Black Market Economies

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Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 6:18 am

http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/black-market-black-market-economy-organ/12/21/2011/id/38512?page=full

The first one we can relate to, the others well, interesting Shocked

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 6:42 am

Quote:

Church roofs have gone missing as the price of lead hit all-time highs. Used fryer grease has disappeared from behind fast food restaurants and resold for biofuel. And thieves in New Castle, Pennsylvania stole an entire bridge for scrap.

How does one manage to steal a roof? Or an entire bridge at that???

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 10:01 am

Quote:

Used fryer grease has disappeared from behind fast food restaurants and resold for biofuel

the simpsons flashback

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jun 2011 Posts: 1066

Quote:

An eighth-grade student body vice president in Connecticut was forced to resign after buying Skittles from an underground "dealer."

Those kids are learning the definition of the term "political scandal" at an awfully young age.

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 10:39 am

it sounds bizarre that used cooking oil is now stealable but I was involved in a small scale way with biofuels. I had a Toyota Surf that I ran on cooking oil, used and new, and good savings were possible. It used to be the case that you could buy fresh oil for ~30p/litre and process it into biodiesel, a perfect diesel replacement, for about half the price of petrodiesel. Now it's not possible to make any savings there as clean veg oil is often more expensive than petrodiesel. Used oil can still be processed into biodiesel but losses are higher and there's more work filtering out the mice heads and burnt chips. your best bet if you're going down the chip oil route is to fit a twin-tank conversion to the vehicle, start and warm-up on petrodiesel then switch to chip oil for the cruise, switching back to petrodiesel for shutdown. The overall effect of this and rising diesel prices has forced up the price of any sort of oil feedstock to ghastly levels (check ebay for it) and made it impossible for small operators to work efficiently. Another economic bubble, I'm afraid. Big processors will buy it for reprocessing into biodiesel but small operators are out of luck, and of course it becomes a target for theft ... Happy days eh.

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 2:34 pm

Fascinating article. Thanks for sharing.

When one of my daughters was in high school many years ago, one of the teachers sold candy purportedly for financial assistance to the choir. It was later discovered he was pocketing the money and not really for the choir. He was later discovered to have been "selling" grades. I figured out what he was doing regarding the "grades" from hearing from my daughter, and the meanie that I am turned him into to the School Board.

Tubas????

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 5:22 pm

About used cooking oil, there's always some life left in it.....

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1152794/1/.html

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 7:57 pm

Chinese restaurants abuse their oil to hell anyway, we always used to avoid them for fuel reprocessing. It was always too thick and contaminated to run as straight fuel (unless you run bunker fuel in a huge engine) and it often resisted any attempts to esterify it into biodiesel, forming sludges and tons of soap (50 gallons at a time. nice!) Horrible stuff. We got a load of horror stories too, mostly from the restaurant owners, like "used oil? we never change ours, just top it up" or "there's none left, we thicken the sauces with it". horror upon horror, but I'm not stopping eating takeaways just yet. yum yum.

recycling it back into edible oil ... ooooooooh Sad

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 2628

There's been reports in the UK of war memorials being stolen for scrap
Sculptures too
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16266378

Though the article about a hot tub being stolen had me wondering if it was the neighbours wanting peace and quiet
http://www.kentnews.co.uk/mobile/news/hot_tub_worth_9_000_and_weighing_450kg_is_stolen_1_1160776

Posted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 11:53 pm

A lot of people in the Northeast have been busted for stealing plumbing and old heating systems for scrap, and copper wire from electrical grids. Some don't get too far and usually found in a small pile of charred human remains!!

Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 12:21 am

I lived in South Texas in the nineties. Outdoor A/C units were secured with 3/4" steel straps to prevent thieves from getting into the casing and stealing all the copper wire. The freon lines had to be shielded or the drug cooks would steal that. Propane tanks on outdoor grills? Better take them indoors when not being used or they'd grow legs. And as our neighbor learned the hard way - locking hubcaps exist for a reason. It sucks to go out the door in the morning and find your car sitting on blocks in the driveway with all the wheels missing.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jun 2011 Posts: 1066

My friend lived on the third floor of her apartment and hated lugging her bike all the way up and down the stairs. She had been leaving it in the hallway until her landlord told her to move it because it was a fire code violation. So she went out and bought one of the best bike locks on the market. They even guaruntee that they will replace your bike (up to five hundred dollars) if it's stolen when the lock is on it. She put it on the outside stairs and locked it to the railing, only to step outside the next day and find that theives had just cut through the middle and run off with the back half. That is how she learned about stolen scrap metal. Confused

Edit: I guess I didn't make this clear enough the first time so I'll elaborate. The theives didn't cut the bike lock in half. They cut the bike in half and took the part that was no longer locked down. My friend basically stepped outside to find the front half of her brand new bike dangling from the railing by her state-of-the-art $200 bike lock.

Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 12:42 am

I had a bike stolen in similar circumstances back in 2007. I went to visit my girlfriend at the time and chained my bike to the apartment building stairs. Came back out 15 minutes later and all that was left was a PIECE of the cut cable! They cut the cable and took off with the now useless piece of cable! And I was only away from it for 15 minutes! Ever since then, is tarted spending more than 20 bucks on bike lock systems XD

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jun 2011 Posts: 1066

^Well, as my friend unfortunately found out, even the best, most expensive bike locks won't help you if the theif isn't concerned about keeping the bike in tact. Your only true guaruntee these days is to keep your bike inside. That's how bad the scrap metal situation is.

Another example, my neighbor came knocking on our door a few months ago to tell us that some kids were trying to peel our license plates off of our car. My husband ran out and chased them away. Then we dug out some old SDPD bumper stickers and slapped them on the back of our car. Haven't had any problems since. We also never get pulled over anymore, even when speeding. Laughing

ETA: Now that I think of it, people also stopped parking in front of the fire hydrant that sits front of our building, right around the time those stickers made their appearance. And that's significant because there were a couple of people who were using it as their own personal parking space. Oh the power of fear.

Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 4:26 am

lol...where I live everything is fair game to theives...they will cut the grounds from light poles, ac's are not safe...people have woke up to find thier trucks not only on blocks, but missing dores, hoods, trunke, exaust systems, and seats...and for about a month now noy even the siding on your house is safe