Silver

Folks,

As part of a diversified portfolio, I own silver stocks, one Apex Corp, stock
symbol SIL. Can't
go wrong. Except...

Apex's main mines are in Bolivia, and the government has begun nationalizing
the energy
sector. Nationalization just means the government takes over ownership, and
does what it
wants.

If the govt taking over energy is a good thing, why not the mines too? So they
announced
they will last Tuesday, and the stock dropped from 22 to 14 that day. It has
since gone back
to 17.50 or so, and I got in at $16.60 last fall, so I can get my money out.

The Bolivian govt has announced it won't nationalize the mines, but it does
need to raise
taxes on the mines. Is there a difference?

Last January the Bolivian President travelled to China to meet with the Chinese
President Hu,
and get agreement on developing Bolivian infrastructure. Bolivia is rich in
natural resources.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4593202.stm

I don't think Bolivia would take this action without the support of China.

Now, the whole world knows that the dollar will get hammered (is getting
hammered). Many
govt's own US Securities as investments, and no one dares unload them for fear
of a "run on
the bank." Perhaps, here, on the margin, in li'l o' Bolivia we are seeing the
testing of a plan:
Nationalize USA investments in your country (the USA commonly seizes the assets
of
countries with which it gets in disputes as well), to balance out the loss in
T-Bill investments.

Foreign stocks are hot in the USA markets right now, giving this kind of action
leverage in
that measure.

Intelligence is often just a matter of spotting patterns. It will be
interesting to see if other
countries follow suit.

John

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