Baires: If it was, these companies who are going under would still be viable. I know the Hollister mine in Nevada, formerly owned by Great Basin Gold and now taken over by Waterton, is a very high quality mine with all infrastructure and production in place but went under because its South African counterpart mine in Great Basin became unviable and dragged the Hollister with it. The failure in South Africa was partly due to the labour conditions but was primarily the inability of top level personnel to engineer the huge resource there. They made bad decisions, bought a lot of equipment for one method of production but could not make it work, fired the guy in charge, gave it a last shot with some supposedly competent management at the last minute but it was too little too late and too much reinvestment was necessary. But the Hollister itself was able to keep that operation alive with its production for a long time. The huge expansion in gold companies since 2002 has drained the supply of experienced and highly skilled top level personnel, who are mainly concentrated in the big producers. Scarce as hens' teeth. What an opportunity! Ike