Top Massachusetts Exports to Europe

[Sparky]

From today's Boston Globe, the top 5 products exported from Massachusetts, in reverse order:

5. Electrical machinery, sound, and tv equipment ..... $1.10B
4. Industrial machinery, including computers............ $1.17B
3. Pharmaceutical products.................................... $1.30B
2. Optical, photo, medical, or surgincal instruments...$2.38B

1. Gold, coins, and precious metals and stones.........$2.45B

What's this?? Precious metals are now our primary export to Europe? This never would have crossed my mind. I skimmed the article to see that the focus was on the impact of the European crisis on Massachusetts' business, but no comment on our #1 export.

$2.45B is equivalent to about 1.5 million troy ounces of exported gold, or 75 million troy ounces of exported silver from Massachusetts alone. I wonder what's going on there? Flight of real capital? Europeans turning to hard assets as their debt crisis explodes?

[Joe King]

Top 5 exports over what time period? The past year? YTD? The past month? Week? ???

[Sparky]

Top 5 exports over what time period? The past year? YTD? The past month? Week? ???
Great question. The article implies it is one year.

[mamboni]

If we could get Europe to take Bawney Fwank and John Kerry, then blubber and bullshit would top the export list, not PMs.

[Sparky]

If we could get Europe to take Bawney Fwank and John Kerry, then blubber and bullshit would top the export list, not PMs.
That wouldn't help. The exports are ranked by total value. ;)

[madfranks]

Is Massachusetts a big mining state? I did a little looking around the internet but didn't find any statistics showing anything significant. So where is Mass getting all the precious metals to export?

[Joe King]

Is Massachusetts a big mining state? I did a little looking around the internet but didn't find any statistics showing anything significant. So where is Mass getting all the precious metals to export?
Are there any big PMeXchanges there? Or jewelery dealers/mfgrs?

Also, is the equivalent of 125,000 ozs of gold in PMs and stones exported per month, a lot? Remember, it's not all in gold. It might be lots of stones for all we know.
What would be interesting to know is if more States exports are similar, or if it's just Mass.

[Down1]

What page was this article on ?
I will have to check it out.
All I can think of is all Mass based mutual funds selling their PM assets for cash.
Maybe something else goes into the top 5 next year.

[Sparky]

Massachusetts is not a big mining state (in fact, it's hardly a mining state at all), nor does it have any big PM exchanges, such as Apmex, Tulving, etc. That's why it it came as such a surprise. However, it is home to Fidelity Investments, and other major investment firms.

[TomD]

A little counter intuitive that a state's leading export would be a product class with which the state has no known relationship.