The law was amended in 2010 to add motion picture box office futures to the list of banned futures contracts, in response to lobbying efforts by the Motion Picture Association of America.[2]
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As a result of this law, The Onion obtained a monopoly on the future, which it was forced to keep for itself.
I am bit tired so I had to reread the explanation on wikipedia twice, but do I get it correctly: They acquired the absolute majority of onions in the state, acquired futures, then flooded the market with their onions (plus some other minor fakeouts), so the price plummeted and they could get a massive payout on the futures?
Why are onions so special for this, doesn't this apply to pretty much any commodity?
Yeah, I think it's just because it was actually like feasible for somebody at the time to buy all the onions in Chicago. Most commodity markets are too big for any one actor to do that, especially now that commodity markets are often global. You can't just like, buy every barrel of oil on earth. Too many.
Plus onions can be warehoused for several months (a year in the right conditions maybe?) so they won't spoil while you're executing your devious scheme.
"so you're a farmer?"
"uh huh"
"do you do all the work on your farm?"
"no, I hire undocumented workers to do that"
"so you're just a property owner who relies on heavily exploitable labor?"
"..."
sure, but the end result could be a reduction in onion production. and the actual farm workers not getting paid.
its the issue with capitalism, the landlords might say 'without us who will finance the housing?' the obvious answer is the Government, but if the Government isn't willing to finance housing (though it is always able to), there won't be new homes (or a great reduction at the least).
