David Bond: Wallace Street Journal Oct 9, 2012

There's something in the wind. You can smell it in the woodstove fires of northern Idaho, the bracing breezes racing across the Straits of Georgia and Lake Ontario. Oh, wait: it's just Fall, full upon us now.

We like the autumnal equinox, the gathering of firewood, the crispness in the air, the return of seriousness to the resource markets. Juxtaposed of course is the silliness of the upcoming U.S. election, punctuated by jubilation over news that the latest jobless figure in the Colonies is a mere 7.8 percent, down, down, mind you! from the stubborn 8 percent it has hovered at since the housing bubble burst. That's likely a B.S. tweak of the statistics but it's probably enough for the Yanks to quibble over the next four weeks until they elect a new or re-traded buffoon.

If you think Canada is not watching the U.S. presidential and congressional elections with interest, consider: Hockey is in a lock-out, and there's precious little else to pay attention to except the browning of the maple leaves. You might visit a recent screed by the National Post's Conrad Black, entitled “Canada's Front-Row Seat to the American Disaster". It's a reprimand of American dreadful politics and its concomitant Canadian smugness. Observes Black: “(A) failed president is running slightly ahead in the polls of a challenger who has a real CV, unlike recent presidents, but who is so politically oafish and plastic, he makes Elmer Fudd seem charismatic.” (Black wrote this before last week's debate.)

So what to make of this American election? Precisely nothing. Ben Bernanke will still be running the U.S. Fed, the Banksters will still be in charge, and all of that scares the Bejeezus out of us. QE3 and all its warts hover over the Americas like ugly on an ape. The printing presses roar, not only in the Americas but in Europe as the ECB adopts the same policies. The only things they cannot print are gold and silver. Our friend Sean Boyd, CEO of gold-miner Agnico-Eagle, said in a recent interview with King World News that the central banks' thirst for gold will drive the yellow metal to $3,000 “within the next 24 months.” That would mean, given the current 50:1 silver-to-gold ratio, a $60 silver price. Boyd is a flinty conservative, and not one to flog his own book. When he speaks, listen.

Plug those multipliers into your portfolio of resource stocks. Value junior explorers for the value of their silver, gold, copper, lead and zinc in the ground. They might be well worth twice what the market's giving.

Want to learn more? Come to the Cambridge House Silver Summit later this month, Oct. 25-26. Set in a fully-restored historic mining venue, the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, Washington, the Silver Summit takes you back to a turn-of-the-century-atmosphere silver-mining convention, where miners, explorers, mining CEOs and resource investors rubbed elbows as equals. Revisit the opportunities you might have missed a decade ago. The mineral resource boom is just now growing legs. There's still time to make the train.

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