( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Not too long ago, the United States used to invade nationalize nations banks for a lot less.
Bloomberg News reports that thefailed Wall Street bank, Lehman Brothers, has a stockpile of as much as 500,000 pounds of uranium “yellowcake” that could theoretically is just about enough material needed to make one nuclear bomb.
The difference between this uranium-oxide and Iraq’s “yellowcake” is, of course, that Lehman’s stockpile is real. It is one of the bankrupt bank’s many assets that liquidators have been trying to offload since September.
A supply of 500,000 pounds of yellowcake is just “slightly” less than the amount needed to make one bomb, or fuel one nuclear power reactor for a year, if the latest enrichment technologies are used, said Gennady Pshakin, an Obninsk, Russia-based nonproliferation expert.
The uranium “might fetch $20 million at today’s prices of about $40.50 per pound”. Once worth $55 a pound, the commodity price of uranium has dropped for five straight months. “More than 43 million pounds of uranium-oxide concentrate, or yellowcake equivalent sold on the spot market last year, more than doubling the 2007 trading volume”.
Lehman’s “yellowcake” is being stored, in part, in oil-rich Canada. Looking back, which was a bigger threat to the United States in 2003? A neutered Iraq or a “yellowcake” stockpiling Wall Street bank?
14 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
and called it good.
they had a giant supergun aimed at out heads, no?
commodity. Futures can be bought and sold and taken nominal possession of. It is kind of a good investment given that there is likely to be at least some expansion of nuclear power in the US in the near to mid term future. I am sure they bought at the top of the market like a lot of folks and the down turn means they are going to sit on it until they can at the very least get their investment back.
Let them eat yellowcake.
Jesus H Christ on a yellowcake patty.
I know that capitalism allows the buying & selling of commodities, but a little discretion in choosing what to be involved in, in publicly traded ventures, would go a long way. It`s strange that this is in the open now, now that they are on the losing end, (unless they can hang on to it long enough to realize a profit)
One has to wonder if they are also in the red with aluminium tube products they may have bought at the top of the market.
What`s Joe Wilson have to say about this, or the French. What is the origin of this yellowcake, a very controlled product, iirc?
Why is it “stored in Canada”, when usually, a corporation would not have actual possession of a commodity that`s bought & sold.
An investor in New York, stuck with 800 cases of stewed fish from Denmark, unloaded them at a small loss to a fish purchaser in Hong Kong.
The buyer in Hong Kong pawned them off to a buyer in Brazil at a 3% markup & after shipping gained a few percentage points on his outlay.
The company in Brazil, then sold the cases of stewed fish, to a fish product supplier in South Africa. The power grid in Brazil had been intermittently disrupted by the rebels there, & the Holding company in Brazil did not want to be left with a bunch of fish, spoiled by a failure in the electrical refrigeration warehouse, so they did sustain a little loss.
From South Africa, the product was sold to a fish processing manager in Denmark who knew the original seller of the stewed fish. One night during a blizzard, the new owner of the stewed fish was kept from leaving the plant. Rather than go hungry, he figured he`d have some of the newly purchased stewed fish.
Upon eating a little of it, he spit it out. The next morning, he called the seller in South Africa, to complain about the most foul tasting shit he`d ever consumed.
The seller in South Africa, was dumfounded. He told the purchaser in Denmark, “What are you!!, an idiot.? That stewed fish is for buying & selling, not for eating.