China Raises Holdings of Euro Debt, Including Spain

Yes, to support exports the region by supporting the value of the euro vs the yuan.

China Raises Holdings of Euro Debt, Including Spain
Published: Thursday, 6 Jan 2011 | 4:38 AM ET
By: Reuters
 

China has increased its holdings of euro debt, including Spanish debt, and has confidence in the European financial markets, according to the Chinese Commerce Ministry.
 

China’s Vice Premier Li Keqiang has said his country is willing to buy about 6 billion euros of Spanish public debt, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported earlier on Thursday, citing government sources.
 

The sources told El Pais Li had said at a meeting that China is willing to buy as much Spanish public debt as Greek and Portuguese debt combined.
 

They said that added up to about 6 billion euros in Spanish government bonds.
 

Li leaves Madrid today, where he has been on a three-day visit, before visiting the United Kingdom and Germany.
 

The report echo remarks by Li earlier this week, although the report is the first to give a figure.
 

“China is a responsible, long-term investor in the European financial market and particularly in Spain, and we have confidence in the Spanish financial market, which has meant the acquisition of its public debt, something which we will continue to do in the future,” Li wrote in an editorial in El Pais on Monday.
 

Spain has come under increasing pressure from international debt markets on concerns it may be forced to follow Greece and Ireland and seek an EU or International Monetary Fund bailout, but while bond yields have risen, demand for Spanish debt remains solid.

Good Description of a Complete Waste of Human Endeavor, in My Humble Opinion

High Gold Prices Giving Old Mine New Life
Published: Wednesday, 5 Jan 2011 | 5:02 PM
By: Bertha Coombs
CNBC Reporter

The easy gold was mined more than 100 years ago in Cripple Creek, Co. The town is now more of a gambling attraction.

The gold left in the hills just above the town, about an hour outside Colorado Springs, is in low-grade, small concentrations, which take a lot more work to mine and process.

But with gold well north of $1,000 an ounce, the economics of mining, even low-grade gold, have never been better.

“We’re actually plowing more money into this operation nowadays than we are drawing off of it, and that’s so we can extend the life of this mine,” says Ray Dubois, VP and general manager of the Cripple Creek & Victor Mine.

Anglogold Ashanti gained full ownership of this mine in 2008, and the gold producer has been investing in expanding production, literally giving the mine and the 300 jobs that it supports a new lease on life.

“We’re at the end of a major extension project here that took the mine life, added four years from 2012 to 2016” says Dubois. “We’re going to put a hundred more into the place to take it into the mid 2020s.”

The mine operates 24 hours a day. Crews literally blast the gold out of the rock, then trucks that stand two stories carry the stones to a crusher.

The smaller crushed stones are then soaked in a giant vat of low-grade cyanide, which leaches the gold from the rock.

The gold is refined and poured into rough cones of gold, that average 60 to 70 pounds.

It takes about 750 truckloads—a full day’s work—to make one of those cones. It works out to about 250 tons of rock to produce two ounces of gold.

In 2010 the Cripple Creek & Victor Mine produced 230,000 ounces of gold.

By comparison, the world’s largest mine produced 10 times that. Yanachocha in Peru, a joint venture of Newmont and Buenaventura, likely produced around two million ounces in 2010, according to Jeffrey Christian of CPM Group.

Anglogold is betting that high gold prices will make its investment in Cripple Creek & Victor pay off in the years to come.

The workers and the communites that depend on the mining jobs here are hoping it does, too.