Metal And The Dark Side of Money
Before there was such a thing as a market economy, metals defined money. Sparkling rocks belie an ugly history, but one worth re-visiting as the precious metals sector of the market reaches for a new era of dominance.
Bloomberg News recently reported that “industrial metal prices are powering to the highest in years,” sparked by upcoming legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions for vehicles, post-pandemic demand for home electronics, and an across-the-board desire by manufacturers of all stripes for next-wave batteries. Aided and abetted by a Biden administration pledge of $400 billion for clean energy research and development, base metals such as copper, nickel, lithium, platinum, and tin are poised to lead “a new commodities supercycle.”
Metal has not been on top of the money heap since President Richard Nixon floated the dollar in the summer of 1971, thus sidelining gold as the sovereign of all underlying values. For the past fifty years, nickel, tin, platinum, gold, and silver have played second fiddle to paper, and few have mourned the loss. But money’s relationship with metal did not originate with the manufacturing requirements of I-phones, Teslas, and catalytic converters. Metal lies at the heart of primitive money, and reveals more than a few unsettling facts about plutocracy and banking.
