Under Scrutiny, Goldman Offers to Speed Metal Delivery

Under scrutiny for the long waits that have cost manufacturers — and ultimately consumers — many millions of dollars, Goldman said on Wednesday that its warehouse unit, Metro International Trade Services, would give customers who store aluminum at the warehouses immediate access to their metal.

Through Metro International, Goldman stores vast amounts of aluminum in and around Detroit. An investigation by The New York Times found that Metro routinely shuffled tons of the metal from one warehouse to another, a tactic that profited Goldman but pushed up the price of aluminum across much of the nation.

Goldman also said on Wednesday it would suggest ways to improve the metal storage system, whose rules are dictated by the London Metal Exchange.

Regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are examining practices at warehouse operations controlled by financial firms and trading houses such as Glencore Xstrata, the Noble Group and Goldman. These operations store aluminum for companies like Coca-Cola and MillerCoors, as well as for speculators.

Congress has taken an interest in the issue as well. Earlier this month, the Senate Banking Committee convened hearings on Wall Street’s push into the physical commodities markets and whether its involvement had raised prices. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, has also been privately questioning big banks like Goldman, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley on their commodities businesses.

In Congressional testimony on Tuesday, Mary Jo White, the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said she had asked the agency’s staff to examine the issue.

Goldman said its offer to speed up delivery of metal was open only to industrial customers of its Metro warehouses. If a customer wants immediate delivery of its metal, Goldman said it would go into the open market and buy the amount requested, then swap it to the customer. Goldman said it would pay the difference between the market cost and the higher price that includes the storage premium. Goldman said none of its customers had taken up its offer yet.

Goldman also said that it supported recent efforts at the London exchange to increase the amount of metal allotted for delivery from its large warehouses, like those owned by Metro.

Last week, in the face of rising regulatory concerns about the big banks’ commodities operations, JPMorgan said it was looking to sell its physical commodities businesses, which include sprawling storage and transportation facilities. But Goldman does not appear to be following suit.

In a television interview on Wednesday, Gary D. Cohn, Goldman’s president, said the bank had no immediate plans to sell Metro International. Under the terms of the regulatory exemption provided to Goldman when it bought Metro, the bank has until 2020 to sell it.

Federal Judge to Zoloft MDL Lawyers: It's Time to Speed

The Zoloft MDL is going to have to pick up its pace if it's going to usher the way for state courts that are hearing similar cases, the federal judge presiding over the case told a room full of attorneys in federal court in Philadelphia during a status conference Thursday.

Personal Injury Lawyer Feels the Need for Speed

High-speed racing is "an adrenaline rush like no other," says Tom Schaefer, a personal injury lawyer in Suwanee, Ga. He says his clients who are motorcycle accident victims appreciate his expertise as a biker.

Four times a year, personal injury lawyer Tom Schaefer locks his office in Suwanee, Ga., loads his truck and heads north for a weekend that could not contrast more with a relaxing getaway in the Georgia mountains.

Schaefer, 47, races motorcycles -- at up to three times the legal speed on metro Atlanta highways. He has established 119 land-speed records in the various divisions for cycle classifications and engine size.

Schaefer's trips lead to a one-mile racing layout in Wilmington, Ohio, on a former World War II airstrip. One by one, riders test their skills and courage, and few have been as committed or accomplished as Schaefer, who raced four different bikes for a while.

He won four Motorcycle Points Championships in successive years with an organization called the East Coast Timing Association at another strip in Maxton, N.C., where he officially reached 206.391 mph.

Schaefer, a single man who estimates he has logged a quarter-million miles on motorcycles, is all too aware of the vehicle's dangers on two fronts. He serves as the attorney for casual riders involved in mishaps. And three racers whom he considered friends died in accidents while pursuing their passion.

You first hopped aboard a motorcycle at the age of 8. Was there a mini Hells Angels club?

My parents have a farm up in Missouri, where I grew up. We had a couple of horses. My dad was getting a little frustrated chasing them down on 160 acres of land so we could ride them. He asked if I wanted to ride a motorcycle. He said, "At least I won't have to go chase it down. It will be right where I left it." Oddly enough, my parents still have that motorcycle they got me, in the basement of their house.

What is the attraction of riding motorcycles at high speed?

I do it because I love it. It's exciting, an adrenaline rush like no other.

You are not just competing against people that day, but against people in history. Your records are there until somebody else is faster.

What was your most frightening experience?

It was my final run in Maxton that got me in the 200-mph club. I was blown off my line by a crosswind just before the one-mile marker. I couldn't get the bike turned for the dogleg to go into the long shutdown area. I wouldn't say I was in a panic, but I was extremely concerned about what was going to happen. I drove the motorcycle to the [outside] of the cones onto a rough, bumpy patch. Once I got to that area, I was able to slow the bike down. I remember looking down, and I could see just past my left leg into the open field a foot away.

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News Analysis: In Europe, Focus Begins to Shift to Speed of a Recovery

A year ago, many people seriously doubted whether the euro would still exist by now. On the threshold of 2013, the debate is more about how long it will take for the euro zone economy to recover and what must be changed to avoid future crises.

Europe still has plenty to worry about. Economic output is shrinking in nine of the 17 nations that use the euro. European banks remain weak, and many have yet to confront their problems decisively.

Many businesses in Spain, Italy and other distressed countries cannot obtain credit, hampering a recovery.

On top of that, with national elections coming in Italy in February and Germany in September, leaders there may be more focused on the narrow concerns of their voters than the cause of European unity.

“At the moment the crisis seems to have calmed down somewhat,” Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank, the German central bank, said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper published on Sunday. “But the underlying causes have by no means been eliminated.”

But consider some of the doomsday situations that did not occur in 2012. Greece did not leave the euro zone or set off a financial disaster like the one sparked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Spanish and Italian bond yields, rather than succumbing to contagion from Greece, retreated from levels that had threatened their governments with bankruptcy. And nowhere did populist, anti-euro political parties gain the upper hand.

All of these things could still happen, but the probability of catastrophe has fallen substantially because of a fundamental change in the way that European leaders are dealing with the crisis.

Under its president, Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank has promised to buy the bonds of countries like Spain, if needed, to control their borrowing costs.

That vow, which cooled the crisis fever of late summer, bought time for elected officials to begin creating the superstructure needed to make the euro more credible, including a permanent fund for rescuing stricken member countries and a unified system for overseeing banks.

“In 2012, the euro area leaders finally got the diagnosis right,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “It wasn’t about Greek debt or Irish banks. It was about some very fundamental design flaws that needed to be fixed. That’s what markets were looking for.”

Even though European political leaders seem to argue endlessly, they have made enough progress to keep speculators at bay. Investors surveyed by UBS recently ranked the chances of a breakup of the euro zone well behind the potential danger from a combination of spending cuts and tax increases scheduled to take effect in the United States next month or a hard landing by the Chinese economy.

“There is more of a perception that nobody is better off if this thing breaks up,” said Richard Barwell, senior European economist at Royal Bank of Scotland.

The question in 2013 will be whether a fragile calm in Europe holds long enough for economic growth to resume, for banks to rebuild their balance sheets and for leaders to make progress creating a more durable currency union.

Here are some of the main things to watch:

ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE The euro crisis, arguably, will be over the day that all of the stricken countries are generating economic growth. Ireland, one of the first countries to get into debt trouble back in 2008, might already have turned the corner. Its gross domestic product grew 0.2 percent in the third quarter from the period a year earlier.

Spain, Italy and Portugal are still deep in recession, and Greece is in a de facto depression. But there are some signs of progress in one crucial measure: trade balances. All of the distressed countries have increased exports this year and reduced trade deficits. That is a sign their products have become more competitive on world markets.