Mining on my mind

On January 4th, Bob Hopper died. On January 3rd, Judy Bonds also died. Today we also learned about the practice of blow top mining, a sort of scalping of the mountains: a quick returns operation, which is safer for the miners in that it doesn't really need them. All you hear is: "BP this", "Gulf that". What about the poisoned streams, Mr. Blankenship?
And what about La Oroya? Say, Ira Rennert, the junkie extraordinaire, junk bonds are supposed to be risky but high paying, right? What did it mean, then, when Greece's something or other was graded as 'junk' recently? Was someone invited to speculate straight away?
It is important to know the richest men of one's nation, and Ira Rennert is quite a man.