No Se Nada

god hates me. Somehow I got on Jay Taylor's (snail) mailing list. You don't know who Jay Taylor is? Well, according to Mr. Taylor, he "is America's #1 geoeconomic stock expert and one of the most respected authorities in mining and energy stocks."

He runs miningstocks.com and shills extractive industry stocks. The latest "newsletter" (J. Taylor's Energy & Energy Tech Stocks), tells us, in a big headline splashed across the front, of a coming "Runaway Uranium Stock Boom!"

You then get to read a few pages of amazing 1000-2000% profits in just months! and how if you would have listened to him in 2002 you would have made a killing and how Jay has a proven track record of delivering dazzling profits of up to 500%, 1000% or more. Finally, after a few pages, you realize that the entire color 24-page newsletter is really trying to get you to buy stock in Northwestern Mineral Ventures, currently trading at a fun 84¢ a share.

But here's the greatest part of J. Taylor's "newsletter" :

More than a successful analyst, Jay Taylor has had extensive geologic studies.

Well that sounds awesome! Tell me more!

And he does and here's where it gets weird. Jay Taylor's newsletter actually contains the following passage, and not hidden, but displayed somewhat prominently, in large-type answer to the sentence noted above:

To find junior mining stocks with the greatest profit potential, Jay studied geology and completed virtually all of the required coursework for a B.A. in geology from Hunter College.

OH. MY. GOD.

He did what???? Almost completed a Bachelor of ARTS in geology from HUNTER?

Who would admit that?

(And in case you care, Hunter doesn't even have a Geology program....in a time where schools in the U.S. are killing their Geography programs left and right, Hunter is not only keeping its Geography Department, but housing Geology inside Geography. That's kinda shocking.)

For you non-geology majors who might wonder what the difference between a B.S. and B.A. in geology is, usually the answer is field work. As in, a B.S. means you have to do a lot of field work and complete a long summer field program. The B.A. means you don't have to do much of anything outside of the classroom. So let's recap with this new info: not only did Jay DNF his geology program, he DNF'd the watered-down field-requirementless Geology-that's-really-Geography program. Pathetic. And he admitted this???

[Note for UK readers: Geography in the UK and Geography in the US are different things. You guys decided long ago that Geography was important. For some reason we didn't. We're doing the same thing but calling it Earth and Environmental Sciences or some variation thereof.]

It was already way suspicious, especially once it was clear that the entire intent was to hawk $0.84-per-share NMV, but then I started seeing the huge type and how it reminds me of playing cards with my vision-impaired grandparents and I realized: this is a scam on unsuspecting bluehairs with a few bones to invest, to get them to put some coin into hyper-volatile penny stocks.