16 January 2012

Housing and Oil: Dark Inventory Rules

Ilargi: I'd like to try a little intellectual exercise. There were two pieces in my mailbox this week that concerned posts at Naked Capitalism. Though their topics have at first glance little to do with one another, there is a term that is pivotal to both. Inventory.

When it comes to real estate, it's popularly called "shadow inventory". With regards to commodities, the term "dark inventory" has been coined. While there are plenty of differences in the way the terms are applied, I'm for now intrigued more by - potential - similarities between them.

Not that I have the illusion that I can treat this in a way that could even border on comprehensive, don't get me wrong. I want to lift only part of the veil that hides from view what underlies how and why the financial system that rules our economies is going to the dogs: market manipulation.

In particular, I'm interested in how both shadow and dark inventory phenomena pervert their respective markets, as well as the entire free market system as a whole, where everyone is supposed to have "full access to information". Something both dark and shadow inventories make impossible. Something the 99% general public are not aware of. At all.

And it's not like they're alone. Try your average pension fund manager, banker, politician. Not a clue.

Let' start with a trip back to June 2011, when Izabella Kaminska for FT Alphaville perhaps first used the term "dark inventory":

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