RE: consolidationI absolutely agree. This IS the year where reserves and future potential will start to really push some of these situations. Whether the more speculative situations benefit as much, I have my doubts, but maybe, this is not one of those, other than the court issue. Increasing dwindling reserves at the majors is a BIG issue, and the clock is ticking. They may have hoped to grab some of these on some sort of pullback in the metal prices, but it looks harder all the time,and the price ranges just keep trending up. When they make a move, I think bidding wars may actually follow, as there aren't really that many good ones either. The perfect storm is brewing, the longer the majors delay, the higher they risk the eventual cost to add to their reserves. As well, they are competing, with each other. 2008 looks to be very good, and Eldorado, baring any bad news, a major benafactor.imo On top of this, with the FED in panic mode, inflation, declining US currency that was already in the cards has just about been guaranteed to continue at an increasing rate for the next while. It is actually hard to come up with more variables pointing to another period of gold and silver not going up in price.