The Vampire Squid, Goldman Sachs at it again

I just read a Reuter's report that I got through the Atlantic Wire, about Goldman Sachs making $165 million a year hoarding metal, aluminum,  in warehouses in Detroit.  According to the report, Goldman is hoarding a "quarter"of the world's known supplies of the stuff. By doing this, Goldman is actually causing the price of aluminum on the world market to rise.  The eventual costs to society, consumers, business, and who knows what else, are too vast for me to understand. But we do know it will be the consumer that suffers most of they have their way.

According to the report, Goldman gets paid huge rental fees, "tens of millions of dollars a year"  by producers for storing the metal due to some regulation by the London Metal Exchange, the body that regulates this stuff. It's a great deal.  Apparently, this rule allows the holder of the metal to release in to the market "only a tiny fraction of their inventories per day, much less than the metal that is regularly taken in for storage."

"Goldman said its warehouse subsidiary Metro International Trade Services has done nothing illegal, and abides by the LME's warehousing rules. "Producers have chosen to store metal in Detroit with Metro," a Goldman spokeswoman said. "We follow the LME requirements in terms of storing and releasing metals from our warehouses."  the Reuters report states. They all "follow" the rules don't they? The problem is that they also make the rules.

Not only that, Goldman Sachs trades in this particular commodity.

The workers of the world recently saved this rotten system of production from complete collapse. Goldman Sachs, the coupon clipping outfit that was described by Matt Tiabbi as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." received public money, some $12 billion via the AIG affair. The people that run these institutions and the rotten capitalist system they propagate are unelected and for the most part we don't even know who they are. 

Here in the US millions of workers, after bailing these thugs and their system out of the mess they got us and the world in are now being assaulted further with their austerity measures and are passively accepting it for the most part. Meanwhile throughout the world, workers are fighting back against the forces of the market and its adherents.

The delay of any mass movement in the US is due to the successful offensive the US capitalist class has waged over the years on the workers' organizations with the collaboration of the leadership of these organizations.  The passivity is partially due to the fact that people do not know where to go and cannot see a way out.

This will only delay the anger that exists in US society from taking organizational form.  It will ensure it is confused, make many mistakes and take wrong roads initially. It almost guarantees it will be explosive as movements of the US working class have been historically.   But it will not prevent it.