What does a copper strike in Chile have to do with the debt-deadlock in Washington, D.C.?

More than might at first meet the eye, as this Bloomberg piece makes clear, tying the upswing in copper’s price to a strike at Chile’s Escondida Mine added to the dollar’s drop as the debt crisis drags on.

How interconnected is our just-in-time global market?  Enough that a five-day strike by Chilean copper miners is attracting global attention, now that some see copper as a leading economic indicator.

One way or another, the debt crisis will be settled – or kicked down the road, as the favored Washington phrase goes – and eventually Chile’s copper miners will reach a deal and go back to work. But the bigger reality here is the ongoing interplay of rising resource demand and global economic growth, with a more than a dash of fiscal stability thrown into the mix.