Sudbury Northern Life Reporter Bill Bradley
http://www.northernlife.ca/News/Loca...
Nickel prices have started to rise.
At the start of early trading Monday, nickel was cited as being worth $5.585 a pound according to the Kitco Base Minerals website at www.kitcometals.com.
Nickel prices dropped to as low as below $4 a pound in early December, leading to fears in the city that massive layoffs could result in the near term if market conditions continued to soften. However, since then nickel has been in the range of $4.50 to $5 a pound.
Meanwhile, nickel inventories started to level off somewhat for the first time since mid-November, according to a graph from the London Metal Exhange (LME) warehouse Monday.
How can this be?
According to Toronto Star business columnist David Olive, in an article published Saturday, thanks to government interventions, banks now have the cash to resume lending to consumers, who have a pent-up demand to spend, especially in the United States.
Businesses have slashed inventories so deeply, that goods are now scarce, he writes.
Dick DeStefano, executive director of the local mining supply and service cluster, SAMSSA, said while visiting his son in St. Louis, Missouri, over Christmas he was shocked to see parking lots outside of malls full.
“While there I talked to local economists and investment dealers, and they were upbeat about the economy, at least in St. Louis,” said DeStefano.
“While many of the investment people had lost their bonuses, they still had good paying jobs, and so did many other people they knew,” he said.
DeStefano said the SAMSSA members he had talked to recently were loathe to cut many jobs, especially from their core operations, just in case an upturn comes faster than expected.
U.S. unemployment rates still hover around seven per cent. Canada's 6.3 per cent jobless rate could climb to eight per cent. That is still far from the 13 per cent unemployment rate in 1980-81 recession, or the 10 per cent rate in the most recent recession in 1991, notes Olive.
Canada's fundamentals are still good with a long run of budget surpluses and job growth, he added.
Locally, in Greater Sudbury, the parking lot outside of the Future Shop in New Sudbury, was packed with cars Saturday as people went inside to take advantage of extended sales on such items as big screen televisions.
Televisions were marked down hundreds of dollars.
