Just over 150 years ago, people came to northern Minnesota in search of gold.
Instead, they found a more enduring, but no less valuable resource — iron ore.
The rest, of course, is history — Minnesota history shaped by generations of entrepreneurial, daring and hard-working “Iron Rangers.”
Good paying jobs, the ability to raise a family, vibrant communities, quality education and stewardship of the wilderness and environment — these are the past and present values and aspirations that define more than a century of mining throughout Minnesota’s Iron Range.
Read more: http://www.virginiamn.com/mine/article_1dad37ae-f95d-11e2-8a48-0019bb2963f4.html
Rural Minnesotans Less Optimistic About Economy
MPR News
Tom Robertson
Rural Minnesotans are less optimistic about the economy than people in the Twin Cities and other metropolitan areas of the state, according to a new study by the Blandin Foundation.
The Blandin Foundation’s Rural Pulse survey, to be released today, found that while about 40 percent of respondents in urban areas thought there aren’t enough local job opportunities, 56 percent of rural Minnesotans thought so.
“Recovery hasn’t made it to all people,” said Kathleen Annette, president of the Grand Rapids-based foundation. “And there are those in rural communities that have less optimism. And those are primarily those that are making less than $35,000 a year, and they’re older than the age of 35.” Read more: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2013/05/08/news/rural-minnesotans
Blandin Foundation
News Release
Economic recovery is reaching Minnesotans unequally, according to a statewide survey released by the Blandin Foundation. The real-time snapshot of community issues, perceptions and priorities among rural Minnesota residents, called Rural Pulse(TM), demonstrated that demand for living-wage jobs far outweighs all other concerns.
While residents note that the economy has improved somewhat, 58 percent of rural Minnesotans and 41 percent of urban Minnesotans say there are insufficient local job opportunities. Urban residents are nearly twice as likely as rural residents to say that their economy has improved over the past year. Read more: http://www.blandinfoundation.org/resources/news-detail.php?intResourceID=7903
Ely Echo
Editorial
PolyMet has had Swiss-based Glencore as a financial partner for some time, so this wasn’t really big news. Duluth Metals received a $30 million loan from CEF Holdings Limited, which is owned 50% by Cheung Kong Limited and 50% by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
That being said, we’re a bit puzzled why the anti-mining crowd is opposed to foreign investment. Maybe they don’t realize our country was built on it. And without foreign investment, our country would be bankrupt.
Over 40 percent of the U.S. government’s debt is owned by foreign countries. China is at the top of a list that includes Japan, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
PolyMet Expects to Mine Copper by Late 2015
Duluth News Tribune
John Myers
One day after announcing plans to raise $80 million in cash, officials of PolyMet Mining Corp. on Thursday said they are moving headlong toward permitting and, eventually, construction of Minnesota’s first copper-nickel mine.
“This is a pretty big step for our project,” Jon Cherry, PolyMet president and CEO, told reporters Thursday. “We’re getting over that hump.”
On Wednesday the company announced it would receive a $20 million loan from its largest investor, Swiss commodities giant Glencore. Glencore already owns 25.6 percent of PolyMet and has options to increase that to 34 percent.