MECHANICAL CONTRACTING | PVF | CONTINUED FROM PAGE 20
Copper prices reach an all-time peak Since time immemorial, the intensity of America’s
domestic construction industry had as its tell-tale barometer the price of copper. In fact, a pre-recession all-time high of $4 a pound was reached in mid-2008, just before the ignominious economic implosion that still persists in the residential construction sector. But after sinking to slightly over $1.20 a pound early in
2009, the red metal, which is used in everything from automobiles to communications equipment, has spiraled to a near four-times multiple, closing recently at $4.60 a pound. With the construction-oriented copper usage, the bulk of its domestic demand, still bumping along in the doldrums, the answer to this obvious disparity is sales to China and also, to a lesser extent, to India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan and South Korea.
Although the
Chinese economic miracle has been written about ad nauseam, the pace of that society’s conversion to consumerism and its accompanying construction is legendary. To put this awesome metamorphosis in perspective, the pace of that nation’s building activity staggers the imagination. Less than ten years
ago, a visitation by Chinese city mayors, in which I had the privilege of participating, elicited the fact that a city the size of Indianapolis (population one million plus) was built every three months by the Beijing-controlled economic giant. Today, this
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building frenzy has escalated to a new metropolis the size of New York City (eight million) under construction every month. Much of this frenzied internal activity is a reflection of China’s governing brain trust, which is heading off internal convulsions among its teeming 1.4 billion population by upgrading its middle class and bringing its agrarian peasantry into the 21st century construction mainstream. It’s an example that should be copied by the Middle East’s Islamic chieftains. l
phc april 2011
www.phcnews.com
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