...or bring anybody down...but if we accept as a given that aside from arbitration, our best hope is for a buyout or possibly JV (since Hugo won't give us one 'red' cent) then we have to ask ourselves....can one even operate a gold mine at a profit in Venezuela...what with the 'sell all the gold to the central bank at a loss' banter and other such talk. If I was looking at investing heavily in a deal, I would want to know that profitability was not an issue (ignoring for the moment possible expropriation of the finished mine for pennies on the dollar). The mine could contain a trillion ounces of gold....but I wouldn' be interested if I was not going to be allowed to make a reasonable profit.

Full disclosure: I am not a basher