Riba Dalam Pasaran Komoditi Dunia : Mangsa Pengeluar Tembaga

(Nota: 1.13 bilion tan tembaga dijual atas angin (lebih US 20 bilion/hari), melebihi 71 kali pengeluaran dunia ! Inilah sistem riba/dajjal yang membenarkan pasaran hadapan komoditi-legalized usury/theft of world natural resources. Yang rugi, negara pengeluar sebenar.

Malaysia telahpun kehabisan bijih timah pada tahun 1990an selepas 50 tahun melombong (anggaran 30,000 tan/tahun dan lebih 1.5 juta tan metrik dieksport. Jika dikira harga sekarang RM190,000/tan, maka hasil timah yang hilang/ambil oleh penjajah/tauke barat adalah RM190,000 x 1.5 tan = RM285.0 bilion ! )

In northern Chile, on the high plateau of the bone-dry Atacama Desert, machines have cut a giant hole in the Earth's crust. The crater is three kilometers (1.9 miles) wide and almost 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) deep. It grows larger every day. And as it grows, the Chilean state becomes wealthier.

The mine on the edge of the Andes is called Chuquicamata. It belongs to the state-owned copper mining company CODELCO and is 700 kilometers (435 miles) from the San Jose mine, where 33 trapped miners were rescued last week. Six percent of all copper produced worldwide comes from Chuquicamata, one of the world's largest open pit mines.

Excavators dig through the rock with massive shovels the size of small houses, loading the copper ore onto trucks custom-made for the mine, each weighing up to 400 tons. With their engines roaring, they creep up through the hairpin curves of the road leading out of the pit. The ascent takes 45 minutes.

At the top, the ore is ground into powder, in a process yielding one ton of pure copper for every 100 tons of ore. On this particular day, a ton of copper sells for about $8,100 (€5,844) on the commodities exchanges, according to the current price CODELCO manager Rodrigo Toro sees on his computer screen. Only 24 hours earlier, the price was almost $200 higher. "The market has become very volatile," he says.

Wild Ups and Downs

Toro's office is about 1,200 kilometers south of Chuquicamata, on the 10th floor of the CODELCO headquarters building in Santiago, the executive floor. Everything here is made of copper, from the counter in the lobby to the handrails and the elevators. Metal fibers are even woven into the towels in the bathrooms.

In the past, it would have taken weeks for the market price to move as much as it did on this single day. A price change of that magnitude would have had Toro and his fellow executives deeply concerned. There would have been talk of a warning signal for the global economy. But today no one is surprised by these wild ups and downs.

This year, the price went from $6,400 in February to $8,000 in April, then plunged to $6,100 and is currently rushing back up toward $8,900, which would be an all-time high. The metal has become an object of speculation, and the copper business a playing field for deep-pocketed gamblers. Price movements have less and less to do with the product itself. In fact, the prices are set elsewhere -- in New York, for example.

Going Long or Short

In Manhattan, only one block from Ground Zero, 12 men are sitting at a round table in a windowless room. If it weren't for the countless flashing screens and electronic display panels, they might resemble a group of old men who had gathered to play poker. But these men are copper traders who have gathered at the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), the world's largest physical commodity futures exchange.

They trade in futures contracts, or agreements that obligate them to sell highly pure copper at a fixed price on a specific date. Each contract represents about 11 tons, with a current market value of roughly $95,000.

Sometimes they go "long," which means betting that prices will rise. Or they take short positions when they expect prices to fall. These traders no longer have any interest whatsoever in the metal itself.

Traders today deal in unimaginable sums worldwide, with securities worth more than $20 billion changing hands every day. Last year, copper futures corresponding to 1.13 billion tons were traded on the world's four largest copper exchanges, in London, New York, Shanghai and Mumbai. It was 71 times as much copper as the industry actually produced in the same period.