption rates were declining or even constant, the economic and environmental problems stemming from resource depletion would be easier to solve. Growth makes all such problems more intractable with every passing year. 4. Environmental Impacts In many respects, advancing technology tends to reduce the environmental impact of each increment of resource extraction (though there are exceptions!). Underground coal mining in the early days - only a few decades ago - was far more dangerous, dirty, and dreary than it is today, though mine disasters still occur (as we sadly discovered just a few weeks ago in West Virginia) and miners still die from pneumoconiosis. Similarly, the oil business in the early 20th century lacked regulations and safety technology, and resulted in more frequent oil spills and fatal accidents than does today's high-tech industry. The first successful exploratory oil wells nearly always produced gushers because there was little to prevent pressurized oil from shooting out the top of the drill pipe once reservoir contact was made. These days, gushers are extremely rare due to modern oil well pressure control systems. In the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, we see on display all the most advanced technology for drilling safety and spill cleanup. Blowout preventers, pressure monitors, careful planning, regulations, and advanced engineering combine to make accidents rare. If something does go wrong, there are remote-controlled underwater vehicles, top kills, and junk shots to seal off the leaks, and oil booms and chemical dispersants to deal with the spill itself. And yet, despite all this technology and expertise, we are still witness to one of the worst environmental disasters in history. Why? As we are still learning, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was due largely to gross negligence on part of several companies, primarily BP, and also to the approval of a flawed drilling plan by the Federal Government's Minerals Management Service (MMS). Such lapses are to be anticipated. In a deepwater drilling operation with a budget running upwards of a hundred million dollars, every minute costs money, so there are strong incentives to cut costs. Often, engineers (who may be more concerned about safety) are overruled by management (who are more concerned about budgets and ROI). Then there is the phenomenon - common throughout government - of regulators being figuratively (or literally) in bed with industries they are supposed to be regulating. So in March 2009, when BP filed a plan with the MMS, repeatedly asserting that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities," so unlikely in fact that "a blowout scenario... is not required for the operations proposed," the regulators simply took the company at its word. In the bigger scheme of things, an event such as the Deepwater Horizon explosion becomes more likely with every passing year, despite the continuing development of superior technology: as oil production levels grow to meet rising demand, and as the industry is forced to drill deeper in ever more hostile environments, there are more things to go wrong; and when problems happen, they are harder to fix. While the world's attention is appropriately riveted on the consequences of the Macondo blowout, it is important to remember the ongoing, routine environmental devastation that comprises the background static of contemporary industrial life: climate chaos, air and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. In many instances of resource extraction - including "mountaintop removal" coal mining and tar sands oil production - massive environmental destruction is the result not of unforeseen accidents, but of normal operations. With the convergence of climate change and "clean coal" technology we see the culmination of many of the trends discussed here. Climate change is an environmental consequence of nonrenewable resource usage, and one that is so horrendous it will stop civilization in its tracks. Therefore something must be done to stop it. Several key industrial nations can't afford to give up coal, the highest-carbon fuel, because their economies depend on it and the alternatives would be too costly to develop. The ideal solution would be a new technology to clean up carbon emissions from burning coal. Voila! Such a technology exists - Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), which entails burying carbon dioxide from the coal combustion process underground. But CCS will cost so much to build to scale that the technology will almost certainly never actually be implemented. (see China's Coal Bubble...and how it will deflate U.S. efforts to develop "clean coal") The upshot: there is no apparent solution to the coal/climate conundrum that preserves economic growth much longer. The trends end in some sort of unpredictable discontinuity. 5. Deepwater Horizon: Impact on Future Oil Production Now, back to the events in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Department of Energy forecasts that "a vast majority" of projected increases in U.S. oil production in the near term will come from Gulf deepwater fields similar to the site of the Deepwater Horizon spill. Such deepwater fields currently represent about 70 percent of all Gulf oil production (the other 30 percent come from shallow depths, typically of a few hundred feet). Offshore oil provides almost a third of total U.S. oil production of 5.5 million barrels per day, and that percentage is rising. For the world as a whole, the International Energy Agency projects that by 2020 deepwater will be providing 40 percent of all oil being extracted. Why the emphasis on deepwater? Because we've already chewed our way down through the higher levels of the oil pyramid: there's very little onshore or shallow-water oil left to find. So down we go! The BP spill is likely to throw a wrench into these plans. Heavier regulations, and higher (more expensive) standards are on the way. President Obama has just ordered the suspension of all current U.S. deepwater drilling operations for six months, and future deepwater projects could be delayed by years. Insurance costs for deepwater projects will soar ("The cost of insuring a rig against a so-called physical loss - damage to the rig itself - can easily surpass $3 million a year, and could reach $9 million depending on the deductible," according to Rigzone). Total insurance claims on the Deepwater Horizon disaster could far exceed the total premiums paid by all oil drillers to insurance companies in 2010, so a bankrupting of some insurers is at least possible. Further, deepwater projects require financing - however, in case anyone hasn't noticed, the economy is falling apart. Banks aren't lending because of all the bad loans on their books; and, though oil companies may be flush with cash, they prefer to spread risks around. Now that the risks associated with deepwater exploration appear much larger, and credit is tight in any case, fewer investors are likely to want to jump aboard. Oil companies may want to just hang onto their cash by buying up their own stock shares. After all, the object of the game is to make a profit; producing more oil is just a means to that end, and if a better means is available, why not go with it? Sure, "financializing" the oil industry doesn't work over the long term, as oil companies need booked reserves in order to attract investors, and maintaining reserves requires exploration. But who's in it for the long term? Hey, in the long term, we're dead. Maybe it's time to cash out and let a new generation of managers figure out what to do next. Then there is the problem of over-optimism. Developers of production projects are naturally inclined to talk up the prospects for the latest "play." Later, when reality sets in, initial rosy forecasts may not be borne out. Case in point: BP's flagship deepwater Gulf of Mexico project, Thunderhorse, was slated to produce a billion barrels of oil at the rate of 250,000 barrels a day (b/d). Production hit 172,000 b/d in January 2009, but then declined rapidly to 61,000 b/d by the end of last year. BP has not commented publicly on the reason for this unexpected production crash, but outside observers are skeptical that the platform will ever actually produce the promised billion barrels. According to Post Carbon Institute Fellow Tom Whipple in "Peak Oil Review" for May 24, "At least 25 other deepwater projects are said to be facing problems of falling production, raising the question of just how much oil these very expensive deepwater projects will ever produce." Take one Thunderhorse, add a Deepwater Horizon, mix thoroughly, and what do you get? Investor jitters. Economic optimists never tire of pointing out how enormous the resource pyramid is when viewed as a whole. When society is desperate, they say, we will go after energy resources and raw materials no matter where they are, no matter how expensive the process, and no matter how much environmental destruction comes with it. We'll solve problems that arise as best we can and move on. Growth is inevitable and unstoppable, and if fuels and materials that enable growth exist, we will find and use them. In reality, though, things may not work out that way. New extraction projects require the cooperation of many functioning systems including manufacturing/fabrication, finance, insurance, regulation, and advanced technical education. As that system of systems becomes more complicated, the sites of potential breakdown multiply. The current economic crisis is likely to rupture the system in multiple places, crippling extractive industries. Much of the remaining oil, coal, gas, and mineral resource base that could technically be extracted may well end up staying in the ground simply because society can't continue to organize itself functionally at a high enough level to maintain the growing effort needed. In short, the Deepwater Horizon story is not just an environmental tragedy. It is a story about the limits of both extractive technologies and the increasingly complex societal systems that support them. It's a reminder that the whole project of basing unending economic growth on ever-increasing rates of extraction of depleting nonrenewable resources is wrongheaded from start to finish. And it's a signal that hopes for our economy to magically "dematerialize" have turned out to be just that - mere hopes. 6. This Is What the End of the Oil Age Looks Like There will be plenty of blame to go around, as events leading up to the fatal Deepwater Horizon rig explosion are sorted out. Even if further efforts to plug the gushing leak succeed, the damage to the Gulf environment and to the economy of the region are incalculable and will linger for a very long time indeed. The deadly stench from oil-soaked marshes - as spring turns to hot, fetid summer - will by itself ruin tens or hundreds of thousands of lives and livelihoods. Then there's the loss of the seafood industry: we're talking about more than the crippling of the economic backbone of the region; anyone who's spent time in New Orleans (my wife's family all live there) knows that the people and culture of southern Louisiana are literally as well as figuratively composed of digested oysters, shrimp, and speckled trout. Given the historic political support from this part of the country for offshore drilling, and for the petroleum industry in general, this really amounts to sacrificing the faithful on the altar of oil. President Obama has called the spill a "massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster," and his representatives are now referring to it as both the worst oil spill and the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. But it's much more than that. It is a sign that we're nearing the end of a trail we've been following for at least a couple of centuries now. Once again, I must repeat: we're not even close to running out of oil, coal, gas, or most minerals. But we face a convergence of entirely predictable but severe consequences from the depletion of the concentrated, high-grade resources at the top of the pyramid: less affordable and more volatile commodity prices; worse environmental impacts - cumulative, mutually reinforcing impacts - both from accidents and from "normal" extraction operations; declining resource quality; declining EROEI for fossil fuels; and the need for massive new investment both to grow production levels, and to keep environmental consequences at bay. And all of this is happening just as investment capital (needed to fix all these problems) is becoming scarce. In short, the monetary and non-monetary costs of growth have been rising faster than growth itself, and it looks as though we have now gotten to the inevitable point where growth may in fact no longer be an option. The Deepwater Horizon disaster reminds us that, of all non-renewable resources, oil best deserves to be thought of as the Achilles heel of modern society. Without cheap oil, our industrial food system - from tractor to supermarket - shifts from feast to famine mode; our entire transportation system sputters to a halt. We even depend on oil to fuel the trains, ships, and trucks that haul the coal that supplies half our electricity. We make our computers from oil-derived plastics. Without oil, our whole societal ball of yarn begins to unravel. But the era of cheap, easy petroleum is over; we are paying steadily more and more for what we put in our gas tanks - more not just in dollars, but in lives and health, in a failed foreign policy that spawns foreign wars and military occupations, and in the lost integrity of the biological systems that sustain life on this planet. The only solution is to do proactively, and sooner, what we will end up doing anyway as a result of resource depletion and economic, environmental, and military ruin: end our dependence on the stuff. Everybody knows we must do this. Even a recent American president (an oil man, it should be noted) admitted that, "America is addicted to oil." Will we let this addiction destroy us, or will we overcome it? Good intentions are not enough. We must make this the central practical, fiscal priority of the nation. In my 2006 book, The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse, I laid out a simple formula that could guide us in systematically reducing our global dependence on oil. The same general plan could be adapted for use with all other nonrenewable resources. At the time, I naively thought that environmentalists would eagerly take up the idea, and that a few courageous politicians would champion it. So far, there has in fact been very little interest in the Protocol. It turns out that nearly everyone likes the idea of using less oil, but nobody wants to take the step of actually mandating a reduction in its production and consumption, because that would require us to dethrone our Holy of Holies - economic growth. It's so much more comfortable to spout support for the intention to build more electric cars - a technology that in fact will take decades to gain even moderate market penetration. Fair enough. But where does that leave us? In an oily mess at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico... and entangled in what may be the ultimate Catch 22: We want more petroleum-fueled economic growth, but we hate what the pursuit of petroleum is doing to us (not to mention the environment), and it looks as though "more" may not be an option much longer in any case. There's just no easy answer here, folks.

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