The trouble with the undead is that they are terribly stubborn about remaining among the living. This makes good zombie films. It is less profitable elsewhere.
This year’s commodities horror movie is iron ore. Demand in China for steel is not what it was. The ‘Li Keqiang’ index of (relatively) trustworthy economic indicators hit a post-financial crisis low last month. Yet it has coincided with big international producers opting to increase, not cut, supplies of iron ore.
This is a classic attritional strategy. Iron ore for delivery in January to the Chinese port of Dalian dropped below $80 a tonne on Monday. Thus miners who extract ore for $85 or $90 a tonne in west Africa or China itself are straddling economic life and death. In theory, they should stop digging.
By contrast, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto already have the scale to mine western Australian iron ore for as low as $20 or $30 a tonne. BHP raised its annual production target from 220 million tonnes to 290mt only last month. Done right, increasing volumes should be accompanied by falling unit costs, just as in a Toyota factory. So even if the added tonnage hits prices, BHP can increase its profits, to a point.
There is a cold counterfactual logic to this. Had the big miners shown restraint, the high-cost miners would have added capacity and prices would have fallen anyway – without the benefit of lowered unit costs for BHP and Rio.
Between theory and practice, however, there is the little matter of the zombies. Chinese state-owned miners have increased production a tenth so far this year, according to J Capital.
然而，在理论与实践之间，还有一个关于“僵尸”的小问题。据美奇金投资咨询公司(J Capital Research)介绍，中国的国有矿商今年迄今已增产十分之一。
Meanwhile in west Africa, Glencore, with no iron ore mines but a trading business, is getting tougher in negotiations with cash-strapped producers. Eventually it might like to take over those assets itself to run for cash. It likes to return cash to investors.
Here I am and I stand so tall,
我在这里 站在高处
Just the way I'm supposed to be.
这才是我本应拥有的位置
But you're on to me and all over me.
但是你仍在我之上，笼罩着我，控制着我
I live here on my knees as I try to make you see that
我跪在这里，只是试图让你看见
发表于 2014-9-29 10:41:13