Some people believe that the future price of aluminum is going to be sufficiently higher than the prevailing price today that they would prefer to pay to store their aluminum and sell at some point in the future. The NYT correctly suggests that this increases the price of aluminum today and that this generates (literal) rent for people who own warehouses. The NYT is furious about it, because they are not envisioning the possible future headline "Women and poor worst hit as consumer good prices skyrocket due to aluminum shortage."
Note: this is me explaining what is happening rather than explaining the causal chain which the NYT thinks is happening, because my version is a lot simpler and more likely to be correct.
Wasn't the point of the original Routers article that GS owned the storage warehouses and therefore could (and did) control the speed/amount of aluminium being shipped out, against the wishes of those who owned the metal. i.e. GS have huge control over the supply of a finite resource. Saying 'well the price did fall' doesn't undermine the argument that GS were controlling the supply to their own benefit since we don't know what positions GS took on aluminium over that time.
> the possible future headline "Women and poor worst hit as consumer good prices skyrocket due to aluminum shortage."
Actually, I'd expect rolling blackouts long before an actual Al shortage.
(Reasoning: Aluminum is one of the most abundant metals in the crust, but it's never found pure. It's always found in an ore, and the cheapest way to refine the ore is very electricity-intensive. As a side note, aluminum was once a fairly expensive metal; the tip of the Washington Monument is made out of it, which was an extravagant expense at the time.)
Metal exchange spot prices for Al are affected by the length of time the stock has been stored; the warehouses dilly-dally to raise the price, the powers who could do something about it (the metal exchange) get a cut for ignoring the whole scam.
I did not read too far into the article, but I read far enough to gather that this is one instance of something I've been reading about elsewhere. Even the specific commodity, aluminium, sounds familiar.
Goldman is one of the largest -- and therefore, most effective -- players, but basically Goldman and its ilk have been using their financial (and legal) clout to essentially corner commodity markets. They are creating effective monopolies for themselves -- or sufficient control to significantly influence availability and therefore pricing.
In this particular instance, as far as I read, they are using their control of aluminium stocks and warehousing to jack up the prices they receive. This may abut regulatory and other concerns, resulting in a "shuffling exercise" to place their price increases within boundaries and definition of an established market mechanism and regulation.
Still in the process of being converted from a public resource to a private commodity -- in the U.S. and some other countries, at least -- but another one to keep an eye on is water, including potable water. There are companies working to privatize supplies, with an eye to charging you whatever the market will bear. And if and when they control said market? And given that most communities are single sourced for local, bulk delivery?
TL;DR (From what I understood): Banks work around regulations to artificially increase the time they are allowed to store metal for - essentially shipping it to each other, back and forth, for a very long time. As they charge for storage, this increases the price of the metal for all manufacturers who use it, who then pass it on to consumers.
