More of that pretend "free market" nonsense from Wall Street: NY Times: "Wall Street’s lucrative commodities businesses came to the fore here Tuesday as a Senate panel questioned whether banks should be allowed to control warehouses, pipelines and other infrastructure used to store and transport essential goods. . . .The hearing followed an article in The New York Times on Sunday that explored the operations of warehouses controlled in part by Goldman Sachs. The bank’s tactics, along with those of other financial players, have inflated the price of aluminum and ultimately cost consumers billions of dollars, an investigation by The Times found. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is now gathering information on the warehouse operations. Several witnesses at Tuesday’s hearings warned that letting the country’s largest financial institutions own commodities units that store and ship vast quantities of metals, oil and the other basic building blocks of the economy could pose grave risks to the financial system. The ability of those bank subsidiaries to gather nonpublic information on commodities stores and shipping also could give the banks an unfair advantage in the markets and cost consumers billions of dollars, the witnesses said. "
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 13:12:57 +0000
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