China goes green with rare earth plea

Re: kettle calling pot

OPEC, De Beers, Microsoft, apple etc etc.

When you've got a monopoly you can abuse it however you want for your own benefit.

Re: kettle calling pot

Western govs are hoist by their own petard here. It's clear that China has a near-monopoly on rare Earths not because they physically happen to be located only in China, but because the environmental corner-cutting allows China to extract them far far cheaper than is possible anywhere else.

The western (+ Korea/Japan) electronics makers want their rare-earths cheap and to hell with the pollution caused in China but they don't want to pollute their own back yards to dig it up, and they don't want the Chinese to clean up their act because prices would spike (except that they can't publicly say that, because they're pretending to be eco-friendly)

Won't work. China for one is absorbing massive inflation the west is producing. Money printing etc.

Our CPI baskets are filled to the brim with cheaper Chinese manufactured goods. Which is used to suppress inflation.

Take that out and boom, you'll probably stick an easy 20% onto inflation stats just like that. Thats assuming you believe the official 3.6% inflation figure. What with substitution principle and hedonics to massage inflation.

You reckon the BoE / FED will even dare to raise interest rates to crush inflation? When millions can't pay their mega mortgages at 0.5%