This was posted recently on Fark, but I thought it was fascinating how a multinational corporation pulled the wool over the eyes of basically everyone in the US (and elsewhere, but mostly the US) in order to keep prices on diamonds artificially inflated. It also predicts (it was written 21 years ago) about why diamond prices dropped dramatically over the last fifteen years or so. I'd love to see a follow-up.

Have You Ever Tried To Sell a Diamond?

It's three big web pages of text, so, to summarize for those of you who might be interested but not enough to spend the time reading the whole thing, it talks about how DeBeers, the owner of and/or sole distributor for 99% (at the time, apparently) of all of the diamond mines in the world artificially kept the price of diamonds high by using advertising to convince the US populace that ``Diamonds are Forever'', despite the fact that the discovery of diamond mines in South Africa and Siberia means that there's a virtual glut of diamonds -- hardly the rare find of European Roylaty of yore.