Is it Rio Tinto or Rio tainted ?

Not many know that a Norwegian Pension Fund blacklisted Rio Tinto some time ago. On September 9, 2008, amid the turmoil of the global financial crisis, the Norwegian government announced that it had liquidated its entire $1bn investment in Rio Tinto for "grossly unethical conduct

The Grasberg mine in West Papua on New Guinea, which the fund believed posed the "unacceptable risk" of contributing to "severe environmental damage" if it were to continue funding the Anglo-Australian mining giant.This blacklisitng of one of Australia's blue-chip stocks received only syndicated coverage in the local media.

Some history of Rio Tinto in the black

An ancient copper mine located near Huelva in southernmost Spain changed hands in 1873 and a group of opportunistic Anglo-German investors acquired it from the Spanish government for mining. The mine's copper had polluted the surrounding water to such an extent that the indigenes named the river Rio Tinto - literally meaning "red river".

The mine at Rio Tinto had supplied the Greeks, the Roman Empire and many others. Its copper had paid for Carthage's numerous wars on Rome.We can only assume that these investors, aware of such indelible marks on the environment and history, missed the irony, because they named their company Rio Tinto.

There  are still protests by environmentalists in West Papua, one of the poorest provinces of Indonesia

Julia gillard air & hair on national port authority plan

It's estimated that trade through our nation's ports will triple over the next 20 years.

 

The Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese will unveil the plan in Perth. With an eye to that prediction the Federal Government is launching its National Ports Strategy later today aimed at boosting productivity and eliminating the bottlenecks that held back the last commodities boom

Australian stock market Update

With the merger war between Dell, Inc. (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard Company (HPQ) at last drawing to a close with the latest $33 a share offer from HP for 3par, Inc. (PAR), tech stocks have really been in focus lately. A spate of merger and acquisition action has prompted a renewed focus on information technology companies, particularly cloud computing stocks.

However, don't be fooled into thinking that a bunch of big spenders in the technology sector means that all tech picks are doing well. In fact, a number of big name blue chips in the industry continue to face very difficult roads ahead. Here are 5 blue chip tech stocks stumbling right now


Wesfarmers has pulled out of the race to acquire the assets of financially strapped miner Griffin Coal.

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International banking regulators known as the Basel Committee will likely require banks to have a Tier 1 capital ratio of 6 percent, up from 4 percent, said the BdB banking association, whose members include lenders such as Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank.

Regulators are bumping up the amount of capital banks need to hold in an effort to ensure lenders have an array of loss-absorbing backstops that can be used in case of a downturn.

Buffers for capital conservation of an additional 2 percent and a countercyclical capital buffer of 2 percent more are also likely to be applied, the BdB said on Monday.

The Tier 1 ratio and each of the buffers probably would be composed of 80 percent of top quality or "core Tier 1" capital, which consists of equity capital and retained earnings, BdB said.