Indian Coin Meltdown

Do you want to multiply your money fast?

No problem. Just move to India and collect one rupee coins, melt them down and convert the metal into razor blades.

Indian coins are worth up to 35 times as much as razor blades as they are as coins. This leaves a huge profit margin for those involved in the illegal business of melting down coins.

As you might expect illegal or not such profit margins attract a lot of interest. Coins are in short supply in many parts of India.

Originally, the Indian coins were smuggled into Bangladesh and then melted down and turned into razor blades. More recently enterprising Indians have themselves been melting the coins down and then smuggling the finished product into Bangladesh.

The boom in commodity metal prices caused by rapid growth nations like China and India have caused similar problems for governments in other nations.

Copper is salvaged from melted down stolen telephone lines. Metal manhole covers are stolen from city streets and sold as scrap metal. Cast iron water pipes are ripped from roadways.

As long as huge profit margins remain from such activities the authorities are going to be hard pressed to stop the illegal practices.

This is not only true in countries, like India, that in spite of rapid economic growth still has hundreds of millions of citizens living in poverty, but in developed countries, like the United States, that has a surprising number of homeless and low income people trying to survive one way or the other.

When you get hungry enough cutting down and selling as scrap metal a few hundred feet of liberated old fashioned copper telephone lines may seem like a good idea.

The scrap metal business will likely continue to boom as the growth in the world economy brings the world ever closer to an age of pronounced shortages in basic commodities.

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