Patriot76 through my many years of scrapping have experienced sever price drops, I've been fortunate to have had good relationships with the Jewish yard owners who had a larger finger on the health of the industry. I had inside information if the situation was short or long term, with today's crisis no one could have prepared for the downturn.
In the past world conflict had a positive influence on scrap demand keeping prices up, then China came into the picture as a world industrial leader, with everyone putting their eggs into the same basket feeding the Chinese economy by outsourcing North American manufacturing which cost us jobs.
Looking back it was a poor;y played chess game, part of Chinas demand for scrap and raw materials was used for her own infrastructure to keep her own economy healthy but as we all know for readying the news China has built new city's having no industry, people or merchants. The writing was on the wall instead of taking heed we laughed at the fools who also took us down with their failure.
North American industry who closed down their factories, terminating employees by the thousands all because the men in suits were still trying to get the last drop of champaign from the bottle. What I'm saying is their corporate bank accounts were still flush but as we can see now from the news this is also coming to an end. The auto industry and the banks have all been to the public trough asking for bail money.
VW an auto mobile manufacture with a global presence, the emission cheat software who do you think is going to pay for that. I do not own any vehicles manufactured by this company but have suffered a loss just the same. Thankfully my palladium horde is small with only 287 grams but it sickens me to see the price dropping daily.
History may repeat itself back in the 1930's Wall St. had jumpers, those men who jumped left behind family's that society had to support - dead or alive those men were still bottom feeders sucking every dime they could form the populace.
Stocks and Bonds just fictitious value same as the fiat dollar, bring back the gold standard. Impossible Fort Knox we know is empty, from which was proven when the Germans asked for their gold to be shipped back to them.
In the past when scrap prices were going down long term, 6 months or more I would change occupations, this round probably out picking cedar boughs for $0.37 lb.
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