Glencore's Colquiri mine seized in Bolivia - Telegraph

Glencore's Colquiri mine seized in Bolivia - Telegraph:

Glencore's Colquiri mine seized in Bolivia

Glencore has demanded compensation from Bolivia after the country's Left-wing government nationalised one of the commodities group's tin and zinc mines.

'via Blog this'

Resource nationalism

Angry people without money or food need a bogie man to blame and some leaders are happy to point the finger. 

Argentina has nationalised the assets on its soil of Repsol the Spanish oil company.   Further to that Argentina is sabre rattling over The Falkland islands which lie 500miles of it's coast. The arguement being that British colonialism shouldn't own somewhere on the other side of the world but Argentina should because 500miles is closer that to Britain.  The fact the inhabitants of the islands have been there over 180 years when it was an uninhabited rock and class themselves as British is irrelevant to the Argentina.  Perhaps the new discovered oil in the Falklands is the real reason for the claim, or sour grapes over being bankrupted in 2001 by Western banks, some of which were based in London. 

David Cameron and Cristina Kirchner

With rescource nationalism comes a withdrawal of capital and infrastructure.  Perhaps this would have a deflationary effect as companies and banks become cautious about taking risks in nationalistic countries, but the world still needs metals and I'm sure China will be happy to buy South American metals regardless of ownership. Albeit and a knock down price. 

Rise or fall

Metals may drop in price if there is a Western deflation.  (People not buying mobile phones or computers. )

Metal prices may rise if a lack of investment in the newly nationalised state run mines with incompetent direction make it more difficult to extract metals and creating a shortage.

If there is deflation there will be money printing.  If there's money printing pensions and savings will rapidly lose value, food will become expensive and people will become angry.  As angry as the Arabs in the Arab spring, but this time it will be right outside your door.

Regardless of metal prices rising or falling prices in currency there is always a need for metals, and that's why it is worth holding as an investment. 

I would say that wouldn't I because I sell metals?  Well, yes prices of metals have dropped this last year, but a colleague of mine said he paid £30 for his gold wedding ring 20 years ago.  I estimate it to weigh about 8 grams which means it's worth about £250 in scrap value.  An 8 fold increase in price in just 20 years!

Food for thought.

http://buycopper.co.uk/ 

Germanium Coins

Here is a Germanium coin/pellet imported from China and is one of 500 for sale. 

To give a sense of scale I put a 2pence piece in the picture.  It really is quite small and weighs 0.3gm

I tried to get larger coins but this was the biggest they made. It's an interesting metal.  It's not dangerous and it's supposed to have healing qualities but they said that about Arsenic.  :P    

I don't recommend ingesting this metal.  People are doing some strange thing with colloidal silver, which is supposed to be safe but I saw a youtube video of a man who's skin turned blue and it didn't look very healthy.  

China as always is the main producer of this metal and I haven't found any other supplier of this metal.  They have a monopoly it seems.  That said, if there are other nations producing Zinc then they may refine Germanium too.
I tried finding an annual production tonnage for this metal and I found 60tons.  That is a very small amount, considering China alone produces 300 tons of Gold a year.  

Germanium is mainly used as a semi conductor, but you'll probably get better information from watching the man with the big hair in the video below.

Would the world notice if this metal was unavailable or in short supply?  YUP!   Fiber-optics, infra red and solar cell technology need Germanium.

More information can be found at Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanium

www.buycopper.co.uk

BRONZE bullion bars

It was after reading about the humble British 1 Pence piece that led me to think about the metal Bronze. 

It's been around since, well, the Bronze age.  It's an alloy of Copper and Tin and is tougher than Copper and Tin on their own.   

I believe it's still widely used in marine applications like propellers but also sculptures and plaques that get stolen by people devoid of any morality, much like bankers and politicians. 

The humble British decimal penny from 1971 to 1992 was made in Bronze before it changed to the cheap copper plated steel.  Why?  Because Bronze became worth more than the face value of the Penny.  Inflation made Bronze too expensive to use.  People would simply keep their old pennies and sell them to scrap metal merchants.  

I actually know a man who tried buying £1million worth of 2pence pieces. He was going to ship them to a foreign country to be melted down because the old 2pence pieces were made of 97% pure copper and he stood to make a lot of money from the scrap value. 

You can't melt the currency down in the country it was issued in.  There are laws stopping that but there's no law against melting it in other countries I hear.   

So, almost all western governments have slowly issued worthless coinage to replace coinage that had real worth because of their metal content.  

At this moment Greece and the Eurozone is teetering on the brink of collapse, where the Greek people are withdrawing 1billion Euros A DAY from Greek banks because they fear a bank run and losing all their savings if they change to Drachma.  Not that it'll help if Greeks stash Euro's under their bed because the Euro as a whole is in deep trouble.  The Spanish have started withdrawing Euros from Santander and even the British Santander is having withdrawals and they're not connected with the problems in Spain. 

Rich Greeks are buying housing in London because they see London real estate as a safe haven.  Although the Pound Sterling isn't doing that well either,  but you can see the thinking.  Buy hard assets.  Something that can't be devalued.  

I never understood the buying real estate hard asset/investment thing myself.  Council tax, water rates, electricity, insurance and maintenance of a house is expensive.   With metals, you leave it in a cupboard or your garage.  Years later, list it on Ebay, or go to a jeweller or scrap metal merchant and exchange it for cash.  

Final note.  A colleague of mine said he paid £30 for his gold wedding ring in 1992.  It felt like about 8grams to me.   A gold sovereign weighs 8grams and costs no less than £270 today.  So that ring has had an almost a tenfold increase in value compare to the Pound in 20 years.   

Oh yes, the bronze bars.  They're selling for £60 at the time of writing this. The metal grade is PB102  from a certified metals dealer (phosphor Bronze 102) which seems to be the most widely used grade.  It has a beautiful golden hue to it.  They're hand polished in Birmingham UK and pressed in Redditch.  British made from start to finish. 

You can buy them at the link below.

BUY BRONZE

China's epic hangover begins - Telegraph

China's epic hangover begins - Telegraph:

Here's a snippet of a Telegraph article today.

It is hard to obtain good data in China, but something is wrong when the country's Homelink property website can report that new home prices in Beijing fell 35pc in November from the month before. If this is remotely true, the calibrated soft-landing intended by Chinese authorities has gone badly wrong and risks spinning out of control.


What I gather from this article is a monster of colossal proportion is about to wake up.
I could be wildly wrong but if Chinese people can't invest their wealth outside China, which I assume is because the Yuan can't be used outside China, then wealthy Chinese people will invest in property and thereby cause the bubble. If the property market collapses, losing millions of people their wealth as has happened in the West with the property bubble over here, then it looks likely Chinese people with any money left will buy precious metals because that is allowed and encouraged in China.
I expect 2012 will be the year precious metals go stratospheric with huge swings up and down in price along the way.  Inflation and deflation are on a collision course. Anything can happen.

http://buycopper.co.uk/

How banks opperate

buycopper.co.uk

Why Buy Copper?

Every few weeks I get an email quoting the spot price of copper and mentioning the 'high price' of the copper bars sold on the Buy Copper website.  

Some people ask for an explanation of the price and some people are rude.  The rude emails are deleted straight away, and I rarely have time now to reply to the people who'd like to know.  

The reason is, tax and labour.  

When you buy copper or silver or titanium, palladium, gallium etc you have to pay tax.  VAT is 20%.  Polishing is labour +VAT, stamping is stamping +VAT 

Paypal takes 3%  and there are other expenses that push the price higher.  

The spot price is a mythical number constantly quoted.  I believe you can buy metals at the spot price from the London Metals Exchange but it would have to be about 20 tonnes! Which you'd have to move with a lorry and the pay 20% VAT. What form it would look like I don't know because nobody does it.  

Remember the price of gold was at an all time low in about 2002?  How many people considered Gold as a good investment back then?  How many uses has gold got?  Not many.  What about Copper?

So as the Euro slides into oblivion much like the Russian Ruble did in the 90s, the currency you think in may actaully be worthless.  

Certainly £75 billion of new Quantatative Easing money from the Bank of England last week hasn't done your savings or weekly wage any good. 

Metals are money, they have value because they are expensive to mine.  Paper money is a promise.  The Bank of England has devalued it's promise of worth.

£75billion pounds is about 10% of GDP in Britain and they'll use that up in under 2 years, which probably means the price of everything in paper Pounds will go up by about 10% before the next round of devaluing.  

http://buycopper.co.uk/