The likelihood of strikes this May and June by workers in South Africa’s strategic mining sector may curb output from the world’s largest supplier of platinum, presenting an upside risk for the precious metal, analysts said.

The catalyst for any upswing may come as early as this week when Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) – the world’s top platinum producer and a unit of Anglo American – reveals the outcome of talks with the government and unions about restructuring plans that may involve cutting up to 14,000 jobs and mothballing two mines in South Africa.

“Whenever someone mentions restructuring to me, I get a bit nervous,” Jonathan Barratt, editor and founder of commodities newsletter Barratt’s Bulletin, told CNBC Asia’s “Squawk Box”on Monday.

(Read More: US Crude May Hit $100 on Payrolls, Geo-Politics)

Any labor unrest may swiftly rekindle bitter memories of violent confrontations last year at the Marikana mine owned by the world’s third-largest platinum producer Lonmin where 34 striking miners were shot dead by police last August in South Africa’s deadliest security incident since the end of apartheid in 1994.

Any industrial action this year will coincide with wage talks across South Africa’s mining sector, which start this month.

“South Africa has a history of labor issues,” Barratt said. “Remember the PGM [the platinum group of metals] market is very tightly controlled so any concerns there in terms of labor issues will hit the market relatively quickly. As a result, I think you will see a bounce” in prices.

Platinum prices fell to their lowest since mid-August in mid-April to about $1,490.24 an ounce. Prices closed above $1,500 on Friday, trading at a premium to the gold price.

(Read More: ‘Dr Copper’ Attempts Some Self-Healing)

‘Walk-Back’

The latest round of Amplats restructuring talks were extended for a month at the end of March and the final plan had been expected to be unveiled this week. “However, the parties are still in the process of concluding the details of the consultation and its outcome will be communicated during the week commencing 6 May 2013,” the company said in a statement on its website on April 30.

Political risk consultancy Eurasia Group said that Amplats may “walk-back” its restructuring plans following intense opposition from the ruling African National Congress and labor unions. According to unverified media reports, the company will reduce layoffs by a half to two-thirds and presumably scale back production cuts, Eurasia Group said in a report last Friday.

If true, such a scaled back plan “would represent a victory for the government, the ANC and by proxy ANC-linked National Union of Mineworkers (NUM),” said Mark Rosenberg, Senior Africa analyst at the Eurasia Group.

(Read More: Would You Buy a ‘Man-Made’ Diamond?)

Nevertheless, the NUM has been “displaced” by the more militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) as the majority union at Amplats, Rosenberg said, warning the AMCU “will likely reject the Amplats plan, even if it does significantly scale-back retrenchments.” That raises a “high risk” of strikes and production losses in May and June, he added.

“AMCU has enlisted the majority of platinum workers and claims ‘control’ over Rustenberg, the platinum-mining town near Marikana from where a big chunk of the layoffs will come,” Rosenberg said. “The union will view the Amplats restructuring [however it shakes out] as a threat to its new-found power and will likely fight to maintain it.”

http://www.cbc.ca/hamilton/news/story/2013/04/25/hamilton-fake-silver-coin.html

The Mobile Gold Rush   (May 2, 2013) 

Here’s the basic mobile gold rush model: poach advert spending in a stagnant economy.

The mobile gold rush of Web 2.0 continues to attract thousands of techie fortune seekers to San Francisco. It’s an old story, and a compelling one: there’s gold in them thar hills, and I’m a-gonna git me some. The only thing that changes is the nature of the gold.

The dot-com boom of the late 1990s created a new gold rush in San Francisco and Silicon Valley that fizzled in the early 2000s as the same old reality hit home: only the first few gold-seekers hit it big, and most of the late-comers trudge home empty-handed.

Over 50,000 people left the San Francisco Bay Area as employment in dot-com technology imploded.

The new gold rush is mobile–mobile apps, mobile services, mobile anything. And so the timeless gold rush story is dusted off and launched anew: young coders are paying $600 a month for the right to sleep in someone’s laundry room; the average rent on a one-bedroom apartment is over $2,500.

Developers are breaking ground on dozens of residential highrises that will add thousands of apartments and condos to the Market Street corridor. Rent for a postage-stamp studio: $2,000 a month (maybe more if the market will bear it), but we know hipsters like bicycles so they’ll be plenty of secure bike-racks. Amenities galore!

Though there are already thousands of pricey restaurants in San Francisco, dozens more are opening every month as entrepreneurs rush to claim their piece of the tech “miners” spending.

You know the story: the canny folks didn’t bother seeking gold, they sold the tools to the miners and fed them–a fresh egg, after all, could fetch a princely weight of gold in the feverish economy of gold mining towns.

It’s too bad the actual gold in the mobile gold rush–income streams in the billions of dollars–doesn’t exist. All technology boils down to this: either it increases productivity or it’s a time-sink. Some technologies serve both masters, of course, and perhaps mobile technology is the ultimate in promising productivity but delivering time-sink.

Let’s disassemble the mobile gold rush into its constituent parts. The easiest way to do that is to follow the money.

1. How big is the income stream generated by sales of mobile apps, services and hardware? Most apps are free or sell for a few dollars, ditto services. With Android tablets going for $45 a piece in China, hardware profits are heading down. How much premium will people pay for an Apple or Samsung tablet?

People like to tout $1 billion in sales in this or that; fine, but what’s the net, and is that net rising or falling? What else is in the pipeline that offers similar functionality for free?

2. People now expect free everything except their monthly 4G service bills. The real money in mobile is the monthly service fees; people routinely pay $150+ a month for their smart-phone service; no wonder you can get a free phone if you sign up for a lengthy service contract.

As correspondent Mark G. recently observed, you will soon be able to buy a fully functional Android-OS tablet for $1–if you sign the service contract.

3. So if there’s no money in selling apps/software or hardware, then what’s left? Marketing. The hot new vein of gold the frenzied tech-miners are digging is mobile advertising and targeted marketing.

The scenario that everyone imagines is this: carefree wealthy young people are out on the town and they seek a pizza. They open an app (free of course–the money is made in delivering the advert) and all the nearby pizza places that paid to join the advert network show up on their little screen. Oh joy, the terribly difficult task of locating a pizza place has been simplified, and the restaurant owner gladly ponies up the advert fee for the special delivery of a customer.

Nice, but how realistic is this scenario? How many billions can it possibly generate? The entire ad industry is about $170 billion a year, and that covers everything: television, radio, print, Internet and mobile. Advertising & Branding Industry Overview. Mobile adverts are still a thin slice of that: $4 billion.

That’s the gold everyone’s seeking: a larger slice of the advert pie. It is obvious that mobile can poach a lot more advert dollars from other media, hence the gold rush to mobile everything that serves adverts.

It is a given that a targeted ad, specially sent to the most important consumer in the world, you, based on your own unique desires of the moment, will be more effective than a TV, radio or print advert that reaches thousands of people with the same message.

Big Data machines are grinding away at reams of marketing data to select the most effective platforms and techniques to “grow mobile’s share” and make advertising even more compelling to enterprises. Everyone will soon have a specialized mobile advert campaign designed for them, with “guaranteed” (ahem) results that beat every other competing media.

These truisms are feeding a corporate frenzy for mobile technology. The game plan for all these hot-shot coders seeking nearly instant wealth is not to design a service that generates tens of millions of dollars annually–the game plan is to rough out an idea, claim it will generate tens of millions of dollars and then sell it for millions of dollars to some corporation desperate for a “mobile strategy.”

Is that a sustainable model? No, because once every corporation has scooped up a company with 11 coders for a couple million dollars, then the need to scoop up more start-ups fades.

All this overlooks the basic mobile gold rush model: poaching advert spending in a stagnant economy. If we look at who pays income taxes as a rough guide to how many people have disposable incomes large enough to have money to blow on excess consumption, we conclude that only the top 10% of U.S. households have enough income to respond to adverts, as The top 10% of households paid fully 72.7% of all Federal income tax, the top 5% paid 60.7%.

As noted here many times, real median income (adjusted for inflation) is down 8%. If we subtract out the income of the top 10% (which is rising), then the decline for the bottom 90% is a lot more than 8%.

Bottom line: fewer dollars of income, higher costs for essentials leaves fewer disposable-income dollars left to blow on consumption.

If only the top 10% have significant disposable income, then advertising is a diminishing-return game, as everyone chases the dwindling number of dollars available for purchases of non-essentials. Is poaching adverts a solid foundation for a gold rush? Not by historical standards.

I can think of nothing more than the single greatest nonsense that has frustrated me for decades – the MYTH of the ONE-SIDED TRADE.

As I have stated at seminars around the world, there is this prevailing myth of someHUGE short position that forces the market down. In gold, there is the mythical short positions of J.P. Morgan. I am by no means a mouthpiece of the bankers. I have stood my ground and taken every arrow they have shot at me and I am still standing.

Keep in mind that if I SOLD 100,000 contracts of gold, I can ONLY do that if someone bought.  Therefore, at every instant there is a sale, the equilibrium is balanced. This is why there has never been a single investigation that EVER found the mythical huge short position. It does not exist. The source of EVERY crash is contained within theCONFIDENCE of each side – nothing more. What makes the crash is scaring the longs – it is the process of shaking the tree as I put it. I have been called into just about every crisis since the Franklin National Bank collapse during the 1970s. NEVER has there EVER been some huge short position – NEVER!!!!!!!!

Cycles are the key to everything. It is how light moves. You get a different effect depending upon the WAVELENGTH at that moment. Change that factor, and you get something entirely different from Xrays to Microwaves – it is still all the same core wave – electro-magnetic. Here is a visual representation of how sand will form patterns on a metal plate that change with the frequency of the sound. This is called Cymatics, which is taken from the Greek κῦμα meaning “wave”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtiSCBXbHAg

We are living still in the Dark Ages. We have realized that the earth is no longer flat. But we have NOT made it to that place of realization that we too change our patterns according to our sense of TIME – cycles. Perhaps soon we will take that next step in the evolutionary process and create a world where we have learned from our past.

We can do this. It does not take the majority to shift the direction of society. Surprisingly, it is accomplished with less than 10%. Even during the Russian Revolution, the major of the people really did not understand what they were revolting about, yet the small minority seized control with their support and installed their agenda. It is what Stanley Milgram called – Obedience to Authority – people do things because they are told to even when it goes against common sense.

It is the VOLATILITY that binds the business cycle. It PREVENTS the business cycle from moving into what would be the White Earth Effect - where the cycle collapses and life is extinguished. It is the moving of the majority from bullish to bearish and back from bearish to bullish that creates the highs and lows. There can never be a one-sided position. If there is a huge short position, that means it was offset by an equal and opposite long position. What changes the market is CONFIDENCE. Will all those people who bought gold just hold? Holding physical gold coins is one thing. Leveraged positions – sorry but that has its limits. Eventually losses will FORCE liquidation. If the Hunt Brothers had HUGE long positions that were “real” and were intent upon holding until silver hit $100, then why under this same theory did silver crash?

This not about trying to talk markets up or down. This is the TRUTH about a reality that we will have to face one of these days. The sooner we do, the better for society for we can then move to the next level in the game of life and the evolution of society.

This entire scandal spells out, for anyone willing to look at it with open eyes, that the banking system carries too much weight with the politicos and that they look at the masses as a source of free funds. This situation screams loud and clear that everyone should buy gold and hold it in their possession.

But now we are hearing other officials talk about the same style of bank recapitalization. From New Zealand….

http://rt.com/business/new-zealand-cyprus-style-banking-failure-solution-477/

• If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without  a license, but not for being in the country illegally … you might live in a  country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.
• If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but not  to get an abortion … you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run  by idiots.
• If the only school curriculum allowed to explain how we got  here is evolution, but the government stops a $15 million construction project  to keep a rare spider from evolving to extinction … you might live in a  country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.
• If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a  library book, but not to vote who runs the government … you might live in a  country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.
• If the government wants to ban stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines with more than ten  rounds, but gives 20 F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt … you  might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.
• If, in the largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not a 24-ounce soda because  24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat … you might live in a country  founded by geniuses but run by idiots.
• If an 80-year-old woman can be stripped searched by the TSA but a woman in a hijab is only subject to having  her neck and head searched … you might live in a country founded by geniuses  but run by idiots.
• If your government believes that the best way to  eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more … you might  live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.
• If a seven year old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher “cute,” but hosting a  sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable  … you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.
• If children are forcibly removed from parents who discipline them with spankings  while children of addicts are left in filth and drug infested “homes”… you  might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.
• If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government intrusion, while  not working is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, subsidized  housing, and free cell phones … you might live in a country founded by  geniuses but run by idiots.
• If the government’s plan for getting people back to work is to incentivize NOT working with 99 weeks of Unemployment checks  and no requirement to prove they applied but can’t find work … you might live  in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.
• If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big screen TV while your  neighbor buys iPhones, TV’s and new cars, and the government forgives his debt  when he defaults on his mortgage … you might live in a country founded by  geniuses but run by idiots.
• If being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you more “safe” according to the government …  you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots.
• If you live alone and pay more than about $12,000 in taxes and the government tells you that you are not paying your share……you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots
• If you live in a country where a burglar can break into your home, fall and hurt himself and then file a lawsuit and win a settlement from you…….you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots
• If you live in a country where the main goal of the police or highway patrol is to sit on the side of the road and target citizens for speeding in order to raise revenue for the government…..you might live in a country founded by geniuses but run by idiots

An Australian amateur gold prospector with his hand-held metal detector found a gold nugget weighting in at 177oz. It is worth more than $300,000 dollars.

Makes you wonder what went through the man’s mind when he found it. Perhaps, “See Hon, don’t look so weird now, do I?”