A lot of your points I do agree with, and yes I am familiar with the rationale for the handing out of these grants. What I don't agree with though is HOW it is done, regardless of whether or not it is the "norm". First of all I would like to see the grants announced several months ahead of time so that us lowly shareholders can decide for ourselves whether we should wait or not before buying such shares. (I would then buy the shares AFTER the grants are made since it would naturally represent more of a low point in the stock price.) I was not "priviliged" though with such inside information as the directors were and so I ended up buying a bunch of shares "near the top". OK, bad timing on my part as well, I'll admit, and perhaps a bit of me being a bit "overly aggressive", but still .....as a shareholder it doesn't do me a whole lot of good to buy a ton of shares at .75, .80, and above, only to see the directors exercise their options at such prices and then quickly sell the shares, drive the price down to .65, and then CONVENIENTLY hand out more grants at that price. Secondly the grants SHOULD (whether norm or not) be granted at a price .10 or .15 higher or it should require that they hold onto the shares for at least 6 months or a year before being able to sell the shares ...........it just seems like it should be some sort of a violation of SEC rules to be able to exercise grants and then sell right away. INSIDE INFORMATION just makes it too easy to make a ton of money off of suckers like me who do NOT HAVE INSIDE INFORMATION.

Perhaps in general it is not a gift but for this round it was ......a gift that came right out of my wallet. I am OK with being one of the top "contributors" and payers of their "reimbursement package" this year provided that they now actually "prove their worth" over the next several years and do so by meeting their qoals in production, cost containment, and exporation ....or to put it in a simpler way so long as they make some good profits, which with gold being at above 800 dollars right now it shouldn't be too much to ask. But in the meantime, until this happens, I remain in the hole and taking on risk. Meanwhile some of these directors have "fattened up their wallets some" and have a bunch of shares (essentially for all pracical purposes) that they now get FREE OF RISK and without having to pay a penny for ..........JUST THE OPPOSITE OF MY SITUATION.

But fine. I'm not complaining, nor do I want anyone to take it that way. I just want to see them EARN IT. Pure and simple. So far for the past several years the companies that formed to create this one has been VERY SERIOUS UNDERPERFORMERS. (Just go look at their charts over the past several years.) But yeah, I'm sure the directors of those companies had plenty of grants exercised and sold at shareholders expense too. The grants certainly didn't do the stock prices for either of them any good (in spite or rising gold prices) ......that is for damn sure.