Lead (Pb) price continues to skyrocket

An excellent observation. You want to put it in perspective?

An ounce of gold still weighs 480 grains, but it now takes about $760 of our useless dollars to purchase one. Official gold valuation, prior to 1933, was $20.67/ounce.

Harold

We own a fishing tackle store here in South Africa - the price of lead here too has rocketed - even here the lead is being sent to China from the scrap merchants - not good for sinker prices !!!! Soon it wont only be Bismuth sinkers that are outrageously priced !!!

Tim

We could simply stop buying Chinese-made toys.

If the demand for Chinese toys goes down, they won't need as much lead-based paint, and their need for lead will go down dramatically.

Then you'll have to go with tungsten, or maybe iridium... You can get pure tungsten for three dollars an ounce, and it's about 75% heavier than lead! But I guess even with lead's price increase, it's still much cheaper than tungsten. Iridium is almost double the density of pure lead, but an ounce of iridium would be over seven hundred dollars. You'd have to be one wildly successful fisherman to justify iridium sinkers...

Thank you. Yeah, inflation doth bite. At the same time, if you think that the dollar has *ever* seen a high rate of inflation, you'll be in for an awful shock when the petrodollar exclusivity is finally broken. Well, SOME people will be, but I suspect you invest in resources rather than currencies and are probably already aware of the upcoming period of catastrophic inflation.

A fisherman with a wet suit and SCUBA gear. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

Rumors, innuendo, and gossip continue to indicate that Saddam Insane got the chop because of three no-nos.

1. He started pricing Iraq's oil in Euros, and was thus threatening to blow that particular scam.
2. He was beating the oil futures speculators because he could turn the oil spigot on and off, as required to make a profit going short and long.
3. He was speculating against the US dollar, verging on economic warfare, as an extension/expansion of his oil speculation successes.

Note: Iran has begun to require payments in Yen from Japan, and Euros from Europe for their oil, and China and the other large holders of US dollars and dollar denominated securities are forming "sovereign investment" entities, to exchange their virtual dollar assets for equities including land, buildings and large shares of American corporations.

Just who do these foreigners think they are, demanding that the US redeem their IOUs? If PIK [payment in kind, where you make the debt payments with more paper debt] is good enough for the US banks and hedge funds it should be good enough for China and the Arabs.

Unka' George [George McDuffee] ============ Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. president. Letter, 17 March 1814.

Immediately after the "mission accomplished" vistory over Saddam, I exchanged a substantial amount of our dollars into euros, and held them ever since. A decision that I am not at all regretting. I feel much better with cash in euros rather than in dollars, though I still have quite a lot of dollar assets -- but not 100%.

On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:07:04 -0500 in rec.crafts.metalworking, "*" wrote,

You mean stop buying from Harbor Freight? Not going to happen. Now go away.

Exactly.

You were smart to invest in Euros then. I didn't know about any of this until recently.

Though I'm no expert in this, I have a feeling that a sudden, catastrophic drop in the dollar's value could negatively impact the Euro as well, not to mention the entire world economy. I'm not saying it would devastate the world economy, just that it wouldn't be good.

To me, all currency is just an IOU which can be voided at any time. Of course, nothing is 100% proof against loss, but I feel better putting my money in hard assets.

You did not know about our trade deficit, mounting debt, and artificially low interest rates?

It would be a good thing, in my opinion, though it will obviously lead to higher interest rates here in the US. Since US foreign debt is denominated in dollars (not typical), an option to av oid paying it is inflation. Another outcome is a more responsible fiscal policy, and more favorable trade balance.

Make sure that the "hard assets" earn you money while you are holding them. Here, I am a little bit preaching to do what I say rather than what I do, since for a few years I held 7 100 oz silver bars. But that was because I thought that silver was underpriced.

On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:17:43 -0500 in rec.crafts.metalworking, "Adam Corolla" wrote,

Some time ago I found a used carbide diamond-shaped tool insert lying on the sidewalk. I don't use insert tooling, so I was surprised to find how heavy it was for the small size. Tungsten carbide, presumably. How much does used carbide go for per pound? Would sinkers or boat keels molded of used inserts embedded in epoxy be economical?

About 5 dollars per lb. I recently scrapped a few lbs.

Really, Harold.

Out of context, this looks like a huge devaluation. In context, not so much.

Better comparisons would be to look at the price of gold, etc, against the monthly average wage.

Wages have increased a great deal, also, in the time frame. A guy that could buy an ounce of gold on his payday then, can still pretty much buy one now.

Inflation sucks, but comparing just one data point, such as "the price then was..." is pretty much useless info.

Compare how long a person could live, on the sale of an ounce of gold, then to current state.

That would be a little better comparison.

Cheers Trevor Jones

On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:18:31 -0700, David Harmon wrote: How

$8.50/lb as of Monday. It was as high as $9.25 last summer.

This just in

Light, sweet crude for November delivery hit $90.02 in electronic trading Thursday evening before returning to around $89.60. Earlier, prices had risen $2.07 to settle at a record $89.47 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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Unka' George [George McDuffee] ============ Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. president. Letter, 17 March 1814.

Ned, do you know how much does HSS go per pound?

======= connect the dots.....

======== dot #1 AP Dollar Hits Low Against Euro Thursday October 18, 5:35 pm ET By Erin Conroy, AP Business Writer Dollar Drops to Low Against Euro Amid Weak Economic News From Washington

NEW YORK (AP) -- The dollar fell to a new low against the euro on Thursday after the 13-nation European currency broke through the $1.43 mark on reports from Washington that growing economic weakness was boosting jobless claims. for rest of article click on

MF says dollar ?overvalued?

By Chris Giles in London

Published: October 17 2007 14:00 | Last updated: October 17 2007

Currency traders were given a green light to continue selling the US dollar on Wednesday, as the International Monetary Fund said the greenback ?remains overvalued? and rejected claims the euro had risen too far. for rest of article click on

October 18, 2007 Iraqi Contracts With Iran and China Concern U.S. By JAMES GLANZ

BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 ? Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran.

The Iraqi electricity minister, Karim Wahid, said that the Iranian project would be built in Sadr City, a Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is controlled by followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. He added that Iran had also agreed to provide cheap electricity from its own grid to southern Iraq, and to build a large power plant essentially free of charge in an area between the two southern Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.

The agreements between Iraq and Iran come after the American-led reconstruction effort, which relied heavily on large American contractors, has spent nearly $5 billion of United States taxpayer money on Iraq?s electricity grid. Aside from a few isolated bright spots, there was little clear impact in a nation where in many places electricity is still available only for a few hours each day.

Of the two new projects Iraq has agreed to finance, Mr. Wahid said, the largest is a $940 million power plant in Wasit to be built by a Chinese company, which he said was named Shanghai Heavy Industry. That project would pump some 1,300 megawatts of electricity into the Iraqi grid. For comparison, all of the plants currently connected to Iraq?s grid produce a total of roughly 5,000 megawatts.

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Unka' George [George McDuffee] ============ Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. president. Letter, 17 March 1814.