Big Banks Take Huge Stakes In Aluminum, Petroleum and Other Physical Markets ... Then Manipulate Their Prices Washington's Blog

Big Banks Take Huge Stakes In Aluminum, Petroleum and Other Physical Markets ... Then Manipulate Their Prices Washington's Blog

 

Giant Banks Take Over Real Economy As Well As Financial System … Enabling Manipulation On a Vast Scale

Top economists, financial experts and bankers say that the big banks are too large … and their very size is threatening the economy.  They say we need to break up the big banks to stabilize the economy.  They say that too much interconnectedness leads to financial instability.

But – as shown below – the big banks are getting bigger and bigger … and getting into ever more interconnected markets.

Indeed, big banks aren’t even really acting like banks
anymore.  Big banks do very little traditional banking, since most of
their business is from financial speculation. For example, we noted in
2010 that less than 10% of Bank of America’s assets come from traditional banking deposits.

The big banks are manipulating every market.   They’re also taking over important aspects of the physical economy, including uranium mining, petroleum products, aluminum, ownership and operation of airports, toll roads, ports, and electricity.

And they are using these physical assets to massively manipulate commodities prices … scalping consumers of many billions of dollars each year. More from Matt Taibbi, FDL and Elizabeth Warren.

A 2-year bipartisan probe by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations has shined a light on this problem, culminating in a new 400-page report.