48 Comments

Didn't Hillary's thing work like this? The brokerage would make, say, 10 trades. Say 5 were gains and 5 were losses. The gaining trades were assigned after the fact to Hillary's account. The brokerage absorbed the losses in the other 5. And presto! The brokerage has sent some $$ to the governor's wife, in a cleverly roundabout way.

(BTW this post-trade assignment of trades was legal then, but later banned.)

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Great article. Need to pair with a review of Thiel's "Zero to One" about how "nice" monopolies are the optimal solution. Raw capitalism and messy markets are old school

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Great article!

Will you look into big dairy please? We have a couple of small dairies we can purchase raw milk. I asked them why the do not have butter and sour cream. They said that big dairy lobbied for regulations that do not allow small dairies to produce butter and sour cream. The small dairies have spent large amounts of money to get the regulations changed but to no avail.

This won't end well if something disrupts the commercial dairy chain. Humans can survive famine for a long time eating butter and a potatoes.

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That opening sentence is brilliant. And hysterical. 😂

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Sounds like the UK milk businesses. In the 80's all milk was delivered to your door and controlled by a number of companies. These paid the farmer's a fair price.

In 87, one of the dairies sound there milk to the supermarket ASDA ( later taken over by Walmart, who sold it last year). The diary (intermediary) got a great deal. Shortly after all the other main dairies did the same. The price of milk came tumbling down, severely affecting the farmers as the supermarkets squeezed out the profit. All the intermediaries have left the market or gone bankrupt as the supermarkets were significantly larger and stronger. Many farmers were in trouble and milk has had to be imported as a consequence.

So many people lost their jobs. The UK milk floats were electric, well ahead of there time.

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Political hit piece. Did nothing to substantially illuminate the consolidation in the meat packing industry and it's effects on the rancher or consumer.

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"I don't care who does the electing, as long as I get to do the nominating." Boss Tweed was an early practitioner of owning the politician well before they reached office.

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I will ask my regional health food chain about the source of their grass fed $13 lb. beef stew meat. It's perfectly trimmed and reminds me of the good old days.

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Stoller's argument that 80% of the cattle are now sold under long-term contracts with reference to a "spot" price of cattle which has become thin and easily manipulated, makes absolutely no sense unless you assume that the sellers of the 80% are idiots. (Typical for the quality of his arguments, IMHO.)

Pointing to the expanded margins of Tyson Food during an enormously disrupted period also makes no sense. If this continued significantly past the current period, then it would be meaningful, but drawing meaningful conclusions from one quarter's data during a pandemic is impossible.

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I hope you're in contact with Joel Salatin a.k.a. The Lunatic Farmer. HE definitely is on record regarding the distorted meat production 'system' in America.

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Back in the day, communities would get together and spend a week processing beef, pork, whatever. There is nothing to prevent that from happening again.

Fedgov be damned.

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Robert Caro (with a C not a K)

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communism coming in from the top???

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I haven’t figured out why farmer owned cooperatives are not players in the meat processing market. That could help level the playing field. They play a huge role in dairy processing and grain processing/export.

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Great article.

The response locally here in the Midwest when many slaughter and butcher shops got booked for a year to two years out during the highest points of panic last year was that a bunch of new shops opened. It's great. Now there's quality shops all over to take cattle to, and a thriving brisk local business in meat. More ranchers are selling directly to consumers and setting up all kinds of different vehicles for doing so, shares, quarters, etc

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Great article.

The response locally here in the Midwest when many slaughter and butcher shops got booked for a year to two years out during the highest points of panic last year was that a bunch of new shops opened. It's great. Now there's quality shops all over to take cattle to, and a thriving brisk local business in meat. More ranchers are selling directly to consumers and setting up all kinds of different vehicles for doing so, shares, quarters, etc

Expand full comment