From the bottom in gold shares in 2001 until September of 2011, champagne flowed in offices of gold companies all the way from Vancouver to Toronto. Any former cab driver or drill crew supervisor with a good pitch could raise all the money he wanted from a seeming unending cornucopia of dollars from hedge and mutual funds.

That began to stop in late 2011 and has come to a grinding halt as of almost four years later. To raise money today would require a higher grade of gold than found in the US Treasury storage barn at Fort Knox.

It means mining companies who intend to go into production have to shave every possible expense off their costs and have to do everything possible to increase recoveries.

Extracted from http://www.321gold.com/editorials/moriarty/moriarty031015.html

My comments:

POO entered 44 dollar territory yesterday, so Bob's summary I think may be more appropriate to late last year than to March '15, given that the cost of energy can amount to 25-35 percent of mining production costs. Having said that, I am in no way putting myself above him. He's very smart and very highly accomplished in many areas.

I quote him above in appreciatation of his graphic representation of the state of affairs for new mining ventures. It well underscores LBSR's momentous challange at present, and how dramatically unusual will be the funding of HMSP when it occurs.

I also want to point out that grade trumps everything, assuming we have it as expected at HMSP. Moreover, outcroppings and near surface mineralization, on and near pre existing infrastructure, in a mining friendly justisdiction, even in the best of times is an explorationists wet dream.

The market, too, I believe is also looking for the next big thing in mining, the kind of discovery that comes along only once every couple of decades, or so. If LBSR longs are correct in our expectations that drilling will validate Caldera Theory at Tombstone/Hay Mountain, LBSR could be that next "big thing", and will literally make history.