It's a pretty quiet day at the office, so...

...let's break the tedium by having a good laugh at Wistar Holt, Mexico Mike Kachanovsky and all the GATA idiots for backing the dog of all dogs, ECU Silver (ECU.to) and shamelessly pumping the stock while on the company payroll. I mean, how you you like your charts?

Five day?

Year to date?

12 month?

5 years?

How anyone can take these idiots seriously is beyond me. You get paid to promote the worst silver company out there (I nearly said 'silver producer' there, but even ECU.to admits it doesn't fall under that category) for years on end, watch it do worse than nothing all this time and still have the brass neck to tell your flocks it's only a matter of time...and any minute now....and now's not the time to give up. Utter charlatans, the lot of you.

Special Delivery for Bill Murphy of GATA and "Mexico" Mike Kachanovsky

Feeling stupid yet? Hey Bill, you know it's time to throw in the towel on this one, don't you?

And of course, in the world of Mexico Mike a person who accepts money from a company like ECU.to in order to pump the stock on his website is a fine upstanding citizen, while somebody who calls such people out is a disgrace to the mining community. Funny old world, innit?

c

IKN heart Jeffrey M. Christian

Somebody has to stand up to those knownothings, charlatans and bullies at GATA. You go Jeff.

"GATA represents itself to its followers as experts when they clearly are not. They prey on the lack of knowledge and fear of investors who have not studied the markets as well as they should have. The solution to that problem is investor education, not lies. All that the reckless pursuit of conspiracy theories do is distract investors from the much more important agenda of understanding the gold bullion marketplace and the fundamentals that drive the price of gold."

The full and most excellent GATA smackdown is right here. I'm sure Jeffrey M. Christian will agree when I say, "DYODD, dude".


UPDATE: A reader writes in with this:

Did you catch the Christian vs. Murphy "debate" on FSN last week?

Link here

I say "debate" because Christian ate Murphy alive.

Who the hell is Erik Townsend?

I'd like to know so that I can shake his hand and say, "Damn straight dude".

Townsend has written an extended article that all GATAsheep need to read and consider. Entitled "Debunking the Post CFTC Precious Metals Fear Mongering Campaign" it looks into the allegations cooked up by the charlatans at GATA about that recent "we've got proof that the silver market is rigged" episode. Townsend's article is detailed and takes in all the angles well so it must be read in its entirety, but here's just one of the header bullet points to give a taste:

"Despite the best efforts of some responsible journalists including Jim Puplava, others including Tyler Durden (ZeroHedge) and Eric King (King World News) have contributed to the misinformation campaign by promulgating GATA’s baseless allegations."

Exactly, Erik. Here finishes off his piece by saying....

If you’re a GATA member, for heaven’s sake hold the leadership accountable for their atrocious handling of this entire affair.

....and I can't agree more with that one, except to add that you're wasting your time and your money by being a member of that clown's brigade. These GATA jokers have pulled the wool over too many eyes for too long. Their self-serving agenda needs to be laid out for all to see. Here's the link to Townsend's excellent and well-researched article again. Necessary reading for all metalheads. Now use the link.

My one and only post on the CTFC/Andrew Maguire/GATA/silver manipulation issue

I've had a lot of mail recently asking an opinion on this revelation whistleblower thing revolving around an interview given by a certain Maguire about how the silver market is supposedly manipulated by big banks (JP Morgan front and centre in the firing line) and how the whole cause celebre is getting taken up by the morally challenged Bill Murphy over at GATA. This mail excerpt received this morning from reader MS is a pretty typical example:

".....what do you think of the action at CFTC's metal limits hearings?

(LBMA being 100:1 leveraged, the testimony about JPM manipulating silver market by Andrew Maguire, Christian's assertion that the way to avoid delivery failure at LBMA is to cash settle, etc)

I get that you're no fan of GATA, but those are not just "conspiration theories" anymore, are they?"

Now let's be clear that I have no problem with reader MS or anybody else that has mailed in to ask about this issue...it's always good to ask questions. So to make my position clear on this, here's my answer as written to MS:

Show me a market that doesn't suffer from manipulation in some form or other and I'll care a lot more. Wanna hear some stories about what the metals traders at LME do to the copper pit? Or the nickel? I mean, we know that forces want to skew the monetary value of things for their own benefit and the bigger the back pocket the bigger the weapon....jeesh, big deal!

GATA is a shillers operation that exists for its own benefit and has attracted a clique of tinfoilhatters, period. Great marketing, but a waste of time trying to find life's deeper truths there.

I hope this helps. Mojitos served, the end.

The 2009 Small Silver Sweepstakes: The Results

Yes indeed, 2009 is all over and so the results are in on our tracking of best small silver mining company in 2009. Here's the chart:

click to enlarge

• And the winner is....ENDEAVOUR SILVER (EDR.to)! Congrat guys on a great achievement and a 230% gain in 2009.

• An excellent second place (silver medal...geddit?) goes to my personal favourite silver miner, Fortuna Silver (FVI.v). You guys should be proud of yourselves, too.

• The honour of third is won by Great Panther Resources (GPR.to). Maybe not my number one personal pick, but there's no knocking success. Well done indeed.

Oh....who's that bringing up the rear? In last of ten places and the only featured stock to have made a net loss in 2009 is ECU Silver (ECU.to)! This means that GATA membership is half price in 2010, people. Don't forget what Bill Murphy pledged to the world early in 2009:

If this stock (ECU.to) is not at $3 US, or CDN, by the end of the year, I will cut the Café’s subscription price in half for 2010, or $100 versus the now $199 … which means I will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars if this dog does not hunt … am putting my money and my mouth where my money is.

All I can say to that is "ROFL". So Bill, either you make that shiny new cut price $100 annual sub nice and easily available to your long suffering members or you can quite simply, once and for all

ECU silver (ECU.to) third quarter results

Yes indeedy that fun time has come around again, as ECU Silver (ECU.to) quietly publishes its 3q09 results. Once you look at them you understand why management never announces it has published results like any normal, respectful entity; it doesn't want to attract attention to this ongoing trainwreck of a financial situation. But never fear, IKN is here! Here are the charts that tell the story.

Let's start with the fact that, despite all the fanfare about higher production and doré bars and grades and stuff, it still managed to make a loss in the quarter

Assets are still held up by its ridiculously inflated fixed asset position that cannot be justified by any normal sentinent being. The company has little in the way of current assets.

In the quarter, ECU.to decided to sweep its debt problems under the carpet by booting a large portion of what it owes into the deeper future. The debt is still there folks, the only difference now is that it will be paying more interest on what it owes for a longer period of time.

But the funny thing is, even though silver shot up in price and even though ECU.to booted a large chunk of its debt load into the longer term future, the company is still running a negative working cap!

Meanwhile, its self-entitled management team decided that they were still worthy of stock options. That's now over $6m in stock based compensation in the space of two years.

And of course, who pays for all this incompetence? Yeah you guessed it.....more share dilution registered in the quarter.
ECU.to now has a deficit of over $100m. Assets-debt = $56m, it can't make a quarterly profit to save its life, it's heavy in debt, has negative working cap but somehow it has inflated itself to a current market cap of $254m.

Disclosure: now you know why I'm short ECU.to as of this week. DYODD.

Bill Murphy of GATA has a nasty case of amnesia

Bill Murphy, a man best known for his university
degree in hotel administration

I am reliably informed that Bill Murphy of GATA 'fame' has just written to his shee.. SORRY!... his subscribers today and informed them that...

"I am raising the price of a Café subscription from $199 to $299 as of midnight on Sunday, November 15."

But wait up! Isn't this is the very same Bill Murphy of the very same GATA that wrote on February 25th , 2009 about the company called ECU Silver (ECU.to) and stated clearly that:

"If this stock (ECU.to) is not at $3 US, or CDN, by the end of the year, I will cut the Café’s subscription price in half for 2010, or $100 versus the now $199 … which means I will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars if this dog does not hunt … am putting my money and my mouth where my money is. So be it … either way."

So let's just check on ECU.to and see how close it is to that magical $3 barrier:

Hmmmm...does the phrase "EPIC FAIL" mean anything to you?

Clearly, Bill has not suddenly turned into a twisted, scheming, lying and manipulative moneygrabber (nay nay, perish the thought) but has simply suffered from a bit of memory lapse. So therefore, IKN takes it upon itself to do the right thing and inform Bill Murphy of GATA about his piece of harmless forgetfulness. All you need to do is pass this post on to Mr. Murphy and I'm quite sure he'll send out another mail to GATA-types where he offers to stand good on his own word of honour and drop the price by a c-note rather than raise it.

Wistar Holt, unhinged bully

Wistar Holt (for it is he)

Well hoodathunkit? It turns out that your humble scribe isn't the only person that GATA dumbass and über-underwater ECU Silver shareholder Wistar Holt tries to bully around with his foul mouth and threatening behaviour. From Kitco's Nadler today:

"A certain Mr. Wistar Holt (he, a key member of an organization that promulgates the theory that the old market is rigged/suppresses/manipulated/etc.) sent this writer an overtly threatening e-mail (you know, like the Sicilian message about Mr. Luca Brasi sleeping with the fishes) and advised this writer to 'watch his back' when next out in public. Now that this is out in the open, maybe you can all help me watch my back, and Ian's too, and anyone else's who dares to use his right of free speech, or that of putting forth an opinion to challenge the propaganda of the histrionic, the illogical, the uniformed, and the unhinged bullion bullies."

Semi OT: Don't forget, folks; If the scam silver stock ECU.to doesn't crack a share price of $3.00 by December 31st 2009, HRH Bill Murphy of GATA is offering his half price subscription special for 2010. Here's the evidence, in the hand of the great gold god himself.

ECU Silver (ECU.to) and the big question

"When you gonna start shorting it , Otto?"

Great news for the randomwalkers that hold ECU.to, believe the BS hype and actually think it's a viable alternative as an investment. After a magnificent recent pump job, the stock is now only 7% down on the year, sitting today at 82c.

And as for that shorting question, all things considered the line has to be 90c, right? And by the looks of things, a 90c price tag would time very close to the company's earnings report....I'm really looking forward to reading that one this time around :-)

Warren Buffett, my hero.

Catching up with ECU Silver (ECU.to), Bill Murphy and the 2010 half price GATA challenge

Back on February 25th 2009, GATA head honcho Bill Murphy wrote the following words when talking about ECU Silver (ECU.to):

If this stock (ECU.to) is not at $3 US, or CDN, by the end of the year, I will cut the Café’s subscription price in half for 2010, or $100 versus the now $199 … which means I will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars if this dog does not hunt … am putting my money and my mouth where my money is.

Here's the link to those words in a very interesting article by Murphy also includes a jawdropping comment about how Murphy has only ever visited one mine in his life (that of ECU) but still considers himself an expert on things mining. He also calls the work done by ECU.to management "incredible". This is true, but only in the strict sense of the word. It beggars belief, frankly. And so with just three months or so left before the end of the year, let's see how close Bill's dawg is to that hunt:

Hmmmm....I have to say that by the looks of things, GATA Metropole Café subscription will indeed drop to $100 for 2010 and Murphy will indeed lose those hundreds of thousands of dollars he mentioned. A bit of a bummer for Murphy to lose more money on top of the cash that's evaporated from his 1.75m ECU.to shares held, but at least his loyal clientele get to benefit. But you never know in this crazy game of stockings marketings, so we'll keep a close eye on things....maybe Bill gets his late win after all! Hope springs eternal and all that.....

But remember GATAites, don't be backward about claiming your 2010 discount if it doesn't go Murphy's way. We all know that he's a man of his word and will honour his hubri...SORRY! his sincerely held views.

ECU Silver (ECU.to): All you need to know

It's 30% down on the year.

ECU.to versus peers, 2009 to date
(click to enlarge)

So if you're still long this PoS, why not ask the person who reco'd it to you for a decent explanation.

ECU Silver (ECU.to) grants options...bless 'em!

I dunno what part of this is funnier. Here's your choice of guffaw material:

1) The press release happened on a Saturday afternoon.
2) The options are worth over $6m (though with this company we have to be careful about using words that suggest any sort of value).
3) The mental hoops the crooks go through to justify awarding themselves options at under the present share price.
4) "Consultants" are in on this optionsfest. Who the F does that include, Wistar? Any clues, Bill? Expecting a windfall, Adrian?

Remember folks, Bill Murphy over at GATA is offering a half price subscription next year if ECU.to doesn't make it to $3/share by the end of 2009. So at least you GATA saps that have lost thousands in this stock can recoup a tiny fraction of your moolah.

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Sept. 12, 2009) - ECU Silver Mining Inc. (TSX:ECU - News) today announced an issuance of share purchase options (the "Options") pursuant to the Company's Stock Option Plan approved by shareholders and accepted by the Toronto Stock Exchange.

In accordance with the Company's Stock Option Plan, as at September 9, 2009 the Company has granted Options on 10,825,000 common shares of the Company to directors, officers, consultants and employees of the Company. The Options will be exchangeable into common shares of the Company at a price of $0.60 per common share. This represents a premium of 18% over the 10-day average closing price of ECU Common Shares of $0.51 ending September 9, 2009. The shares closed at $0.58 on September 9, 2009. The Options represent approximately 3.8% of the Company`s 285,760,634 common shares outstanding and will expire September 9, 2016.

UPDATE: Seriously, these guys just get worse and worse

TORONTO, ONTARIO - September 13, 2009 – ECU Silver Mining Inc. (TSX: ECU)
On September 12, 2009, the Company announced that its Board of Directors had granted various common share purchase options pursuant to its stock option plan. The Company wishes to announce that upon further review, the Board of Directors has elected to defer the issuance of the Options at this time.

YAY! Go GATA! Go ECU.to! Go Bankruptcy! YAY!

Why does GATA insist on pumping arch-dog ECU Silver (ECU.to) to its innocent flock?

• Maybe it's something to do with the 1.75m shares held by Bill Murphy alone.

• Maybe it's Wistar Holt's chunk of shares that's so desperately underwater.

• Maybe it's the way Adrian Douglas pumped it back in 2006 when it was at its absolute peak top price.

• Maybe it's because none of the above can actually read a balance sheet correctly and don't know how bad this company is looking right now.

• Maybe it's because Murphy has offered clients half-priced membership in 2010 if ECU.to doesn't trade at $3+ this year.

But whatever the reason, it's beginning to look like the ECU.to management have been playing dirty with their own joint venture partners. So the question begs; will the whiter-than-whites at GATA condemn the seemingly illegal actions of ECU.to before the company loses its property rights or afterwards? Will GATA at least make the risk known to the poor saps that took their advice about serious and imminent legal risk on the horizon? After all, GATA is the first to cry gold manipulations and crimes to the world but seem to be playing precisely the same sort of games they themselves condemn by using their influence to pump a heavily owned and very dubious stock to their sheep for all its worth. Inquiring minds wonder whether full disclosure will be given by these shillers and cheerleaders.

The below comes from the June 2009 MD&A published by Golden Tag (GOG.v) yesterday. Enjoy.

On June 23, 2009, the Company gave a formal notice to ECU Silver demanding arbitration consequent upon having determined that ECU, the operator of the San Diego joint venture has failed to remedy fundamental breaches of the option and JVA in respect of the San Diego property. The Company became aware of a lien on the San Diego property at the end of February, 2009. A meeting was held in ECU’s offices in early March to discuss this matter and other breaches. Also, Golden Tag’s counsel in a letter dated March 20, 2009 formally notified ECU of these breaches and Golden Tag subsequently received assurances that the breaches would be rectified within the requested 30 day period. The notice of arbitration was issued, when after an almost 4 month period since the original meeting was held to discuss this matter, and despite several follow-ups by the Company during that time, the breaches were not remedied.

Among the breaches of ECU which Golden Tag believes will be substantiated at arbitration are that ECU : (a) Allowed a third party charge against the property contrary to the JVA; (b) Invoiced Golden Tag for joint venture expenses but did not remit the funds to pay joint venture suppliers on a timely basis, some suppliers still being unpaid ; (c) Failed to timely contribute its equivalent pro rate share of funding to the joint venture; and (d) Failed to follow proper procedures and timely financial reporting.

Due to these significant breaches, the Company plans to seek the right to assume operatorship of the property, dilution of the interest of ECU and/or compensatory damages and other relief. At this time, the breaches have still not been remedied. Golden Tag and ECU have named their individual arbitrators. A third arbitrator as outlined in the arbitration process in the JVA is planned to be appointed soon to form the arbitration committee/board.

Golden Tag also learned recently that ECU commenced unauthorized removal of surface stockpiles on the San Diego property in clear contravention and breach of the ECU and Golden Tag JVA. As such, the Company on August 13, 2009 presented a formal notice to ECU Silver demanding the immediate cessation of the removal of this material. Removal of these stockpiles and transport of the material at an approximate rate of 250 tonnes per day was continuing on a daily basis with a fleet of seven trucks making two trips per day. The material was being transported to the nearby processing facility of ECU. There are at least 40,000 tonnes of mineralized material grading 1% Lead, 1% Zinc and 100 grams Silver per tonne on the property. Golden Tag estimates that approximately 3000 to 3,500 tonnes had been removed from the property since on or around March 23, 2009 and until ECU ceased removal on August 14, 2009 after receiving the Notice. The Company has asked ECU for an accounting of the material that was removed without its consent.

The stockpiled materials represent a joint venture asset which cannot be mined or processed without the authorization and approval of the Joint Venture Management Committee. Such authorization and approval has not been requested or approved. This matter will be addressed at the arbitration hearing together with the other breaches mentioned in this report.