McEwen Mining Inc (MUX)

[gharma]

I agree that there couldn't be a much more crippling idea than the tax on mineral reserves . . . sheesh, a company with reserves and feasibility study that is positive but that runs into a bad financing climate (which is not all that unlikely with Argentina as things are) so that there is an extended delay in the permitting and securing financing for cap ex followed by non-productive years as the project is developed would be taxed what? something like 50% of the value of the in-ground eventually recovered resource ? Absolute project killer, putting a new risk on new projects that it is hard to see how there would be any move forward.
But other than that one I can see how their mining laws could get worse if there is a force imposed popularly by (non-business sense aware or caring) resource nationalism motivated electorate, for example raise the royalty on product sold, increase the government's carried interest as silent JV partner, etc..
The country in broke from an international finance point of view, and without much in the way of successful initiatives to change that, but until it has a path to cover its budget mining is one of the few things they have that looks like low hanging fruit (for those that can overlook the shoot yourself in the foot part of it).