Ben Paynter's BusinessWeek cover opus on a world-wide copper theft explosion went up while I was on holiday break but since I didn't see anything overwhelming elsewhere today, I'm throwing it in. it's a great sprawling story that covers commodities, construction, threats to U.S. infrastructure, criminal gangs, police work, the laws of supply and demand and how you launder stolen tubing.
Think it's kind of a minor story to devote this much attention to? Think again.
Dallas, like many cities, was being rocked by copper theft. That might not sound as threatening as bank heists or murder sprees, yet the scope and frequency of the crime threatened to disrupt a far more important target—the wiring and plumbing that makes up the central nervous system of the city itself. And Dallas was, and is, not alone. Thanks to a boom in the copper market, city services around the country are being hit, leaving law enforcement agencies nationwide scrambling to understand the scope of the problem and to confront it.
It's compelling reading of the sort BusinessWeek does really well. The reporters find the context that make this story cover a wide range of modern life and its underpinnings, neatly tying the business story to a wider theme of how we live now.
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