[ExI] not that rare earth (part 2 of at least 2)

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> 
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>
>>... Keith, I cannot imagine it would take years to figure out how to refine an element out of ore, given modern chemistry technology... spike

>...We know how.  There was a mine that sorted the REE out in the US.  One of the problems is the long lead time on industrial machines.  For a while, I installed electronic equipment in a copper mill.  They had 30 ball mills that made fine beach sand out of 3/4 inch crushed rock at
100 tons per hour per ball mill.  Each one was driven by a 1200 hp motor.

>...If you have any doubts about how long such equipment takes to be delivered and installed, talk to one of the companies that makes them.  Keith

Ja to all, no objection.  Sufficient piles of money have a magic way of accelerating such investments.  If the demand is high enough, driving the price high enough, investors will come stampeding, the plants will be built on an accelerated schedule.  It might still take years, but investors race with each other, to get that metal on the market while the spot price is high enough to pay for all that expensive equipment.

This you can bet on: the world will not let China get a monopoly on anything.  Their aggressive posture towards Taiwan makes them an unreliable trade partner.  The military has anticipated this for decades and they have their own strategic stockpiles of anything that comes out of China.

This you can also bet on: manufacturers who need those materials anticipated China's aggressive Taiwan stance and stockpiled materials well ahead of time, betting on huge profits when the spot price went up, as it has on some of the magnet stuff.  The electronics stuff didn't go up much, but the magnet stuff did, so those investors are making out bigtime.  

If one wants to invest in elements, most people think of gold and silver.  I would say that is a bad idea, for it makes one a target and requires a big clunky safe and all that.  Buy niobium, ytterbium, praseodymium, those other elements which surprise you when you hear about them for the first time after having spent your adult life around chemistry.  Investment is always a guess: perhaps someone will discover a use for it.  Buy a few ingots of some rare earth, stack it in the back of your garage, no security heroics needed.  Then if the hoozisium or wotzatium spot price goes way up, it makes you a hero, a rich one (the best kind of hero (it also provides a buffer against China leveraging its earth metal near-monopoly (giving non-Chinese world a few years' supply of materials (during which we greedy speculators can invest in mining and refining equipment.))))

spike