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To: E. Charters who wrote (82520)	2/25/2002 6:53:18 AM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 116764

<<What value traders put on things is up to the trader, not the politico who favours his paper/taxes/financial control. >> BUT is it better when the value is set by the "value" or the "momentum" trader?

To: E. Charters who wrote (82520)	2/25/2002 7:30:39 AM
From: IngotWeTrust	Respond to of 116764

What ticklestheheckouttame is: all the european 9Kt schlock jewelery being sold on eBay by British Bobs and Bobettes to American dodos who can't operate a calculator...they are getting 24K prices in a lot of cases. Talk about adding insult to injury...we gave them our gold after WWI umpty years ago, and now they are selling it back to the ugly and ignorant American's for 14X the booked value of when we gave it to them...only in a capitalistic system would one witness such incredible opportunity. $ 20.67 in WWI $290.00 in WWIII Not a bad gig I guess if I had some badly tarnishing 9Kt pieces of s**t jewelery to move... gold_tutor on SI, on SH, on Yahoo, on TN on GM on GS on eBay...and on...and on... :)

To: E. Charters who wrote (82520)	2/25/2002 1:40:19 PM
From: Richnorth	Respond to of 116764

Monday, February 25, 2002 US Hi-Tech Trash Dumped in Asia ASSOCIATED PRESS in San Jose, California What happened to that old computer after you sold it to a second-hand parts dealer? Environmental groups said there was a good chance it ended up in a dump in the developing world, where thousands of labourers burn, smash and pick apart electronic waste to scavenge for the precious metals inside - unwittingly exposing themselves and their surroundings to innumerable toxic hazards. Now, a report being released Monday documents one such "cyber-age nightmare" - a cluster of villages in southeastern China where computers still bearing the labels of their one-time owners in America are ripped apart and strewn along rivers and fields. The authors of the report, called "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia", hoped it would put more pressure on US companies and lawmakers to increase domestic recycling efforts. Investigators who visited the waste sites in Guiyu, China, in December witnessed men, women and children pulling wires from computers and burning them at night, fouling the air with carcinogenic smoke. Other labourers, making US$1.50 a day and working with little or no protection, burned plastics and circuit boards or poured acid on electronic parts to extract silver and gold. Many pried open printer cartridges - whose hazards were uncertain - and smashed lead-laden cathode ray tubes from computer monitors, the report said. Consequently, the ground water was so polluted that drinking water had to be trucked in from a town 18 miles away, the report said. One river sample in the area had 190 times the pollution levels allowed under World Health Organisation guidelines. "I've seen a lot of dirty operations in Third World countries, but what was shocking was seeing all this post-consumer waste," said one of the report's authors, Jim Puckett of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network. "This is all stuff from you and me." It is no secret that hazardous materials from the world's leading economies often end up as detritus in the world's desperate places. A 1989 treaty known as the Basel Convention restricts such transfers, but the United States has not ratified it. Computer waste in particular is becoming a difficult problem, with millions of devices becoming obsolete each year as the technology industry produces faster, better and less expensive equipment. Mindful of the dangers, California and Massachusetts have banned cathode ray tube monitors from landfills and incinerators. A few PC makers and large retailers have launched recycling programmes, but they require consumers to pay around US$30 and ship their old PCs themselves. With no organised system of electronics recycling as Japan and some European countries have, much of the nation's e-waste ends up being passed along a difficult-to-track chain of re-sellers and parts brokers, said Ted Smith, head of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, which also prepared the new report. The report said some in the industry estimate that as much as 50 per cent to 80 per cent of the United States' electronic waste that was collected in the name of recycling actually gets shipped out of the country. That often involves operations like the dump in Guiyu or similar ones in India and Pakistan, where labour is so cheap it is cost-effective to try to salvage every last screw or bit of silver. "Everybody knows this is going on, but is just embarrassed and don't really know what to do about it," Mr Smith said. "They would just prefer to ignore it." To make electronics manufacturers accountable for their obsolete products, several organisations believe the cost of recycling a computer should be added to the initial sales price - much like a bottle deposit - to fund clean and efficient recycling programs. A few states are considering such plans, including California, where two state senators last week introduced bills that would slap fees on electronics to pay for reducing e-waste. Some reputable electronics recyclers and re-sellers were already taking steps to ensure that they did not transfer parts to someone who might in turn dump them overseas, said David Jones, a waste management official in the Environmental Protection Agency's Southwest regional office. "They know it's a matter of time before someone knocks on their door and says, 'Do you know where your stuff goes?'" Mr Jones said. But real change would come only with public pressure for a real electronics recycling programme, Mr Jones said, which was why he believed the report on Guiyu was important. "It's good to me that people are trying to ground-truth this and not just listen to the rumour mill at recycling conferences, and actually go and find whether the stories are true are not," he said. "I think this report will be good in having the effect of making people question stuff." technology.scmp.com