irish,

Interesting article with quite a few good points, some quite cynical, but that's fine...free speech!

Got some comments for part of the article which states:

"China is obviously thinking big and long-term.

The Ring of Fire mining opportunity in the far north of Ontario has them drooling at a time when Canada and this province are fiscally challenged."

That's quite true. They are long-term planners and very patient when to invest their zillions. With real money in the deep pockest they can pick and choose the time when to strike.

Baosteel (and probably others as well,... how about Wuhan, and/or others?) is sitting there waiting (Baosteel don't even bother to match/surpass RCF leading position in its holding of nearly 20% (don't remember exactly, but it could be something like 17%?). They want to see the politics, the Prov, the Fed, the FNs, etc... to unfold before acting. Money is not a problem here. RR building? No problem, they can bring in their technology (fully automated system to lay the rails) to build the RR in no time, and it would be eye-opening for our construction industry.

China has the need for steel and stainless stuff big time. The building of satellite cities of about 1M inhabitants each is growing (believe that they plan to build about 100 such cities around the overpopulated ones, with skyscrapers of course to ease off the pressure on monster cities like Shanghai, which has over 23M people). Hence the demand for steel/and stainless is not going to subside.

Wuhan? CLF has some off take with them as the results of the TO of Consolided Thompson (CLF paid ~$5B). Compared that to CLF current Mkt Cap of about $5.5B a TO of CLF by Wuhan would look mighty attractive ($5-6B is chump change for some people). Perhaps they would wait for CLF to TO KWG, PRB and FNC and then walk in with an offer for CLF. Note; KWG has the RR corridor, PRB had BC and transportation access and FNC has transportation access, BH and lots of Fe and Ti in Quebec.

The Cdn/Ont governments, especially the Fed, are not naive. They are pros in this negotiation business as well and would not sell the barn for nothing. It's a "give and take" thing just like how we deal with our neighbour in the south. It would be time to look east for diversification as currently done by the governments. Is McGuinty visiting Beijing, Shanghai, etc.in Jan 2013...just before the provincial election?

The Prov., especially after the election (could be a Conservative Gov?), can be polite/nice but firm. They can offer favorable electricity rates in exchange for smelters in the province to produce value-added products, or they will lose them to Quebec, our brother/sister to the east. There is that to worry about the potential loss of business, not only to off-shore people, but to our nextdoor relatives.

Enough musings for the morning.

goldhunter