Source: http://www.jackliftonreport.com/2009/12/the-true-drivers-behind-chinas-accelerated-development-of-natural-resources/

When the crunch point comes, and it may come very soon, when there are no rare earth metals to be had for export, the prices of the rare earth metals will skyrocket and institutional investors will squander billions to re-start the Western supply and value chains for the rare earth metals. Western institutional investors simply don’t know how to value rare metal resources; they are about to have an expensive lesson.

Let me repeat: I believe that the rare earth metals are underpriced already at the present time, because they represent a Chinese pricing set for the main purpose of keeping production of rare earth metals – and their end use products – in China, to maximize the jobs created by this industry, within the domestic Chinese economy.

This situation cannot last much longer, because I believe that China itself is running short of rare earth metals due to inefficient production methods, environmental problems, and corruption."

If the above statement holds true, then the REEs market will definitely explode to astronomical proportions, making it possibly the next "gold rush" of this decade with everyone jumping onto the REEs bandwagon.