Thursday, April 14, 2011

All Your Mines Belong to Us

The dentist took some x-rays and looked at my tooth. He could find nothing wrong. The x-ray maybe showed a slight infection above the root on the tooth that hurts, but it was clearing up and hard to make out. I got a script for an antibiotic and he said unless the pain got worse to let it ride for a bit. I guess that is good, nothing big going on there. It still does not hurt anymore so I should be good to go.

Joe Battipaglia Passed Away
I used to love to watch the Fox Business block on Sunday's a long time ago. One of the more fun guests on the shows was Joe Battipaglia. CNBC reported it earlier and now there is confirmation that Battapaglia has died at age 55. I send all my best wishes for the Batapaglia family and for his friends. Very sad.

All Your Mines Belong to Us
I was still holding some Pan American Silver (PAAS) and everything seemed fine this morning before I left for the dentist around 11am. Of course I get home and get this headline:
Bolivia may scrap Glencore, Pan American contracts
In a nutshell, Bolivia is going all communist and will probably seek to take over mines that are contracted to private companies and use them for the state's wants and desires. PAAS got hit big on the news and I sold out at a 2 cent gain. Yup, TWO CENTS! Figures. It could have been worse.

This reminds me once again why I stopped trading miners a long time ago. They suck. From 2002-2007 with gold and silver rising steadily and happily the miners were always lagging and looking like dogshit. They always burn a 20% move up in the stock by doing a monster secondary stock offering for like 75% of the company, buying some other miner, or just missing earnings even though it was almost impossible to do so.

As of late the miners are now so extremely volatile you cannot even trade them. Stop losses? Forget it, don't bother. EXK moves up and down in increments of 10%, try placing a stop on that screwball, you are gonna get executed.

I know plenty of folks navigate the miners well and clean up doing it. There is a donation button on the site at the left, use it. I am going to stay away from these things from now on.

Zipcar and What it Means Bigger Picture
The Cambridge based company Zipcar had their IPO today and it went bananas. These cars are all over the Boston metro area. This section is not to discuss Zipcar in a buy/sell sense, but a post over at Leigh Drogen's place really jumped out at me as to what this kind of thing means going forward. From Mr. Drogen:
Zipcar is the perfect representation of the fact that our economy is shifting, drastically, from people wanting to own things, to people wanting to use things, but have no desire to own them. This shift is made possible by recent technological advances in peer to peer networks. These services are sprouting up in every industry, even baby toys. Instead of buying baby toys which you will throw out in a year when your kid outgrows them, why not rent them when it makes sense, with a subscription service, and send it back when your kid is done playing with it, like a video game rental.

Zipcar is playing on the same theme, why own a car when you only drive it once in a while?
Good stuff.
This sort of big change will allow many more people access to various things, cars in this case, that they would not be able or interested in using otherwise. This has broad effects on the economy both deflationary and inflationary in some ways. Worth thinking about.

Extortion
This Red Meat comic had me laughing until I figured the banking system is doing the same thing to all of us. Then I wanted to get a chainsaw for the tree, hee hee (click for larger view or hit the link to the site):

Yuppers.

Have a good night.

13 comments:

watchtower said...

GYSC, I know you've already read this but I just came across it today over at David's site:

"Zipcar is awesome for those of you who don't know what it is. It's a car rental service, but you can rent by the hour -- or even half hour, if you want. Best yet, if you live in a big city like I do, chances are there's a parking lot near you that has anywhere from 4 to 8 cars available to all members."

http://tinyurl.com/3fat7tl

Sounds like a great idea for those only needing occasional use of a vehicle.
But your right, everybody needs to get on an open road with a "nasty strong" car at least once in their life : )


GYSC, I have noticed that in the past you have had some pretty eclectic Friday Night Entertainment posts, so I was hoping that you might play this video Friday night (assuming you are having Friday Night Entertainment this week):

http://tinyurl.com/3wzyvch

It's from the late great Sarah Vaughan, taken from the movie soundtrack of Sharkey's Machine.
GYSC, if you've never seen this film I would urge you to do so, Rachel Ward is simply stunning in this, what a beauty.
Burt Reynolds actually does an acceptable job acting in this too.

EconomicDisconnect said...

Whoa Watchtower, thats a lot to cover!
The "nasty car" comment I made was so true; open up a 300 plus horspower and torque motor out in the open and you don't need to go to the amusement park! I so love my Infiniti G35x coming up a highway onramp; I nail the gas and all the cars on the highway slow, then stop, then suddenly go backwards (relative to me) faster and faster. Love it.

BTW, David runs a good site.

I have seen Sharkey's Machine and I really liked it. Burt Reynolds was ok in it, in Deliverance he was top flight. My favorite Reynolds film? "Breaking In".

The video will be on my man! No problem at all. Got quite a few requests this week via comments and email, should be fun. We need a youtube of a 1970 plymouth GTX hemi sound file!

watchtower said...

"We need a youtube of a 1970 plymouth GTX hemi sound file!"

Hells yeah!

EconomicDisconnect said...

I looked, had trouble finding one, dang!

GawainsGhost said...

Black Sabbath, "Swinging the Chain." Off the Never Say Die album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNOv2rCdLzU

That's Bill Ward on vocals, although Ozzy does come in at the end. Great song. Very heavy, but quite jazzy too. Excellent work on the saxophone, I think by Geoff Nichols (?).

I saw that tour, you know, way back in 78. And I got to tell you, it was beyond belief. The first three concerts I saw were Elvis in 72, Kiss in 77 and Black Sabbath in 78. Honestly, I didn't see anyone better or equal until I saw the Stones in 90. Well, with the exception of the Grateful Dead in 85.

Anyway, as to this Zipcar thing, Karl Denninger a post up on the IPO. He doesn't like it, thinks it's dishonest. But he doesn't speak on the business model.

I think Zipcar could be a successful company in big cities, where people might need temporary use of a car but don't want to own one. But that means the company has a limited market. It is not viable in large states with wide open spaces, like Texas.

I saw that tour way back in 78.

David Batista said...

Whoa! I had no idea you visited my site, Watchtower. Cool! :)

And, yes, living in a big city is the only way I see Zipcar being a viable option. For me, living in New York City where owning a car is highly prohibitive, it's a great alternative for those times where public transportation is not going to cut it. If I want to take a long weekend trip out of the city, I might go the traditional car rental route -- which has better long-term rates. But for afternoon or half-day errand runs around the city, Zipcar is truly a godsend. I cannot sing its praises highly enough.

Anonymous said...

Re: Miners. They dont inherently suck - its just the countries they inhabit that suck.

Incidentally, this is the basis for why I really used to get into it with Jeff "housing time bomb" when he wondered aloud, "what makes us different than greece".

In a word its the stability. Nearly all of South America has bananna republics who sporadically get these bouts of populism say "we're just gonna come in and take/nationalize your private enterprise and make it our own". Can you imagine how much it sucks if you spent like 100Million in infrastructure/equipment, etc only to have some foreign govt then say "we'll take that thank you"? Its this lack of certainty that makes operating in South America, Africa & parts of Asia such a high risk, high reward venture.

That in a nutshell is the difference between us and them. Yeah, our debt loads are high, but we have a long long history of honoring our contracts, whereas these other guys do this sort of shit all the time. Same with japan who has even higher debt loads - they are deemed ultra safe because they never say "yeah, nevermind" and take your shit.

Jennifer Hillier said...

That Red Meat comic is funny but kind of alarming too!

EconomicDisconnect said...

Anon, good points. The US uses inflation to lower debt burden, but you are right. Japan could never have the debt they do without heavy public debt holdings and an the real faith of the world they will pay. Somehow Argentina keeps getting cash though, go figure.

JH, love the Red Meat comics. They are all funny and distrubing, maybe even "CREEP"y :)

Anonymous said...

Get - yeah. In some of the 3rd world countries the market says "yes they have the money to pay, but given their history will they actually pay this time"?

Here in the developed world its "im not sure if they have the money to pay, but given their history they always seem to pay"

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