????如果你上周末買過一罐可樂，你有可能多花了0.002美元，背后的原因是高盛集團（Goldman Sachs）。更糟糕的是，你出去買這罐可樂所開的汽車成本可能比原來高出了12美元（相當于每輛車每年要多耗費1.09美元）。問題同樣出在高盛身上。

????當然，我過去也曾經指出過，這些零散的小錢我們并不放在心上。然而華爾街的暗黑魔法正是想方設法從所有人身上賺取這些小錢，然后重新分配，以數百萬美元分紅的形式流入到那些為數不多的曼哈頓上東區富人的口袋中。

????但是，如果要證明華爾街確實在利用我們（正如一位記者生動的比方：將它的吸血管插入任何聞上去有金錢味道的地方），大家必須算一算這些數目加起來到底有多少。事實上，相關數據并不明顯支持對高盛集團涉嫌操縱鋁價的指控。

????本周末《紐約時報》（New York Times）一篇報道稱，高盛集團操縱鋁價進而從可口可樂及其他產品的消費者身上獲利約50億美元。根據這篇報道，時間追溯到2003年，監管機構通過了一項規定，允許高盛集團和華爾街的其他公司涉足金融市場正常范疇以外的領域，使得它們能夠收購實際參與大宗商品（包括鋁等金屬）買賣的公司。所以，高盛集團這樣操作了。它在底特律購買了一系列倉庫，用于鋁金屬儲運。

????《紐約時報》爆料稱，實際上高盛集團持有的鋁幾乎沒有給客戶發過貨，只是把鋁從一個倉庫轉移到另一個倉庫，完全看不出任何用意。很蹊蹺，對吧？

????但也許事情并不是這么簡單，因為高盛鋁業務的客戶一般都是投資者（正如該行其他業務部門的客戶那樣），而不是可口可樂（Coke）或者通用汽車（GM），也不是其他的鋁材終端用戶。這些投資者并不從事實體制造，鋁對他們來說沒有實際用途，他們做的只是囤積居奇，高盛就是為他們服務的。等到他們賣出時，這些鋁材也許又會被另一個投資者買入，堆放到另一個倉庫，也有可能這個倉庫同樣也是歸高盛集團所有。

????而鋁金屬經常在倉庫間轉移的主要原因似乎源于倫敦金屬交易所（London Metal Exchange，簡稱：LME）一個奇怪規定：它要求鋁倉庫每天移出3,000噸金屬，無論持有者是什么身份。《紐約時報》這篇報道認為，這個規定的出發點比較可疑，因為倫敦金屬交易所也可以因此從鋁材倉儲業務中獲得額外增長的利潤。因此，如果投資者既想長時間的囤積手中的鋁，同時又不想違反這一規定，就必須每天把鋁從一個倉庫轉移到另一個倉庫。這也就增加了金屬鋁的持有成本。如果投資者想從中獲利，就必須進一步加價。而最終結果就是導致鋁價上漲，至少在公開市場是如此。也許這個才是真正推高鋁價的幕后黑手。也就是說，使得我們每購買一罐可口可樂就要多花0.002美元、一年將近多花50億美元的始作俑者是拙劣的監管規定，而不是高盛集團卑鄙的炒作手法。

????更重要的是，高盛集團鋁倉庫的庫存僅為150萬噸，只占全球總量的一小部分。因此，如果真按照《紐約時報》的數學計算公式，高盛集團從鋁價上漲中獲利1.71億美元。其余剩下的大部分利潤就都流向鋁工業。然而，“拙劣的規定使得汽水每罐上漲0.002美元，美國鋁業公司（Alcoa）和其他鋁生產商因此獲利48億美元”這樣的新聞標題大概不會上頭版。

????If you bought a can of Coke this weekend, you might have paid $0.002 more because of Goldman Sachs. Worse, the car you drove to wherever it was that you bought that can of Coke cost $12 more than it should have, again because of Goldman (GS), which is like $1.09 more a year over the life of the car.

????Of course, the fact that these amounts are small doesn't matter, as I have argued in the past. The black magic of Wall Street is figuring out how to take pennies from everyone and redistribute that money in the form of multi-million dollar bonuses to a relatively small number of people on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

????But when you want to make the case that Wall Street is taking advantage of us -- that is, jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money, as one colorful reporter put it -- you have to look at how these amounts add up. And in the aluminum market, it's not clear that the case against Goldman does that.

????The tale of how Goldman is manipulating the market for aluminum and boosting prices to the tune of $5 billion a year for Coke drinkers and others was laid out this weekend in an article in theNew York Times. According to the article, back in 2003, regulators passed a rule that allowed Goldman and other Wall Street firms to go outside the normal realm of financial markets and buy up companies that participate in the actual buying and selling of commodities, metals like aluminum. So Goldman did. It bought a group of warehouses in Detroit that store and ship aluminum.

????The NYT makes a big deal about the fact that nearly none of the aluminum Goldman holds is ever shipped to customers. Instead, Goldman moves it from one warehouse to another, without any perceived purpose. Sketchy, right?

????Maybe not. That's because Goldman's clients generally aren't Coke (KO) or GM (GM), or any other end user. Goldman's clients, like in the other parts of its business, are investors, who aren't in the business of making things. They have no actual use for the metal, other than to stockpile it, which is what Goldman does for them. When it is sold, the aluminum might end up being bought by another investor, who would put it in another warehouse, which could also be owned by Goldman.

????Much of the movement of the metal, though, happens, it appears, because of a weird regulation, imposed by the London Metal Exchange -- the motivation of which, according to the Times article, is dubious because it too benefits from inflated profits in the warehousing business. The rule states that no matter who owns the aluminum, 3,000 tons of it have to be moved out of warehouses every day. So if investors want to hold their metal for long periods of time, they have to move it from one warehouse to another in order to not run afoul of the rules. That drives up the cost of holding onto the metal, and therefore the price that investors want to get paid when they sell it. And that results in a higher price of aluminum, at least in the public markets. So what may really be driving up the price of aluminum, and costing customers $0.002 more for a can of Coke, to the tune of $5 billion a year, is not a dastardly shipping scheme by Goldman, but some poorly written regulation.

????What's more, Goldman's warehouses only hold 1.5 million tons of aluminum, a small fraction of the overall stock of the metal. So if anything, by the NYT's math, Goldman's take of its aluminum inflation efforts is $171 million. Much of the rest of the benefit would go to the aluminum industry. Still, a headline that read "Alcoa and other aluminum manufactures make $4.8 billion off poorly devised regulations that drives up the price of a can of soda $0.002" probably wouldn't have made the front page.