高盛真是推高可口可乐价格的幕后黑手吗？

    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

    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.