Horst

[Michael Bailey]

which like they are all, oh this is a wild bunch of dudes and dudettes
with a fascinating white collar job trading commodities

but, like, "being commoditized" is what everyone wants to avoid
because it is like what Gaddis kept mentioning in JR as "decline from
status to contract" -- these commodities now are extracted by
heartless faceless corporations without regard to previous inhabitants
or the state their excavations leave the landscape in

and yes, that includes the agricultural commodities with the factory
farming and the overfertilizing and the lakes of pig excrement, as
well as the mineral commodities with their well-known toxic byproducts

so basically they are the vacuum, sucking the value out -- they are
the evil white sugar and white bread and white rice of the system, all
the nutrients and fiber removed in their evil quest to maximize rather
than optimize profits!



On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 6:01 PM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> This book is focused on the NYMEX, and oil. But it's the same in all
> the commodities pits, on the KNIFE, the NY Futures Exchange, and in
> Chicago where Horst trades. This is the culture.
>
>
> The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market
>
> Leah McGrath Goodman
>
>
> They were a band of outsiders unable to get jobs with New York's
> gilded financial establishment. They would go on to corner the world's
> multitrillion-dollar oil market, reaping unimaginable riches while
> bringing the economy to its knees. Meet the self-anointed kings of the
> New York Mercantile Exchange. In some ways, they are everything you
> would expect them to be: a secretive, members-only club of men and
> women who live lavish lifestyles; cavort with politicians, strippers,
> and celebrities; and blissfully jacked up oil prices to nearly $150 a
> barrel while profiting off the misery of the working class. In other
> ways, they are nothing you can imagine: many come from working-class
> families themselves. The progeny of Jewish, Irish, and Italian
> immigrants who escaped war-torn Europe, they take pride in flagrantly
> spurning Wall Street. Under the thumb of an all-powerful international
> oil cartel, the energy market had long eluded the grasp of America's
> hungry capitalists. Neither the oil royalty of Houston nor the titans
> of Wall Street had ever succeeded in fully wresting away control. But
> facing extinction, the rough-and-tumble traders of Nymex led by the
> reluctant son of a produce merchant went after this Goliath and won,
> creating the world's first free oil market and minting billions in the
> process. Their stunning journey from poverty to prosperity belies the
> brutal and violent history that is their legacy. For the first time,
> The Asylum unmasks the oil market's self-described "inmates" in all
> their unscripted and dysfunctional glory: the happily married father
> from Long Island whose lust for money and power was exceeded only by
> his taste for cruel pranks; the Italian kung fu fighting gasoline
> trader whose ferocity in the trading pits earned him countless
> millions; the cheerful Nazi hunter who traded quietly by day and
> ambushed Nazi sympathizers by night; and the Irish-born femme fatale
> who outsmarted all but one of the exchange's chairmen the Hungarian
> emigre who, try as he might, could do nothing to rein in the oil
> market's unruly inhabitants. From the treacherous boardroom schemes to
> the hookers and blow of the trading pits; from the repeat terrorist
> attacks and FBI stings to the grand alliances and outrageous fortunes
> that brought the global economy to the brink, The Asylum ventures deep
> into the belly of the beast, revealing how raw ambition and the
> endless quest for wealth can change the very nature of both man and
> market. Showcasing seven years of research and hundreds of hours of
> interviews, Leah McGrath Goodman reveals what really happened behind
> the scenes as oil prices topped out and what choice the traders
> ultimately made when forced to choose between their longtime
> brotherhood and their precious oil monopoly.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l