7 ms·

Planet Money had a recent podcast titled "The Onion King", where someone took physical control of onion futures, and why that is the one type of future outlawed

by 33W 11y ago

Planet Money had a recent podcast titled "The Onion King", where someone took physical control of onion futures, and why that is the one type of future outlawed by congress. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/episode-657-the-tale-of-the-onion-king http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/episo...

andyjohnson0 11y ago
"and why that is the one type of future outlawed by congress" I was intrigued enough to follow this up, although I didn't listen to the podcast. From wikipedia: During the hearings, the Commodity Exchange Authority stated that it was the perishable nature of onion which made them vulnerable to price swings. Then-congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan sponsored a bill, known as the Onion Futures Act, which banned futures trading on onions. The bill was unpopular among traders, some of whom argued that onion shortages were not a crucial issue since they were used as a condiment rather than a staple food. The president of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, E.B. Harris, lobbied hard against the bill. Harris described it as "Burning down the barn to find a suspected rat". The measure was passed, however, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill in August 1958. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Kosuga#Regulatory_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Kosuga#Regulatory_acti...
- dclowd9901 11y ago
  And yet, crude, as a staple good, gets no such protections.
  - ars 11y ago
    It's not a protection, this law causes problems, it doesn't help anything.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  > since they were used as a condiment rather than a staple food such an unstaple food that The Times of India has a page dedicated to track the price of onions http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Onion-prices http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Onion-prices
  - everlost 11y ago
    This was probably in response to the onion crisis a few years back when onions were more expensive than gasoline http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Petrol-cheaper-than-onions-in-Goa/articleshow/21815006.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Petrol-cheaper-t...
  - SCdF 11y ago
    Yeah calling onion a condiment is pretty crazy, Onion is the basis of a huge amount of cuisine.
    - briandear 11y ago
      Not in America in the 1950s.
  - strictnein 11y ago
    My first snarky response was: "Do they also track beef prices?" But yes, they do (sort of): http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Beef-prices http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Beef-prices But then I wondered if those pages were auto-generated, so I tried other things: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Taco-prices http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Taco-prices Ok, how about non-food: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Obama-prices http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Obama-prices Yeah, it's kind of free form: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Why-Am-I-A-Pickle http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Why-Am-I-A-Pickle The first time you specify something unique, it takes a little bit to load, but then it's caching it.
    - SixSigma 11y ago
      I found it by searching Google. I think the articles it lists illustrate my wider point that onion prices are a concern to multi-billions of people.
cfontes 11y ago
There is an awesome book "Reminiscence of a stock operator" by Edwin Lefevre, the story is about one guy and he does that with coffee in the US, not one, but 2 times. The government actually had to come in and take it from him... The book is a mixture of fiction and real life and it's just great! One of my favorites
- VLM 11y ago
  It is an awesome book and its an extremely thinly disguised biography of Jesse Livermore. Its interesting to read up on why its thinly disguised. Its widely believed the author both got, and planted, stock tips for Livermore, but the author wanted no written legal document connecting them in case things went wrong and he ended up in court discussing his documented long financial relationship w/ Mr Livermore. Legally on paper he can say he has never had anything to do with the guy, etc. Everyone knew exactly what was going on, of course. Fred Schwed's "where are the customers yachts?" is another investment classic. Another classic comedy was Ben Graham's Security Analysis; its a comedy in the sense that market prices currently have no relationship to fundamentals from a Graham perspective. When I was young and dumb I thought I'd spend my life making wise investment decisions based on fundamentals using Mr Graham's techniques. Instead, my entire adult life has been spend in central bank bubbles. In that sense the book is useless today. But in your grandpa's day, or great grandpa's day, this is how investment decisions were calculated, and its kinda interesting historically. It would be amusing some slow day to have a HN article along the lines of "books recognized as cool, that have nothing to do with computers". I think we've had them in the distant past, years ago.
  - noir_lord 11y ago
    > It would be amusing some slow day to have a HN article along the lines of "books recognized as cool, that have nothing to do with computers". I think we've had them in the distant past, years ago. That would be very cool, I love reading how the world works outside computers but there is so much of everything and it's hard to filter in fields I know nothing about, have you considered suggesting it to dang, it would fit in well still I think.
  - 11y ago
bderrett 11y ago
The only other outlawed future is motion picture box office receipts: "7 U.S. Code § 13–1 - Violations, prohibition against dealings in motion picture box office receipts or onion futures; punishment (a) No contract for the sale of motion picture box office receipts (or any index, measure, value, or data related to such receipts) or onions for future delivery shall be made on or subject to the rules of any board of trade in the United States. The terms used in this section shall have the same meaning as when used in this chapter. (b) Any person who shall violate the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof be fined not more than $5,000."

by 33W 11y ago

andyjohnson0 11y ago

"and why that is the one type of future outlawed by congress" I was intrigued enough to follow this up, although I didn't listen to the podcast. From wikipedia: During the hearings, the Commodity Exchange Authority stated that it was the perishable nature of onion which made them vulnerable to price swings. Then-congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan sponsored a bill, known as the Onion Futures Act, which banned futures trading on onions. The bill was unpopular among traders, some of whom argued that onion shortages were not a crucial issue since they were used as a condiment rather than a staple food. The president of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, E.B. Harris, lobbied hard against the bill. Harris described it as "Burning down the barn to find a suspected rat". The measure was passed, however, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill in August 1958. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Kosuga#Regulatory_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Kosuga#Regulatory_acti...

dclowd9901 11y ago
And yet, crude, as a staple good, gets no such protections.
- ars 11y ago
  It's not a protection, this law causes problems, it doesn't help anything.
SixSigma 11y ago
> since they were used as a condiment rather than a staple food such an unstaple food that The Times of India has a page dedicated to track the price of onions http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Onion-prices http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Onion-prices
- everlost 11y ago
  This was probably in response to the onion crisis a few years back when onions were more expensive than gasoline http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Petrol-cheaper-than-onions-in-Goa/articleshow/21815006.cms http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/Petrol-cheaper-t...
- SCdF 11y ago
  Yeah calling onion a condiment is pretty crazy, Onion is the basis of a huge amount of cuisine.
  - briandear 11y ago
    Not in America in the 1950s.
- strictnein 11y ago
  My first snarky response was: "Do they also track beef prices?" But yes, they do (sort of): http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Beef-prices http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Beef-prices But then I wondered if those pages were auto-generated, so I tried other things: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Taco-prices http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Taco-prices Ok, how about non-food: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Obama-prices http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Obama-prices Yeah, it's kind of free form: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Why-Am-I-A-Pickle http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Why-Am-I-A-Pickle The first time you specify something unique, it takes a little bit to load, but then it's caching it.
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    I found it by searching Google. I think the articles it lists illustrate my wider point that onion prices are a concern to multi-billions of people.

cfontes 11y ago

There is an awesome book "Reminiscence of a stock operator" by Edwin Lefevre, the story is about one guy and he does that with coffee in the US, not one, but 2 times. The government actually had to come in and take it from him... The book is a mixture of fiction and real life and it's just great! One of my favorites

VLM 11y ago
It is an awesome book and its an extremely thinly disguised biography of Jesse Livermore. Its interesting to read up on why its thinly disguised. Its widely believed the author both got, and planted, stock tips for Livermore, but the author wanted no written legal document connecting them in case things went wrong and he ended up in court discussing his documented long financial relationship w/ Mr Livermore. Legally on paper he can say he has never had anything to do with the guy, etc. Everyone knew exactly what was going on, of course. Fred Schwed's "where are the customers yachts?" is another investment classic. Another classic comedy was Ben Graham's Security Analysis; its a comedy in the sense that market prices currently have no relationship to fundamentals from a Graham perspective. When I was young and dumb I thought I'd spend my life making wise investment decisions based on fundamentals using Mr Graham's techniques. Instead, my entire adult life has been spend in central bank bubbles. In that sense the book is useless today. But in your grandpa's day, or great grandpa's day, this is how investment decisions were calculated, and its kinda interesting historically. It would be amusing some slow day to have a HN article along the lines of "books recognized as cool, that have nothing to do with computers". I think we've had them in the distant past, years ago.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  > It would be amusing some slow day to have a HN article along the lines of "books recognized as cool, that have nothing to do with computers". I think we've had them in the distant past, years ago. That would be very cool, I love reading how the world works outside computers but there is so much of everything and it's hard to filter in fields I know nothing about, have you considered suggesting it to dang, it would fit in well still I think.
- 11y ago

bderrett 11y ago

The only other outlawed future is motion picture box office receipts: "7 U.S. Code § 13–1 - Violations, prohibition against dealings in motion picture box office receipts or onion futures; punishment (a) No contract for the sale of motion picture box office receipts (or any index, measure, value, or data related to such receipts) or onions for future delivery shall be made on or subject to the rules of any board of trade in the United States. The terms used in this section shall have the same meaning as when used in this chapter. (b) Any person who shall violate the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof be fined not more than $5,000."