How the naked silver Emperors, Bunker & Nelson Hunt screwed sugar producers

[Democrats_win]

Bunker and Nelson Hunt are famous for trying to illegally corner the silver market along with their younger brother, Lamar Hunt (founder of the Kansas City Chiefs). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Bunker_Hunt

What's missing is the fact that they also had control of the Great Western Sugar Company which they used as a "bank" to help them with their desire to corner the silver market. The Great Western Sugar Company not only provided direct jobs for thousands of employees who turned sugar beets into sugar, but also provided employment for the farmers who grew the sugar beets. But because of the Hunts' using the Sugar Company as a bank to buy silver, Great Western Sugar went bankrupt and left thousands of people in northern Colorado, part of Nebraska and parts of Wyoming out in the cold.

Many small towns in Colorado harbor abandoned sugar factories that have become eyesores. Great Western Sugar was truly a great company. Yet like many bankrupt companies, the rich owners blame the EPA or the market. Although the sugar market drastically changed in the mid-1970s (because the price of sugar had gotten so high), the Hunts made a lot of money from sugar. Before they bought the company, one of the founders was Charles Boettcher who also founded Ideal Cement in order to provide cement for construction of his new sugar factories. Boettcher was a good man who wanted to give back to the state that had been so good to him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sugar_Cooperative

However, the Hunts were notoriously, terrible people. In her new biography, My Extraordinary Ordinary Life, Sissy Spacek describes, how as a Texan she felt bad when JFK was killed in her home state. She, according to her book even felt worse when Bunker Hunt said some derogatory things about the deceased JFK. So you see, the Hunts (members of the John Birch Society) were real pieces of work.

Do you think any of this is in Wikipedia? No! The pages about the Hunts says nothing about the Great Western Sugar Company. In a 2009 book, Footsteps in the Sugar, one of the farmers associated with Great Western Sugar basically says that the Hunts "raped the company." Even without the Great Western story, the Hunts were terrible--a typical story of the Great Gatsby rich who just leave a mess in their wake. Yes, the rich really are different. They're sick and terrible. These brothers had a sick obsession with wealth that included Iran Contra, Libya and sadly Colorado.

[Hotler]

1. Kicking because I live in Colorado. And remember

Great Western Sugar.

[Punx]

2. Their attempts to corner the silver market.

Resulted in changes to commodity trading rules. The specifics of which escape me at the moment but which foiled them in their attempts.

These are the "Hunts" referred to by Eisenhower in his 1954 letter to his brother.

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas.5 Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Currently their number is not so negligible, and they have friends on both sides of the aisle. I would say they are winning at the moment.