INFOGRAPHIC: Most Assets Hurting, but one stock market has bucked the trend

Edmonton Journal reports that regional planning directors are considering LRT, light rail transport, to solve traffic jams along Highway 63. As more workers pour up north to work on the oil sands projects, workers are becoming snarled in traffic since the roads lack capacity. "[Officials] say something needs to be done about mobility issues that could impede the region's economic growth, with some estimates indicating an hour of traffic congestion costs oil companies $20,000 to $50,000."

Australia on Monday gave environmental approval for BHP Billiton to expand its Olympic Dam mine but set more than 100 environmental conditions on the uranium, copper and gold project. The $30 billion expansion of the existing Olympic Dam underground operation will create an adjacent open pit mine that would be the worlds biggest. An idea of the olympian effort required to construct the mine and the size of the undertaking is clear from the fact that trucks will haul overburden 24/7 for five to six years just to reach the ore body. The combined operations would mine 72 Mt ore per year and would produce 750,000 tonnes refined copper, 19,000 tonnes uranium oxide, 800,000 gold ounces and 2.9 Moz of silver per year.

Gold for December delivery traded up $37.30, or 2.3%, at $1,673.10 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange in early afternoon trade Monday, after climbing more than $40 earlier to touch an intraday high of $1,676.70. Gold's gains come amid strong buying during China's Golden Week despite the fact that buyers have to contend with bullion that is $300/oz more expensive than last year. Traders reported that the price of gold has been moving up and down in sync with the S&P 500 in the last four sessions, while the safe-haven buying that spurred the metal's three-year rally was largely absent. Other precious metals also benefited from a near 2% drop in the dollar index.

Reuters reports China will extend a resource tax – calculated on value rather than volume of production – on domestic sales of crude oil and natural gas from some regions to the whole country and expand the list of taxable resources to coking coal and rare earths from November 1. The move, billed as a way of conserving resources and limiting environmental damage, is part of a long-awaited tax reform that would enrich the coffers of local governments but slash the earnings of resource companies, such as PetroChina Co, China National Petroleum Corp and Baotou Steel Rare Earths by billions of dollars each year. The tax on rare-earth ores will be levied according to a wide range of between yuan 0.4 – 60 per ton and between yuan 8 – 20 a tonne on coking coal.

Ever since Friday's New York Times report saying the US State Department assigned an important environmental impact study of the Keystone XL pipeline to Cardno Entrix, a company with financial ties to the pipeline operator TransCanada, in contravention of federal law, opponents of the project have shifted the focus of their opposition to allegations of conflict of interest and corruption. Two prominent names on the political left and in the green movement Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben put it most bluntly: Obama's plan to transport oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast reeks of cronyism and it is quite possibly the biggest potential scandal of the Obama years. TransCanada officials meanwhile appear to have been caught off guard by the vociferous protests that weeks of Keystone hearings that ended on Friday have elicited, pointing out that TransCanada won approval for a similar pipeline three years ago with little opposition.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports Australia's Gillard government has opened the week of the crucial vote on carbon tax by revealing that big fuel users such as airlines want to sign on to the scheme, while the coal industry counterattacked with a report estimating that the tax risks the jobs of 21,000 miners. The government's bid to boost the carbon tax comes as a new coal industry-commissioned report says the tax would force the premature closure of 17 per cent of existing black-coal mines in Australia, including 15 in NSW. Today the Australian Coal Association will release the results of an ACIL Tasman consultants study that concludes an estimated 27 per cent of employment in coalmining projects would be under threat with a carbon tax.

The Wall Street Journal reports Mongolia is relaunching talks with international miners on developing the western block of Tavan Tolgoi in the South Gobi desert, the world’s largest deposit of high-quality coking coal used in steelmaking. Mongolia's National Security Council rejected a deal struck with US giant Peabody Energy, China's Shenhua and a Russian-Mongolian consortium mid-September, just two months after they were announced as winners. At the time losing bidders from Brazil, India and South Korea raised serious concerns and Japan went so far as to call the bidding process 'extremely regrettable'. Mongolia still hopes to privatize its Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi coal-mining company which controls the remainder of the 6 billion tonne resource for upwards of $3 billion next year.

Does gold's precipitous $300 drop in September represent a fundamental market shift? It is hard to argue with this statement: "Global stock markets are volatile, central banks have not regained credibility, inflation is still a concern, and trust in the markets has not been restored. Yet gold continues to fall... Gold has lost its shine."

A new report from research firm TNS could have implications for mining. A survey of affluent households around the world — defined as greater than $100,000 — found that 80% of the world's wealthy live in Western countries.TNS's Global Affluenty Investor study conducted interviews across 24 markets including China, Brazil and India.