In 1996, the world learned a Japanese firm had cornered the copper market. The company, Sumitomo, was fined $125 million for squeezing copper supplies and artificially inflating prices--at that point the largest penalty ever levied by a U.S. government agency. The Commodities Futures Trading Commission called the scheme “one of the most serious worldwide manipulations” of a commodity in decades. Last Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission posted a decision that could effectively lead to a repeat of the Sumitomo corner, with one key difference: hoarding copper will now be legal.

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