Sas and VDF...I "hope" you guys right. I really do.

But let me see if we can quantify that hope a bit more. There's been some interesting news in the macroeconomics over the past couple of days.

First off, China just reported growth rates of 6.1% for Q1 2009. While a little under consensus estimates, that's still reasonably good growth. But here's why I'm encouraged: China's banks -- remember this is a "command economy" and the banks are essentially instituting govt. policy -- have lend almost as much in Q1 as they did for ALL of 2008.

That's a hella of lot of stimulus...and most of that lending has yet to show in in GDP growth, but it soon will. Importantly, a lot of that is actually going to infrastructure spend which spells high commodity usage.

Add to that, the $1 trillion the G-20 pledged to developing economies -- heavy commodity users -- in the first days of this month and we've got massive stimulus going on. Much bigger than US stimulus as a percentage of GDP.

There's also been considerable talk that China would switch a significant amount of its US Dollar foreign reserves into gold. According to Evans-Pritchard, they may have been watching the wrong metal.

Hmmm... Maybe a sustained $3 dollar plus copper price may just be in the cards.

Perhaps this will help BCU in getting La Balsa off the 'simmer' mode?

But we should remember, if they could have found funding and/or a JV partner earlier, the wheels of getting production flowing would be already be moving in Mexico. If Bell had La Balsa modest cash flow coming in, it could ride out this credit crisis, and fund modest exploration.

The fact they had to switch gears and move Kabba exploration forward says they could not succeed in getting La Balsa sorted out. Kabba is Plan B. And its riskier for the simple reason its exploration is far far riskier than actual production.

Nonetheless, the macroeconmic winds are beginning to blow in our direction, but we are far from out of the woods yet.

Remember most all base metal stocks have been hammered...including the senior producers that do the acquiring. They too have been reporting lower earnings as metal prices have fallen. They too have to answer to shareholders demanding higher earnings.

All this has slowed the M & A activity...not helpful to BL in finding a JV partner while, at the same time, many competiting assets to La Balsa are also cheaper. Again, check out Mercator's Mineral Park. First phase production was targeted at 25,000 tpd -- it's been producing in the 27K to 32K range...with 2nd phase schedule for 50K about 18 months out. It's a lot cheaper today too.

If we gunna 'hope', let's pray that Marsh has got the geo model right at Kabba. Success there could make BCU a much more attractive asset -- along with the production La Balsa -- to a senior base metal producer.