CHINA HALTS RARE EARTH PRODUCTION

====================

IMNSHO and FWIW

This type of price volatility is exactly what you expect to see when massive market manipulation is occurring, i.e. illogical and in violation of basic free market axioms such as supply and demand. For example, how can prices and supplies increase at the same time, e.g. petroleum.

Market manipulation on this scale implies sovereign/state involvement, as individual capital, even that of George Soros, is grossly inadequate.

Apparently the gloves are coming off in the ongoing and rapidly escalating economic/trade wars. As is the usual practice, the average citizens will pay the price for these elitist/oligarchic fun & games.

From what I gather, while we were busy dicking around and arguing about spending a measly 60 billion in stimulus money, ( of which much ended up going to the banksters ) the Chinese immediately injected something like 600 billion in fiat currency into their own economy in infrastructure and manufacturing loans and grants and in doing so they basically cornered the market on metals including rare earth as well as silicon production as used in first generation solar cells which is basically why solar cells using new technology such as what solyndra had been offering became non-cost-effective.

=============== You appear to be 100% correct.

The PRC invested and is investing in three critical technologies: (1) Molten salt moderated thorium fusion reactors; (2) Large scale coal and organic waste liquefaction aka synthetic petroleum; and (3) a drive to recover the huge quantities of rare earths in their fly ash piles that have collected by their coal fired power plants. As a byproduct of the rare earth recovery, large quantities of both uranium and thorium are also recovered.

Indeed, it has been calculated that the value of the energy represented by the recovered thorium exceeds the original cost of the coal by several times.

It should be obvious with abundant supplies of cheap power, many of their problems can be solved through technical means such as desalinization of sea water and intensive hydroponic/aeroponic agriculture.

A major shift to molten salt thorium reactors for electrical and stationary power/process heat will make a large amount of domestic coal, currently used for electricity generation available for liquefaction and liquid fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jp4, as well as solving the organic waste disposal problem.

FWIW their coal liquefaction project is not leading edge but rather a large turnkey pilot/demonstration plant built with SASOL technology under license.

They are also taking care of their banksters and broksters, but they are able to do this for the cost of 6 or 8 rounds of issue ammunition for the firing squad, which they bill to the deceased's estate. Their TARP program has a lightly different emphasis than does ours...

I was seriously wrong about the amounts though...

--ours was ~549 billion while China's was ~586 billion....roughly equivalent, IOW

FWIW, here's where the US TARP funds went:

And if you're curious about the Chinese program, Wiki is as good a place to start as any :

While I'm at it, here's a couple of links to US historical employment statistic by demographic

and employment sector

--a nice feature is you can produce graphs comparing various groups / sectors against one another over selected time periods.......

The executed is also an organ doner.

Best Regards Tom.