With regard to KRY and GRZ, their combined market caps even at todays low prices are close to half a billion dollars. Why should Chavez pay that much money or any amount of money to acquire the mining plans and infrastructure on his land that the shareholders and creditors of these companies willing provided when he could have it all for $0? I think it is just blind optimism to think he will ever issue permits under conditions that will allow outsiders to profit. His pattern is to create the false hope that this time it is different if he needs foreign capital to build infrastructure. But in the end its always the same - he can take it all without paying anything for it.

[Bill Cara note: Legal expropriation of private assets for some purpose deemed worthy by governments in many countries is well-known. In Venezuela's case, they have expropriated natural resource assets and have paid market prices in the past. Maybe they will in the case of KRY and GRZ. I gather Cuba's Castro decided to pay zip, which brought about the US response to penalize that country in various ways. But, I still think Venezuela is a different story -- more one of which vested interest -- the private or public sector -- has the ability to use the capital markets for strategic purposes. If Pres. Chavez has chosen socialism and is willing to pay the price, then the owners of capital --the private sector--can invest elsewhere and there is no problem for us. Until he proves otherwise, Pres. Chavez is likely to follow Venezuelan tradition in paying for the assets it seizes. Now price is always in the eye of the beholder. With KRY, I think Venezuela may be prepared to pay say $1/share, whereas the 200-day MA up to the point of seizure was probably around $2.50/share, and in a free market, with full permits and a management team like Barrick, Goldcorp, Gold Fields, etc, I think that asset is worth over $10/share. The stock traded as low as $0.55 on Friday and as high as $0.93 yesterday. One thing is for sure, the wealth (15 or 16 million oz of gold --say $15 billion-- is in the ground, and not going anywhere soon.]