[patio11]

Some people believe that the future price of aluminum is going to be sufficiently higher than the prevailing price today that they would prefer to pay to store their aluminum and sell at some point in the future. The NYT correctly suggests that this increases the price of aluminum today and that this generates (literal) rent for people who own warehouses. The NYT is furious about it, because they are not envisioning the possible future headline "Women and poor worst hit as consumer good prices skyrocket due to aluminum shortage."

Note: this is me explaining what is happening rather than explaining the causal chain which the NYT thinks is happening, because my version is a lot simpler and more likely to be correct.

[anon1385]

Wasn't the point of the original Routers article that GS owned the storage warehouses and therefore could (and did) control the speed/amount of aluminium being shipped out, against the wishes of those who owned the metal. i.e. GS have huge control over the supply of a finite resource. Saying 'well the price did fall' doesn't undermine the argument that GS were controlling the supply to their own benefit since we don't know what positions GS took on aluminium over that time.

[derleth]

> the possible future headline "Women and poor worst hit as consumer good prices skyrocket due to aluminum shortage."

Actually, I'd expect rolling blackouts long before an actual Al shortage.

(Reasoning: Aluminum is one of the most abundant metals in the crust, but it's never found pure. It's always found in an ore, and the cheapest way to refine the ore is very electricity-intensive. As a side note, aluminum was once a fairly expensive metal; the tip of the Washington Monument is made out of it, which was an extravagant expense at the time.)