Ore and More

People keep a careful count when white people die, but they rarely care about anyone else. Being Jewish, I have a keen sense of history and the injustices of history. I clearly understand that the world is not fair, and I do not expect it to be, but I am always amazed by how ugly it really is.

If 100 people die in London, it makes the news for dozens of days at a time. Hundreds of millions can be spent on figuring out why and laying tribute or blame around the event. If 1,000 people die in the Congo, no one even notices. If 1,300 or 13,000 people die in the Philippines or Burma, the attitude is, there are just more of those people over there, so why should we care?

I guess human nature is to give care of duty to the people whom you know, and to the people who might actually need your help, bugger off. We will happily give at the office for the nameless starving masses, but we rarely actually spend any time thinking about and trying to understand why they might be starving and how we affect their world.

I work in an industry that has the ability to destroy or build up nations. Wars are fought over the mines and the products of the mines. You can almost trace political instability by where diamonds or other natural resources are found. The basic reason for this is whoever does not have the wealth from the resources is jealous of the lucky buggers who are making the bucks. In addition, in many places that are resource-rich, there is not excellent rule of law, and even if there were, that is not always a solution.

Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa. It was an amazing country with lots of food, mines, and strength. Now it is a hollow shell thanks to one man, Robert Mugabe, and that man is going to let people starve, die, be mutilated, and completely destroyed, just so he can stay in power.

You cannot just kill him because the risk of that is civil war. His supporters have the guns and those proud few pieces of pond scum would prefer to let the nation descend from a lousy dictatorship to a civil war than to face their crimes. We need him to step aside. We need to find safe passage for 400 really nasty guys. And then we need to go out and get a fair election, a stable currency, and functioning farms.

I am not an Africa expert. I make a point of not going to countries that are reasonably risky. I suppose that I should get more flexible and I probably will with time, but I just have not had enough desire or greed to go find riches in places where a human life is cheaper than 5 grams of platinum.

You see, platinum is what this all comes down to. There is a bloody nice reef that goes across the border of two countries, and it is a license to print money. We cannot have the clean air that we breathe without the platinum from the mines of Zimbabwe and South America. The green left-wing nuts who have been clamoring for tighter vehicle emissions standards are helping support Bobby boy because their cars need platinum to convert the nasties that come out of the tailpipe.

This reef is the single best asset of Anglo American, and control of it is make or break for the company. If the platinum market is further fragmented by the loss of this mine, it will cost Anglo huge money.

Anglo has rights to platinum in Zimbabwe, and it is not going to give them up. They are damned if they walk—Mugabe and his nasty sidekicks can get another company in to mine in 20 minutes—and damned if they do not—the West will tell them what a bunch of horrible people they are.

Robert is, of course, going to play this situation like a fine fiddle, and the nice woman from New Jersey with her nice modern offices 1 block from Trafalger square is just bait for him.

Of course, it’s easy for me to be sarcastic and judgmental because I am not in Anglo’s shoes. They are in a tough spot, and I do not have the answer. But I am sure that there are some smart PR guys in London huddled around their mineral water and watching the hours of billing add up as Anglo figures out how to explain the value of a human life in Zimbabwe. Anglo is going to have to make some tough decisions, and frankly if Bobby boy and his cronies do not fall soon, Anglo is going to yet again have blood on its hands. Just goes to show that history repeats itself.

Anglo’s management is not stupid, so perhaps they can tell me, what is the value, in grams and ounces of platinum, of the rape and murder of innocent people in Zimbabwe? Can you even value such a life at a single ounce on the LME?

If you expect to stand up in the modern world, take a stand and do the right thing. If you must continue to develop in Zimbabwe, then give away a dollar in food aid per dollar spent on exploration for the rest of Africa till Bobby is gone. If you owe your employees jobs there, then understand what is at stake. And if you have to deal with Bobby, pay him in grain. Make it an international gesture—offer to pay him twice what he is asking for in good, clean food. But if you do nothing, your claim to be a new Western caring company will ring false to my ears.

There has to be a business of sitting in a Starbucks and being a corporate fink.

I was in the city of London and between meetings. Being me, I opened my Mac, but as it has been a long week, I was playing Freeciv rather than doing real work. It is amazing how disarming a Mac and a guy who is not in a suit playing Freeciv is. People are just bloody stupid in how they talk and talk as if no one else cares about what they are saying.

I know more about one group that is looking to let people go, and another group that is trying to figure out how to market to pension funds, and what the rate premium is for some really neat credit swaps.

You would think they thought that I was stupid.

I am not stupid enough to trade on the information, but there have to be people who sit in Starbucks pretending to be wall candy and sell the information they find. If it is not a business for the mob, nothing is. I mean they could even franchise the store. Heck, the chairs are cheap enough and have enough curves you could just plant a few bugs and run a computer program or 3 to find out interesting information.

A good guy with a good computer algorithm could run every conversation in a Starbucks every day in the city and find the conversations that have useful information. The thing then would be to filter the information and find customers, but considering that 100 basis points on $100-million deals are at stake, there has to be a way to find customers.

What I do find useful is watching the city people deal with each other over a cup of joe. You can tell who the real power people are and who are the laid back people who control stuff. You can see who is gripping the table, or holding a cell phone tight. You can also pick up the way that they talk to each other. I think the visual really helps add value to the business, and the combination would be dynamite. Just have some kid watch the room for the right people and take a few notes to go along with the data.

I am not saying that I am not also guilty of the same offense of having conversations in places that are not private, but I am at least somewhat discreet, I hope.

Bloody lot of fun.

A good project needs a good promoter. I got into a fight with someone a while ago in which I said I would take skilled management over a good promoter any day. I still think I am right, but I am also starting to understand the other side. If you are a rational person, skilled management has to win, but if you are going to go out and make bets, your best first hire is a good quarterback who is probably not rational, but can project a vision and how to score the goal. Then you hire the guys who get stuff done.

In business there are principals, and then there are consultants. The two are wired very differently. A consultant thinks about the number of hours billed and does the math on what he earned and is very happy. A principal does not count the cards in the same way.

I always dreamed of being a consultant. The fact is, if you have something to say, people will pay for it, and it probably pays more on a risk-adjusted basis for most people than being a principal. You get up in the morning, you do your job, and you get a sum of cash. If you save 10% of that over your life, you are going to be quite well off, assuming you have an education and a brain to sell.

The key to being a good consultant is knowing not the truth, but what the client wants. Maybe another way to look at it is the truth is what the client wants. Most people want to hear themselves in a slightly different manner. If you are a consultant, every project is feasible and everything is couched in wiggle words.

I had a professor in grad school—heck, he was the only reason I stayed in the program—who hated wiggle words. You either knew something or you did not and you were never to couch the answer in “I think” or “should.”

If you are a principal, you do not think about personal money and project money. You might be driven by money, but you are more driven by the game and playing it, and damned be the person who gets in your way to the end goal. Australia is full of principal, as is Canada. Some are very, very good, and most 99.99% of them would be better off going out and finding a day job.

Principals have dreams and then they go do them, sometimes well and sometimes horribly. They sometimes win, but most of the time they lose. A good principal always is an optimist and is able to map the path from where he is today to where he needs to get. Just being an optimist does not work. You have to be able to clearly know the steps you need to take to get to your goal, and to have a clear plan on how to take those steps.

A promoter who is good is a principal who can also play quarterback. Not only can a promoter promote, they can get the vision across to lots of other people in a orderly manner. There are very few good promoters, and I am starting to understand that even in their projects that are junk, they stand a much better chance than the rest of us. Every project that is a success in this business is driven by a good promoter.

The best promoter knows when to sell out, and that is the key. It is, however, amazing how much further down the path that sale is vs. what a mere mortal would do. He will get every last penny off the table before selling out. A good promoter will make a so-so project fly, but even a good promoter can not produce gold out of straw. The best promoters find good projects and the combination is a wonder to watch.