Metal content? Priced steel, aluminum or copper lately?

On Sat, 24 May 2008 08:37:02 -0700, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:

Its always dangerous to extrapolate from a single data point, but
this could be the first drops of water seeping through the cracks
as the dam bursts, although Vallejo is not a major municipality.

Like Orange was?
==========
Interesting that you remember Orange County. It appears that the
Orange County Debacle and the LTCM disaster were linked [if only
by the employment of extreme leverage, hubris, and over reliance
on arcane calculations -- Astrology for Orange County and the
BMS/VAR algorithms for LTCM]].

Financial catastrophe was [apparently] avoided only because
Greenspan stepped in to coordinate the orderly
unwinding/liquidation of LTCM. This was not a coup on the part
of Greenspan, as he had largely created this financial H bomb by
failing to take action when it was possible to do with minimal
cost/disruption.

[I observe here that the "free market" is *NOT* a suicide pact.
From the Orange County results, it appears that Astrology is not
the best basis for making financial/monitary/investment
decisions...]

for some background click on
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...ract_id=259854
http://www.ultirisk.com/en/DFA.asp
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery...9854& mirid=1
http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Mone.../dp/0471498114
snip
"Long Term Credit Management's demise is one of a number of
recent high profile collapses involving the world's derivatives
markets. Other recent ones include those of Sumitomo's chief
copper trader, Yasuo Hamanaka, who lost $1.8 billion during a
decade of unauthorized dealing and price manipulation in the
copper market; Orange County's $1.7 billion loss on risky, highly
leveraged investments on the direction of interest rates;
Metallgesellschaft's $900 million loss on crude oil hedges; and,
of course the activities of Nicholas Leeson, Baring's infamous
Rogue Trader."
snip
http://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/te...8/tsty1598.htm
http://www.hennesseegroup.com/releases/pitfalls.html


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).