Thursday, April 26, 2012

Alphaville Diagnoses The Incredible Chinese Copper Inventory Build

OCD
From FT Alphaville:
China is being buried alive in copper
According to Wikipedia, compulsive hoarding is a disorder characterized by the excessive acquisition and inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that would seemingly qualify as useless or without value.

We’d like to make the case that China is suffering from this disorder and that we’re at the stage where a psychopharmacological intervention needs to be organised by China’s friends and family. If not China’s hoarding tendencies could destroy the world as we know it.

Case in point, the following picture from a Standard Chartered’s trip to examine copper inventories in bonded areas in eastern Shanghai last week....MUCH MORE
Amazing. It's like the cat lady who, when asked about the hundred tabbies just removed says:
"Well it started with three and then it just sort of got away from me"
Or the guys I mentioned in 2010's "CME Group expands dairy complex with cheese futures":
Years ago I heard of a Chicago company that made a whey-based artificial cheese.
Apparently the operation was headed by a mad scientist type who had come up with the formula but had no marketing ability.

He was producing the stuff and not selling any, converting all the investors' cash into this "analog" goop and storing it in Chicago area warehouses.

Then the Chernobyl reactor blew, the price of whey skyrocketed, I've no idea what the connection was, the company went broke and the receivers opened the warehouses to find tons of this 'cheeze', semi-molten in the summer heat.

That's what I thought of when I saw this story, tons of the stuff oozing out of bonded warehouses. No connection of course, just a visual....