Precious Metalhead #6 – QE2 Underway and The Map of Metal

This has been an incredible month in regard to the Federal Reserve, emerging policy, the precious metals, and our film. Megan, our fine Fed correspondent, has covered the world’s biggest bank so well that I can only highlight these trends, just since last month:

• The Fed has announced Quantitative Easing 2 – and has started. According to the Fed’s own balance sheets they now are “printing” or creating $3,385,000,000 new dollars a week. You are supposed to feel richer because of this and start spending.
• By the same report, the Fed has now surpassed China as the world’s largest holder of US Treasuries, of our debt. This is a mind-bending situation, and not far off from the monetary genius of John Law in 1705 France.
• Thanks, ironically, to our country’s only Socialist Senator and the otherwise-bad financial reform bill, the Fed has been caught in a lie. It turns out… despite their claims to the contrary, they DID pay money all over the world as part of the bailouts.
• Another wild card is new information from WikiLeaks – which still remains up at http://213.251.145.96/ .  Go ahead, click on it, be a rebel.  Assange is expected to turn himself in within the day, but has released an encrypted “poison pill” of documents should anything happen to him. What is in the info-bomb? Citibank?
• Not unpredictably, investors have fled to gold and silver. I’ve been hoping to see silver take a dip to buy materials to make another set of rounds… but both metals have been going nuts. Just since the last Precious Metalhead on 11/9, gold is up 1.8% to $1423, and silver has rocketed 8.9% to $30.1. Now that the people who bring you the US Dollar have made their intent known, I would submit that maybe these metals are not so much on a bubble, as the dollar is facing long-term weakness.
• The Fed has indicated that it will keep doubling down on the QE bets until something happens. I’m wondering what number of QE to enter for our movie’s 2019 scenario… QE7? QE23? Or more?

And that’s just one month of news.  But fear not; this is all very good for Silver Circle.

On the production side of the movie – we are pushing hard to finish and release in Fall 2011. We are almost done with blocking animation, and will be placing/rendering virtual cameras into the shots this month. The result will be over 1,200 video clips that will give us the first multi-camera take of the movie. Compared to Pixar, we are moving at light speed!

Our Graphic Novel is now 16 pages deep and available to all on the internet – start at page 1 here. Thanks to Jackie, our AWESOME artist with a FEARSOME mohawk, this comic is looking tremendous. You can start to get a sense of the Silver Circle world, meet the characters, and get involved.

In the coming months, we will be doing a lot more to engage with the comic world – and in the process we will be unveiling a lot more about the characters. Zoe now has her own blog column… and more are coming.

This month’s metal excursion is not a song but a truly amazing piece of multimedia that just came across my desk from Rae, our Animation Director. The Map of Metal is an amazing piece of work – a visualization that traces the history and roots of the genre across time and styles. You can explore genres, listen to samples, trace and compare styles. I discovered some styles that I had never heard of, like Visual Kei (meh) and Trance Metal (kinda cool). It transforms decades of musical evolution into a complex, interlinked landscape – check it out… I’m sure that there are maps for other musical genres – but none so badass as this one!

Assuming that the Department of Homeland Security does not remove our domain address (note to DHS: there is no reason to do so – we are just a movie, ok?) we shall look forward to writing next month’s missive!

Pasha Roberts
Producer/Director
Silver Circle