Hi Vaughn, gemsearcher and all,
Majority of tax loss already taken. Am holding small amounts to remind me how stupid I was falling in love with SUFfering stocks.
Re South Africa:
The esteemed president of South Africa appears to be supporting King Mugawbe of Zimbabwe's stand on white settled land,...the blacks can go to the farms, kill the white's and take over the farms,...or the rich Western countries will subsidize the whites for the land, and the whites will get the hell out. Got to wonder what could happen in South Africa??
Courtesy Dutch Central Bank thread,
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=13668615
"Guree : SA Rand is in free fall.
Causes are allegedly the strong US dollar and weak euro. More to the point is the awful situation in Zimbabwe and the failure of the SA president to say anything in condemnation of the actions of comrade Robert Mugabe, president of Zim."
Also in SAf, the natives are restless,...and on strike.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000510/wl/safrica_strike_4.html
Half of South Africa Goes on Strike
By Allan Seccombe
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Half of South Africa's workforce went on strike for 24 hours Wednesday, protesting against soaring post-apartheid unemployment.
the South African Chamber of Business (SACOB) said the manufacturing sector was hardest hit with 60 percent of workers staying away and unions estimated four million workers stayed at home. Car production ground to a halt.
More than half of the country's gold, platinum and diamond mines had reported significant stayaways, the Chamber of Mines reported.
Some 36 mines reported absenteeism between 40 and 90 percent and another 27 had full attendance.
``It is going to have a very severe impact on mining production,'' said Frans Barker, a spokesman for the chamber.
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Workers wearing red COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) tee-shirts and caps gathered in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and close to mines and car factories elsewhere.
Up to 20,000 workers gathered in central Johannesburg for a march on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) where policemen on horses and helmeted police with riot shields, batons and stun grenades blocked the entrance to the downtown building.
Unions Demand Talks
COSATU President Willie Madisha told the singing crowd, stretching back for many blocks, that the federation wanted talks with the government and big business within the next six days otherwise the protest action would continue.
The South African rand, driven by investor fears over the turmoil in Zimbabwe and fueled by Wednesday's strike, plunged to an all-time low of 7.17 against the dollar and approached record lows against the euro.
South African business said it would hold talks with the country's giant union federation to stave off further protests.
SACOB said in a statement the economy had not ground to a halt and economic activity continued at a lower level.
COSATU, which has held a month of protests around the country with varying degrees of success, said support for the strike proved unemployment was a big problem and that it had forced business into fresh talks.
He said the union was demanding a change to insolvency laws that made it too easy for companies to close down at the expense of the workers and it was also demanding the government slow down the rate of tariff cuts that were leading to a flood of cheap imports.
COSATU also demanded the government change a macro-economic policy it said was costing the country jobs.
SACOB chief executive Kevin Wakeford accepted a memorandum from Madisha, which outlined union demands. He said urgent talks would be held with the federation.
``I must emphasize very seriously that we need to develop a common economic vision for our country so that we can move from conflict to consensus,'' Wakeford said.
SACOB said a preliminary survey of members around the country had indicated that on average about half the workforce around the country had turned up for work.
The National Automobile Association of South Africa said major car plants had closed their doors for the day, but would make up production over weekends and overtime.
The strike was called by the 1.8 million-strong COSATU at the end of several weeks of sector-targeted action to highlight job losses since white apartheid rule made way for democracy.
Unemployment is running above 30 percent and the country has lost a million jobs in the last decade -- about half of those since the African National Congress (ANC) was voted into power in 1994 after the country's first democratic elections.
Business has warned the stoppage could cost the economy 3.2 billion rand ($450 million) and damage already fragile investor sentiment.
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PTX is one of those interesting market enigmas. No volume, tightly held, and the market thinks someone will buy them out so they won't have to prove they can actually mine the deposit. SUF, on the other hand, is actually mining the deposit, and as gemsearcher says, there is lots of other baggage around SUF, including country risk. Cashflow from M1 is dwindling quickly, and the profits no longer exist,...other costs and writeoffs have turned the income statement from black to red ink. Messina cashflow is a long way off.
Re Brazil:
Several projects by foreign mining companies are being delayed in Brazil until permitting is obtained including SUF's holdings, and CNB/PVF on Rio do Sono. The environmental lobby is fronted as the culprit,...whether it is them, or insufficient bribes, or the garempios throwing up road blocks in front of the legal concession owners to allow them to continue their illegal, unpermitted operations on the land is uncertain.
De Beers has dropped huge parts of their land holdings in Brazil, and the Cormandel project could be the only one active now. I wasn't aware it was a mine, still undergoing bulk sampling I understand, and awaiting more of those permits. Their focus has changed to other parts of the world,...there is not an official NR, it is what you hear as you walk around trade shows talking to company reps from various diamond mining companies, including the De Beers reps. The gossip is De Beers is fed up with the Brazilian government crap, and sees other areas of the world to be more prospective with much less total risk.
The difficulty getting permits to sample gravels miles away from active river channels is what SUF is facing currently. I talked to CJ et al in March,... they had applied for several permits to sample these gravels,...they had waited for some time, and were not hopeful the permits would be forthcoming any time soon. Part of the problem is the forest has grown over many of these gravels, and in order to get at them, they sometimes have to strip the forest away,...so permitting becomes more complex than one might think.
Has anything changed in Brazil? Well exploration concessions are easy to get and pay for. Exploration permits much less easy to get,...and how many mines have been built and are operating under foreign ownership? The record speaks for itself perhaps?
And in the national news we see that Canada and Brazil are engaged in a trade war,...does this help make Brazilian government reps more cooperative dealing with Canadian based mining companies? Perhaps it's a good thing that SUF is moving to the U.S. |
