 Cazart!
A Moment of Prozac Clarity
David Bond
Editor, Silver Valley
Mining Journal
Aug 10, 2004
Wallace, Idaho - Hunter S. Thompson has an expletive for one
of those fleeting moments of truth and clarity we all get: "Cazart!"
We had such a Cazart! today, ensconced as we were in a green
plastic injection-molded chair on the sidewalk at the corner
of Sixth and Bank Streets, basking in the snow-melting warmth
of an Idaho August evening. Coupla tourists wandered by wondering
if there was any property, commercial or residential, left for
sale. Good Luck, we told them. Saloon-keeper Sandy Monday from
the Smokehouse was tramming us beers with the aid of her barkeep
Beauregard. The round was $6 and it was our turn; we paid for
it with our 10-Sterling silver piece, one troy ounce of
certified Sunshine triple-9, grudgingly accepting four paper
Greenspanbacks in change in the anxious hope that, for at least
as long as it took us to get rid of them, the greengrocer down
Bank Street would swap those Greenspanbacks back for something
worthwhile, for something we could eat or drink or pour into
the kitty box.
The grocer and the gasoline
merchant have lately, we have noticed, become ever more suspicious
of Greenspanbacks. The are requiring more Greenspanbacks for
the same quantity of fuel or food or cat litter every time we
visit. These are not reassuring times.
We lit an additive-free Natural
American Spirit cigarette (now costing $34.99 in Greenspanbacks
per carton: Eisenhower quit the damned things when they hit 10
cents a pack) and contemplated the perfidious nature of the Greenspan
Skull & Bones economy; where Teresa Tides catsup is counted
as a vegetable; where making burgers counts as a manufacturing
job; where zinc, lead, silver, gold, copper, concrete, scrap
steel, uranium, nickel and even - as noted Eiffel Tower-buzzer
and fearless 321gold leader Bob Moriarty earlier today - molybdenum
have shot the moon in the past 12 months and oil is 45 bucks!?!?.
When we live in a time when the price of decent orange juice
has nearly doubled and the Dow and NASDAQ are cratering and they
tell us THERE IS NO ECONOMIC PROBLEM?
This isn't a blip. Denial is
not a river in Egypt.
Lou-Zers Dobbs and Ruckeyser
are not communicating to us in any meaningful way that we are
in deep bowel-leavin's. Even the Fox Fearmongers have failed
to notice that our economy is blowing itself to Kingdom Come.
They thrash around the bond market minutiae, picking pepper out
of rat-sh*t, while around them the time-dishonoured calamity
of a half-century of fiat currency collapses around their ears.
What's gold worth? What's silver
worth? As much as you're willing to pay? Or is it worth maybe
a bit more than your competitor is willing to pay? The LME was
clearing lead ingots at 50 cents an elbow last week. The Chicoms
promptly beat that price by a dime - 20 percent - Platts Metals
Week reported the same week. How bad do you want lead, moly,
nickel, copper, zinc, gold, silver? Bad enough to keep your industrial
economy alive? Until the towel-heads entered the scene on 9-11
we rightfully regarded the root of all war to be trade issues.
May be that's still the case, although it's been argued that
this Armageddon, this fourth world war, will be a battle between
the secular and the religious. Either way, we've lost on both
fronts.
At first blush this makes no
sense. But it's OK after all. The CAZART! came thusly courtesy
of the British Broadcasting Corporation. In case you want to
read the whole tragic BBC screed (and we would not recommend
such an exercise bereft of medication), surf here:
for the story out of England (which is the country where Great
Britain used to be).
Here's the short version:
 "Prozac found in drinking water"
"Traces of the antidepressant
Prozac can be found in the nation's drinking water, it has been
revealed. An Environment Agency report suggests so many people
are taking the drug nowadays it is building up in rivers and
groundwater. A report in Sunday's Observer says the government's
environment watchdog has discussed the impact for human health.
A spokesman for the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) said the
Prozac found was most likely highly diluted.
"The newspaper says environmentalists
are calling for an urgent investigation into the evidence. It
quotes the Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, Norman Baker
MP, as saying the picture emerging looked like "a case of
hidden mass medication upon the unsuspecting public". He
says: "It is alarming that there is no monitoring of levels
of Prozac and other pharmacy residues in our drinking water."
Experts say the anti-depression
drug gets into the rivers and water system via treated sewage
water." Ahem. A "case of hidden mass medication upon
the unsuspecting public." Really? Could this explain the
Dow? The Fed?
We have not digressed in this
tirade because there is no reason to, except for now. Because
the CAZART! keeps coming back, The November 2004 Skull &
Bones popularity contest looms into illusory fuscous, then fades
to the softened lens. Perennial optimists, we keep a gallon jar
of Vaseline beside the bed just in case, because although this
is all supposed to feel just so good, some scintilla of surviving
cerebellum tells us it will not. After all, we are pros. Prozacs,
that is.
And perennial realists that
we are, there'll be a jug of colloidal silver closer by. At least
it's worth something, and it doesn't piss up the water supply.
Aug 9, 2004
David Bond
David Bond covers gold
and silver mining equities for a number of national and international
publishers, including Platts Metals Week, a division of McGraw-Hill.
He lives in Wallace, Idaho, heart of the planet's richest silver
fields, the Coeur d'Alene Mining District. He is former editor
of the Wallace Miner, and holds regional and national firsts
in investigative journalism from the Atlantic City Press Club
(National Headliner) and from the Society of Professional Journalists
(SDX/SPJ) and has edited or written for newspapers on both coasts,
Canada and Alaska.
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321gold Inc
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