RE:What matters now?While I agree with you that the current business cycle has been perverted by the constant infusion of liquidity and that their will come a day of reckoning with regards to all the accumulated government, corporate and personl debt, I'm not sold on precious metals as a safe haven. One reason is that historically you need significant inflation for precious metals to shine and despite the never ending priming of the pump we seem to be closer to defalion than rampant inflation. I just can't see gold as an attractive option in a recessionary scenario. The other thing is regarding silver, even though the ratio between it and gold is at historically attractive levels I feel that silver is different in than it is a bit of a hybrid metal that has a precious but also an industrial component. I would expect silver to go down in a deflationary/recessionary period that we might be finally enetering into.
As far as Trevali goes I don't feel like their silver component is big enough to provide much cushion even under a favourable outlook for silver. I do think they are in for a couple of very rough quarters but am hopeful that a) the drop in interest rates will help them out as they inevitably take on debt and b) that more highly leveraged competitors will have to reign in production or perhaps dissappear altogether. I also expect that treatmnet charges are not immune to economis at at some point will have to drop.
I concur that the inventory effect on Zn prices has been disheartening, but believe at some juncture we will reach a tipping point even with that and more rational supply/demand fundamentals will reassert themselves. Obviously we have to all hope that TV can stick it out until that happens.
GLTA