Two Short News Items -- Widgets and Molycorp

I often like to look at the US Debt Widget above.  If you look now, you can see that we have passed $126,000 of national debt per taxpayer.  Just a few weeks ago, we passed $125,000.  When I started this blog (May, 2011) I first wrote when our debt per taxpayer was $119,000.

Any of you taxpayers feeling like you can pay $7000 more?  Not me.

I rarely discuss short term movements in the price of gold and the other precious metals. But, since I have mentioned one widget, I would ask that you all glance at the PM price trackers above.  As of now (11:00 AM ET), the prices are all spiking somewhat.  As of now, I do not know why, but I'll look into it.  I think more about the long-term value of gold rather than the day-to-day movements.  But, it is fun to look at big moves too.  And (so far), that's a $30 bounce off its low around 9:30 AM.


EDIT:


Man those guys at Zero Hedge are very much on the ball re gold's spike (about GREECE, should have guessed, I post the link, and now will go read it):


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/gold-celebrates-formal-greek-cac-activation-40-intraday-move-higher


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I read last night about rare-earth miner Molycorp's acquisition of Neo Materials, a Canadian manufacturer of alloys and other materials that use rare earth metals.  Neo Materials makes powders of Boron-Iron-Neodymium for example, this is used in permanent magnets.  Neo (and soon Molycorp) sells to Toyota and many other customers.  Molycorp (ticker: MCP) now is closer to its long stated goal of becoming a mine-to-magnet producer (a vertically integrated company).


This is a good thing, they are more in control of their business.  I wrote a short piece about Molycorp's new construction at its mine and processing facilities earlier, with a nice overhead video (with music) over its facilities there at Mountain Pass, California:


http://robertmixblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/aerial-video-of-molycorps-new.html