An interesting development over the last 9 months has been the stockpiling of commodities by countries such as China and South Korea. Rather than buying financial market paper, they have been buying hard assets such as oil, iron ore and canola. It’s the equivalent of you or I stocking up on canned goods and candles! (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!). The problems with the whole stockpiling thing are firstly, where to store it all and secondly, how to unload and unpack it quick enough. The latter is now becoming a problem for China, according to this report in the NY Times.