I don't know if this is the right forum . . . I figured this would make more sense here compared with posting it in Economics. I'm watching the Law & Order episode tonight (commercial) and its plot has to do with a diamond heist. This may be a little mixed up thinking, but the diamonds in the show got me to thinking about what part the stones play in trading. Wouldn't the demand for diamonds be an indication of overall global wealth? Does anyone track the average price of diamonds? I'm going to research this a little after the show's over. I wanted to post to see what everybody thougt. I'll be back.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/diamondindustrial.pdf Here's some raw data from the gov. I'm going to see if I can get some price info and cross reference it with GDP or something. Tomorrow.
The diamond market is the most contrived manipulated market in the world. If the cartel is ever broken-up the price of diamonds will fall 90%. They simply are not a scarce commodity. DeBeers controls something like 85% of the world supply.
I remember reading somewhere where a diamond contract was initiated on some exchange but they closed it down a few days later when the price kept on falling. I can't for the life of me find where I read this (was on the web). Anybody know what I'm talking about? Anyway, the point was that in a freely traded market it looked like the real price of diamonds was a pittance. And of course that couldn't be allowed to happen so the whole idea was scrapped. I wish I had bookmarked that link.
my sister did her doctoral work on DeBeers... 1)All executives of the DeBeers diamond corp. are to be arrested on site in the US for antitrust practices. (that's why you'll never see em here 2) they do control 80%+ of the worlds diamonds in vaults below london. 3)they use this so that when some indep. fires up a new diamond mine they can flood the market ensuring that the startup will fail due to glut of diamonds and then will sell the mine to (suprise suprise) DeBeers. Diamonds = Bullshit (somehow this argument hasn't worked w/ my girlfriend)
100% correct Jewish Mafia runs DeBeers... Diamonds are very abundant and not "rare" as they are made out to be.. the whole industry is controlled by DeBeers and it is illegal yet we all fall for it... amazing how ignorant the public is to the fact it is just one big scam!!
Diamonds are over priced rocks solely because one company ( DeBeers ) controls 90% of the distribution and most of the mining. If you know where to look you can buy similar quality Diamonds for 1/100 the price that DeBeers whole sales them for to the distributors.
Arrested?!! ROTFLMAO!! They should be SHOT ON SIGHT Americans lost millions of lives because DeBeers was supplying the Nazis industrial diamonds for machining their superior weapons. Without DeBeers industrial diamonds and diamond dust , the Nazis would have lost the war within a year.