EclecticLip

The mining show this year (2010 - not sure if they recycle the web address annually) featured a lot more well-dressed people than in years past — which probably means a lot of first-timers, which itself means gold is due for a plunge.  All the better to part newcomers and their money. 

Longer-term, the outlook for the shiny-metal-with-the-colour-of-the-sun seems bright, if only because of the dire financial straits most countries seem to be in.  For example, if the interest rates on Japanese debt went up from their current 1.5%-ish to 4%, the annual interest would exceed the government’s entire tax revenues for everything.  This problem is exacerbated by demographic decline: the total population is dropping… but the “working-age” population is dropping much, much faster.  The same problems plague Europe and North America to varying extents.  On the plus side, Japanese vacations may become affordable again…

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In a complimentary copy of Resource World magazine, I saw an ad for a mining firm which noted that Green Technologies are dependent on “exotic” materials like silicon, neodymium, lanthanum, and heavy rare earth metals.  Yes, apparently silicon fits in that category, despite being a component of silica (sand) — the most abundant mineral in the earth’s crust!!

The free issue of BCBusiness featured a roundtable of economists, arguing over what governments should do to support the economy.  I’ve always considered economics to be a bit Rashomon-esque: starting with your political sensibility, you can find an entrenched economic philosophy that affirms it.  And I think the kaleidoscope of contradictory opinion in economics is one reason some business people disbelieve global warming — they can’t believe other fields actually achieve consensus on anything.  Anyways, the article did have an AWESOME moment of truth from John Richards of SFU. 

Q - What might be the most surprising thing in 2010?
A - I am no good at forecasting.

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I noticed a lot of companies from Yellowknife (”diamond capital of North America!”) at the conference, but that’s probably just because we made plans to visit the Northwest Territories in March — part of my ongoing “Tour de Tundra”.  I’m aiming for a Canadian Arctic tourism hat-trick; what with the Yukon two years back and the NWT this year, hopefully we can make it to Nunavut in 2012.  Y’know, before the Mayan calendar flips over. 

The combined Lonely Planet guide to the NWT and Nunavut — 32 pages, downloadable for about $2 — yielded some surprising facts.  For instance, the NWT legislature IS SHAPED LIKE AN IGLOO; and when it comes to official languages, the Territories have not two, not three, not four, not five (…let me skip ahead here…) but ELEVEN.  Eleven official languages, for thirty thousand people!  It puts Switzerland’s three-or-four, to shame. 

Apparently temperatures in Yellowknife in mid-March have ranged from -43 to +22 Celsius.  So, taking my planning cues from corporate leadership, I’ll be packing t-shirts and shorts. 

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While downtown yesterday, I went to a local company’s [stock-promoting] presentation, something I found out about through a connect at TEDxVancouver.  While I’m unsure about this company’s business model — perhaps because I don’t know much about business models! — I attended ’cause there’s always free food at these things.    I also scored a free copy of David Bach’s “Go Green, Live Rich”, which they were handing out.  I’m not that fond of the author, given that he filled the ”Finish Rich” book series with everyday pablum, but this book’s ghostwritten, is filled with nice stock images from iStockPhoto.com, and is tweaked for Canadians, so I figured I’d give it a chance.  Plus, the price was right!

On the topic of iStockPhoto.com, while shopping at the local PriceSmart Foods at Christmas, I noticed that the boxes of “Sun Brand” Japanese mandarins, and “Pagoda Brand” Chinese mandarins use the same stock photo on the box cover!  The only difference is that Pagoda actually replicates part of the original photo twice.  Someone at one of those two companies is either very dumb, or very very clever… 

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Ah, January — when mutual funds roll out ads for RRSP season, and investment advisors get exponentially busier as February 28 approaches.  This year, the industry’s “Christmas-after-Christmas” season will be particularly joyous, as many funds will have risen 20% or more in 2009.  That still qualifies as underachievement, though, as the Toronto index rose 27% on the strength of…   well, on the strength of it no longer being 2008. 

Now, according to the Globe & Mail’s mutual fund site, sixteen of twenty-two Canadian gold funds had returns of 100% or more, in the year ending November 30.  That’s a poorly-chosen datapoint — November 2008 was the absolute nadir of that sector — but it’s the latest data available on the Globeinvestor website as of this writing.  And it shows that for such funds last year, a dart-throwing monkey could’ve probably doubled people’s money… that is, if they were foolish enough to trust their entire savings to an ape.  Mind you, considering how the ape’s competition did, that might not have been a bad idea…!

Still on the topic of dextrous chimps, the Vancouver gold show coming up will see hordes of company reps looking to fleece the uninitiated with some old-school Vancouver Stock Exchange bravura.  Bre-X was ten years ago, Southwestern was so 2008, so someone new has to carry the torch!

The venue should be obvious from the assortment of protesters politely asking conference-goers not to invest in a various companies pillaging their way through foreign lands like the humans in the movie “Avatar”.  There’s a story going around that our mining companies have been so ruthless in Latin America, Canadian tourists are sewing American flags on their travel gear.  Like most such stories, it’s probably untrue in the immediate factual sense (I doubt many tourists are doing this) but it does point to a commonly-held belief, which is in this case true (some Canadian mining companies do some vicious things for their shareholders).

Back to activism though.    During our recent Portland trip, I was privy to the most effective protest leaflet I’ve ever seen.  A few well-dressed individuals from the “In Defense of Animals” group were handing out copies of the professionally-designed, high-gloss postcard below (on the web here).

Basically, they praised Nordstrom and its founders, praised its customers as compassionate individuals, and explained that since the chain had done so well in almost completely eliminating fur from its sold goods, wouldn’t you please politely tell the manager you’d like them to phase out the remaining fur products?  While most protest groups would direct their outrage at the store or the very consumers to whom they’re passing out leaflets, these guys neatly separated the evil “other”, the Jungian shadow, into a separate category.

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