The Beat Goes On

Meanwhile back at the ranch, developments in the Congo mineral trade continue apace:

Reuters has an excellent article on the woes of four gold mine companies operating in the DRC: AngloGold Ashanti, Banro, Gold Fields, and Moto Goldmines. An update on that story: Moto Goldmines was just acquired by Redback.

Franz Wild at Bloomburg reports that higher taxes on tin are threatening to undermine the recovery of the tin market. But Joe Bavier at Reuters reports that tin exports are up despite "the threat of United Nations sanctions and pressure from rights campaigners linking the trade to local conflicts."

Wild also reports on the eternal soap opera that is the Inga dam power plant, which could someday produce twice the electricity of China's mammoth Three Gorges project. (And someday I will teach my cat calculus and win the adoration of Megan Fox.) BHP Billiton is interested in bidding on the project.

The Dutch Friends of the Earth published a report condemning the involvement of Dutch companies in irresponsible tin trading.

And last and certainly least, Congo Resources can finally take credit for changing the world, or one tiny insignificant part of it. A few weeks ago we reported that AMD had chosen to nickname its latest microchip the Congo, which struck us as regrettable. The Enough Campaign picked up the story, and they in turn were picked up by the big boys at Daily Kos. Before you could say conflict minerals, AMD had a full-fledged mini-public relations disaster on its hands. The upshot? The "Congo" will heretofore be spoken of as the "2nd Generation Ultrathin Platform." See here and here for the full story.