You really do crack me up with some of the rubbish you bang on about lol.
Now falling fe prices are part of major Chinese conspiracy to change the government! What next? Chinese colluding with Europeans and no doubt the yanks and maybe some Martians to change the government here?
The mining boom has been roaring along for decade or so under both the coalition and Labor. Now Europe, China's biggest trading partner, has turned really ugly, China itelf has also slowed quite sharply with banks chasing steel mills for bad debts etc (see link) and the US recovery is tepid at best.
You're as bad as a certain Mr Rabbit on the 7:30 report. Even after BHP explicitly stated that the decision on Olympic Dam had absolutely nothing to do with any taxes and all to do with the high Aussie dollar, falling commodity prices and so on, he still tried desperately to make a link. He had to admit he hadn't even read the BHP statement!
If you think having that clown running the country is a good idea, that's fine. Just don't make ridiculous links where none exist, especially after BHP and others have stated their decisions have zero to do with tax. Zip, squat, zero.
To reiterate what I posted before, the effect of the carbon tax on even high energy users such as aluminium producers is around 1%. Compare this to the effect of the dollar being around 50% above it's long term average. I don't recall you ever even mentioning the AUD when its effect is about 50 times larger. Go figure.
Normally when commodities tank, so does the AUD. The reason it hasn't this time is due largely to two reasons. Firstly, interests elsewhere have been reduced to near zero to try and kick start economies and in Australia they're still around average. Perhaps more importantly, and for the first time in history, the AUD has taken on somewhat of a safe haven status. I think it was last year, and also for the first time in history, Australia became one of a tiny handful of countries to be rated as AAA by all three rating agencies. Are they also in on your conspiracy theory? lol Kinda makes a laughing stock of those citing domestic sovereign risk for every commercial mining decision, does it not?
The situation with CFE's main project, Marampa, will simply come down to the global economy and fe prices recovering. Hopefully for holders, sooner rather than later. The collapse in the spot price hopefully knocks out some of the high cost Chinese mines.
Peter
CFE Price at posting:
27.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
(20min delay)