Magmatic Ore Deposits - Metals and Society: An Introduction to Economic Geology - page 66

In 1981, the Malaysian government helped set up the International Tin
Council, which bought up surplus tin stocks to maintain steady prices and in
so doing to “protect the national interest” of Malaysia. This operation did
indeed lead to a rapid price rise, from less than 7,000 to 9,000 £/t in 8 months.
The Council then went further, by buying tin for cash in an attempt to control
the global tin market. The purchases were supported by loans from banks
linked to the Malaysian government. Crisis loomed when the cost of holding
the tin became insupportable, and this pressure, together with the actions of
market speculators, precipitating a massive collapse of tin prices. The new
low tin prices rendered unviable tin mining operations throughout the world.
Thousands of mine workers in Malaysia and elsewhere lost their jobs and the
last tin mines in Britain were closed. The “good intentions” of the Malaysian
government had backfired cruelly, and after the mid-1980s, tin was no longer
the country's major export.
http://stocktaleslot.blogspot.com/2008/07/1981-2-malaysian-tin-market-
fiasco.html
This story, together with other tales of misdirected government interven-
tion, illustrates the perils of trying to manipulate world markets. OPEC, the
petroleum cartel, has operated more or less successfully for four decades,
largely because of the capacity of Saudi Arabia to increase or decrease
production when the situation demands, so as to maintain the oil price at
a level that finds a balance between the need to assure strong returns for
producing countries and avoid stifling the world economy. The same does not
apply to a commodity with only a small market like tin.
Less ambiguity surrounds the classification of deposits of Fe-Ti-V oxides in
gabbroic or anorthositic intrusions. The example of the V-rich magnetite ores in the
upper zone of the Bushveld Complex, which clearly formed through the accumula-
tion of magmatic minerals in the upper part of the Complex, has already been
discussed. Other examples, like the Fe-Ti-V oxides in gabbros of the Panxi region
in China, form from Fe-rich magmas that intruded as part of the Emeishan large
igneous province.
An important class of ilmenite (Fe-Ti oxide) deposits occurs in anorthosite
massifs in Canada and Norway. Anorthosite is a rock consisting almost entirely
of calcic plagioclase; anorthosite massifs were emplaced in a restricted time
interval in the mid Proterozoic. Together with heavy mineral deposits in beach
sands (Chap. 5), the deposits in these massifs are the dominant source of the high-
technology metal titanium. The origin of these deposits is poorly understood - it is
not clear how such large amounts of ilmenite, which normally is a late-crystallizing
mineral, could have accumulated - but this lack of understanding is perhaps not so