In Davos, Switzerland, the world is holding an economic forum. It’s a grim meeting where money experts - according to Tim Weber, a BBC correspondent attending the forum and posting tweets on Twitter and the BBC - say, “We are not about to turn the corner, we haven’t seen the corner, we don’t know where the corner is.”

This forum encompasses so many issues, from the current economic crisis to climate change, to the political posturing in Zimbabwe and calls for peace in the Middle East.

More than 40 heads of state and 2,500 participants, including the likes of Al Gore, Rupert Murdoch, and Kofi Annan, to name a few will attend this five-day meeting. It comes at an unprecedented time, and the participation this year is unparalleled.

But again, the overall feeling right now is very grim.

The BBC has a page where you can follow live, via Tim Weber’s tweets, or you can see some of the Webcasts directly from the World Economic Forum Website.

Mining major, Rio Tinto (RTP:NYSE), is in some dire straits… It’s needs cash and needs it now, or it may have trouble paying a $8.9 billion bill come October 2009.

Last year, RTP bought Canadian aluminum company Alcan for $38.9 billion. The company had expected to be able to sell some assets to raise money, but in this environment, it’s not happening quickly enough. So RTP may have to resort to other measures, like cutting capex by $1 billion, and slashing its workforce by 14,000, or 13%.

Not a good situation, so RTP is considering issuing about $4 billion-worth of new stock. Some analysts thing the company should aim higher, to about $6 or $10 billion…

But what does that mean for the value of the company for current shareholders?

Technically, the more shares issued, the lower the value of each share. For current shareholders that’s like taking out a home-equity loan, and some probably aren’t happy about it.

On the other hand, if it can keep RTP from defaulting on a loan, or keep its debt to equity ratios in check, then it might be a necessary evil, particularly if the stock is a long-term position in a buy-and-hold portfolio.

Traders may want to short the heck out of it, and indeed on this news, shares in Australia fell more than 1.5%.

This bad news might smell like an opportunity for some competitors (read BHP Billiton), and I’ve got an article coming out to Taipan Insider readers explaining one possible scenario. Stay tuned…

Let me begin with an amusing image: me, age 11, on a purple skateboard…

And then me, sprawled out on the pavement, thankful my mom forced me to wear a helmet.

I was never very good at skateboarding. My younger brother was, and he always used to show me up. But I always loved watching him do tricks, like ollies and kickflips… 360s off the loading platform behind the school cafeteria.

So I’ve got a bit of a softspot for this sport. Which is why I wanted to share this little article with you from the International Herald Tribune. A skateboarding school is waiting final approval in Kabul, Afghanistan.

It’s an unlikely place for a skateboarding school, but the kids can’t seem to get enough of it.

The idea began as an after-school program, and its main goal is to help bring a bit of normalcy into these kids’ lives. Even girls are allowed to join in the fun, and this one quote, from Maro, a 9-year old girl, really hits home:

“It gives me courage, and once I start skating, I completely forget about my fears.”

And that’s reason enough.

I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to a recent article in Taipan Daily, our free daily newsletter.

One of the recent themes we’ve been talking about is if the U.S. dollar will have the strength to remain the world’s reserve currency. Our editorial director, Justice Litle, wrote specifically about this in an article called, “President Obama Can’t Save the Dollar.”

Our belief is that the U.S. dollar has been appreciating only because investors are fleeing to “safety” which creates a sudden demand for the dollar. There is no fundamental economical aspect to the greenback to suggest this appreciation will be sustatinable.

Just the opposite, in fact. With a mad-cap printing Federal Reserve chaired by spineless leader Ben Bernanke, the dollar is a phoenix… inches away from being crisped to ashes.

It doesn’t help that we’ve got a more than $680 billion debt burden to China alone, who today got a strongly-worded statement by new U.S. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner.

But what happens if China doesn’t want to hold U.S. dollars any more, or calls up that $680 billion debt? I remember a couple years back when there was talk of China changing its dollars for gold. People brushed it off, and it hasn’t happened yet.

Yet… That’s a scary word. If you knew that the asset you were holding was going to be worthless in a year or two, would you keep holding it?

Only if somebody made it worth your while. I think this whole China situation bares watching, and closely. If we get a spike in oil prices that start to put inflationary pressure back into play, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear renewed talk of moving away from the dollar.

And it wouldn’t be just China calling for a change… Watch the Middle East, too.