If you bought a can of Coke this weekend, you might have paid $0.002 more because of Goldman Sachs. Worse, the car you drove to wherever it was that you bought that can of Coke cost $12 more than it should have, again because of Goldman (GS), which is like $1.09 more a year over the life of the car.

    Of course, the fact that these amounts are small doesn't matter, as I have argued in the past. The black magic of Wall Street is figuring out how to take pennies from everyone and redistribute that money in the form of multi-million dollar bonuses to a relatively small number of people on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

    But when you want to make the case that Wall Street is taking advantage of us -- that is, jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money, as one colorful reporter put it -- you have to look at how these amounts add up. And in the aluminum market, it's not clear that the case against Goldman does that.

    The tale of how Goldman is manipulating the market for aluminum and boosting prices to the tune of $5 billion a year for Coke drinkers and others was laid out this weekend in an article in theNew York Times. According to the article, back in 2003, regulators passed a rule that allowed Goldman and other Wall Street firms to go outside the normal realm of financial markets and buy up companies that participate in the actual buying and selling of commodities, metals like aluminum. So Goldman did. It bought a group of warehouses in Detroit that store and ship aluminum.

    The NYT makes a big deal about the fact that nearly none of the aluminum Goldman holds is ever shipped to customers. Instead, Goldman moves it from one warehouse to another, without any perceived purpose. Sketchy, right?

    Maybe not. That's because Goldman's clients generally aren't Coke (KO) or GM (GM), or any other end user. Goldman's clients, like in the other parts of its business, are investors, who aren't in the business of making things. They have no actual use for the metal, other than to stockpile it, which is what Goldman does for them. When it is sold, the aluminum might end up being bought by another investor, who would put it in another warehouse, which could also be owned by Goldman.

    Much of the movement of the metal, though, happens, it appears, because of a weird regulation, imposed by the London Metal Exchange -- the motivation of which, according to the Times article, is dubious because it too benefits from inflated profits in the warehousing business. The rule states that no matter who owns the aluminum, 3,000 tons of it have to be moved out of warehouses every day. So if investors want to hold their metal for long periods of time, they have to move it from one warehouse to another in order to not run afoul of the rules. That drives up the cost of holding onto the metal, and therefore the price that investors want to get paid when they sell it. And that results in a higher price of aluminum, at least in the public markets. So what may really be driving up the price of aluminum, and costing customers $0.002 more for a can of Coke, to the tune of $5 billion a year, is not a dastardly shipping scheme by Goldman, but some poorly written regulation.

    What's more, Goldman's warehouses only hold 1.5 million tons of aluminum, a small fraction of the overall stock of the metal. So if anything, by the NYT's math, Goldman's take of its aluminum inflation efforts is $171 million. Much of the rest of the benefit would go to the aluminum industry. Still, a headline that read "Alcoa and other aluminum manufactures make $4.8 billion off poorly devised regulations that drives up the price of a can of soda $0.002" probably wouldn't have made the front page.

    如果你上周末买过一罐可乐，你有可能多花了0.002美元，背后的原因是高盛集团（Goldman Sachs）。更糟糕的是，你出去买这罐可乐所开的汽车成本可能比原来高出了12美元（相当于每辆车每年要多耗费1.09美元）。问题同样出在高盛身上。

    当然，我过去也曾经指出过，这些零散的小钱我们并不放在心上。然而华尔街的暗黑魔法正是想方设法从所有人身上赚取这些小钱，然后重新分配，以数百万美元分红的形式流入到那些为数不多的曼哈顿上东区富人的口袋中。

    但是，如果要证明华尔街确实在利用我们（正如一位记者生动的比方：将它的吸血管插入任何闻上去有金钱味道的地方），大家必须算一算这些数目加起来到底有多少。事实上，相关数据并不明显支持对高盛集团涉嫌操纵铝价的指控。

    本周末《纽约时报》（New York Times）一篇报道称，高盛集团操纵铝价进而从可口可乐及其他产品的消费者身上获利约50亿美元。根据这篇报道，时间追溯到2003年，监管机构通过了一项规定，允许高盛集团和华尔街的其他公司涉足金融市场正常范畴以外的领域，使得它们能够收购实际参与大宗商品（包括铝等金属）买卖的公司。所以，高盛集团这样操作了。它在底特律购买了一系列仓库，用于铝金属储运。

    《纽约时报》爆料称，实际上高盛集团持有的铝几乎没有给客户发过货，只是把铝从一个仓库转移到另一个仓库，完全看不出任何用意。很蹊跷，对吧？

    但也许事情并不是这么简单，因为高盛铝业务的客户一般都是投资者（正如该行其他业务部门的客户那样），而不是可口可乐（Coke）或者通用汽车（GM），也不是其他的铝材终端用户。这些投资者并不从事实体制造，铝对他们来说没有实际用途，他们做的只是囤积居奇，高盛就是为他们服务的。等到他们卖出时，这些铝材也许又会被另一个投资者买入，堆放到另一个仓库，也有可能这个仓库同样也是归高盛集团所有。

    而铝金属经常在仓库间转移的主要原因似乎源于伦敦金属交易所（London Metal Exchange，简称：LME）一个奇怪规定：它要求铝仓库每天移出3,000吨金属，无论持有者是什么身份。《纽约时报》这篇报道认为，这个规定的出发点比较可疑，因为伦敦金属交易所也可以因此从铝材仓储业务中获得额外增长的利润。因此，如果投资者既想长时间的囤积手中的铝，同时又不想违反这一规定，就必须每天把铝从一个仓库转移到另一个仓库。这也就增加了金属铝的持有成本。如果投资者想从中获利，就必须进一步加价。而最终结果就是导致铝价上涨，至少在公开市场是如此。也许这个才是真正推高铝价的幕后黑手。也就是说，使得我们每购买一罐可口可乐就要多花0.002美元、一年将近多花50亿美元的始作俑者是拙劣的监管规定，而不是高盛集团卑鄙的炒作手法。

    更重要的是，高盛集团铝仓库的库存仅为150万吨，只占全球总量的一小部分。因此，如果真按照《纽约时报》的数学计算公式，高盛集团从铝价上涨中获利1.71亿美元。其余剩下的大部分利润就都流向铝工业。然而，“拙劣的规定使得汽水每罐上涨0.002美元，美国铝业公司（Alcoa）和其他铝生产商因此获利48亿美元”这样的新闻标题大概不会上头版。

    But that's probably not even the real story. The NYT article says that Coke and other aluminum users have started buying directly from producers of the metal, presumably mining companies, in order to get around rising warehouse costs. So the price of aluminum to Coke and GM, and the cost of a can of soda or a car to an average consumer, probably isn't going up much, or at all. To prove its point, the NYT states that the price of aluminum spiked from 2008 to 2011 as the stockpiles of aluminum in Goldman's warehouses rose from 50,000 tons to 850,000.

    What the NYT doesn't mention is that the spike came only after a much bigger plunge in the price of aluminum in late 2007 and early 2008 at the start of the Great Recession. It still hasn't fully recovered. What's more, aluminum prices have fallen since mid-2011, even as Goldman's stockpiles have continued to grow.

    Coke may have, as the article states, complained about the rising cost of the aluminum in the so-called spot market, which is the price that gets quoted on exchanges like the LME. But that's probably because Coke and other manufactures like to hedge against commodity price swings. If the price in the traded market is higher than the actual price of the metal, Coke would have have to pay more for their hedges. But the fact that Coke can hedge its price still likely saves the company money, even at the higher price. Why else would Coke continue to hedge?

    But perhaps the biggest problem with the NYT's case against Goldman is that it uses its flimsy evidence against the investment bank to justify the argument that basically all commodity markets are being manipulated by Wall Street. The article states plainly, according to a Goldman internal memo no less, that speculators have driven up the price of a barrel of oil by 33%. What the article, again, does not say is that there is a mountain of studies on the other side of that debate that have found that speculators do little to drive up the costs that you and I pay at the pump or elsewhere.

    The article also lumps in as evidence the case being made by regulators that JPMorgan Chase (JPM) used power plants it inherited from Bear Stearns to manipulate electricity prices in California. In that instance, it appears that laws were broken.

    And there Wall Street fraud does seem to be a drag on the economy. But that's always the case with fraud. There are a number of ways Wall Street firms can jump into the commodities markets. Some of them are illegal, and some of them are not.

    In the end, the debate we should be having is not over whether Goldman is breaking any rules -- the NYT article says there is no evidence to suggest it is -- but whether speculators should be able to bet on the price of basic materials that affect our lives. And the speculators we are talking about are not just large institutions like Goldman. In the past few years, ETFs that allow average individual investors to bet on the price of oil and other commodities have flourished.

    My guess is that liquid markets in which lots of investors get to participate to determine the price of oil or electricity or aluminum or stocks is a good thing despite the costs that go along with it. But maybe there are cases where that assumption is wrong. And the idea that Wall Street is bad for the commodities market is certainly in the air. Congress and the Federal Reserve are apparently looking into this question and thinking of proposing new regulations. Hopefully, they won't be using the NYT's case against Goldman as evidence that change is needed.

    但这可能有些失实。《纽约时报》的文章称，可口可乐和其他铝材用户已经开始从金属生产商（很可能是矿业公司）那里直接购买铝材，以此规避仓储费用。因此，对于可口可乐以及通用汽车来说，铝价很可能并没有明显上涨，甚至根本就没有上涨。对于普通消费者而言，罐装汽水或汽车的成本也是如此。为了证明这一点，《纽约时报》指出，铝价从2008年到2011年飙升，而高盛集团仓库中铝库存也从5万吨上升到85万吨。

    但《纽约时报》没有提到的是，2007年末至2008年初经济大衰退（Great Recession）开始时，铝价大跌，之后才出现上面提到的飙升。即便如此，铝价也没有完全恢复到原来的水平。更重要的是，自2011年年中起，铝价开始下跌，而与此同时高盛的铝材库存却仍然在持续增长。

    正如《纽约时报》报道所述，可口可乐可能对现货市场上铝价（伦敦金属交易所的报价）的上涨表示过不满，但是这很可能因为可口可乐和其他制造商一样喜欢借助金融工具对冲大宗商品价格波动风险。如果交易市场价格高于铝材实际价格，可口可乐就要支付更多的费用用于对冲风险。但是事实上，即使是成本上升，可口可乐公司仍可能通过对冲铝价波动风险来省钱。否则可口可乐公司为什么继续对冲？

    《纽约时报》的这篇报道在指责高盛集团为幕后黑手时，最大的问题就在于用了经不起推敲的证据来证明基本上所有大宗商品市场都由华尔街操纵这一观点。这篇报道只是称，根据高盛集团内部的一份备忘录，投机者把每桶石油价格推高了33%。这篇报道没有指出的是，同时也有大量研究表明，投机活动并没有导致汽油价格或其他普通消费价格的上涨。

    文中还将监管机构对摩根大通（JPMorgan Chase）的指控作为证据。监管机构称，摩根大通利用收购贝尔斯登（Bear Stearns）获得的发电厂资产操纵加利福尼亚电价。但这种情况似乎属于违法行为。

    华尔街欺诈的确似乎会拖累经济，但仅局限于欺诈。华尔街的公司有很多途径可以参与到大宗商品市场中，这些途径有些是合法的，有些是非法的。

    最终，我们要辩论的并不是高盛有没有违规（《纽约时报》称没有证据表明高盛违规），而是投机者是否可以去押注影响我们生活的基本材料的价格。我们所说的投机者不仅仅是指像高盛集团一样的大型机构。过去的几年中，允许普通个人对石油和其他大宗商品进行投资的交易所交易基金（ETF）已经蓬勃发展。

    我认为，虽然大量投资者的参与流动性市场会使得成本增加，但是由他们的参与决定石油、电力、铝材或者股票的价格是一件好事。尽管有些情况下，我们的这个前提假设也许是错的。而有关华尔街是大宗商品市场害虫的论调也肯定存在。国会和联邦储备委员会（ Federal Reserve）显然也正在调查这个问题，同时考虑提出新的法规。不过，希望它们不要把《纽约时报》针对高盛集团的这篇报道拿来当成推进变革的理由。（财富中文网）

    译者：默默