Will Goldman Sachs be “Trading Places” with the Hunt Brothers

Goldman Sachs is once again advising their investors to buy crude oil futures as a hedge against inflation amassing quantities of this vital commodity in excess of any normal capacity for supply and demand levels.

Eventually, officials at COMEX raised margin requirements on silver futures in order to check this cornering of the silver market. The highly leveraged Hunt Brothers, unable to meet their margin calls, were forced to sell. The price of silver fell dramatically; on March 27th 1980 the price fell 50% in one day, from $21.62 to $10.80. The Hunt Brothers eventually were forced into declaring bankruptcy and went back into their first love: – the oil business with Hunt Petroleum.

In the last couple of months, Goldman Sachs has been able to regain control on crude oil pricing by issuing ever laudatory press releases about the imminent shortage for this product. But this time, they have an even better grip on the price of futures for crude oil then they did before the free fall in those prices in the last part of 2008 into 2009.
They have been able to virtually eliminate their competition by wielding their ever growing political power and influence on past and current government administrations

On September 17, 2008 Henry Paulson, then Secretary of the Treasury, is quoted as saying: “It’s ridiculous that I can’t deal with Goldman at a time like this!” The quote and some information for this article were obtained from: “Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves”, written by Andrew Ross Sorkin, which is out in print this week. Paulson is the former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs and was complaining to Bob Hoyt, his general counsel, on September 17, 2008 just two days after the Lehman Brothers collapse and less the 24 hours after AIG was rescued with $85 billion of TARP money.

That very day Paulson was able to obtain a secret waiver from the ethics letter, he had signed when was appointed to his post by President George W. Bush. In the letter he agreed not to get involved in any matter related to Goldman Sachs as long as he was Secretary of the Treasury.

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