THE BUZZ FROM BELOW.

This is an article about the boom in the mining industry in Asia in 2005. Investors with an ear to the ground have been hearing the buzz from below: the miners are back. It has been nearly a half-century since the mining industry experienced what economists call a "real" boom. In recent decades, mining has been the boom-bust bane of the stock market -- companies borrowing too much during booms to open too many new mines which came on stream at times of falling demand, producing price collapses for both the metals and their shares. The inflation mania of the 1970s, driven by fashionable intellectuals' claims that the world was running out of almost everything except fast-depreciating paper money, led to massive overinvestment in mines and smelters and plunging metals prices. Flash forward to the annual BMO Nesbitt Burns Global Resources Conference in Florida this month, one of the world's biggest gatherings for miners and institutional investors. Mining is a global business. Companies from around the world came to the conference to talk to investors from around the world. Mining companies must somehow find the will, the capital and the ore bodies to give the people of Asia the chance to live in the fashion we have long taken for granted.