It looks like he DeBeers diamond cartel is on its last legs.
Between the increased output of gem quality manufactured diamonds, and the increasing demands by African nations to control their own diamond output, and get the money derived from the diamond trade, it looks like its death grip on the diamond market may be coming to an end.
To the degree that their neocolonial economic reign of terror ends, everyone, except of course for DeBeers, will be the better for it:
For over a hundred years, DeBeers has dominated and controlled the global diamond trade.
But today, Chinese factories are mass-producing lab-grown diamonds, which are chemically identical to natural stones, and prices are collapsing worldwide for both man-made and natural diamonds.
DeBeers sources most of their rough diamonds from mines in Botswana, and the new government there is determined to move DeBeers' value chains to Botswana itself, thereby retaining billions of dollars in industry revenues in-country.
Anglo-American is DeBeers' parent company, and they are trying to divest their holdings. But even after writing off $4.5 billion in book value in two years, no buyers can be found.
The diamond industry has been a racket for over a century, with monopolists, primarily DeBeers, creating artificial scarcities to drive up the price.
For me, I'm not that concerned much about diamonds as gems, but I am interested the potential lab-grown diamonds as a heat sink material. (Diamonds are the world's most thermally conductive substance as well as being an electrical insulator, which makes their engineering applications very interesting)
The real issue here is that DeBeers stole the wealth of (largely) African nations and kept it for themselves for many decases, and not this looks to end.
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