Well a lot of us feel Mr. Hamilton is very odd indeed. Reminds me of others who manage to talk out of both sides of their mouth.

You are right in that the World economic picture affects the ROF and if it costs more to extract/process/sell minerals then you can sell them for they'll stay in the ground, for now. Mind you demand hasn't disappeared it's just dropped enough that supply has to be reduced to maintain prices to producers. Some producers still make money even at current prices, at some facilities.

Now I'm not a huge fan of looking to China to ride to anybodys rescue but consider they have 2 Trillion dollars in US Treasury Bills of one kind or another and losing money due to weakness of US Dollar and threat of inflation. These are the guys that just bought and bought and bought copper for stockpiling out of petty change. They are so big that even if they'd like to invest in Canadian Securities our market is too small for their kind of bucks to find a home.

To 'get down to it' perhaps it's just possible should Noront and others in ROF find multibillion dollar resources the Chinese will step up and slap down, say one billion, to gain control and put into operation?