Silver Ignites
We have long since passed the fiscal point of no return. Either outright default or massive money printing leading to inflation is going to be the result. And sooner, not later, judging by silver.
Friday, July 11th, 2025
Laramie, Wyoming
By Dan Denning
‘Bags of bastnaesite’
It didn’t exactly sound like a call to arms–or an imminent money making opportunity in the stock market. But that’s exactly what it turned out to be.
I’m talking about the Private Briefing I had with old friend Byron King back in late March. Byron gave us a virtual tour of the only exporting rare earth element mine at Mountain Pass in California. It was owned and operated by an outfit called MP Materials [MP]. Until yesterday.
Yesterday the Defense Department announced it would buy $400 million in preferred shares in MP. That will make the US government the largest shareholder in a company that makes magnets used in the F-35, in drones, submarines…you name it. This is why we referred to rare earths as the crown jewels of the critical minerals and strategic metals of America’s war machine.
We didn’t have the US government making direct equity investments in mining companies on our bingo card to start the year. But it’s happening. And it seems unlikely that MP will be both the first and the last company to be identified as ‘critical’ to national security. See the chart above.
In a normal world, you wouldn’t have government investment as a catalyst for a share price re-rating. And in fact, I didn’t. When I wrote about MP in May of last year (Nero Would Weep) I speculated that MP (and the other companies profiled in that research note) might benefit if the government identified rare earths as an urgent priority. But I always figured the market would move first…and there didn’t seem to be any sign of that at the time…and MP was well outside our imperative to stay in Maximum Safety Mode.