Comments on David Zurbuchen's articles RSS Syndication from SeekingAlpha.com http://seekingalpha.com/author/david-zurbuchen/articles http://seekingalpha.com/article/95733-cash-is-king?source=feed#comment-259257 259257 Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:16:38 -0400
As a commenter on my site noted when I quoted from your piece here, your arithmetic appears to be wrong here -- USEG's enterprise value, according to your numbers above, should be negative $2 million, not negative $20 million. Good post otherwise. ]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/95733-cash-is-king?source=feed#comment-256772 256772 Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:22:37 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/95733-cash-is-king?source=feed#comment-256400 256400 Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:40:15 -0400 metalaugmentor.com) for the full report.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/95733-cash-is-king?source=feed#comment-255970 255970 Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:30:45 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/11003-the-real-silver-deficit-slv?source=feed#comment-107613 107613 >But I don't see how I'm confusing production volumes with rarity. >>silver price is fine where it is and gold needs to come down, or that silver needs to go up relative to gold, since gold's valuation is many times higher than its production ratio against silver [/quote] Production quantity is meaningless. An item's value is not based upon how much of that item is produced in comparison to production of some other item. Rather, value is determined by an item's usefulness/demand with relation to its ability to be produced. Let us change the terms of your argument so that you can begin to see its absurdity: Each year 50 English longbows are produced and 50,000 Remington 700 bolt action rifles are produced. Clearly there is a 1:1000 production ratio between these two items; therefore, an English longbow should cost $800,000. What are the fallacies of the above argument? (This is your argument, by the way, I only changed the terms.) There are many. For starters, a longbow isn't as useful as a modern rifle for the item's intended function: hunting. Who wants to use a weapon which takes years to master, has poor accuracy, and low muzzle velocity (which translates to low range and low stopping power) when they could use a far superior weapon with high accuracy, high muzzle velocity (extreme range and stopping power) and can be used effectively with only a few minutes/hours of instruction? Even if English longbows were freely given away by every government on Earth and it was a requirement of every person on Earth to own one, most hunters would still use a modern rifle because of the irrefutable fact that a rifle is a FAR SUPERIOR weapon. Secondly: production quantities of the longbow with respect to bolt action rifles can be altered should demand for the longbow suddenly increase. Look around. Most places on Earth have trees. I'd wager that you could take someone without even a high school education, show him/her an instructional video on how to craft their very own longbow, give them a hatchet, a plaining tool, and the proverbial ball of yarn, and point them in the direction of a tree, and with a few days of time they'd be capable of producing their very own bow. It might not be a composite bow and it most certainly would not be as capable as an authentic, professionally fletched longbow, but they'd be capable of crafting a bow of some sort and chances are high that it would even work. Now, take the same scenario and ask that same person to craft for you a modern rifle in the same period of time and chances are high that you'd starve to death before you had a weapon capably of killing anything other than its operator. So you can see it takes hundreds of times MORE WORK to produce a rifle than it does to produce a bow. Thirdly is the availability of the resources necessary to produce the weapons. In the case of bows: Trees are plentiful, skill of labor requirement is low, necessary tools are few. In sum, making a bow is easy. In the case of rifles: Iron ore is much less plentiful, skill of labor requirements is extremely high, necessary tools are staggering. In addition the basic raw material, steel, must first be mined as ore, then refined and processed into usable steel. This in and of itself requires its own industry to do just that. Then this steel must be machined and numerous complex parts must be fashioned from it and assembled before you have a weapon. In sum, making a rifle is extremely difficult. Okay, so that's just three fallacies with your argument. There's likely a half dozen more that I didn't touch on. That said, its likely you won't understand any of the above, evidenced by the fact of your fallacious argument to begin with so let me put it into terms that you might understand. 1: Gold is more desirable than silver as a monetary instrument. The reason for this is because gold is fundamentally a far superior instrument for its intended function: wealth. For some reasons why it a superior instrument of wealth, see below. 2: Production volume of Silver can easily be increased, should demand for it suddenly take a trip to the moon. Silver is everywhere, its easily mined, and its easily extracted and refined. Mining companies could hire more miners and run 24/7 to increase production. Gold, on the other hand, is rare. Mines are rare, mining is difficult, extraction and refining is difficult, even dangerous. Miners must pull out vastly greater cubic meters of ore out of the earth to net the same volume of refined gold as silver. Even if mining companies hired more miners and ran 24/7 shifts to increase production, they would NEVER be able to produce as much gold as silver in the same period of time because the saturation volume of gold in ore is much less than silver. 3. Production of one cubic meter of refined gold requires MUCH MORE WORK than to produce one cubic meter of silver. 4. You go on and on about silver's industrial use to justify your argument for its primary use: wealth. This in and of itself is staggeringly, mind-numbingly nonsensical. At anytime anything becomes sufficiently rare and expensive to preclude its secondary use, people will use something else instead. This is basic high-school economics. You did graduate from high school, didn't you? Let's assume for a moment that what you state is true: silver is going to become so rare (due to industrial demand) that its price will increase twenty-fold. If what you state is true, then I submit to you that no manufacturer in the world will be using silver to produce anything beyond the point it becomes economically infeasible to do so. To say otherwise is madness. Furthermore, once silver becomes economically prohibitive, industry will use some other economically attractive substitute and silver will never reach the value you and Ted Butler predict because of the fact that there is simply more silver on the Earth and IN the Earth than gold. I'd wager that you could take every bit of silver that ever been refined in the history of the world, every silverware, every coin, every bullion and dump it into the abyss, never to be seen again and silver would still not reach the levels you and Ted Butler predict. Why? Because THERE IS MORE SILVER IN THE EARTH THAN GOLD. Let me put your argument another way, because you're likely still shaking your head and not getting it. More likely is that you DO get it but you're going to pretend you don't just so you can keep preaching your nonsensical silver theories. At any case, by your logic, everyone should invest heavily into companies which produce steam-powered electricity generators because production of steam-powered generators is lower than petrol based generators and therefore should be worth more; Furthermore, everyone should invest heavily into petrol based generators because as we all know, oil is a finite resource and its running out and the price of oil is going to go up and therefore petrol based generators are a great investment. Can't you see how nonsensical the above arguments are? By advicing everyone that will listen to you to invest in petrol energy solutions, you're completely ignoring the fact that petrol will be replaced with some other energy source (ethenol, hydrogen, solar, geothermal, tidal, etc, etc) as soon as energy companies get fed up with paying increasingly higher prices for it. Even private consumers will stop buying it to burn in automobiles, eventually. Already, people are paying to have their automobiles converted to burn alternate fuels. The fact is, the rarer something is or becomes, the more expensive it is. Eventually, it gets prohibitively expensive to continue using it so people will use a substitute instead. If you want to invest is anything for long-term wealth, you should invest in the substitute, NOT in the item that's going to be replaced by the substitute. The problem with silver is that is serves a duel function: Wealth and Industry. Eventually the industrial use will cease and you'll be left with only the wealth use, in which case, prices will drop like a stone in water because suddenly most of the demand for silver will be zilch. Seriously, you and Ted Butler are hilarious to read. One of several things: 1. Both of you are uneducated idiots; 2. Both of you have bought huge quantities of silver and are actively attempting to artificially inflate the price of silver by scaring equally uneducated investors; or 3. You and Ted Butler are one in the same and you're his alias intended to lend credence to his rubbish by acting as his second mouthpiece. Whatever the case, I'd reccommend you A) Get a college education (a real one, not one of those bought-over-the-internet-printed-on-your-home-pc-certificates), B) stop spewing this rubbish all over the internet C) rethink your life before you end up in prison for pump and dump schemes.]]> Tue, 01 Jan 2008 06:12:03 -0500 >>But I don't see how I'm confusing production volumes with rarity.
>>silver price is fine where it is and gold needs to come down, or that silver needs to go up relative to gold, since gold's valuation is many times higher than its production ratio against silver
[/quote]

Production quantity is meaningless. An item's value is not based upon how much of that item is produced in comparison to production of some other item. Rather, value is determined by an item's usefulness/demand with relation to its ability to be produced.

Let us change the terms of your argument so that you can begin to see its absurdity:

Each year 50 English longbows are produced and 50,000 Remington 700 bolt action rifles are produced. Clearly there is a 1:1000 production ratio between these two items; therefore, an English longbow should cost $800,000.

What are the fallacies of the above argument? (This is your argument, by the way, I only changed the terms.) There are many.

For starters, a longbow isn't as useful as a modern rifle for the item's intended function: hunting. Who wants to use a weapon which takes years to master, has poor accuracy, and low muzzle velocity (which translates to low range and low stopping power) when they could use a far superior weapon with high accuracy, high muzzle velocity (extreme range and stopping power) and can be used effectively with only a few minutes/hours of instruction? Even if English longbows were freely given away by every government on Earth and it was a requirement of every person on Earth to own one, most hunters would still use a modern rifle because of the irrefutable fact that a rifle is a FAR SUPERIOR weapon.

Secondly: production quantities of the longbow with respect to bolt action rifles can be altered should demand for the longbow suddenly increase. Look around. Most places on Earth have trees. I'd wager that you could take someone without even a high school education, show him/her an instructional video on how to craft their very own longbow, give them a hatchet, a plaining tool, and the proverbial ball of yarn, and point them in the direction of a tree, and with a few days of time they'd be capable of producing their very own bow. It might not be a composite bow and it most certainly would not be as capable as an authentic, professionally fletched longbow, but they'd be capable of crafting a bow of some sort and chances are high that it would even work. Now, take the same scenario and ask that same person to craft for you a modern rifle in the same period of time and chances are high that you'd starve to death before you had a weapon capably of killing anything other than its operator. So you can see it takes hundreds of times MORE WORK to produce a rifle than it does to produce a bow.

Thirdly is the availability of the resources necessary to produce the weapons. In the case of bows: Trees are plentiful, skill of labor requirement is low, necessary tools are few. In sum, making a bow is easy. In the case of rifles: Iron ore is much less plentiful, skill of labor requirements is extremely high, necessary tools are staggering. In addition the basic raw material, steel, must first be mined as ore, then refined and processed into usable steel. This in and of itself requires its own industry to do just that. Then this steel must be machined and numerous complex parts must be fashioned from it and assembled before you have a weapon. In sum, making a rifle is extremely difficult.

Okay, so that's just three fallacies with your argument. There's likely a half dozen more that I didn't touch on. That said, its likely you won't understand any of the above, evidenced by the fact of your fallacious argument to begin with so let me put it into terms that you might understand.

1: Gold is more desirable than silver as a monetary instrument. The reason for this is because gold is fundamentally a far superior instrument for its intended function: wealth. For some reasons why it a superior instrument of wealth, see below.

2: Production volume of Silver can easily be increased, should demand for it suddenly take a trip to the moon. Silver is everywhere, its easily mined, and its easily extracted and refined. Mining companies could hire more miners and run 24/7 to increase production. Gold, on the other hand, is rare. Mines are rare, mining is difficult, extraction and refining is difficult, even dangerous. Miners must pull out vastly greater cubic meters of ore out of the earth to net the same volume of refined gold as silver. Even if mining companies hired more miners and ran 24/7 shifts to increase production, they would NEVER be able to produce as much gold as silver in the same period of time because the saturation volume of gold in ore is much less than silver.

3. Production of one cubic meter of refined gold requires MUCH MORE WORK than to produce one cubic meter of silver.

4. You go on and on about silver's industrial use to justify your argument for its primary use: wealth. This in and of itself is staggeringly, mind-numbingly nonsensical. At anytime anything becomes sufficiently rare and expensive to preclude its secondary use, people will use something else instead. This is basic high-school economics. You did graduate from high school, didn't you? Let's assume for a moment that what you state is true: silver is going to become so rare (due to industrial demand) that its price will increase twenty-fold. If what you state is true, then I submit to you that no manufacturer in the world will be using silver to produce anything beyond the point it becomes economically infeasible to do so. To say otherwise is madness. Furthermore, once silver becomes economically prohibitive, industry will use some other economically attractive substitute and silver will never reach the value you and Ted Butler predict because of the fact that there is simply more silver on the Earth and IN the Earth than gold. I'd wager that you could take every bit of silver that ever been refined in the history of the world, every silverware, every coin, every bullion and dump it into the abyss, never to be seen again and silver would still not reach the levels you and Ted Butler predict. Why? Because THERE IS MORE SILVER IN THE EARTH THAN GOLD.

Let me put your argument another way, because you're likely still shaking your head and not getting it. More likely is that you DO get it but you're going to pretend you don't just so you can keep preaching your nonsensical silver theories.

At any case, by your logic, everyone should invest heavily into companies which produce steam-powered electricity generators because production of steam-powered generators is lower than petrol based generators and therefore should be worth more; Furthermore, everyone should invest heavily into petrol based generators because as we all know, oil is a finite resource and its running out and the price of oil is going to go up and therefore petrol based generators are a great investment.

Can't you see how nonsensical the above arguments are?

By advicing everyone that will listen to you to invest in petrol energy solutions, you're completely ignoring the fact that petrol will be replaced with some other energy source (ethenol, hydrogen, solar, geothermal, tidal, etc, etc) as soon as energy companies get fed up with paying increasingly higher prices for it. Even private consumers will stop buying it to burn in automobiles, eventually. Already, people are paying to have their automobiles converted to burn alternate fuels. The fact is, the rarer something is or becomes, the more expensive it is. Eventually, it gets prohibitively expensive to continue using it so people will use a substitute instead. If you want to invest is anything for long-term wealth, you should invest in the substitute, NOT in the item that's going to be replaced by the substitute. The problem with silver is that is serves a duel function: Wealth and Industry. Eventually the industrial use will cease and you'll be left with only the wealth use, in which case, prices will drop like a stone in water because suddenly most of the demand for silver will be zilch.

Seriously, you and Ted Butler are hilarious to read. One of several things:

1. Both of you are uneducated idiots;
2. Both of you have bought huge quantities of silver and are actively attempting to artificially inflate the price of silver by scaring equally uneducated investors; or
3. You and Ted Butler are one in the same and you're his alias intended to lend credence to his rubbish by acting as his second mouthpiece.

Whatever the case, I'd reccommend you A) Get a college education (a real one, not one of those bought-over-the-intern... B) stop spewing this rubbish all over the internet C) rethink your life before you end up in prison for pump and dump schemes.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/47287-metalline-mining-a-world-class-zinc-company-in-the-making?source=feed#comment-96315 96315 Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:28:57 -0400
5-Sep-2007

Changes in Registrant's Certifying Accountant, Financial Statements and Exhib



Item 4.01 Changes in Registrant's Certifying Accountant
On August 31, 2007 Metalline Mining Company (the "Company") notified Williams & Webster P.S. ("Williams & Webster") that it was dismissed as the Company's auditor effective immediately. The Company's Audit Committee had recommended that Williams & Webster be dismissed as the Company's independent registered public accounting firm.

On September 4, 2007, the Audit Committee and the Board of Directors approved the appointment of Hein & Associates LLP, certified public accountants, as its independent registered accounting firm.

William & Webster's principal accountant report on the Company's financial statements for both of the past two years did not contain an adverse opinion or disclaimer of opinion, nor was either modified as to uncertainty, audit scope, or accounting principles.

There were no disagreements with Williams & Webster on any matter of accounting principles, practices, financial statement disclosure, or auditing scope or procedure which if not resolved to Williams & Webster's satisfaction would have caused Williams & Webster to make reference to the subject matter of the disagreement in connection with its principal accounting reports.

The Company has provided Williams & Webster with a copy of these disclosures and has requested Williams & Webster furnish to the Company a letter addressed to the Securities and Exchange Commission stating whether William's & Webster agrees with the Company's statements in this report. Williams & Webster's letter is attached hereto as Exhibit 16.1.





Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits
(d) Exhibits

16.1 Letter of Williams & Webster, P.S. dated September 4, 2007.]]> http://seekingalpha.com/article/47287-metalline-mining-a-world-class-zinc-company-in-the-making?source=feed#comment-96180 96180 Mon, 17 Sep 2007 13:53:09 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/47287-metalline-mining-a-world-class-zinc-company-in-the-making?source=feed#comment-96179 96179 Mon, 17 Sep 2007 13:52:12 -0400 http://seekingalpha.com/article/47287-metalline-mining-a-world-class-zinc-company-in-the-making?source=feed#comment-96148 96148 Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:54:24 -0400