Political Quotes

“last month the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concluded a 2-year bipartisan investigation into Wall Street bank involvement with physical commodities. Our investigation, which focused on Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase, culminated in a 400-page report and 2 days of hearings. The subcommittee's investigation found these banks involved in a breathtaking array of physical commodities activities. They owned coal mines and oil pipelines, oil tankers and refineries, electric powerplants, massive amounts of copper and aluminum and even uranium. We examined multiple aspects of financial holding company involvement with physical commodities, including the nature and extent of those activities with the attendant risk, such as the threat to a bank's safety and soundness from a catastrophe along the lines of the BP oilspill in the Gulf of Mexico. We also examined the impact of those activities on consumers, manufacturers, and markets. One key area of concern relates to possible price manipulation and unfair trading. What we found is that involvement in physical commodities gave these banks access to important nonpublic information that they could use to profit in their trading of financial products tied to those same commodities. In the stock market, the use of such nonpublic information is prohibited, but no such clear prohibition exists in commodities markets.…”