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I was listening to the testimony (have a day off today). A lot of truth was told and the panel (with its Chairman Ron Paul) was pretty friendly and understanding. What makes these proposals "no-go" is things like eliminating of FDIC insurance and putting responsibility on every citizen: "There is no such a thing as guaranteed checking account. Your "guaranteed" money is still risky investment even if you don't realize this." This kind of thinking will never get support of the Congress because they care of us, poor Americans, and protect our financial safety.
I would agree that PMs have hit the bottom for this Summer. That's why some funds went to PSLV. But "correction is over for PMs" doesn't necessary mean that correction is over for each particular miner... including USSIF. We will see soon. I still have enough to enjoy or suffer.
The point of the testimony was: Let the Fed play with its paper but give people (States, municipalities, etc.) right to create their own money (including PM backed notes). Ignore the Fed - free market will resolve the problem itself.
Well, sometimes you have to make hard choices and be prepared for consequences... I've sold 50% of my USSIF position yesterday and today and spread funds between several other silver stocks. First, the chances of USA-RXE merger seem to be more real now. Second, all PM stocks are down significantly last couple of days but USSIF holds well because of HL offer. Assuming that the merger is approved this creates exceptional arbitrage opportunities (w/o Hecla offer USSIF would trade in 1.3-1.4 range right now). Silver correction is not over yet, so keep some cash for coming opportunities.
Ready to be proved wrong next week. Wouldn't be the first time. :)
BTW, you can watch AOCS testimony live (starts at 10am):
http://mfile.akamai.com/65722/live/reflector:36166.asx?bkup=36167&prop=n
Should be interesting.
"Let’s stop talking about auditing the Fed. Forget about ending the Fed. Let’s start ignoring the Fed, and eliminating the impact they have on our lives."
"Do not try to compete with the federal reserve system: ignore them."
http://www.opencurrency.com/aocs-goes-to-washington/
Both CEOs were on BNN today:
Hecla: http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip732008
U.S. Silver: http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip732051
As someone already asked on another board: "Why is the CEO of Hecla in Toronto? To do a 5 min interview on BNN?"
We can see some deals done the last minute... like "Hecla buys US Silver & Gold (shares+cash)" or something else. It's obvious HL wants US Silver badly. They may agree to take RXE as painful attachment. Or... another possibility - Sprott & Co. realized that they are not getting 66% votes from USA shareholders and want to make a deal instead of embarrassing announcement of voting results.
Just speculating...
Well, I am getting very angry at... Hecla. Could it be that everything we witnessed last several days was just precalculated game to raise USA-RXE initial merger market cap? Really, the situation was kind of embarrassing - market didn't like the "synergy", and share price of both companies kept falling. Then they called the neighbor asking for help. Hecla's offer was too low and too late to cause any real threat. But now US Silver & Gold will start from higher level... Probably I am too cynical... but Hecla has just several days left to do something real to stop this merger. If they are serious, of course. They need to start some legal actions: to delay the shareholders meeting; to call for independent audit of submitted votes; etc. Raising the offer price wouldn't work at this point - there is no time for this.
IMO.
These are current votes for USA-RXE merger, and Sprott is FOR:
"At this stage in the game about 82 percent of the shares voted are voting in favor of our transaction with RX Gold," Pridham said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/31/ussilvercorp-offer-shareholders-idUSL4E8IU6E520120731
They can talk only about votes of US Silver shareholders, and they claim that 82% of submitted proxies are for the merger at this time. As we were told the counting is managed by independent private company. I am not sure if they allowed to inform US management about interim results. Somehow I don't believe these numbers, but I am spoiled by voting fraud experience in some other places.
The time is running out. Hecla has a proxy for US shareholders on company's website:
http://www.hecla-mining.com/documents/FormofDissidentProxy.pdf
They need to announce that 33% of votes have been submitted already. Otherwise US management will claim 99% support for the merger. The current support is 82% of submitted votes (if you believe them, of course). Money will do nothing at this point. Let the legal war start! Help us to get rid of RXE first and we will talk to you later.
FactCheck.org: No Obama conspiracy to give Alaska islands to Russia
All [the islands] are far closer to the Russian mainland than to the Alaskan mainland. All lie on the Russian side of the U.S.-Russia maritime boundary set by a treaty that the U.S. Senate ratified overwhelmingly more than two decades ago, after being signed by President George H.W. Bush, and with the support of both of Alaska's senators. ...
And sure enough, no president or secretary of state since has shown any interest in disputing the Soviet/Russian claim to Wrangel Island or the others. Which brings us to the present accusation that President Obama is somehow giving away something the U.S. has never claimed to own. How can that be?
http://www.adn.com/2012/03/28/2395313/fact-check-no-obama-conspiracy.html
Cork, if some silver producer submits unsolicited offer to buy Hecla @ $5 cash... would you accept it? Just curious. I own both HL and USSIF and have to say: market doesn't like both of them. Old fashion businesses with good assets but no excitement. If USSIF is seen as a loser then HL is "loser squared". Multiplying those businesses will give us "cube of loser". What I like about HL - it's traded on big exchange and has options, which makes it better trading stock than USSIF. Other than that... I would rather see USSIF acquired by Apple or Google.
NYBob, I hope you understand that this is just a joke? Yes, this question is raised sometimes in Russian yellow press ("Japan wants our islands - let's take back Alaska or exchange it for some other territories", "It would be fun to have a border with Canada", etc.) But this is no more than entertainment. Will never happen. BTW, at that time Russia had no choice but get rid of this icy land. Russia could not control it anyway and didn't have money to develop this remote territory. All money Russia received from America were used to pay back big loan to Rothschild.
Of course, some kind of cooperation is possible - to help USA to bypass drilling and exploration restrictions in this region. But sale... NEVER.
BTW, Americans also like to make fun of this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/22/AR2005112201854.html
I know it happens sometimes, but never on my watch was management’s recommendation rejected by shareholders in situation like this. Even now after HL offer I give 60-40 chance that the merger will be approved. I don’t know how they are going to do this: using shareholders laziness and inactivity; manipulating the count process; or something else, but management and Sprott won’t give up easily. If Hecla management is serious about this buyout they shouldn’t take any chances. Raising the bid a little is helpful but won’t do the trick. What they need is: 1) publish detailed instructions to USA shareholders how to tender their shares to Hecla; 2) before USA shareholders meeting put an official announcement that 33+% of USA shares have been tendered already. They may need to request rescheduling the date of the meeting because “US Silver TA has not supplied necessary data in time”. That’s my recommendation to Hecla at this point. :) When we are done with RXE we will look at our other options.
I believe HL management is smart enough to understand that their offer had no chances. The purpose was to ruin USA-RXE merger first and "think about this" later. I hope they succeeded in this. It's hard to imagine that 66+% of shares will vote "for" now.
counter-offer to what? I didn't see an offer. :)
Well, here is my “conspiracy theory”. In normal situation US Silver is supposed to report Q2 results sometime around August, 15. During this quarter the silver spot price was close to the last reported cost of production. So, I conclude that earnings are not going to be good. Actually it could be bad. I suspect the timing of the merger and the date of the shareholders meeting was chosen to distract market from earnings results. If the merger is approved than Q2 report can be delayed and replaced by joint USA-RXE report, where USA performance will be lost in tons of combined data. That’s one of the reasons why the management wants it to be approved NOW. I am not sure they are even ready to submit Q2 report in time, they probably consider the merger as a done deal.
Sorry to ask a stupid question, but… what is the procedure of counting the votes? Who does this? Who controls this? How sure are we that it will be a fair count? "It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes." (Josef Stalin).
OK, talking seriously, I don't think RXE has resources or even intention to beat HL offer. IMO, most likely we will see both managements (RXE-USA) working hard to prove that existing merger agreement is superior to the Hecla cash offer. Sprott is also interested to have a puppet company US Silver & Gold which he can manipulate in future (like buy physical silver at bargain price). He can't do this with Hecla and I don't think he is going to take a big loss on USA shares that he bought at 3+... unless Hecla offers something that he can accept (shares instead of cash, employment for USA management, etc). I could be wrong, of course. We will see...
Good thing about Hecla offer (as I said before) - it's raising recognized USSIF value (with or without merger), and it makes negative outcome on the merger vote more probable. I think there are real chances that both proposals won't get 66% shares votes "for".
IMO.
It's called "Reductio ad absurdum" - reducing to an absurdity. Used in polemics, logic and mathematics as a method of proof how wrong the initial statement (your statement) was. Requires some advance thinking though.
I am sorry, but this is like asking a rape victim: Are you better to be raped by RX or HL... assuming there are no other rapists?
I think the answer is "No" to all of them.
Assuming that Hecla is not going to raise the offer price (which is very possible - they don't have time to play bidding games) we have 3 options now:
a. reject both offers;
b. accept RXE merger;
c. accept HL offer.
At this point I prefer the first scenario, and if it's impossible - go for merger with RXE. At least in this case we can keep dreaming about higher prices in future. In any case 1.8 offer is a big positive for USSIF. It will give some support to the market cap of the company (USA or USA-RXE). With current combined market cap about $157 mln the share price of USA Silver & Gold would be $2.61 - with big chances to get AMEX listing soon after the merger. So, in my opinion, accepting the current Hecla offer is the worst thing that can happen to USA shareholders. Again, I'm assuming that the takeover number 1.8 is not raised significantly by Hecla or anybody else.
IMO.
I don't think so. Mayskay was not involved in all this in any way except... Aurus said it was. But I don't have any specific information...
Speaking legally, I'd like to refer Marina to the post
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=73579750
it's about Vice-President of Markray Normand Terroux. He is a lawyer.
And can anybody tell us why Markray has never paid its taxes to the State of Delaware and listed as inactive (dead) corporation?
There is an option to "revoke any proxies they may have voted for the proposed RX Gold & Silver transaction".
http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=nmona&article=53604065&symbol=HL
The video describes assets and production activity of Zapadnaya. You can find all of this on company's website. Of course, it has nothing to do with Markray...
BTW, AO "GRK Zapadnaya" is a real company in Yakutiya. I guess it supposed to play the role "Mayskaya" played for Aurus. Vladimir Marushko, one of the people behind this game, spent several years working in this region. The company doesn't respond any requests (sent email several days ago).
http://www.zapadnaya.com/
Just noticed that PENA has woken up after long sleep and sitting at the lowest ask right now.
Whoever is buying USSIF shares today (maybe it's Hecla?) can't vote them for or against USA-RXE merger. But these shares can be voted for the Hecla's offer, I guess.
Just wait a couple of days. USA management will explain us why this offer is not good.
Don't forget that Hecla's 1.8 offer is in Canadian dollars. It's about $1.78 USD - exactly where we are sitting right now.
I don't know... I would rather take HL shares (2.4 USSIF shares = 1 HL share?)
Manipulation or not... it's clear that the situation is not going to improve until demand for PHYSICAL silver overwhelms the supply. And industrial demand is the only reliable number right now - you can't put any paper (futures contract or shares of ETF) into cell phone. And I agree this number can go down significantly in recession scenario. As to the investors demand, it is manipulated hugely. When people are gullible enough to think that there is any silver behind the paper they own it's easy to "print silver" just like to print dollars. We already had several scandals with "allocated" accounts that didn't have any gold or silver. When people realize that their "precious metal holdings" are just paper promises, they may start buying real gold and silver. BTW, are there any gold in Fort Knox, what do you think? :)
I voted my few USSIF shares against the merger yesterday. First, I find SOUTHPEN's arguments convincing, although I am not that "fundamentally attached" to the company. Second, I don't like the arrogance that Sprott and Co (both managements) have been demonstrating. They ignore investors requests and multiple questions about the coming merger. They are sure everything will be OK w/o communicating with this annoying crowd. Although I believe the merger will go through anyway (because many investors won't vote and their shares will be counted as "yes"), but I don't like to be ignored.
Oh, yes, I forgot about 2C and his famous trip. Although, I do remember that after working with these guys he got very angry and called them criminals and "Russian mafia". So, he is not a good example either. Unlike 2C I don't want to lose my belief in company's assets and loyalty to this incredible team of gold seekers. :)
Thank you for the invitation. I do have dozen of years of geological experience. But... we had a Buddy who was unfortunate enough to accept similar offer from the same crew. He used to be a big shot monitoring those Roshal assets... missing now and nowhere to be found. Have you met him in Roshal by any chance?
"the reason of such actions is visit by representatives of this person of the Markray's mines in the Magadan region"
Just for your information: Markray in Magadan region has nothing to do with RVBR. It's former Marushko's company that used to produce gold several years ago, but has always been in the list of region losers. Marushko used the same name when started this RVBR game to confuse innocent investors like you. He tried several other cards before (Zoloto Venture, etc.) but nothing worked.
So, Moscow gold did not do a trick and we are back to Magadan "assets" now? I guess the next step is to merger with Mayskaya? It's not even funny anymore.
"telling every Parisian to buy silver"
High precious metals taxes in Europe is one of the reasons they stay away from silver:
https://www.goldbroker.com/precious-metals-taxes-uk-usa-ireland-switzerland-europe.html
Richard Androsiglio
The Vice - president of Aurus Corp. on public relations
Date of birth - October, 1961.
The birthplace - New Jersey , USA
Reside in Boca Raton, Florida since 1973
Education :
1980-1982 - BCC College
1983 - Gold Coast School of Real Estate
1990- Gold Coast School of Mortgage Broker/Finance
Business Background:
1985- 1990- Imperial International Commodities- Import & Export Trade of Commodities.Conducting Financial transactions between companies worldwide.
1990-1995 -Great Western Bank - Manager of Residential Mortgage Division
1995-2008 - Consolidated Trust - President/Owner- Commercial/Residential /
Joint Venture/Venture Capital/Raw land Development Projects in excess
of 5000 acres and High-rise Buildings in New York City.
Expertise - Projects and Businesses in Distress-Working with Government Agencies to Develop/Rezone Properties. Creating an alliance between Investors and Developers in Projects throughout United States.