Mining News

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blogging to bring you this mining bulletin.

The CEO of BHP Billington is stepping down to be replaced on October 1, 2007 by the current head of their non-ferrous division, Marius Kloppers.

BHP is currently the third largest producer of copper in the world and that's not even their primary industry. Their first love is for iron ores. Nevertheless, with the new CEO at the helm it is likely that they will be in M&A mode. I can't see them wanting to try and come back into America after their failed purchace of Magma in the late 90's (they purchased Magma when copper prices were trending downward, then closed all of their newly aquired properties permenantly and wrote off the loss only one year before copper started swinging back into profitable territory); however, I can see them ramping up foreign operations or acquisitions.

Why should you care? Actually, for the typical consumer a bigger BHP will probably translate into slightly cheaper copper products as they increase production in their most profitable operations; ie, third world operations.

Why do I care? I currently am employed at one of the least profitable copper operations in the world (but because copper prices are so high, we are still extremely profitable.) I worry that a bigger BHP will translate into a greater world supply that will lift world inventories thereby pushing prices down and price my mine out of operation.

Honestly, any big news like this in the copper business is interesting to a miner like me.

Sorry if I've bored your pants off. ... You can put them back on now, this isn't that kind of a website.

Hectic Schedule

A hectic schedule
Almost ev-e-ry night
Seems its my lot
With no end in sight

I've signed up for college
To improve my mind
Three hours with scouts
Add to the grind

Visits to friends
at least one night a week
My wife keeps her hobbies
Its her sanity seek

The yard needs attention
The weeds multiply
A faucet is leaking
and I am the guy

Six kid a clammerin'
for my attention
One more on the way
gets honorable mention

A date with my wife
Will come if I'm lucky
Best not neglect it
Or else she'll get plucky

The dishes are waiting
they won't clean themselves
How did that shoemaker
merit those elves?

Spare minutes are rare
They'll come if you look
An hour playing games
Or reading a book

Lest you think I'm complaining
Don't pity my plight
My life holds no bordom
And that seems just right.

I should have seen it coming

Please note that I did talk about the national healthcare issue just a few posts ago. What I should have realized then is that the release of this film would be coordinated with somebody's campaign. I'd be willing to bet that Mr. Moore and Mr. Obama are working together. The buzz from the film and the already thought out healthcare plan will create the stage for the democrats. And every other candidate is already behind.

It will probably set the stage for the Republican candidates as well by hijacking the agenda. "Mr. Giuliani, what do you think about national healthcare?" He'll have to be ready with an answer and just by answering will move the issue even more to the front.

Lest you think that I have a conspiritorial mind. I do not see this as a left wing conspiracy. Only very deft politcal ability. Mr. Obama will be a candidate to watch. And I think that's the way he wants it.

School is almost out for the Summer

The kids have just a few more hours left in class. Then the school doors open and they'll be set loose.

And so, a poem for the occasion:







Little orange moth
you flit from flower to weed
Six children lithely chase you
All the fun they need

One would pinch your wing off
The other makes you drown
One holds you like a crown jewel
You're both simple and profound

Come spend the summer evening
Flitting through our weeds
Please come kiss the flowers
And see our growing seeds

SiCKo

Michael Moore is at it again. He will release a new documentary on our health care system and one can only suppose the underlying agenda: "Get us a nationalized healthcare system!"

If you were alive in the 1980s and 1990s you remember the same mantra being chanted. The solution was to create HMOs or Health Management Orginizations. It was a halfway step to national healthcare. What did this do for healthcare? Did we see a steep decrease in healthcare costs because of them? No, we saw an increase in the bureaucracy. Most HMOs have quietly gone away in the last ten years and the bureaucracy has shifted to the insurance companies. They decide what proceedures are covered and when. Try talking to a doctor about this sometime and see if they like how the current system works. HMOs and national healthcare have the extremely undesirable effect of making the high cost of a medical education unappealing. What do you get for it after all? Prestige?

I have no doubt that Mr. Moore will be screaming for a national healthcare system. What will that mean for the average person? More bureaucracy for less healthcare. Any doctor with any sense will switch to a "private clinic" practice. In other words: pay as you go health care. The kicker there is that in order to have a national healthcare system you'll be having some money removed from your paycheck like the government already does for social security and medicare. Then, if you want to go to a private clinic, you'll pay more money out of your own pocket because the government isn't going to pay you to go to a private clinic.

Robin Hood will be at it again. The rich are paying for the poor to have another entitlement. Except it won't be the rich who bear the real burden, it will be the middle class, because they'll be just well enough off that if they want real health care it will be within their reach and yet because of the national system they'll pay double for it.

I say we regulate the insurers and not the medical system. Limit how much profit they can take off the top. Then, in order to increase revenues, they won't want to limit procedures they'll encourage them (more volume means more revenue after all.) More volume would mean more real competition and our medical system becomes a free market system once again.

I know. Its a pipe dream.

Venezuela in self destruct

Apparently no one in power in Venezuela is a student of history OR economics.
Señor Chavez has swept to power and compares himself to Fidel Castro.
Fidel faught for his power. I don't like what he did either, but here the comparison doesn't fit. Fidel got where he did with guns, not votes.

Señor Chavez is nationalizing much of his country's major industries. Oil is the main one. That is a good short term win, lots of cash still being generated by that Texas tea. Good luck keeping your pumps working when you will never get another outside company to invest one penny in upgrades and exploration. His move has effectively locked in its production at the current levels (they'll actually deminsh as equipment becomes harder and harder for them to repair.)

Señor Chavez has begun land reform. When has that EVER worked? Again, short run politics winning out as the underprivilaged underclass suddenly feels empowered. Oh yea, they also feel entitled. Good luck keeping that entitlement up.

Señor Chavez wants to move towards a national barter system. WHAT???!!! Barter ended in civilized society before we started keeping histories.

That clinches it. Señor Chavez wants to move Venezuela back into the dark ages and beyond.

The list of things he is doing is only missing the persecution of one group of citizens. I think he'll be able to bypass that ugly totalitarian characteristic by putting the country on the oil teat. Just look how well that has worked for Saudi Arabia, they have a HUGE and growing youth population and a very large unemployment rate (around 12 percent.) Both of which can be directly traced to government handouts associated with oil.

Good luck Señor Chavez.

A quick note. I got a comment from a Venezuelan student who has been opposed to Chavez from the beginning. Apparently there are more people opposing him than I originally gave credit to in this post. My prayers go out to these people.

She specifically noted that I had said, "Apparently no one in Venezuela is a student of history OR economics. " Julia, I hope you approve of my edits.

Storm last night

A little poem about the storm last night

The thunderstorm last night
Shook us from bed
If my eyes seem to be blodshot
Its the gum in my head

Actually, the worst part of the storm was that it woke up our Bam-bam who then proceeded to wedge himself in perpendicular to mom and dad, all the while crying and protesting. I'm betting mom feels the same way I do.

Sarkozy in Africa

Interesting article in the WSJ today opines that with Sarkozy now president of france, a ministry office in France called the "African Cell" is likely to close.

This map from the article gives a good feel for where France still has direct influence. (It doesn't show the countries where they speak french as their official language.)

France won't be pulling their military right out of Africa because of Sarkozy. They will just be less likely to swoop in and reverse negative situations in Africa as they perceive them.

What makes this interesting is that without the direct influence of France on the dark continent these countries are actually going to do better, because France has only ever protected France's self interests. Not the interests of the African nations.

Let's hope it doesn't go the other way and get overrun by warlords.

If you're wondering why I care, my company is opening a copper mine in the DRC. I've been keeping close tabs on African politics for a couple of years now because of the potential direct impact to my company's bottom line.

Solving more world problems

I already suspect that my twin is going to nay-say this post. I think this solution is more realistic than my Saharan Jungle solution. What are the two most politically sensitive topics right now? Iraq and global warming. (Never mind that number two after Iraq on the public conscience is health care, because the media hasn't really caught onto that idea yet.)

Here's how you solve both: The United States initiates a true self sufficiency program with regards to energy. Something on the scale of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956. They ended up spending $116 Billion dollars laying out the highways which in todays dollars is equal to about $833 Billion dollars. Not chump change.

The good news is my proposed solution already has the infrastructure almost started.

What we do:

The government MASSIVELY starts subsidizing any alternative energy source that gets us off of foreign oil. Bio-diesel, solar, wind, ethanol, you get the point. The emphasis should be on upgrading existing systems, not putting new systems in place, like a hydrogen economy would need.

How would they subsidize it? The subsidies would pay for solar and wind installations costs over and above what it would cost for them to install petroleum consuming resourses. Including, half of the cost of solar panels that the typical homeowner could install on his home to power up. Make it a no brainer to take your house off of the electrical grid. More specifically, a no painer.

The political results would be interesting and rapid:

First, we would lose almost all interest in what happens in the Middle East. The only thing we would have left to defend there is our interest in Israel. (Which I'm afraid would also deminish in proportion to our dependancy on the oil reserves of their neighbors.)

Second, oil countries would have to change their welfare state structure because they wouldn't be getting so much of their funding directly from the gas pumps of America.

Third, America would once again be creating resourses rather than consuming them. No one ever built strength by only consuming. You must CREATE resourses. Mine them, grow them, generate them, whatever. Wealth does not ever flow away from resources. It flows to them.

Yes, this is a kind of econmic warfare, but if we don't do it now, we aren't going to be left with the choice. Eventually the warfare will be even more real than Iraq. It will involve the entire region and could spread to other oil producing states.

The lines are now open for your critisisms.

And now for something totally different:
I don't know if I can keep watching American Idol now that Lakisha is gone.

My week off

I didn't listen, read, or watch the news.

I didn't blog or read blogs.

I spent the last week at home with my children while my wife went to a seminar out of state.

Here's some of the things that I learned or stuck out in my life the last week:

Bam-bam lived up to his name and took a swan dive out of a shopping cart. (No permenant damage, but you can still see the bruise.)

Miss M had a all day field trip. She got up at four and stayed up 'til ten and the meltdown didn't come for almost twenty-four hours and it was a small one.

Bug ran in a school track and field day. I missed his last event because the school got ahead of schedule and didn't bother trying to stick with the schedule they had sent home to the parents. I saw his school locker. How can he be so neat at school and so sloppy at home?

Tiny has even worse vision then we first thought. It does help to know what his limitations are though so we can work on compensating with him. (Instead of just relying on him figuring it all out on his own.) We're even thinking of buying him what is called an "identifier" cane. Basically it is a white folding cane you see being used by the blind. It would help people remember his limitations and compensate rather than just seeing a cute kid with glasses and assuming that he has no vision problems.

Angel Face gets goofy when he wants attention. Its funny at first but the seventeenth time he tells you that the dinner dishes should be cleaned in his brain, it just looses its appeal.

Lucy is a true sweetheart. She does everything she can to be helpful. I have no doubt that they made the pink aisle at Wal-mart for her.

I miss my wife when she is gone, even after almost fourteen years of marriage. She does more for our family than I give her credit for.

These are all good things to find out as a proud papa.