Goldman Sachs' Price Fixing Merry Go Round

detectiveconan16

detectiveconan16

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-aluminum-but-to-banks-pure-gold.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0&pagewanted=all

Goldman Sachs, and many other job creating Wall-Street firms, has a little side project to influence the price of aluminum and other mundane metals.  We ain't taking about soda cans, but giant bars only transported by even bigger trucks.  They bought up a lot of warehouses, and they are used for the sole purpose of being shells in a game of move of the aluminum beams.  They charge rent on the owners of the aluminum per day, and start shuffling the aluminum until they reach a certain price point.  My head kinda hurts thinking about this. ;)

Why are they able to do this? Why our good friends in Congress who can seem to do big favors for their bedfellows but act like feeding the poor is a herculean task.

 
Just let the free market handle this.

Seriously though, stories like this are depressing yet common. Democrats and Republicans both tend to agree on favoring the rich and wealthy. The EPA grants immunity to the hydraulic fracturing companies, Wall St. gets to sell mortgage-backed securities to the Fed on the taxpayer's dime, multinational corporations can skirt labor laws by sending jobs to countries without democratic representation.There really seems to be no recourse for the common folk.

The American empire is in decline and it's because we have no idea how to control our lawmakers.

 
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This is also a big reason as to why the price of oil is/was so high, but no one seemed to pay attention to large financial corporations manipulating the market. Hell, I remember arguing this like 5 years ago.
 
dohdough said:
This is also a big reason as to why the price of oil is/was so high, but no one seemed to pay attention to large financial corporations manipulating the market. Hell, I remember arguing this like 5 years ago.
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But what can you do? Voting doesn't do anything. Calling lawmakers doesn't do anything. Protesting gets you arrested and condemned by the "liberal" media.

 
Gotta start small. Talk to your friends, talk to your family, talk to strangers on the internet. Vote in every single election for candidates that most closely resembles your ideology even if they're going to lose. Literally write letters to your representatives. Get involved with your community.


If the teabaggers have taught us anything, it's that primaries matter. We might not have the Koch's on our side, but no matter how much money they have, they still can't beat us when it comes to the ground game.
 
willardhaven said:
Just let the free market handle this.

Seriously though, stories like this are depressing yet common. Democrats and Republicans both tend to agree on favoring the rich and wealthy. The EPA grants immunity to the hydraulic fracturing companies, Wall St. gets to sell mortgage-backed securities to the Fed on the taxpayer's dime, multinational corporations can skirt labor laws by sending jobs to countries without democratic representation.There really seems to be no recourse for the common folk.

The American empire is in decline and it's because we have no idea how to control our lawmakers.
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I actually believe free market would take care of this.

You, yourself just described our current economic system in which politicians from both sides protect the these huge corporations. Imagine if government becomes involved and we have these jackasses running the country. History has shown us that big governments do not work.

 
mrsilkunderwear said:
I actually believe free market would take care of this.

You, yourself just described our current economic system in which politicians from both sides protect the these huge corporations. Imagine if government becomes involved and we have these jackasses running the country. History has shown us that big governments do not work.
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So let me get this straight. You are saying that since we have a tragic lack of enforcement with regard to existing regulation, we should discard the regulations?

 
willardhaven said:
So let me get this straight. You are saying that since we have a tragic lack of enforcement with regard to existing regulation, we should discard the regulations?
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I am a libertarian not an anarchist. I believe in regulations, as many as needed to be effective. What I am against is over-regulation. I believe that everyone is equal under the rule of law and no one is exempt.

 
mrsilkunderwear said:
I am a libertarian not an anarchist. I believe in regulations, as many as needed to be effective. What I am against is over-regulation. I believe that everyone is equal under the rule of law and no one is exempt.
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Great. What about the conversation we were having though. Where you suggested the free market would take care of stopping large corporations from skirting regulations that our government doesn't care to enforce.

Over-regulation can't really exist until the regulations are enforced.

 
willardhaven said:
Great. What about the conversation we were having though. Where you suggested the free market would take care of stopping large corporations from skirting regulations that our government doesn't care to enforce.

Over-regulation can't really exist until the regulations are enforced.
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Over-regulation exists today which is why there are so many monopolies. These regulations are created to make sure the little guy is unable to compete with the deep pockets of the major players. In a libertarian society if a company breaks the law then they will be punished. It is quite simple and I am sure you could argue that this could also happen under a big government. I will agree that there could be a prosperous society under a powerful government. There have been numerous examples of that but in the end they usually end up failing because good people are always removed from power.

 
Under-regulation is what created the Gilded Age, if you didn't pay attention in history class.  I'm more of a believer of balanced approach to regulation, where there should at least be laws that stop banks from playing tricks with our money or stop corporations from poisoning our water supply or ruining neighborhoods and communities.  We don't even have that anymore, because it's all about crony capitalism behind the shroud of what some people think as "over-regulation" when it's clearly crony legislation.

 
The problem with the idea of just creating more laws/regulation is that these new laws will be written and enforced in such a way that they don't hurt the big players and only hurt the little guys (thus, helping the big players keep their power).
I feel that we've had this discussion before...
 
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I do agree that just shouting "deregulation" isn't the answer that some hard-core right-wingers seem to think it is.

What we need is what I've said for years - we need smarter, more efficient regulation, along side stronger penalties for those who break the law - and extreme penalties for politicians with their hands in the cookie jar.
 
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