No Kind of Rider - Away Colors

The Merchants of Wall Street: Banking, Commerce, and Commodities

Saule. T. Omarova, Associate Professor of Law, University of North Carolina

In June 2011, Coca-Cola ran out of patience ... and aluminum. So the company filed a complaint with the London Metal Exchange (“LME”), the world’s largest organized market for industrial metals, claiming that, for months, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (“Goldman”) had hoarded enough commercial aluminum in its metal warehouses in Detroit to drive global aluminum prices to record levels.2 For Coca-Cola, which uses aluminum cans to package its iconic soft drinks, this artificial delivery bottleneck at Goldman’s metal warehouses meant an unjustified rise in operational costs and potential disruptions of its production process.

On September 20, 2012, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) issued an order threatening to penalize JPMorgan Ventures Energy Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (“JPMC”), for potentially misleading the agency in its probe of the company’s allegedly manipulative trade practices.3 The FERC began its investigation in June 2012, after receiving complaints from electric power grid operators in California and the Midwest alleging that JPMC’s power traders had intentionally inflated wholesale prices at which the company supplied these important regional markets with electricity.4

In July 2012, the Financial Times reported that JPMC, Goldman, and Morgan Stanley had struck similarly-structured deals, under which they would supply crude oil to several major U.S. oil refineries and buy those refineries’ output for resale in the open market.5 Under the terms of these deals, financially-strapped refineries would not have to worry about any of the logistical details of buying, storing, and transporting oil supplies or shipping their jet fuel and gasoline to customers – the experts at JPMC, Goldman and Morgan Stanley would take care of all of these operational details.6
On the surface, there is nothing particularly surprising about these seemingly unrelated snippets of recent news stories. Yet, when read together, they reveal something quite extraordinary and puzzling about current trends in the U.S. banking sector – and the current state of U.S. bank regulation...



1 David Sheppard & Alexandra Alper, As Banks Deepen Commodity Deals, Volcker Test Likely, REUTERS, July 3, 2012 (quoting an anonymous Wall Street bank executive).

2 Dustin Walsh, Aluminum Bottleneck: Coke’s complaint: 12% of global stockpile held here, boosting prices, CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS, June 26, 2011.

3 Kasia Klimasinska, JPMorgan Power-Trading Business Faces Suspension, FERC says, BLOOMBERG, Sept. 20, 2012.

Lucky Paul - Thought We Were Alone feat Milosh (Gadi Mizrahi & Eli Gold ...

I thought we were alone...

How Many Calories Does Your Body Need?

There are three primary components that make up your body's energy expenditure. Adding these three components together, basal metabolic rate, energy expended during physical activity, and the thermic effect of food is the most accurate way of determining how many calories your body requires each day.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): Most of the body's energy, about 60-70%, goes to supporting the ongoing metabolic work of the body's cells. This includes such activities as heart beat, respiration and maintaining body temperature. To determine your BMR:

For adult males - Multiply the body weight by 10; add double the body weight to this value.
[i.e., for a 150 lb male, 1,500 + (2 x 150)=1,800 cal/day BMR]

For adult females - Multiply body weight by 10; add the body weight to this value.
[i.e., for a 120 lb female, 1,200 + 120=1,320 cal/day BMR]

Energy Expended During Physical Activity: The second component of the equation depends upon your level of physical activity. Physical activity has a profound effect on human energy expenditure and contributes 20-30% to the body's total energy output. One of the most reliable methods in calculating calories burned during physical activity is the Metabolic Energy (MET) Method. This is the method we have used for the Fitness Partner Connection's Activity Calculator for 158 different activities.

Thermic Effect of Food: The last component to calculate has to do with your body's management of food. The increase in energy required to digest food is referred to as the thermic effect of food (TEF) and it's simple to determine:

TEF = total kcals consumed x 10%
[i.e., 2,000 kcals consumed/day x 0.10 = 200 kcals expended for TEF]

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the best things in life are free

finally, a friday night to remember. a friend gave me a pass to the erykah badu concert at love nightclub tonight. i was hesitant to go since last trip to love, they attempted to charge me $20 for parking and another $20 for cover even though i was on the guest list. this, however, was amazing. i walked right past the one hundred or so people standing outside, handed the bouncer my "credentials", and was welcomed right in, like one of those guys you see climbing out of a wagon wheel rimmed [insert flashy car brand here], accompanied by some girl you just know has a 20 page image search result on google.

once inside, i quickly learned that dinner was on verizon wireless. i hopped in line for a plate of pasta and jerk chicken and then headed upstairs to get a good vantage for the badu show. erykah badu has a very down-to-earth vibe that made her show comfortable as well as entertaining. i didn't realize she was the artist responsible for the song "tyrone", but seeing the crowd's excited reaction to this and others from her catalogue captured my interest. while neo soul isn't a type of music i usually listen to, it was easy to become a fan of erykah's heartfelt live performance. not to mention the fact that the whole experience cost me less than one of those ridiculously expensive 41 cent postage stamps! what about you -- are you an erykah badu fan? get anything good for free lately?