Commodity Scramble Ratching Up

[don]

12 companies join German commodity alliance

Mon Jan 30, 2012 3:23pm GMT


HAMBURG, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Twelve German companies have joined the new German alliance aimed at securing raw materials supplies in the face of growing competition for key commodities, the Federation of German industry BDI said on Monday.

In October 2010, Germany's government approved a new commodities strategy aimed at helping German industry secure supplies in the face of intense competition from China and other newly-industrialised countries which will include partnerships with supplier countries and greater cooperation between German commodity consumers.

A series of major German companies have been involved in talks about a project lad by German industrial association BDI to invest in foreign commodity projects and 12 have now agreed to join, the BDI said.

The founding members are copper producer Aurubis, chemical groups BASF, Bayer, Evonik Industries, Wacker Chemie < WCHG.DE> and Chemetall; carmakers BMW and Daimler ; steelmakers Georgsmarienhütte Holding, Stahl-Holding-Saar, ThyssenKrupp and electronics group Bosch.

"We are working together to build up a powerful corporation which will provide long-term improvements to Germany's raw material supplies," said BDI vice president Ulrich Grillo. Grillo is head of one of Germany's leading zinc processing groups Grillo-Werke AG.

"The alliance has the goal of taking shareholdings in commodity projects to achieve a long-term improvement in the supply of raw materials to industry," Grillo said.

"The commodity alliance will become involved in projects at an early phase which seek and assess reserves so as to give German companies the option of sourcing (raw materials) or taking shareholdings," Grillo added.

In specific cases the alliance may itself invest in projects to develop commodity reserves, he said.

The first phase of the alliance will involve clarification of legal and organisational questions and creating the corporate structure, the BDI said.

The establishment phase of the project is being supported by the Boston Consulting Group, Egon Zehnder, Hogan Lovells and PricewaterhouseCoopers, which will initially provide advice without payment, the BDI said.

The chief executive of the alliance is Dierk Paskert, previously an executive board member of German energy group EON .
The BDI said previously the alliance will focus on projects to secure supply of non-energy commodities, especially rare earths.

Consumers in many industrial countries have noted with concern how commodity-hungry China has been buying up supplies, especially with major deals in Africa.

There has also been major concern that China will restrict its own exports of rare earths used in a wide range of industries.

http://af.reuters.com/article/metals...nnel=0&sp=true

[don]

Re: Commodity Scramble Ratching Up

Surveying a Global Power Shift

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

STRATEGIC VISION

America and the Crisis of Global Power

By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Illustrated. 208 pages. Basic Books. $26.


The 2008 crash and America and Europe’s continuing economic woes; the rise of China and worries about the decline of the West; and technology-fueled uprisings around the world from the Arab Spring protests to anti-Putin demonstrations in Russia — such developments underscore just how prescient Zbigniew Brzezinski has been in his earlier writings.
In the early 1990s, when some scholars were arguing that the end of the cold war and the implosion of the Soviet Union signified the advent of a new era in which liberal democracy would triumph around the planet, Mr. Brzezinski was warning about the forces of upheaval rumbling through the developing world and the weaknesses of the West that could undermine its global clout.

In his 1993 book “Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century” Mr. Brzezinski argued that the acceleration of communication made possible by technology set contemporary history apart from the past, that China was more likely than Russia to assume a leadership role on the world stage, and that America’s emphasis on “material wealth, on consumption and on the propagation of self-indulgence as the definition of the good life” could endanger its pre-eminence as a global power.

What Mr. Brzezinski does do here — lucidly, and for the most part with great persuasiveness — is explore the consequences that a steady slide by America into impotence and irrelevance might have on the rest of the world. Such a development, he argues, would probably not result in the “ ‘coronation’ of an effective global successor” like China, but would likely lead to a “protracted phase of rather inconclusive and somewhat chaotic realignments of both global and regional power, with no grand winners and many more losers.”

An America “in serious decline for domestic and/or external reasons,” he says, would lead to a breakdown in the ability of the international system to prevent conflict once it became evident that “America is unwilling or unable to protect states it once considered, for national interest and/ or doctrinal reasons, worthy of its engagement.” As he sees it, a more Darwinian world of tumbling dominoes would most likely result: there would be little to prohibit regional powers (like Russia) from exerting claims on neighbors falling within traditional or claimed spheres of influence (like Georgia, Belarus and Ukraine).

Global environmental issues — including climate change and growing water shortages — would be similarly affected. In a gloomy conclusion to this insightful book Mr. Brzezinski writes that without a revitalized America helping to manage the international commons, “progress on the issues of central importance to social well-being and ultimately to human survival would stall.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/bo..._r=1&ref=books

[don]

Re: Commodity Scramble Ratching Up

in related news . . .

Venezuela Receives Last Shipment of Repatriated Gold Bars


Venezuela today received the last shipment of gold bars in an operation that repatriated 160 tons of the South American country’s reserves of the metal held abroad, said Nelson Merentes, president of the country’s central bank.

Fourteen tons of gold arrived at the Caracas airport today on a flight from Europe, Merentes said. The gold bars were transported in a caravan, broadcast on state television, to vaults at the central bank where street banners proclaimed “Mission Complete.”

“In two months, we’ve brought 160 tons of gold valued at around $9 billion back to Venezuela,” Merentes said on state television from the Caracas airport. “Today marks the last day of the mission.”

President Hugo Chavez in August ordered the central bank to repatriate the country’s gold reserves as a safeguard against instability in financial markets. The South American country, which has the 15th-largest holdings in the world, according to the World Gold Council, held 211 tons of its 365 tons of gold reserves in U.S., European and Canadian banks as of August.

Venezuela will leave about 15 percent of its reserves, or around 50 tons, outside of Venezuela for financial transactions, Merentes said today. He said on Jan. 3 that the country would leave 15 tons of gold in banks outside the country.

A central bank report released in August showed that Venezuela held gold reserves with the Bank of England, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Plc and Standard Chartered Plc among other banks.

“This was the largest type of operation to transport this type of metal in the last fifteen years,” said Merentes. “The repatriation of our gold was an act of financial prudence and sovereignty.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...d-bars-1-.html

[doom&gloom]

Re: Commodity Scramble Ratching Up

I am surprised more countries have NOT followed Venezuela on this ownership quest. Certainly if I ruled a country somewhere I would want MY gold there as well, and not in London, Zurich, or NYC where some banksters could grab it.

And if I were truly honest about it, I would bury, and I mean REALLY bury it. Like about a half mile down in a heavily fortified concrete and steel bunker with only one wany in or out when done, a ladder up a tube that would only allow minimal product to leave on the back of any one man at a time.

[don]

Re: Commodity Scramble Ratching Up

I am surprised more countries have NOT followed Venezuela on this ownership quest. Certainly if I ruled a country somewhere I would want MY gold there as well, and not in London, Zurich, or NYC where some banksters could grab it.

And if I were truly honest about it, I would bury, and I mean REALLY bury it. Like about a half mile down in a heavily fortified concrete and steel bunker with only one wany in or out when done, a ladder up a tube that would only allow minimal product to leave on the back of any one man at a time.

Think Gaddafi