"A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold" by DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI at the NY Times

[applegrove]

A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-aluminum-but-to-banks-pure-gold.html?hp&_r=1&

"SNIP......................................


The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.

This industrial dance has been choreographed by Goldman to exploit pricing regulations set up by an overseas commodities exchange, an investigation by The New York Times has found. The back–and-forth lengthens the storage time. And that adds many millions a year to the coffers of Goldman, which owns the warehouses and charges rent to store the metal. It also increases prices paid by manufacturers and consumers across the country.

Tyler Clay, a forklift driver who worked at the Goldman warehouses until early this year, called the process “a merry-go-round of metal.”

Only a tenth of a cent or so of an aluminum can’s purchase price can be traced back to the strategy. But multiply that amount by the 90 billion aluminum cans consumed in the United States each year — and add the tons of aluminum used in things like cars, electronics and house siding — and the efforts by Goldman and other financial players has cost American consumers more than $5 billion over the last three years, say former industry executives, analysts and consultants.


....................................SNIP"

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Wow. Those thieves don't miss a trick.

[dogknob]

2. Too bad the hookers on Wall Street aren't more like Julia Roberts.

"So... you don't do anything. You don't make anything. What do you do?"