Loki,I appreciate your views (and your insight in seeing the...

Loki,

I appreciate your views (and your insight in seeing the recent correction coming - if only I had listened to you wrt MCR). [May also I suggest however that perhaps Australia copying China in restricting Newscorp might not be such a bad thing. LOL.]

I wouldn't see it in Australia's interests to further transfer control of the likes of Uranium to foriegn interests (although RIO is hardly anything but).

Merging RIO and BHP would hardly be protecting Australia's control over it's resources, RIO is predominantly foreign owned. Not sure such a merger speaks well for free markets, and if I were the Chinese I'd be opposing it strongly. A RIO-BHP Olympic dam would be less Australian than a BHP one.

My preference (BHP shareholder) is that BHP walks, BHP/RIO cooperate where appropriate to obtain development synergies, and cooperate to get the transport cost into the iron ore price. I'd hate to be a future Aussie supplier/contractor up against a future (probably foriegn controlled) BHP-RIO. I don't like monopolies, and I don't think it wise to antagonise your future largest customer.

EL