Economics and politics. Accretion and repletion. Mergers and acquisitions. Joe Mazumdar, senior mining analyst with Haywood Securities, sees all of these as catalysts for a rebound in the junior gold space in 2012. In this exclusive Gold Report interview, he reveals the names of companies he expects to take off. The Gold Report: What is the consensus among Haywood analysts on what 2012 will bring for mine commodities, particularly precious metals?

Cheap money was trending long before "the" Facebook lost its article and 845 million people lost the rights to their lives... The U.S. FED'S status update last month about how it still loves cheap money always and forever was sure to work magic. Even if the pixie-dust did blow straight past output, incomes and capital formation.

Civilian Unemployment Rate: 8.3% in January, down from 8.5% in December. Cycle high jobless rate for the recent recession is 10.0% registered in October 2009. Payroll Employment: +243,000 jobs in January vs. +203,000 in December. Private sector jobs increased 257,000 after a gain of 220,000 in December. A net gain of 60,000 jobs followed after revisions to payroll estimates of November and December

NFP printed 243K, higher than forecast. As expected markets took out all resistance's and moved to the almighty important level of 1345/50. Key highlights from NFP report

This December gold prices swooned by more than 10 per cent in their biggest monthly fall since the collapse of Lehman Brothers. For some insecure gold investors it was like a bad dream. They were happy to wake up to a bright, crisp January whose performance was more than enough to warm the heart of any gold investor. It was the metal's strongest starting month in 32 years giving a resounding answer to those who wondered if the 11-year rally in gold had ended (and they always seem to come out of the woodwork every time gold experiences a correction.)

Critical materials have been described in various ways, with perhaps the clearest being the following two definitions: A critical or strategic material is a commodity whose lack of availability during a national emergency would seriously affect the economic, industrial, and defensive capability of a country. The critical materials are natural resources that have a threatened supply availability and are a necessity for technology that is experiencing growing demand.

It only took eleven years, but in 2011 global gold-mine production has finally returned to pre-bull levels.  In fact, with 2011’s volume expected to come in at around 88m ounces, we’ll see a new all-time production high.  The latest exploration-and-development cycle is finally starting to bear fruit! This fruit has been hard-earned though, as the miners have had to reverse the course of a brutal production decline that bottomed out in 2008.  Incredibly global gold production had fallen nearly 13% in five years from 2003’s high, to a level not seen since the mid-1990s.  And needless to say that painted quite an alarming fundamental picture considering demand was on the rise.

Doug Hornig, Casey Research Lovers of liberty have seemingly had a good bit to celebrate recently. First, there was an unprecedented outpouring of negative public sentiment about the Congressional bills SOPA (House) and PIPA (Senate); they are legislation that would have thrown a large governmental monkey wrench into the relatively smooth-running cogs of the Internet. Millions of Americans signed online petitions against the bills after seeing websites' various protests. Google shrouded its search page in black; Wikipedia and Reddit went dark entirely (although Wikipedia could be accessed if one read the information available via clicking the sole link on its protest page); Facebook and Twitter urged users to contact their representatives; and many other core Internet businesses also raised their voices in opposition.

“The U.S. economic and systemic-solvency crises of the last five years continue to deteriorate.  Yet they remain just the precursors to the coming Great Collapse: a hyperinflationary great depression.  The unfolding circumstance will encompass a complete loss in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar; a collapse in the normal stream of U.S. commercial and economic activity; a collapse in the U.S. financial system, as we know it; and a likely realignment of the U.S. political environment.  Outside timing on the hyperinflation remains 2014, but events of the last year have accelerated the movement towards this ultimate dollar catastrophe.  Following Mr. Bernanke’s extraordinary efforts to debase the U.S. currency in late-2010, the dollar had lost its traditional safe-haven status by early-2011.  Whatever global confidence had remained behind the U.S dollar was lost in July and August.  That was in response to the lack of political will—shown by those who control the White House and Congress—to address the long-range insolvency of the U.S. government, and as a result of the later credit-rating downgrade to U.S. Treasury debt.