Sleuthing Copper Prices

By: Jason Webb
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:23:56
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I’m not generally one to go out “Bush Bashing”. I don’t enjoy high prices or the war in Iraq, so I put up with both often in silence.

Last week I found myself at the local hardware store purchasing a (ten dollar) piece of copper tubing for a home repair. At the cash register the clerk rang up my purchase and cheerfully announced, “That’ll be $18.34 sir.” She must have noticed the look of astonishment on my face because her cheery smile instantly turned up-side-down and the explanations started pouring out of her. It seems, according to her, the high cost of fuel is to blame because for the last several months copper has been increasing in price by leaps and bounds. Not only finished copper but also scrap pricing has sky-rocketed and there have been thefts. In fact, a large building fire by a wharf has been attributed to two homeless men burning insulation from copper wiring so they could sell it for scrap.

After paying the clerk and loading my pipe I began pondering the souring copper price issue on the drive home. Later at lunch, I found myself doing math in my head. Sure fuel has doubled but labor costs haven’t, at least not in my neck of the woods.

Throughout the day the question of copper companies gouging hard working Americans kept popping in my head. Why, when the country is so hard hit with energy costs, would the giants of copper companies suddenly decide to double the price. Was it fuel costs or greed?

The game is a foot and the answer may be less diabolical than one would expect. After a novice attempt at research, my conclusion is, it is indeed economics but not greed or fuel prices. It is the law of supply and demand that doubled my home repair costs.

No, there hasn’t been a sudden rash of home repairs depleting supplies of copper tubing. There has however been a rush on copper, pushing its demand beyond cheap levels of supply. Us, DIYers (Do It Yourself) aren’t to blame though.

Apparently, in case you’ve been asleep or under a rock the last four years, there has been a war in Afghanistan and Iraq. To put this into perspective for the layman, The US military issues M-16 rifles to its estimated 161,000 plus troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. These rifles fire rounds made of gilding metal alloy, which is predominantly copper. Now its true that one bullet doesn’t weigh much and you certainly can’t fault any soldier for lawfully squeezing the trigger, but according to John Pike, director of the Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org, based on the GAO’s figures, US forces have expended around six billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. I’m just guessing here but I think I have found out where the missing copper went that led to a supply and demand issue that just doubled the price of my home repair.

A 7.62 military round weighs 9.33 grams. Simple math deduces almost 123 million pounds of copper bullets expended. This guestimate may be way off in left field but I can tell you it does represent 85,307 miles of ? inch copper tubing.

More deductive reasoning says that since I shouldn’t and won’t blame our troops, I can instead follow the chain of command up the ladder all the way to the commander in chief and lay the blame squarely on his shoulders. This would be President George Bush.

Congress said the war would cost us billions. They were counting tax dollars. If you add in additional out of pocket expenses it easily becomes trillions and this is why I feel somewhat exonerated for my current round of “Bush Bashing”. I don’t know when our troops are coming home but I hope it is before the number of lost lives doubles like the price of copper has.

Jason Webb is a student of life living in the mid-west.

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