Pardon this brief tangent from the hypnotic, sclerotic, quixotic, Cypriotic situation which will get no resolution today, or tomorrow, and may at best be resolved on Sunday night following yet another coordinated global bailout, (although our money is on a last, last minute resolution some time on Monday when Cyprus is closed but the European markets are widely open), but as it highlights a key follow up to our article from two days ago, "Dr. Copper's Deja Vu [5]" it is worth being aware of a rather particular problem in Asia right now. A rather well-known problem for those who have tracked the warehousing woes of assorted industrial medals in China as an indication of the true state of the Chinese economy: as of right now, the stocks of copper in Asia (as determined by deliverable LME CLS [6] and Shanghai [7]copper) are at an all time high and up 90% from the previous three year average.
[8]
Soon enough every warehouse in Asia will be stocked to the brim. What happens to copper prices then when no more copper can be stored, either for functional or collateral purposes, is unclear, but if the Fed, BIS and ECB somehow manage to manipulate that market next, we expect it will go stratospheric.
h/t Sean Corrigan of Diapason