Specialty Metals and Minerals – Antimony

Read the prologue to specialty metals and minerals here. History Antimony has been used for thousands of years. Antimony sulphide (stibnite) was used as a cosmetic, as long ago as 3,000BC, in Sumer (today’s south-central Iraq) and Egypt. The sulphide was finely ground and applied to the eyes and eyelashes.…

Australian LNG Projects are in Serious Trouble

There are currently six liquefied natural gas (“LNG”) projects under construction in Australia. According to the International Energy Agency, all of these projects would lose money at the current oil price of USD47/barrel(“bbl”), and most would struggle even with oil at USD60/bbl. I suspect that oil would have to approach…

Freight Goes to Heck, Now Even in the US

This was originally posted by Wolf Richter over at Wolf Street. It is re-posted here with permission. This is a very worrying signal for the global economy. The Dow Jones Transportation index has been warning us: by August 25, it was down 19% year-to-date before bouncing. It’s now off 13%.…

A Great Article by the IMF on Global Financial Interconnectedness

This 2010 IMF article remains pertinent today. Countries are financially interconnected through sovereign assets and liabilities, financial institutions and corporations. This of course leads to a very complicated risk profile where failure in one institution, such as Lehman Brothers in 2008, can have multiple unforeseen consequences. This article is an…

The High Cost of Real Estate in Australia

A million dollars will not buy much in Australia’s overpriced housing market. In Sydney, the largest Australian city of around 5 million people, house prices were up 20% over the past year. Here’s a look at what one million or so will buy in Sydney. Houses Newtown is an inner…

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