Reply To: China Limiting Export of Graphite.
Back in the day I read “The End Of Oil,” a book by one of the peak oil alarmists who had no idea what he was talking about, but was a really great writer. One of the things he stressed was the high likelihood of countries lying about their proven and unproven reserves, especially Saudi Arabra. He’s probably not wrong, but then again, fracking and better extraction techniques really changed the denominator. My thinking is that there’s a group of bankers, investors and accountants in the Federal governement who have a handshake agreement that the minerals under the US are tacitly collateral for keeping the dollar the reserve currency. They hide behind the greens’ fear of digging holes. Not only better to use up everyone else’s raw material before we tap into ours, we can borrow against it (and pretend its there), as long as everyone gets a piece of the action.
See also: Fort Knox, public lands, and fear of the IRS.