Goldman Sachs and other the Wall Street banks that were responsible for blowing up our economy have now found a new way to fleece us and put our entire economy at risk.

Under the not-so-watchful eye of the Federal Reserve Bank, these banks have gotten involved in the production and distribution of physical commodities.

The banks’ involvement in these commercial commodities enterprises has created new risks these already reckless “too big to fail” banks can’t manage.

And that doesn’t even include the danger of these banks manipulating the price of commodities.

Last year, for example, the New York Times exposed a Goldman Sachs scheme that has driven up the price of aluminum — costing American consumers billions. Yes, billions.

The Goldman Sachs scheme uncovered by the New York Times is pretty outrageous. According the article:

Before Goldman bought Metro International [a company whose warehouses store a quarter of the aluminum on the market] three years ago, warehouse customers used to wait an average of six weeks for their purchases to be located, retrieved by forklift and delivered to factories. But now that Goldman owns the company, the wait has grown more than tenfold — to more than 16 months, according to industry records.
[…]

Metro International holds nearly 1.5 million tons of aluminum in its Detroit facilities, but industry rules require that all that metal cannot simply sit in a warehouse forever. At least 3,000 tons of that metal must be moved out each day. But nearly all of the metal that Metro moves is not delivered to customers, according to the interviews. Instead, it is shuttled from one warehouse to another.

Because Metro International charges rent each day for the stored metal, the long queues caused by shifting aluminum among its facilities means larger profits for Goldman. And because storage cost is a major component of the “premium” added to the price of all aluminum sold on the spot market, the delays mean higher prices for nearly everyone, even though most of the metal never passes through one of Goldman’s warehouses.

Aluminum industry analysts say that the lengthy delays at Metro International since Goldman took over are a major reason the premium on all aluminum sold in the spot market has doubled since 2010. The result is an additional cost of about $2 for the 35 pounds of aluminum used to manufacture 1,000 beverage cans, investment analysts say, and about $12 for the 200 pounds of aluminum in the average American-made car.

Read the full article in the Huffington Post – including instructions to a protest action – here.

Here is a direct link to the PDF protest action.