{"id":979,"date":"2010-05-14T14:20:11","date_gmt":"2010-05-14T08:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wokay.in\/?p=979"},"modified":"2010-05-14T14:20:11","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T08:50:11","slug":"where-is-all-the-rubber-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/2010\/05\/14\/where-is-all-the-rubber-going\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is all the Rubber Going?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the past year, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indexmundi.com\/commodities\/?commodity=rubber&amp;months=12\">price of natural rubber has more than doubled<\/a>. This, in what is supposedly a great recession. This is being blamed mostly on demand from China.<\/p>\n<p>What the hell are the Chinese doing with all the rubber they&#8217;re buying? Auto sales are down globally, so making tires is pointless. So is mine output, so making conveyor belts is ruled out. Condoms just don&#8217;t use that much rubber. Neither do gasket rings and suchlike.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s possible that Chinese companies have decided in the face of all logic to build up stocks in the face of falling demand. But I&#8217;m worried that they&#8217;re putting the rubber to far more nefarious uses. Specifically, that they&#8217;re building <a href=\"http:\/\/www.animenewsnetwork.com\/encyclopedia\/lexicon.php?id=100\">giant armoured robots<\/a> to more successfully persuade the United States to hand over the Pacific states when they <a href=\"http:\/\/wokay.in\/2010\/04\/26\/twenty-first-century-land-purchases\/\">default on their sovereign debt<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Be afraid. Be very afraid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the past year, the price of natural rubber has more than doubled. This, in what is supposedly a great recession. This is being blamed mostly on demand from China. What the hell are the Chinese doing with all the rubber they&#8217;re buying? Auto sales are down globally, so making tires is pointless. So is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,52],"tags":[923,1106,1392,1513,2162,2259,2301],"class_list":["post-979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-yellow-peril","tag-gundam-suit","tag-iron-man","tag-mecha","tag-natural-rubber","tag-synthetic-rubber","tag-tokyo-commodity-market","tag-tyre"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7AOU2-fN","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aadisht.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}