China

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[URL="http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err32/err32.pdf"]http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err32/err32.pdf[/URL]

Just china stuff on food consumption patterns and where things are going.


When china repegs its currency,the spending patterns of 1.3billion are clearly
outlined,although this report doesn't discuss it.

Looks like fish and beer are the big winners.

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From Reuters:

"The United States will tread carefully as Beijing is the country's largest creditor, holding more than $900 billion worth of U.S. Treasury bonds.

Below are the top 10 largest holders of U.S. debt as of the end of October.

-- China, mainland: $906.8 billion

-- Japan: $877.4 billion

-- United Kingdom: $477.6 billion*

-- Oil exporters, which include Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Gabon, Libya, and Nigeria: $213.9 billion.

-- Brazil: $177.6 billion

-- Hong Kong: $139.2 billion

-- Caribbean banking centers, which include Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Netherlands Antilles and Panama: $133.7 billion

-- Russia: $131.6 billion

-- Taiwan: $131.2 billion

-- Canada: $125.2 billion

* UK figure may include government debt bought by other countries through London intermediaries

Source: Treasury Department"

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And this is a good example, Agrivillers, why farmers must never allow idiots to control farmers' interests:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/41019109//

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lol-i like the "when the fed tries to sell them part".

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A morning read for you.
.. from Forbes' webpage and written by Nathan Vardi


"Molycorp Looks Like One Of The Greatest Private Equity Deals Ever
Jan. 11 2011 - 8:40 am |

By NATHAN VARDI
Move over billionaires Stephen Schwarzman and David Rubenstein. Eat your heart out Goldman Sachs. One of the greatest private equity deals going, Molycorp, belongs to a little-known private equity firm based far from Wall Street. Resource Capital Funds is headquartered in Denver. Its chief and co-founder, James McClements, actually lives in Australia.

Resource Capital has not realized a penny from its investment in Molycorp, which aims to produce rare earth minerals at a previously shuttered mine in Mountain Pass, Calif. But on paper the investment is staggering. In the last two years, Resource Capital has invested $110 million in Molycorp. At Molycorp’s recent share price that investment is now worth $1.5 billion. In the private equity business, that doesn’t happen very often, especially with figures as big as these.

By comparison, one of the most legendary private equity deals ever saw Thomas H. Lee buy Snapple for $135 million in 1992 and sell it two years later to Quaker Oats for $1.7 billion, reportedly making $900 million on the investment.

Resource Capital still needs to execute the selling part of this equation while keeping Molycorp successful, a detail not lost on Ross Bhappu, the Resource Capital partner who put the investment together and is the chairman of Molycorp. “We don’t want to count our chickens before they hatch,” says Bhappu.

“It would be hard not to be excited about it, everybody is really pleased about the performance of Molycorp and that is shared around the office and our (investors) are also equally very happy and we get calls about it from them all the time.”

Resource Capital, which exclusively invests in metals and mining, may move soon to start to realize some of its paper gains. The lock-up preventing Molycorp insiders from selling shares expires in February and Bhappu says “if an opportunity arises we would look to monetize some of the position, but we don’t want to disrupt the company and the incredible run it has been on.”

“We are weighing our options and evaluating them, I don’t know that we have made any clear decisions on it yet,” says Bhappu. “If we do sell any shares it would be a relatively small stake.”

Bhappu’s decision not to sell any shares in Molycorp’s initial public offering in July looks pretty smart. In fact, Resource Capital bought shares in the IPO. Goldman Sachs went in another direction. Originally part of the investment group led by Resource Capital that purchased Molycorp from Chevron in 2008, Goldman Sachs sold its stake in the company in the spring of 2010. Molycorp’s stock has nearly quadrupled since the IPO.

The story of how Bhappu, 50, engineered this deal goes all the way back to his childhood, when he used to spend summers hanging around Molycorp’s mines while his father did consulting work for the company. He invested in Molycorp because he believed demand for rare earth minerals would rise, but he did not know that China, which mines 97% of global supply, would move to restrict its exports like it has in recent weeks.

Is Molycorp part of a rare earth minerals bubble? Could the prices of rare earth elements collapse as quickly as they have risen? “Given what the Chinese are doing these commodity prices are very sustainable and those prices are well above what we are using in our financial models,” says Bhappu. “It’s hard to predict what the sustainable price is for these commodities, but given the supply and demand relationships we are pretty comfortable that these prices are sustainable for the near term.”

Meanwhile, Molycorp has been executing on things in its control. It recently secured a final required construction permit and entered into an agreement with Sumitomo for the $130 million Molycorp needs to finish funding its business plan. Sumitomo also committed to purchasing certain rare earth elements from Molycorp, even though that won’t prevent Molycorp from continuing to generate financial losses for at least two or three more years.

To get a sense of what all this currently means for Resource Capital Funds, consider Resource Capital Fund IV, the fund that holds a big chunk, but not all, of its Molycorp stake. Resource Capital Fund IV raised $526 million from investors in 2006. Its current stake in Molycorp alone is worth almost $1.2 billion. If you add just one more of its successful deals, an investment in Talison Lithium, Fund IV holds $1.35 billion in paper assets from just two of its investments.

But investors are never satisfied. When Resource Capital’s investors call Bhappu these days they want to know what he is going to do next. “They want to know where the next Molycorp is,” he says
Unquote

cott China will maybe reconsider rationing their rare earth minerals?Pars

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Tough to say,they need to satisfy domestic
consumption but at some point someone will strong
arm them into playing ball.