[ExI] too late

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, 26 November, 2025 4:25 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: spike at rainier66.com
Subject: Re: [ExI] too late

 

I think this chart is more informative than yours: 

 



 

John K Clark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sheesh, John are you still going on about that?  Did you note the spot price of neodymium?  We are told that Nd is the stuff most needed for good magnets. 

 

But the real deal is uranium.  It is all about U.

 

Read on please. 

 

Spot prices are determined by the collective guess on the part of investors and speculators on future prices of that material, which is determined by supply and demand.  For raw materials, metals which never spoil, which can be stored indefinitely and securely in the form of ingots with very little effort or storage space, the spot price tells all: it has been steady (or slightly declining once inflation is factored) for years.  There is plenty of that stuff available at the usual price.  Everything we heard about supply chains and China was hype and flim flam, price manipulation for fun and profit.  Solid empirical evidence: spot prices on “rare earth” elements.

 

I might offer this insight: when the military stockpiles material in those enormous storage bunkers I mentioned, it need not be only ingots of neodymium but also the equipment to mine and refine neodymium.  Businesses such as Mountain Pass Materials already had all that stuff, and the equipment which had been idled for a quarter century but restarted recently.  

 

The rare earth element “shortage” was all a grand illusion John, set up for the purpose of driving up the spot price of Nd, which worked long enough for the Nd holders to cash in back in 22.  We know the game: investors do this stuff all the time with silver.  Silver is a popular element for cornering the market for some reason.  A lot of speculators, market squeezes, naked shorts, all that stuff, plenty of that in the Ag market.  I suppose it sounds more prestigious to tell the locals one is a silver baron.  Not as much in Nd, but the same principle applies: buy a bunch of it, create a run for it, sell short at the peak, crash the price by dumping your horde, guess at the market nadir, rebuy what you had to cover your shorts, load up for the next stampede.  It’s an old game.  The good news is that anyone can compete.

 

There is no shortage of any element, never was and never will be any real shortage of any element, with the single exception of uranium.  We will always need and want more of that stuff.  The rest of it, we have enough or can get it, given only energy, which we can get from uranium.  In a sense, we can turn 235 uranium into any element we want or need, with current technology.  We can turn uranium into wind turbines, turn it into solar panels, into lithium battery energy storage, into any refined element, into anything we want.

 

Uranium is the alpha element, the only one like it.  It is all about U, John.  U is what matters most.  U is all I care about.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

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