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John Hathaway: How central bankers fritter away their time -- and ours
9:44p ET Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
For months there have been reports from all over the
world about the theft of copper from public and private
installations. Thieves are even dying for the stuff, as
when one tried dismantling a streetlight the other day
and was electrocuted. Today's copper theft story is
appended.
You may recall the story from The Wall Street Journal
on March 14 reporting that even beer kegs now are being
raided as valuable scrap metal:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gata/message/3723
The point seems to be that almost everything REAL is
at risk of being MONETIZED these days as the world is
flooded with money, money equivalents, money
substitutes, and credit -- perhaps the precursor to
what von Mises called the "crack-up boom," when people
can't get out of money and into tangible assets fast
enough.
Do you remember the story about the woman who took a
wheelbarrow full of reichmarks to the bakery to buy
bread during the Weimar hyperinflation in 1920s
Germany? A thief knocked her down, dumped the
reichmarks on the sidewalk, and ran off with the
wheelbarrow.
The commodities boom is proving awfully frustrating
to certain analysts, including some in GATA's own
ranks, who see supply being more than adequate for
for customary demand and prices being far higher
than can be justified by any customary accounting.
But these analysts may not be taking into account
a new sort of demand -- monetary demand.
After all, Bloomsbury Minerals Economics declared in
January that lowly copper had transcended being a
base metal and had become a monetary instrument
like gold and silver:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gata/message/3604
And why not? With central bank dishoarding and
market manipulation suppressing the price of the
traditional monetary metals, people looking for
an inflation hedge were bound to find something
else as hard, if not quite as glamorous.
Blame it on speculation by hedge funds if you
want, but that won't stop the thief dismantling
your air-conditioner or ripping the aluminum
siding off your house while you're on vacation.
It's a whole new world out there.
Thank you, Chairman Greenspan.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
* * *
Thefts from Air-Conditioning Units
Becoming More Common in Lexington
From WLEX-TV, Channel 18
Lexington, Kentucky
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
http://www.lex18.com/Global/story.asp?S=4817195&nav=menu203_1_17
If you have central air conditioning, you could be targeted for a
crime that has become a big problem in Lexington. In just the past
few weeks, Lexington police say, they have had 35 cases of people
stealing copper tubing from air-conditioning units.
Employees at Smith Realty Group off Nicholasville Road found out
about the rash of thefts the hard way -- they came to work Tuesday
morning to find both of their AC units torn apart, the copper tubing
in both units gone. Two nearby businesses were also hit.
"It just seems like you've been violated," said employee Carol
Bryant. "They've destroyed some of your property."
While the copper is only valued at $1.90 per pound, police say
thieves aren't deterred. "The criminal mind never ceases to amaze
you," said Lexington police Sgt. David Marcum. "What people do to
get money when they need the money."
The repairs, as a rule, likely cost much more than the stolen piping
itself.
"They're only getting a small amount, maybe $15 for copper piping,"
said Bryant. "It's going to be thousands of dollars worth of damage
to our AC unit."
Police say catching the thieves is tricky. Unless they are caught in
the act, there's no way to track copper pipe, and whether or not it
was stolen. Police recommend making sure the copper pipe is still
intact before turning on your air conditioning, otherwise you could
damage the unit.
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