why us dod want a billion $'s - to buy rocks

Says it all really - and there are still people here who invested on a whim and don't grasp what they were getting into?

Goldmans, JPM, DB, Citi... the usual players...

http://americanresources.org/tag/rare-earths/

At the height of its production, Molycorp, a U.S.-based miner of rare earth elements that was hit hard by China’s rock-bottom prices, says it planned to produce 20,000 metric tonnes of product in 2012. This means the underground Chinese supply component could be as much as double the entire U.S. supply, which goes some way to illustrating the opaque and potentially volatile nature of Chinese supply.

“Think about how nervous that would make a Pentagon planner,” McGroarty says.