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But within that tsunami of spam, occasionally a press release will appear that catches my eye and gets moved to the inbox for immediate perusal.

Such an event happened on Wednesday October 8 when a missive from Geodex Minerals appeared in the spam box. Geodex is an interesting company as opposed to most which have me on their hit lists. They have an advanced tungsten-molybdenum play in New Brunswick that macroeconomist and friend Jay Taylor first introduced me to at the NYC Hard Assets Conference in May 2007.

However, it is not a company that I follow closely because of the targeted metals:

Molybdenum is the most fickle of metals. Its price is historically volatile and controlled by by-product and recycled supply and alloy steel demand. About 60% of world production is a by-product from the giant porphyry copper mines of the southwest USA and Chile. China is the largest primary producer and the United States is second with three huge, high grade western mines. That’s soon to be four with one of the best and largest orebodies in the world (Climax) re-opening in 2010 and initially scheduled to add over 20% to current domestic production . Tungsten is a specialty metal used mainly in carbide and composite metal alloys. Producing North American mines in California, Nevada, and British Columbia were undercut and forced to close when flooded by cheap Chinese production and imports in the mid to late 1980’s. China currently produces over 85% of yearly mine supply.

Both metals are still trading at historically high levels but supply/demand balance and mid to long-term price projections are extremely risky for the reasons outlined above.

But I digress.

The news I received from Geodex was actually a reprint from the Northern Miner. The gist of the story was the difficulty of raising venture capital in our little microcap arena when blue chips are trading at pennies on the dollar in a volatile and tumultuous bear market and with worldwide depression looming.

We all know that. That’s not news, is it?

But here is what is

news and what struck me about the Northern Miner article:

The CEO and all management of Geodex have voluntarily taken a 50% pay cut to preserve company capital and accomplish their goal of completing a pre-feasibility study on the Sisson Brook moly-tungsten deposit.

Wow, now isn’t that novel: A company whose management is thinking project and shareholders first and not making a living running a public company for high salaries and the associated perks of travel to world financial capitals, accommodations in five star hotels, wining and dining on the company dole, conducting business on the country club golf course, and going on field trips to exotic project locations with the requisite helicopter fly-overs and guided fishing tours.

Please don’t get me wrong. One of the most attractive aspects of my analyst business is exactly those items mentioned above. My latest musing before I went on a real four week vacation espoused on those benefits (How I Spent My Summer Vacation, September 22, 2008).

But in these bad news bear times, each and every one of us, public companies included, must downsize, cut back an extravagant lifestyle, tighten the belt, dispense of some extraneous toys, eliminate waste and overhead, and focus on what will get us thru the downturn in good financial condition and in a position to profit when the bottom is reached, markets begin to recover, and the raging bull snorts and paws the ground once again.