Call it an instance of the butterfly effect. The thieves who sawed through the bleachers at Kenwood High School, in east Baltimore, and sold them for scrap did not know they were working for contractors in Sao Paulo and Shanghai, but they were. A spike in metal prices from 2003 through the first half of 2008-fuelled by a building boom in emerging markets, especially in the BRIC countries-have led metal thefts in Baltimore County to increase by as much as 1,195% since 2005. As those economies have cooled, however, demand and metal prices have both plunged. Good news for spectators of high-school sports, but awful for the scrap industry.
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