From: "Geo" 

"Don Hills"  wrote in message
news:o3yPDtgaXm7b092yn{at}attglobal.net...

> >Gee how did that happen?
>
> You're in the IT industry, you had a good example of how it happens some
> years back. Remember the memory shortage, when prices reached silly
levels?
>
> Memory was scarce and expensive because the special epoxy resin used to
> encapsulate the chips was in short supply.

It was scarce because of an import law because someone got caught dumping.
The day that law ended was the day memory prices started to fall again.

> So for both, there isn't enough production (refinery, mining) capacity
> available to handle surges in demand or more than the usual number of
> refineries / mines offline due to unforeseen circumstances.

There is no surge in demand for coal, especially for anthracite coal which
is far to expensive for powerplants to use. the problem is caused when 3
different mines (all in Pennsylvania btw) decide to do maintenance at the
exact same time, and that time is right at the start of their busy season.
Imagine that.. Oh and here's the really juicy part, never before have any
of these 3 mines shut down for "maintenance"..

Regular soft coal that the powerplants burn, no problem you can get plenty,
but the hard stuff that's sold to consumers suddenly in short supply. Sorry
but this smells like collusion all the way.

Geo.

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