> A major shift has occurred in the international diamond market. This has
> resulted from the pressures of finance capital, meeting political demand
> for more ethical control in view of the fact that diamond revenues have
> fuelled destructive civil wars in several African countries.
>
> Under pressure from investors De Beers has given up its role as the buyer
> of last resort. It has stockpiled diamonds since 1934 as a result of the
> depression. The stockpile stood at $3.9 billion at the end of 1999.
>
> The trouble for finance capital is that De Beers gets no interest on this
> sum of money.
>
> Fortunately for them the price of diamonds has been buoyant and they plan
> to cut the stockpile to $2.5 billion during 2001.
>
> They also want to promote brands as a more modern way of having monopoly
> control over a commodity.
Surely the Russian pressure on De Beers - which pre-dates "blood diamond" activism by at least 5 years - has also got a role to play here? Particularly, since apart from naturally occuring diamonds, Russian engineers now have the ability to create gem-quality diamonds of significant size artificially (yes, they can be detected as artificial if illuminated under UV light - not something most people do with their diamond rings). Further technological advances offer the possibility of artificial diamonds which are for all practical purposes indistinguishable from the 'real thing' - it will probably take a couple of years for this technology to become a viable option (at present the diamonds created this way are very small).
So De Beers shelves the CSO, and moves to 'brand' to maintain control of the market. I wonder what impact this will have on the substantial (does anyone have exact figures?) industrial diamond market - will they be using 'branded' diamonds? Now that the CSO is moving out of the pictures, channels of distribution will be less centralised - this might have the contradictory impact of making "blood diamonds" more difficult to control.
Oh well, hopefully this will cut UNITA's revenues a bit...
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844