Tuesday, August 04, 2009

"Should Andrew J. Hall Get His Bonus?"

When folks are basically gambling, legitimately, in the arbitrage and futures market, should they be allowed 100 million dollar bonuses?
Mr. Hall and his colleagues -- there are about 55 in the Westport office, and handfuls in London and Singapore -- specialize in a variety of hedging and arbitrage techniques.

Generally, Phibro looks for anomalies in the market and pounces, taking advantage of unusual spreads between the spot price of oil and the price of an oil futures contract.

The company, for example, often wagers that the price of oil will rise so fast during a particular period, say six months, that it can make money by storing oil in supertankers and floating it until the price goes up. (If the price rises by more than it costs to lease the tankers, he makes money.)
With Vegas, at least the house wins. In this case, these free-marketeers wreak havoc on the pricing of such things as oil, continually screwing with the American people. Where's the conscience? Where's the regulation?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...


Lifeboat

Would Mr Hall have the slightest prospect of receiving his $100m bonus if Citigroup had not received $45b in government bailout money?

I made steam. I'm the best stoker on this ship.

When the ship goes down, good (Mr Hall) and bad sailors go down with it. Mr Hall's contract was valid when the ship was sailing under it's own power. Dragged back to the surface, the ship and everything in it belongs to the salvage company to dispose of in any manner they see fit. Mr Hall's contract was with an entity that no longer exists.