Did the much reviled Pebble Mine project just die with a whimper and not a bang?

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

A 15-year fight to mine for gold along Alaska’s pristine Bristol Bay might have just ended — with a whimper. 

Canadian mining firm Northern Dynasty Minerals has been a hot topic in investment advice since Election Day. The company’s stock jumped 326 percent after Donald Trump’s victory, as newsletters feverishly pitched the company’s prospects under the new regime. One even went so far as to label the stock “Trump’s Gold.” 

But Northern Dynasty’s long-planned gold and copper mine, located inside a key salmon spawning habitat, is less a secret fortune-maker and more an elaborate pump-and-dump stock scheme, investment analysts from Kerrisdale Capital said Tuesday. 

“All this enthusiasm is misplaced. We believe Northern Dynasty is worthless,” the analysts said in the note. Despite the stock jump, the company is actually “worth nothing because its key asset is not commercially viable.”

Well that's a little underwhelming. And yet gratifying. 

However it should be noted that this project has changed hands at least three times in the last fifteen years, and faced court orders and numerous protests, and yet it still refuses to completely die despite almost universal opposition from the Alaskan people. 

So is this it? Could this be the final nail in this project's coffin?

Well damn I hope so.

All of those Fox News viewers who bought a shit loads of gold are about to lose their shirts. You know, if they wore shirts.

Courtesy of the Washington Post: 

A little less than four years ago, the world looked like it was about to end and gold hit an all-time high of $1,895 an ounce. 

The United States had manufactured a debt crisis, and Europe hadn't been able to manufacture a solution to its actual debt crisis, so panicky investors sought safety in the same place they had for 5,000 years: a shiny rock. The only problem, as you might have noticed, is that the world did not, in fact, end. It's still here, so gold prices aren't. The yellow metal has fallen 42 percent from its peak—and 8 percent in just the last month—despite the fact that the Federal Reserve has printed more than $1.5 trillion in this time. That, after all, is what gold aficionados said would make its price go to the moon, if not infinity and beyond. So what's happened? Well, exactly what economists said would happen.

Hah! God I love this!

The article goes on to point out that gold does not pay any dividends, or interest like other investments, however it does cost money to store. So not only were the conservative morons who put their life savings into gold about to go bankrupt but they are paying a storage fee for the privilege. 

As I am sure most of you know Right Wing media outlets like Fox News and talk radio, have been awash in advertising urging everybody to put all of their money in gold before the zombie apocalypse, or something like that.

And of course like good little lemmings they have been doing exactly that.

Only now those golden parachutes of theirs are more like shiny anvils tied to their ankles as they struggle to stay solvent.

I imagine that pretty soon we will see elderly conservatives jumping out of windows all over the country in response to this news.

Not to worry however as most of them live in one story trailers so the fall should only result in a sprained ankle and some minor abrasions.

Unless they land on one of their personal mobility devices that is. Because THAT could really leave a mark.

Texas decides to establish their own Fort Knox, because you know screw the federal government!

Courtesy of TPM:  

And the new depository will not just be a well-guarded warehouse for that bullion. The law Abbott signed calls for the creation of an electronic payments system that will allow gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and rhodium depositors to write checks against their accounts, making the depository into a bank – one that will create a metal-backed money supply intended to challenge the paper currency issued by the Federal Reserve - or "Yankee dollars" as one of the law's top supporters calls them. And in case the Fed or Obama wants to confiscate Texas's gold, nice try Fed and Obama! In keeping with this suspicion of the Fed and Washington, the new law also explicitly declares that no “governmental or quasi-governmental authority other than an authority of [Texas]” will be allowed to confiscate or freeze an account inside the depository. Gold that’s entrusted to Texas will stay in Texas. 

The depository law is the brainchild of a second-term state representative in the Texas legislature named Giovanni Capriglione, a 42-year-old Republican from Southlake, just northwest of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. A private equity manager with an MBA, Capriglione was elected in 2012 after beating an seven-term incumbent with the backing of Tea Party activists. He told the Star-Telegram that when he first announced his interest in establishing a depository in Texas in 2013, he “got so many emails and phone calls from people literally all over the world who said they want to store their gold … in a Texas depository. People have this image of Texas as big and powerful … so for a lot of people, this is exactly where they would want to go with their gold.” 

The only thing big and powerful in Texas are the egos. 

I don't know about everybody else, but my very first thought on reading this is that Texas is getting ready to secede, because a state run gold depository would be essential to making that happen.

The place is already overrun with sovereign citizens who are constantly freaking out about the federal government, as was demonstrated by their crazed response to military maneuvers in their state, and some have even gone so far as to start printing their own money.

Personally I hope that they ARE preparing to secede from United States of America. Having them leave would significantly raise the IQ level in Washington since one of their Senators is freaking Ted Cruz, and they count among their Representatives the like of Blake Farenthold, Pete Sessions, and Louis Gohmert.

I just have to wonder how safe Texans will feel once other countries learn that Texas has their own gold reserves and are no longer protected by the United States military?

Goldline, the precious metal seller endorsed by Glenn Beck, guilty of fraud. Shocked, that's what I am. Shocked!

Courtesy of Salon:

If you’ve ever listened to conservative talk radio, you’ve probably heard of Goldline, the precious metal seller endorsed by Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and others. But,critics allege that Goldline is misleading its consumers, much like the talkers they sponsor. 

The company’s business model was built on systemically swindling and scaring its mostly elderly clientele into purchasing overpriced gold coins, prosecutors in California alleged, leading the company to settle for $4.5 million in refunds to its customer. The City Attorney in Santa Monica, where the company is based, brought 19 criminal fraud charges against the company that were later dropped, but a Los Angeles judge last year instructed the company to foot the bill for a court-appointed monitor, who was tasked with ensuring the company revealed its price markups and stopped misleading consumers. 

But now, the company’s former compliance officer is saying she was fired for complaining to her bosses that she was being prevented from speaking with the monitor, Courthouse News Service reported yesterday. Carol Taylor Gabrelow, who is suing Goldline in LA for wrongful termination, says her bosses were afraid she would spill the beans to the monitor about her company’s shady tactics. Her complaint alleges: 

“Goldline specifically targets vulnerable consumers with sales tactics designed to pressure those consumers into buying products that would often result in the consumer losing over one-third of his or her investment the instant the purchase is made meaning that, even when the price of the precious metals increases, because these consumers were deceived into purchasing coins with mark-ups exceeding 50 percent, it could be years, if ever, before the consumer recoups, much less makes any profit on, the investment.”

I have actually almost completely lost touch with Beck after he was summarily dismissed from Fox News for being even too wingnutty for them.

But once in a while DO catch a portion of his radio broadcast, usually on Mediaite or some other internet site calling him out for being ridiculous, and I have noticed that his schtick seems to be focused almost exclusively on frightening people into not trusting the internet, banks, or the government, and then selling them some product to protect their identity, money, or help them get a boner.

Like many of his fellow Right Wing radio shock jocks, Beck's audience is made up of mostly elderly people who cannot yet figure out how to turn on their computers and poor white trailer trash survivalists who seem to think that Beck is broadcasting out of a bunker somewhere, while hiding behind a pile of sandbags.

And while I feel badly that these poor wretched mouth breathers are getting ripped off by this fly by night gold exchange company, part of me thinks "That's what you get for listening to fucking Glenn Beck!"

I mean come on! Beck has NEVER met a conspiracy he did not believe in wholeheartedly, and is so incredible arrogant that he even started his own online school so he could personally help dumb down the American people.

As if his stupid radio show wasn't doing that already.

Rep. Anthony Weiner reveals how Fox News commentators are helping to rip off their listeners. Which causes Glenn Beck to lose his mind...again.

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