Posted on 05/07/2021 11:11:51 AM PDT by george76
You must live in a place where “they” aren’t building houses at a furious clip. Here in central Indiana I see many truckloads of lumber go by every day. “They” aren’t holding back anything here. Way too much money being made.
You’d be wrong. They are intentionally holding up lumber in rail yards. First hand knowledge. It shouldn’t surprise me though, you’re wrong on many things.
Now what do I do with the boatload of pennies I have hoarded.
They are indeed holding it back, rail yards are full up. They’re intentionally driving prices up, but maybe your shot ruined you and now only trust things if the government tells you to.
It does take a little work, and preferably some type of heavy equipment so you’re not trying to move thighs yourself, but it’s satisfying saving the money and not giving the government more of my taxes to enslave me with.
I only partially joke, they are indeed doing just that.
Again the old “I am not intelligent enough to be logical so I will use 4th grade schoolyard name calling”. You do realize this is a leftist tactic right? Sounds like the kettle calling the pot black. :)
I didn’t engage you and there are things you do not know. AbolishCSEU is a good FR friend I respect very much who has a good project going with personal effort. I could have been just teasing my friend or being sarcastic, Wasn’t any of your business in the first place.
Again go bait someone else with your half cocked 4th grade foolishness.
Good for you! and Nickles... :)
Absolutely... Thank you.
Could be a small part of it. But from what my friends tell me this is not the case, they are intentionally stockpiling to get the price up before they start shipping again. I live next to a major rail line and stuff is shipping like crazy, lots of containers going back and forth. All other products are moving.
Been looking at materials index funds this week. Might be a good inflation hedge for the portfolio. Fidelity has a juicy one weighted toward copper companies.
Requisite investment notice to government regulators: I’m an idiot and know nothing. My portfolio is made up of beanie babies and pet rocks. Looking for surplus hula hoops. Call me.
“The mined out UP copper ore, all 250,000 tons (est.), was 99% pure.”
Not sure where you’re getting your numbers, but they are way off. From a history of copper mining in the UP, which took me about five minutes to find online:
“Most of the native copper production came from a 20 kilometer long belt between the towns of Houghton and Calumet, and was mined both from amygdaloidal zones in the tops of basalt lava flows and from interbedded conglomerates. During its productive period, from 1845 to 1977, the district produced 11.5 billion pounds of copper from over 300 million tonnes of ore. All of this production was from underground mines.”
This divides out to a grade of around 1.75% copper by weight. While the native copper itself was of very high purity, the miners had to extract a lot of rock containing the small pieces of pure copper. In fact, very large masses of native copper usually could not be removed economically, as blasting won’t work on them.
Anyway, grade alone is not the most important thing. A billion tons of ore at 0.3% copper contains 60 billion pounds of copper, far more than all of the native copper production from Michigan ever, and there are mines in Arizona with considerably more than that.
Not sure where you’re getting your numbers, but they are way off.
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No not way off, you are just looking at recent history. I said “Someone” because no one knows who did the mining, perhaps the Red Paint people, but that’s just a guess. It was just surface mining with whatever hand tools they used to chip out the deposits.
Those are the estimated numbers from antiquity. Not recent history - was some time during the Bronze Age (3,200 BC - 1,000 BC) according to some - much older according to others.
Australia is seeing similar price increases/shortages. There is a massive housing construction boom on at the moment driving demand for material through the roof. My family come from a timber milling area and the mills are either flat out 24/7 or idle. The idle times are mostly due to having to source timber from elsewhere as last years bushfires destroyed large areas of forestry used to supply the mills.
Governments pump trillions into the economy, of course inflation is going to spike first in the parts of the economy closest to the injection points.
OK. By the way, I made a mistake in my post. A billion tons of 0.3% contains 6 billion pounds of metal, not 60 billion.
That is an understandable situation there for sure. :)
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