What went up for so long finally came down with a thud in late summer. "It was like everything just stopped," as one scrap buyer put it. After years of breaking all price records, the scrap market downshifted from supercycle to harsh reality as it fell victim to the worldwide banking and credit crisis. Now scrap processors and consumers find themselves in an economic limbo like none they've ever experienced. Even scrap veterans who survived previous market cycles seem baffled by the current economic crunch, which some are calling a "black swan event."
展开▼
