Yesterday in this post, IKN professed its brand new mancrush for John Paulson and also featured the link to the presentation made by Michael Marcelo Kim of Paulson & Co at the Denver Gold Show. IKN received a lot of feedback on this post (seriously, the most for a long time, it seems to have hit a nerve) and though most of that feedback was was either wholly or majority positive, a couple of issues came up and were repeated. So this update post exists because, in the humble and considered view of your humble author, those criticizing are fucktards.
There were two lines of criticism:
1) I was told Michael Kim is a dumbass. The best of the crit mails on this angle (and there were several, I don’t know the dude but he obviously rubs a lot of people up the wrong way) came from a friend of mine, who said among other things:
Kim is NOT the right guy to lead the charge, he’s a pompous asshole. (He) tries to show you constantly that he’s “the smartest guy
in the room”, bombarding people with the most inane questions. It’s OK to ask tough questions in a meeting, but he goes overboard and is an asshole about it when you
can’t answer “what’s your ratio of capital expenses to M&I gold
ounces as a function of lubricants and other oil price based
consumables, when adjusted for CPI, when you look at the last 3 benches
of mine production?” type questions.
There were more, but that was the most eloquent of the mails received about Señor Kim (I needed to edit a bit too) of the same ilk. One problem I have with this line of criticism is obvious, it’s Ad-Hom and doesn’t address the content of the presentation (which, I insist, was very good); Who cares about the character if he speaks truth to power? Another problem is that I too am a pompous asshole, so lay off of us okay dude? The final problem is that Kim may think he’s the smartest guy in the room but he’s obviously not; the person who hires Kim and lets him continue with his genius fantasy is clearly smarter than him. And that’s important, because without Paulson and his financial heft Michael Marcelo Kim would be another small voice lost in the storm; exactly like IKN in fact. People only pay attention to Kim’s presentation because of Paulson so don’t shift focus here, this is Paulson’s pony. That’s why the name “John Paulson” is in the title line of this post and yesterday’s, the boss is the boss.
2) Paulson/Kim profess (in the presentation) their investment in International Tower Hill (ITH.to) as evidence they’re doing it the right way. At least half a dozen of you picked up on this (via the last slide) and it’s difficult to lay too much blame, anyone deeply invested into that total waste of time is clearly a dumbass at some level. However in mitigation a) nobody’s perfect and b) I insist, even though these people aren’t going to win any Nobel prizes they have serious market gravitas and cash to back up the main thrust of their argument. And that thrust, frankly, is impeccable:
- Yes, precious metals mining companies are woefully run.
- Yes, their CEOs, officers and board members get way waaay overpaid for their mediocrity.
- Yes, the destruction of capital under their collective watch is nothing short of scandalous.
- Yes, it’s long past time that we the shareholders got organized, got active on their asses and made the whole sector more accountable. Hopefully by firing a few of their worthless carcasses.
If it takes an imperfect but famous investor around which we rally in order to get a bit of activism done, then I will happily take the deal. Therefore, detractors of the Paulson/Kim presentation, you are fucktards you cannot see the forest for the trees. End of rant.