Well it’s December 23rd and we’ve shut the books on 2001. We’d like to take the opportunity to thank all of our readers for support and encouragement over the last few months. “Straight Talk” is now read in 23 different countries. Next year we’ll be bigger and better. All the …

I have had a great deal of feedback from my “Silver” essays. Please keep it coming! Other snippets to report: I mentioned that by-product silver production from some porphyry copper mines is huge, not because they contain high grade silver, but because they mine huge volumes of low grade rock …

“Mining is the backbone of wealth and the spinal column of all certainty.” – Cecil John Rhodes Silver, like gold, platinum, and palladium is considered one of the precious metals. This differentiates it from zinc, copper, lead, nickel and tin which are base metals. What makes a precious metal “precious”? …

Market Commentary: They call it “convergence” in advertising. The CNN-AOL-Time Warner machine blitzkrieged us with unrelenting, shameless, in-your-face, blatant, HYPE; contriving and conspiring to fashion something as inconsequential as the opening of a kid’s movie – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Philosophers’ Stone in UK) – into not just …

As divined by The Economist on September 15th, the overwhelming majority of companies have chosen to include the phrase “due to the events of September 11th” in their quarterly reports to explain away their corporate shrinking profits or growing losses. There is no doubt that the attacks enormously affected sectors …

Market comment: What do you say about this last week?? With gold back below $280US, is it headed back to $260US?? With a war going on in Afghanistan? With a potential war brewing next door between Pakistan and India? With religious rioting in Nigeria and Indonesia? With the anthrax scare? …

Market comment: Fidelity Investments has a new advertisement on CNBC in which Peter Lynch, Vice- Chairman, states that since WWII, “corporate profit is up 60 fold and the market is up 60 fold” and “that’s why you invest in the stock market”. Well Mr. Lynch, I pity the poor fool …

Many of us have seen television medical dramas where the patient’s heart has stopped. The doctor grabs two paddles connected up to a machine, applies them to the chest, yells “clear” so everyone backs away, and shoots a jolt of electricity into the patient. Invariably, this is repeated a couple …

Market overview The silver market is taking off! Two reasons: the New York tragedy and all that it entails, and the placing in “voluntary administration” (September 19th) of Australian company Pasminco Ltd., which is the world’s largest integrated lead and zinc producer, and, according to their website, the world’s third …

Hello out there in cyber land. This is the first in a series of educational essays concerning geology, mining, exploration, and the mining investment scene. I am pleased to see how many people out there want to become more savvy investors. The response to my Gold- Eagle.com and LeMetropolecafe.com articles …