as a raw material, scrap is highly sensitive to perturbations in the global economy. If manufacturers aren’t manufacturing, the scrap dealers are among the first to feel it. Indeed, scrap prices began to slip as much as six months ahead of the Lehman crash. Likewise, if an economy is starting to grow, scrap prices tend to be among the first rising indicators (when Alan Greenspan was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, scrap prices were among his favorite economic indicators). At my family’s scrapyard, we always felt we knew the direction the economic breeze was blowing months ahead of
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