When it comes to our listing for-real “mid-sized” prospects that require a million or more in capital investment to develop or mine, we seem to have a problem attracting “joint venture” funding from day traders spoiled by a 20 to 60% yearly return on the legalized ponzi scheme known as the housing market.  Dave Hopkins, of the Our Creek claims listing, outside of Fairbanks, has so far only had semi-treating phone calls from “experienced investment” lawyers asking, “Why are you selling out so cheap?” I was able to reassure him, from years of hearing a catch phrase similar to the arm waving prospector’s “whole mountain of gold,” that the ploy was on par with the tire kicking on a vehicle being traded-in, especially on an upside-down contract. And that perhaps he needed to actually raise his prices as one day he will get a call from a discounted South African “money-finder,” named Mark who lives in Ealing, a suburb of London, asking, “Why are you asking so much?” 

We both had a good laugh from a story at the expense of a Florida “experienced, investment,” legal firm who approached Roberta to list a gold property in China that “only needed American expertise” to be fabulously successful. She refrained from raining on this rainmaker’s parade by explaining that historically it was old China 49’ers who really showed New England pilgrims how to clean a 5¢ pan in the Mother Lode of California. She did tell him that a picture of a Chinese-American associate visiting his parents’ village —where everyone smiled politely— was not enough to make it into our database. She sent a minimalist list of “due diligence” items our readers would need to see — “as in the Information Age, it takes information to sell a property.” The joke was that less than a week later, I got “beat up” over the telephone for being the contact for a friend out working his claims, by the apparent quick learner who wanted to know all about items on his check-list, because — “... in the Information Age, it takes information...”

The other funny thing for Alaskan’s about a Chinese technological connection is perhaps the best hope for small prospectors developing American mining prospects into a major property today is that following the establishment of a Shanghai, China, futures market exchange, the country that is driving the price of base metals upwards will follow through with their plans for a brand of IPO’s which will break a Wall Street investment banker/stock broker/market maker monopoly on capital that requires a prospector who needs a $3 million dollar drill program, to go hat-in-hand to New York, to raise $6 million. As an “downtrodden prospector,” I like the honest Chinese Communist attitude that all grossly overpaid capitalistic CEO’s who have sent whole factories overseas to be worked by lower priced labor, will eventually themselves be “pinko slipped” by a management cap salary of $200,000 per year.

And, how is it that the investment expert lawyer doesn't know that American workers in one of the big six iron ore deposits of upstate Michigan are delighted to have been bought up by China, as that is patriotically preferable to America being owned by a PAC governed, monopolistic, multinational system controlling the things —three firms own nearly 75% of the global market in iron ore— that nations go to war over.  As logs. Japanese troops invaded Alaska in WWII and were beaten back by a road being built through the wilderness without 20-years of environmental impact studies. Ironic isn’t it that after trying to burn Oregon’s spotted owl out of house and home by fire balloons, Japanese timber companies benefited from the Alcan when shuttling what was left of a skilled Pacific coast logger workforce —through Canadian forests— in Japanese pickups, after PAC funded Bill Clinton used the endangered species act to totally destroy the “gyppo” non-multinational logging business in Oregon’s national forests.

Perhaps Randy McKinney of the Cape Yakataga beach sands property we have also been listing for far to long —given the fact that his guy has worked himself up from black sand dredges he built himself in Nome, to the “big-time”— as he can’t legally advertise sock, or even a limited partnership, directly for investors, as we are not the Wall Street Journal, and to us a “red herring,” isn’t worth pickling.

As the Russians have stated they are willing to buy back Alaska at a bargain price, provided it is in devalued American dollars, perhaps Randy should look to Moscow (not that much farther away from New York) for rubles to buy multinational mining equipment being manufactured in China (closer by sea going barge than Los Angeles). The newly “capitalistic” Russians have great plans on extending a long existing Moscow-Beijing Tans-Siberian railroad across the “other channel; the Bering Straits,” so that a passenger could board a train in London and end up in New York via Nome. Second thought on that, let’s say, North America.  As the U.S. —outside of Alaska— does not know how to run a safe, scenic, fuel-saving passenger railroad anymore, I guess the destination would have to be Québec.

The things you learn being a field reporter actually visiting remote places, asking questions first hand from those who have experienced an ever-changing American wilderness frontier. The same Russian engineer/expansionist I had a long, friendly, conversation with not long ago was wondering —since American’s didn’t somehow think the Aleska Pipeline was important, if we would allow them to use their “backyard,” resource when the North Slope oil field was drained dry, to transport oil from their newly claimed —thanks in part to the climatic changes of global warming— North Pole oil fields.

My point here is that there are many factors at work when it comes to trying to become wealthy overnight through something as politically incorrect as mining.