The American Government has spoken. After a 15-day government shutdown and with 24 hours remaining until the country plunged headlong off the fiscal cliff, the Congress and President have agreed on a grand plan: In 61 days, Congress will impanel a "supercommittee" that will do what a 2011 equally super committee -- appointed to do what a 2010 Presidential Commission failed to do -- also failed to do, with a deadline of 76 days to pass a budget for the fiscal year that began 15 days ago. As for the fiscal cliff, the plan is to roll it forward 115 days, papering over the debt crisis with a budgetary blank check. Then Congress and the President will do it all over again: debt ceiling déjà vu.
Welcome to Washington, 2013, where "Wayne's World" -- "Live in the Now, Man!" - is no longer a slacker classic, but the bipartisan budget philosophy.
Compare that to the wider world, where countries that will define the 21st Century global order are focusing a decade and more downfield.
What's happening while America is writing itself hot checks and holding congratulatory press conferences?
India, which will reach 2050 as the world's largest nation, is busy locking down the resources it will require to support 1.7 billion people. State-owned NMDC -- with mines producing iron ore, copper, diamonds, tin, tungsten and graphite -- has ventured into South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe in search of coal projects. State-owned NALCO -- India's national aluminum company -- has taken stakes in projects in South Africa, Indonesia and Iran.
On the private-sector side, India's Vedanta Resources produces zinc, copper, iron ore, cobalt, silver, lead -- plus oil and gas. Already Africa's largest zinc producer, Vedanta has invested $4 billion in African resource projects in the past eight years alone. India-to-Africa plays also include Tata Steel and Essar Group, active respectively in iron-ore and coal projects in Mozambique, and OP Jindal Group, prospecting for coal in South Africa and Mozambique. Dharni Sampda -- "Earth's wealth" in Sanskrit - mines manganese in Côte d'Ivoire and has exploration permits for bauxite and manganese there, along with tantalite in Sierra Leone and uranium in Niger.
Yet India's external mining investment is easily eclipsed by the state-owned enterprises of China. Just this month, China's Minmetals -- a state-owned enterprise, with origins dating back to the early months after Mao took power --- made a stop in Sri Lanka, looking for copper, zinc and aluminum. Geologically, Sri Lanka has little to offer there, but the Chinese shopping list is instructive. These three metals featured in American Resource Policy Network's "Gateway Metals" study: Primary metals that serve as the source for by-product metals increasingly critical to high tech and green tech applications -- and advanced weaponry. By focusing on copper, zinc and aluminum, Minmetals is putting itself in a position to access indium, cadmium and germanium (via zinc); rhenium, selenium, tellurium, molybdenum and in some instances rare earths (via copper); plus gallium and vanadium (via aluminum). In short, those three mainstay metals are the gateway to 10 more metals that figure in key manufacturing applications.
