The Goat Pen

The Department of Education has SWAT teams?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... TopStories

Investment Banks and their impact on commodity pricing...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/busin ... d=all&_r=0

(this is my industry...so I understand why we do it...it doesn't make it right)

sardis wrote:The Department of Education has SWAT teams?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... TopStories

No reason for honest people to be concerned about the police.

Heh. Tell that to Oscar Grant or Todd Willingham.

Bklyn wrote:Investment Banks and their impact on commodity pricing...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/busin ... d=all&_r=0

(this is my industry...so I understand why we do it...it doesn't make it right)

I would have no problem with these banks capitalizing on these type of activities as long as we don't have to help them when commodity prices hit the wall. But since we are too scared to let them fail then we must have Glass-Steagle.

Yep...well, I do have a problem with the banks artificially inflating the prices. This is regulated with normal products sold in the US, I don't know why this wouldn't be, as well.

Really?

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/22/ge ... olice-say/

Heh...well, Peter Parker's actions that lead to the death of an innocent man spurred him to be a super hero too...

Im still not understanding this whole royal baby thing and the fascination of it in this country. Im hoping its just the ladies & the whole Cinderella thing they were raised up on. Didn't we not fight these guys a few hundred years ago to develop America & a better way of life? Which it is & has been since my Grandpa was born in 1895 and probably before that.

So the next king was born? Who fucking cares? Every child born in America yesterday has the same chance to be "King" as well here. Unlike the Brits, its game on here.

I'm kinda amazed, actually. It's not just here, this kid is the most famous baby in the world, right now. Britain has lost its lustre as a military and colonial power and, to a lesser degree, economic power...but they still keep the world fascinated by the Windsors. It's not even like they are the only monarchy left. The Dutch, Spanish and other European countries that had colonial pasts have monarchies, but don't have the juice of the Brits. It's kinda amazing.

Jungle Rat wrote:Im still not understanding this whole royal baby thing and the fascination of it in this country. Im hoping its just the ladies & the whole Cinderella thing they were raised up on. Didn't we not fight these guys a few hundred years ago to develop America & a better way of life? Which it is & has been since my Grandpa was born in 1895 and probably before that.

So the next king was born? Who fucking cares? Every child born in America yesterday has the same chance to be "King" as well here. Unlike the Brits, its game on here.

Twice. The mf's burned Washington D.C. and the White House. Although admittedly, there aren't too many people here who when born have the chance to be king anywhere.

Anyone born in America does.

WE have no stinkin kings in Amerika. Down with the British. little freakin Island trying to rule the world

I wonder if they would take us back????

Rat is conflating the Bill Gates/Stephen Cohens of America to Kings...but they ain't Kings. They're no more Kings than Britain's Mohamed Al-Fayed is one. Tax dollars of the British go straight to the monarchy (a small fraction of tax dollars, but still tax dollars). The simply wealthy don't receive that luxury.

I'm sure Microsoft's tax maneuvering probably has them as a net receiver of funds from the US Treasury, but that's as close as Gates will get there.

According to some Brits on reddit all income from the properties of the Royal family go to the British government which then pays the royals 15% back. If that's true the royals essentially are taxed at an 85% rate.

You lost me at conflating

I don't really see the aluminum warehousing thing as price setting or manipulation, at least not in the classic sense of, say, the Hunt brothers trying to corner the silver market (or whatever). Yeah, it does add a fractional amount to the underlying commodity due to (more or less) processing fees that might not be necessary, but I don't see that as being nearly the same thing as, say, massive speculation, long or short, that can move the underlying futures by double digit percentage points. I am somewhat ambivalent about even that kind of activity. On the one hand, it does *seem* somewhat shady for guys in NYC (or wherever) to be able to move commodity prices just by pushing a bunch of paper (and of course, there's hardly even any paper involved these days, just clicks of a button) and never seeing, much less owning, the underlying commodity, which cost in turn is borne by the real consumers of said commodities. OTOH, they could just as easily be *manipulating* these markets to go down as up, which in turn is *good* for the consumer (cheaper prices for gas, food, etc, although I realize that most *manipulations* of this sort are on the long side). And finally, if it's really an open market, then anybody should be able to do whatever they want to with their capital. They could be wrong, they could get burned. Trying to control who can buy what and in what quantity seems too much like central planning to me, and isn't that just as much a *manipulation* of markets as just letting the money run?

Never had a problem buying what stocks I wanted to buy.

Seems like this warehousing deal would present an opportunity for, say, Coke and MO, to verticalize, they've got plenty enough capital to get into that game and provide better service and shorter turnaround times (benefiting in cost savings for raw aluminum plus an extra gain in what they can sell at a cheaper price to other users), but I suspect they'd end up doing the same thing as Goldman if they found that they could make more money on the mark-up to others than they could by offsetting their own costs...