The Solar Silver Meltdown

Solar energy is increasingly popular and the world sees an increase in the use of silver in the production of solar cell panels. The photovoltaic industry need for silver is driven by an increase in global solar installations and which have risen 11 percent.

Increasing demand
Silver demand from the photovoltaic sector has risen to a record high of 83.3 million ounces, an increase from 77.6 million ounces (2 415 ton) in 2015. The growth for Chinese solar panel installations were strong and China’s demand for silver is expected to grow in years to come. Mine production of silver for 2015 was 886,7 million ounces and this means that the photovoltaic industry consumes close to 10 percent of the world-output. A percentage that will increase as demand for green energy grows. Solar Industry report

Inexpensive Silver
The price of silver is still artificially linked to the price of gold and not to the market mechanism of supplies and demand. The next industrial expansions, and the need for conductive metal in solar panels, will surly lead to a real price increase instead of a to-days speculative price fixing by greedy banks.  Read about the upcomming shortnes of supply in The Silver Solar Burnout

Call of the Wild

Samler du på gullmynter er Call of the Wild serien fra The Royal Canadian Mint et godt kjøp.

 De tre myntene, som viser en knurrende puma, hylende ulv og brølende grizzlybjørn, er produsert av superrent gull, dvs hele fem ni-tall. 99,999. Myntene er så detaljerte at du kan føle og ta på bjørnepelsen i gull. Mynten er limited edition, dvs. det er preget 250 stykke og pålydende $ 200 kanadiske.

Samleobjekt
The Roaring Grizzly Bear er både en samlemynt og investeringsmynt. Til dagens pris, 28.11.2016, på NOK 10 875 ( USD 1280) over disk i Oslo er det ikke urimelig for en 1. oz gullmynt. Det er også mulig å få kjøpt de to andre myntene i Wild serien. Howling Wolf og Growling Cougar til NOK 11029 (USD 1300) pr stk. Vær oppmerksom på at Tolletaten mener mynten merverdiavgift-pliktige hvis du kjøper den fra utlandet.

Gold and Mercury poisoning .

Gold, gold, gold, sing the dwarves in Terry Pratchett’s books, as they dig the coveted metal out of mines deep underground. 

They still do it, that is, not dwarves, but humans do deep down mining. The deepest gold mine is the AngloGold Ashanti Mponeng mine which is 3,7 kilometer deep.

   However, 15million poor work as small-scale miners and many of these are eking out a living as Artisanial miners. They use water as a medium for separating small grains of gold from tons of stone, gravel and sand. However, water is not effective enough to get hold of all the gold. A cheap and fast method of extracting gold is the use of mercury. This Hell-sent metal attaches itself to the precious metal, making it easy to separate it from sand and gravel. In Burkina Faso more than 6 - 700,000 people live on gold mining settlements. 200,000 are directly involved in gold mining, producing roughly half a gram of gold a day. I repeat… 0,5 gram a day.

1000 tonnes of poison
Every year, artisanal miners release 1000 tonnes of mercury into the environment! This is 30 – 40 per cent of the world’ mercury pollution and 70 per cent of the glittering metal ends up in water systems. The mercury vapors from the gold extraction impact the environment. You probably already got mercury in your body as it seeps into food chains, the fish and the meat you eat. In other words, for every gram of gold you buy, you probably poison yourself, your family and unborn children.

Less Mercury?
The Artisanal Gold Council is working for the elimination of the use of mercury through education and training of artisanal and small scale gold miners. But no mattter how you look at the problem it is not going to be solved as long mercury is produced and possible to buy by the miners.

The Artisanal Gold Council

The Year of the Rooster 雞

The Rooster is the only bird in the Chinese calendar. This ancient calendar is important for superstitious Chinese who believe that luck and bad luck are in mysterious ways connected to this animal. 

The Year of the Rooster began 28 January 2017.
So, if you are a gambler and born a “Rooster”, your lucky numbers will be 5, 7 and 8.

The Lunar Coins
Anyway, the Perth Mint’s Lunar Series II are beautifully minted collector coins and the 2017 coin shows a rooster, a hen, three small chickens, the inscription “Year of the Rooster” and the Chinese character for “Rooster/Cock/Hen/”. The coins are issued as legal tender and the well-known profile of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in her sixties adorn the other side.
   The Lunar calendar coins are not investment coins in the sense that you buy the coins for the value of the metal. You buy them for the pleasure of owning them or giving them away as gifts. The Year of the Rooster coin will ever get valuable since the Perth Mint minted 300 000.

The Mint Blog
Nevertheless, the coin is immensely popular and the Mint’s blog reports: The 2017 Year of the Rooster 1oz silver bullion coin from the Australian Lunar Coin Series II has officially sold out at The Perth Mint. Released in September with a maximum worldwide mintage of 300,000, the coin is the 10th consecutive 1oz Lunar silver bullion coin to sell out since the start of the series in 2008.

   The retail price over the counter in Oslo is, at the time of writing (22.11.16), NOK 238 or USD 27, which is not unreasonable for this well made silver coin.

I am the little red rooster
Too lazy to crow for day
I am the little red rooster
Too lazy to crow for day
Keep everything in the farm yard upset in every way
- by Wille Dixon – The Rolling Stones

The Silver Fix Conspiracy

One of my top ten silver conspiracies is The Silver Fix.

The current spot price on silver is artificial low.

Big banks too big to fail are manipulating the price of silver.

The price of silver is suppressed.

There are no reasons that the price of silver should follow the price of gold.

Daily cloak and dagger silver-fix meetings mean billion dollar profit.

The White Metal Conspiracy
Don’t believe in this conspiracy! Banks got more ways to rip you off than there are sand grains in Sahara. They have more than enough money already, and do not have to sink so low that they have to manipulate the price of precious metals. If the Fed and The European Central bank deem it necessary they can print trillions and call it “Quantitative easing”.

   However, if you disagree with above mention arguments you will find this article at Reuters interesting. Deutsche Bank to pay $38 million in U.S. silver price-fixing case

The Zen of Terry Pratchett on Gold and Love

I thought dwarfs loved gold, said Angua.

They just say that to get it into bed.