

Goldman Sachs Aluminum Moving Scheme Has Allegedly Cost US Consumers $5 Billion - kumarski
http://www.businessinsider.com/goldmans-alleged-aluminum-scam-2013-7

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ryanobjc
This is an interesting study of markets. I fear that those who propose that
markets are the solution are ignoring these cases where a large enough mover
can manipulate the entire market.

After all, for commodities, it is in the best interest of nearly everyone for
the prices to be as low as possible, but still enough so that the
manufacturers can still find it valuable to do so. Traditionally, markets
existed so that farmers could get assurances of prices for goods. How does
that ideal translate to what is happening here?

Markets are a good way to decouple and avoid command economies, but problems
like this need to be taken seriously and addressed. Ideally by alignment of
incentives vs regulation, but hey, if it's christmas I also want a pony...

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kaonashi
> Ideally by alignment of incentives vs regulation

Glass-Steagal seems to have been a regulation that altered the alignment of
incentives (separating lending & investment institutions; so they no longer
have incentive to create bad loans so they can bet against them).

