China Is Said to Resume Shipping Rare Earth Minerals

By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: October 28, 2010

BAOTOU, China — The Chinese government abruptly ended on Thursday its unannounced embargo of exports of crucial strategic minerals to the United States, Europe and Japan, although shipments to Japan still encountered some difficulties, four rare earth industry officials said.
After blocking shipments of raw rare earth minerals to Japan since Sept. 21, and to the United States and Europe since Oct. 18, Chinese customs officials, without explanation, allowed shipments to resume to all three destinations, said industry officials who insisted on anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivity of the issue. Resumed shipments to Japan still face additional scrutiny and some delays.
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Greece likely to default by 2013, says Mohamed El-Erian

INTERNATIONAL. Greece is likely to default over the next three years because budget-cutting won’t be enough to reduce the nation’s debt burden, Pacific Investment Management Co .(PIMCO) Chief Executive Officer Mohamed A. El-Erian said.

It’s in Greece’s interest to default “as long as you can contain the contagion to other countries and it is done through orderly restructuring and repricing to retain competitiveness,” El-Erian said at a conference sponsored by the Economist magazine in New York yesterday. Like Latin America’s “lost decade” in the 1980s, “the alternative doesn’t promise growth and employment generation,” he said.

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