Honestly, Planet Money did an episode on it years back that has stuck with me more than any other in a catalog of many hundreds of episodes. It's a fascinating tale despite seemingly dry elements like commodity trading and futures
We have an odd, kind of family heirloom. It's a still life painting of onions. The story goes that the painting belonged to a railroad VP in California who loved onions but for whatever reason could not eat them. Apparently the VP was a distant relative of the family. The painting was given to my father when he was a young man working in machining factory in the years before WWII. An odd story? Yes, and I've always doubted it's veracity. However it's a very nice painting. 😄
A multi layered family onion painting mystery sounds nice, we're still trying to find out what happened to Dad after he went to the store for cigarettes in 1973.
The most-accepted Chicago meaning is a word that comes from the Algonquin language: “shikaakwa,” meaning “striped skunk” or “onion.” According to early explorers, the lakes and streams around Chicago were full of wild onions, leeks, and ramps. Appropriate that Chicago played such a huge part in this story.
Ramps...Oh do I want some ramps right now. Once found a large patch deep in the woods behind our house as a kid. I swore my family to secrecy about the location, but my Mother told several people. A year later they had all been stolen. I will die with the secret of the locations of my current patches.
@Foolish188 I planted 100 bulbs 2 years ago. Last year I tasted a couple leaves. They're just coming up now, but I expect to be able to take enough leaves to make some ramp butter, and to hopefully get some seed to scatter. Hopefully next year I can take a few bulbs.
@@topherthe11th23 very few questions in etymology can be answered with the unwavering confidence you have put on display in your comment. It's foolish to accept either story as absolute fact, unless you can provide a definitive primary source (which I know you can't).
One year Mom got me an onion for Christmas. I looked right at her and ate it raw. I still like onions and I learned a valuable lesson. Don't make Mama mad.
Wouldn't that actually be Louis and Billy-Ray? Morty and Randy didn't recover from that until the 1990's following a windfall gift from a foreign prince!! 😂😂😂
Having grown onions at scale, actively traded commodities futures, and secretly desiring the cheat code to large piles of money this story is one of my all-time favorites, right up there with The Idles of March and the Manhattan Project.
The most-accepted Chicago meaning is a word that comes from the Algonquin language: “shikaakwa,” meaning “striped skunk” or “onion.” According to early explorers, the lakes and streams around Chicago were full of wild onions, leeks, and ramps.
You know what else has layers? Parfaits. Everyone likes a parfait. Ask anyone if they'd like a parfait. Ain't no one gonna say, "No, I don't want no parfait."
I'm not sure if there is a History Guy video to be made, but tobacco is the most valuable crop in the world for which there is no organized market or trading. I was briefly involved some years ago with one the largest tobacco brokers, which bought directly from farmers and sold to tobacco companies around the world. There is a lot more to supplying the different types of tobacco to the cigarette manufacturers than you could possibly imagine!
Here’s a butter and onion related experience for you: I grew up on a dairy farm in Georgia. My father and grandfather farmed together and had about 330 dairy cows. One unfortunate day, the cows broke down a fence and got into a neighbor’s empty field, which was rife with wild onions. Cows LOVE wild onions, but the resulting milk - pee-ew. Three days of milk had to be discarded, until all traces of onion smell were gone. I will never forget the odor and appearance of the curdled milk in the two big tanks, which as I recall held 3,000 and 5,000 gallons respectively. I still cannot eat French onion dip.
When I was in college (between the fall of 1966 and spring of 1970), there was a Great Winter Onion Shortage. The price of onions shot up, then they disappeared from the shelves. You couldn't get one for love nor money. It was a great day in the morning when they returned. Does anyone else remember this?
4:23 I am commenting in the middle of the piece to express how delighted and amused I am by your well-placed and accurate puns. Thank you. You remind me of my HS physics teacher. All the dad-joke punny humor one could stomach and I was all there for it. Keep it up!
Mr. Lance, I must say that you MORE THAN earn my devotion to your channel every week. You must be a tireless researcher to document so many stories so well with nary a break. I am truly in awe.
When I was up north, in the high Artic, people would eat raw spanish onions because they tasted like apples. This happens when you do not eat frest vegetables for a long time.
I often traveled with my family on the way to Port Jervis New York, through Pine Island New York, a town known for growing onions, in a broad flat valley of pure black soil. Listening to this episode, I wondered if Pine Island would be mentioned, and was not disappointed. The area is quite beautiful, and it is amazing how black the soil is.
One of your best, definitely top ten. Can you imagine over 1000 gondola cars full of onions? I have ridden in a gondola car full of sweet potatoes. At about 50 feet long, that is about 9.5 miles long.
A possible topic for another video - I long ago read in a book that in the 1800s, an investor set about cornering the market for rags used in making paper, but that just as he was completing a major step in the process, wood-pulp paper was made available and the market for rag paper was hopelessly undercut. I have not been able to find further information, and it may be an apocryphal warning story.
A very useful scam. For both farmers who can sell at a guaranteed profit and buyers who can buy at a guaranteed price, eliminating their risk of a higher price. Speculators provide the liquidity for the farmers and buyers.
Interestingly, just last week, Trump Media filed a complaint with the SEC claiming some mystery party was short selling Truth Social to manipulate the prices of their stock. Totally has to be true, can't be that a company that's losing tons of money has an overinflated stock value... Still, gambling and the stock market, ever a match made in the realm of the afterlife, such gambling working out ever so well in the 1920's.
Onions are said to be among the most nutritious of garden vegetables. When I was a kid, Mom would sometimes have a saucer of onion sections on the table. I gnoshed on onion along with other parts of the meal. When I worked with Boy Scouts on canoeing and camping expeditions, I would add onion sections to the meal. The boys liked them, and gobbled them down Courtesy of Half Vast Flying
If only the rest of us were willing to give people like that the one time payment in lead that they deserve. But most of us are no better, we have a system wherein mice happily vote for cats in the delusional hope that they will one day become the cat.
@@jodyssey9921 you have to step on other people's faces to make it up the ladder to wealth. There's a good reason why Jesus told the young rich man to sell all his possessions and give to the poor, and why it is said that a camel can be more easily be drawn through the eye of a needle than can a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven. You can't get rich without screwing people, it's a simple fact.
The plot thickness with each layer that's removed and peeled back!❤ I heard once you can place a few rings of a white onion and a bay leaf under your arm pits, it won't stop you from stinking, but it will help people think someone is cooking beef stew, or an onion soup with beef broth...beef and barley anyone? ----George Carlin.
I have some apples, would you like to buy them? Yes, please. That's how hard it should be to operate a Business. Also, dueling should be brought back. You might be able to say "buy my onions or else" 1 or 2 times but by number 10 you're surely missing an ear.
I worked in futures operations for about 25 years. I was aware that Gerald Ford had sponsored the legislation to ban onion futures sales and that the background related to market manipulation of onion futures prices. Pity that the senior management at Barings' Bank hadn't understood some of the lessons of the story. Those are only 2 of the futures-related scandals I'm aware of. I once visited the old floor of the Chicago Board of Trade (the OTHER exchange in Chicago), and was shown the desks with some wheat grain samples sitting at the back of the drawers from years previously.
I traded commodities on the floor of the CME for over 35 years. Tell me about it. There was quite a bit of hanky panky in the gold pits during the early 1980s. One Trader who made a lot of money in the gold pits, used his money to fund Expeditions searching for lost treasures in various places around the world. The joke at the time, on the floor was, now that he stole all the gold in the trading pits, he's going to use it to steal all the rest of the gold in the world.
Chicago MEANS Onion in the Fox and Mesquaki language. They are the same people who named the major river of America the Mississippi, a Fox and Mesquaki word which means Plenty Of Fish.
Put on a a play based on this called “The Onion King of Chicago” for my final high school group drama performance. Thanks for all the detail on the story!
Seattle's Pike Place market started when onions went from .10 to 1.0 and the housewives rioted. The public market connected farmers to consumers and skipped grocery price gouging.
Totally. I am just an average home cook, but I keep 3 or 4 kinds of onions on hand all the time. Sweet, purple, yellow, leeks ( when available), and green onions. But shallots are great, too.
When I was a dishwasher, I hated to clean the bowls of French onion soup. I asked the chef why we served it, he said it cost $0.50 to make and we charged $8.50 a bowl.
I’m generally a big fan of this channel, and enjoy what is usually intelligent, insightful and often humorously entertaining commentary. On this particular episode, though, there’s a comment at about 2:50 regarding futures derivatives markets offering ways of “hedging against the risk that a bad harvest would depress prices”. This makes no sense to me- a generally bad harvest in any important growing area in any given season will raise, not lower prices due to the law of supply and demand. The risk being mitigated by farmers through futures hedging would be the significant risk that they, and everyone else growing the same crop they did, would have a bumper crop in the same year, creating a glut on the market which would drive down prices. Farmers mitigate the risk of a bad harvest in their own fields through crop insurance.
During my studies of Horticulture I stumbled upon the event known as Tulipmania involving the trading of rare tulips in The Netherlands , 400 or so years ago give or take ,some people lost fortunes speculating on the newest fashionable flower bulbs from the middle east
There's an extra irony to this going down next to the Chicago River, named after a close relative of the bulb onions traded there, then dumped right in.
A very interesting video, although I think you might have exaggerated the following: "In his riveting 1970 work, History of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Everret B. Harris...." But your enthusiasm is catching.
As someone who is very allergic to onions, and onions are in just about everything, the title of this definitely led me in a different direction of thinking.
Onions scandals should not be leeked to the press.
Hey kid, beet it with the puns.
scandalous would be scallion-esque ?
Cheese, I’m getting tired of puns. Every comments section is just peppered with them.
Whey did you ❤️ him THG? You're just egging them on.
Is it weird that I would rather watch a short documentary about onion futures trading than nearly any network produced TV show?
Nope,I totally agree
❤️🙏
No. "Wisdom is known by her children".
That’s why we are here 👍🏻
We're all weirdos here.
4:15 -- "But the market for butter spread thin..."
Funny guy. -_-
He definitely has a way with words 😆
His alliteration is also beautiful, his scripts are like poetry at times
As I spread them thick,I don’t get why the guy is funny.
... Spread thin... Eggs in one basket...That's why I love the history guy...
You rapscallion, you.
So much fun has started with “two guys in Chicago.”
It’s A Hundred And Six Miles To Chicago. We Got A Full Tank Of Gas, Half A Pack Of Cigarettes. It's Dark, And We're Wearing Sunglasses
Cringe
@@Metalkatt Hit It.
That, and “Florida man…”
Dont all good stories involve pirates, ( of any kind ) ???
It takes a real talent to make commodity trading and onion farming into a fascinating story. Well done, sir.
You could say it has layers…
@@pilotjoe4010 So many layers ☺️
Honestly, Planet Money did an episode on it years back that has stuck with me more than any other in a catalog of many hundreds of episodes. It's a fascinating tale despite seemingly dry elements like commodity trading and futures
We have an odd, kind of family heirloom. It's a still life painting of onions. The story goes that the painting belonged to a railroad VP in California who loved onions but for whatever reason could not eat them. Apparently the VP was a distant relative of the family. The painting was given to my father when he was a young man working in machining factory in the years before WWII. An odd story? Yes, and I've always doubted it's veracity. However it's a very nice painting. 😄
That's fascinating! I can't eat onions and neither can my mother. I don't think I've heard of anyone outside my family that reacts to them.
I love family stories like this.
@@drewzero1 I have a friend who can't eat onions. I believe he has diverticulitis.
A multi layered family onion painting mystery sounds nice, we're still trying to find out what happened to Dad after he went to the store for cigarettes in 1973.
Ji.bo.... 9
So glad The History Guy mentioned, "Trading Places" because that movie immediately came to mind when discussing "future's commodities."
Commodity futures.
And he led us right into it with “pork bellies” and “frozen orange juice.” I love that movie! It's a lot of fun.
The most-accepted Chicago meaning is a word that comes from the Algonquin language: “shikaakwa,” meaning “striped skunk” or “onion.” According to early explorers, the lakes and streams around Chicago were full of wild onions, leeks, and ramps. Appropriate that Chicago played such a huge part in this story.
Ramps...Oh do I want some ramps right now. Once found a large patch deep in the woods behind our house as a kid. I swore my family to secrecy about the location, but my Mother told several people. A year later they had all been stolen. I will die with the secret of the locations of my current patches.
@Foolish188 I planted 100 bulbs 2 years ago. Last year I tasted a couple leaves. They're just coming up now, but I expect to be able to take enough leaves to make some ramp butter, and to hopefully get some seed to scatter. Hopefully next year I can take a few bulbs.
@@topherthe11th23 very few questions in etymology can be answered with the unwavering confidence you have put on display in your comment. It's foolish to accept either story as absolute fact, unless you can provide a definitive primary source (which I know you can't).
So just like how New York is known as "The Big Apple", Chicago could be called, "The Wild Onion"?
Yes,Pete ....it is.Actually,it's pronounced "mill-ee-wah-kay" which is Algonquin for "the good lands"
_"If making money is a crime, then I'm guilty."_
He didn't make money. He extorted money.
Only because dishonest people believed him
@@EddieVBlueIslandgreedy people anyways
@@EddieVBlueIslandWere the onion farmers who didnt want their crop to become worthless dishonest?
Good point.
One year Mom got me an onion for Christmas. I looked right at her and ate it raw. I still like onions and I learned a valuable lesson. Don't make Mama mad.
Since I was a kid, I have eaten onions, like apples, but ☝️covered with Mustard & Black Pepper; Tomatoes, as well🤤😋🤣
Salt & Watermelon 🍉 🧂 is pretty good too🤙😉
Ever hear of Vidalia onions? Supposedly they're sweet like apples!
They are! @@poetryflynn3712
The ones that are as big around as softballs but only an inch or so tall are the best ones.
@@peterestrada9420 My dad did that.
I love that little nod to Trading Places at the end. On a side note people selling short on major films released in 2023 could have made a fortune.
Just shorting Disney world have been a good idea
" the butter market had spread thin" such a great slip in line
Mortimer and Randolph Duke would be proud.
Wouldn't that actually be Louis and Billy-Ray? Morty and Randy didn't recover from that until the 1990's following a windfall gift from a foreign prince!! 😂😂😂
😂 😂 😂
Having grown onions at scale, actively traded commodities futures, and secretly desiring the cheat code to large piles of money this story is one of my all-time favorites, right up there with The Idles of March and the Manhattan Project.
What's the difference between an onion and an accordion?
No one crys when you cut up an accordion.
The most-accepted Chicago meaning is a word that comes from the Algonquin language: “shikaakwa,” meaning “striped skunk” or “onion.” According to early explorers, the lakes and streams around Chicago were full of wild onions, leeks, and ramps.
I'm surprised that box office futures was even considered given how infamous Hollywood accounting is.
That is probably why it was considered, i.e., given how infamous Hollywood accounting is.
Guy turned good later, that's not normally how bad onions work.
And south american drug lords put money into their communities. So what's your point?
😂😂😂
You could say that he had layers to his personality.
A lot of those robber barons/shady capitalists turn to philanthropy later in life.
Steals a boatload of money and gives (some) of it away to boost his own reputation. Real nice guy he was -_-
It brought tears to my eyes at how you peeled this subject, sliced then diced its many layers.
And then leeked the information to us.
That last joke has me crying 😢 I don't know why!
Layers? ... like an ogre? ...
You know what else has layers? Parfaits. Everyone likes a parfait. Ask anyone if they'd like a parfait. Ain't no one gonna say, "No, I don't want no parfait."
Good one !
Cake! Cake has layers!
Ogres, onions, you mean smelly and make people cry?
This story brought tears to my eyes.
" the butter market had spread thin" such a great slip in line
Lance is in fine form today.....
So instead of preventing the same sort of market cornering to be done again, they just made it impossible for 2 very specific products.
And started an in-joke in the Adams family, where Gomez would comment on the price of pork bellies in multiple episodes.
I'm not sure if there is a History Guy video to be made, but tobacco is the most valuable crop in the world for which there is no organized market or trading. I was briefly involved some years ago with one the largest tobacco brokers, which bought directly from farmers and sold to tobacco companies around the world. There is a lot more to supplying the different types of tobacco to the cigarette manufacturers than you could possibly imagine!
Here’s a butter and onion related experience for you: I grew up on a dairy farm in Georgia. My father and grandfather farmed together and had about 330 dairy cows. One unfortunate day, the cows broke down a fence and got into a neighbor’s empty field, which was rife with wild onions. Cows LOVE wild onions, but the resulting milk - pee-ew. Three days of milk had to be discarded, until all traces of onion smell were gone. I will never forget the odor and appearance of the curdled milk in the two big tanks, which as I recall held 3,000 and 5,000 gallons respectively. I still cannot eat French onion dip.
I really appreciate all the puns you sprinkled throughout this clip. Thank you for all that you do. We learn so much from you😊
When I was in college (between the fall of 1966 and spring of 1970), there was a Great Winter Onion Shortage. The price of onions shot up, then they disappeared from the shelves. You couldn't get one for love nor money. It was a great day in the morning when they returned.
Does anyone else remember this?
That Vincent Kosuga, he really knew his onions...
Now I can't get the smell of rotting onions out of my mind ...
I was thinking the same thing. 🤮
aw heck, got a flashback from 2020 when for like 3 months the only stink I could feel was the stink of rotting onions
This story brings tears to my eyes
4:23 I am commenting in the middle of the piece to express how delighted and amused I am by your well-placed and accurate puns. Thank you. You remind me of my HS physics teacher. All the dad-joke punny humor one could stomach and I was all there for it. Keep it up!
Lesson: Don't cry over spilled onions.
Mr. Lance, I must say that you MORE THAN earn my devotion to your channel every week.
You must be a tireless researcher to document so many stories so well with nary a break.
I am truly in awe.
When I was up north, in the high Artic, people would eat raw spanish onions because they tasted like apples. This happens when you do not eat frest vegetables for a long time.
I often traveled with my family on the way to Port Jervis New York, through Pine Island New York, a town known for growing onions, in a broad flat valley of pure black soil. Listening to this episode, I wondered if Pine Island would be mentioned, and was not disappointed. The area is quite beautiful, and it is amazing how black the soil is.
"...the market for butter was spread thin"? Ahhaha 😂 Sir, only you could get away with that.
as soon as he said i thought " genius"
One of your best, definitely top ten. Can you imagine over 1000 gondola cars full of onions? I have ridden in a gondola car full of sweet potatoes. At about 50 feet long, that is about 9.5 miles long.
I wore an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time... 😂
Was it a brown onion?
Or one of the white ones that was fashionable at the time?
Thank you!😂
Here it is!
Onya Abe 👍
What. The. Fck. Are you from the 1800s??
I was looking for this lol
A possible topic for another video - I long ago read in a book that in the 1800s, an investor set about cornering the market for rags used in making paper, but that just as he was completing a major step in the process, wood-pulp paper was made available and the market for rag paper was hopelessly undercut. I have not been able to find further information, and it may be an apocryphal warning story.
Hey THG, my first time commenting. Love the Channel, great videos. This was a great video, super informative. I love onions, keep up the great content
I have always looked on futures trading as a sort of scam as it just seems to susceptible to stuns like this one.
A very useful scam. For both farmers who can sell at a guaranteed profit and buyers who can buy at a guaranteed price, eliminating their risk of a higher price. Speculators provide the liquidity for the farmers and buyers.
Interestingly, just last week, Trump Media filed a complaint with the SEC claiming some mystery party was short selling Truth Social to manipulate the prices of their stock.
Totally has to be true, can't be that a company that's losing tons of money has an overinflated stock value...
Still, gambling and the stock market, ever a match made in the realm of the afterlife, such gambling working out ever so well in the 1920's.
Onions are said to be among the most nutritious of garden vegetables. When I was a kid, Mom would sometimes have a saucer of onion sections on the table. I gnoshed on onion along with other parts of the meal. When I worked with Boy Scouts on canoeing and camping expeditions, I would add onion sections to the meal. The boys liked them, and gobbled them down
Courtesy of Half Vast Flying
Fantastic episode! The ending elicited a healthy chuckle! Thank you for all your hard work getting to the root of the issue! You are no dim bulb!
I can’t imagine being a farmer and then stealing from all the other farmers knowing how hard it is to stay afloat. What an actual pos. Makes me sick
Ruthlessness is the most important quality if you want to be rich. That's why rich people are all assholes.
If only the rest of us were willing to give people like that the one time payment in lead that they deserve. But most of us are no better, we have a system wherein mice happily vote for cats in the delusional hope that they will one day become the cat.
@@jodyssey9921 you have to step on other people's faces to make it up the ladder to wealth. There's a good reason why Jesus told the young rich man to sell all his possessions and give to the poor, and why it is said that a camel can be more easily be drawn through the eye of a needle than can a rich man enter the kingdom of heaven. You can't get rich without screwing people, it's a simple fact.
14:34 FCOJ but Pork Bellies were also part of the plot when Valentine was tested on when and what price to sell.
The plot thickness with each layer that's removed and peeled back!❤
I heard once you can place a few rings of a white onion and a bay leaf under your arm pits, it won't stop you from stinking, but it will help people think someone is cooking beef stew, or an onion soup with beef broth...beef and barley anyone?
----George Carlin.
Two of my great passions coming together, onions and scandals.
When I was a teen and working as a dishwasher in a restaurant, I was asked to help by prepping onions. I lasted about 15 minutes.
It's official: The History Guy can make any subject ap-peel-ing, no matter how many layers he has to unwrap.
My best friend thought that he was so smart. He said to me that onions were the only food that made you cry...then I threw a coconut at his face! 😂🧅🥥
I have some apples, would you like to buy them?
Yes, please.
That's how hard it should be to operate a Business. Also, dueling should be brought back. You might be able to say "buy my onions or else" 1 or 2 times but by number 10 you're surely missing an ear.
Per usual I read the title of your episode and go wow how is that going to be interesting and then you go ahead and blow my mind about onions.
Onions and potatoes, two of the best vegetables. They work with basically anything.
Clever, thank you for the laugh and smile.
Thank you again THG for another history lesson, this time on the onion. I am always impressed with your historical research.
Onions with steak and mushrooms?...Yummy!
Cue the Susan Christie song, "I Love Onions?"
Thanks!
Thank you!
I worked in futures operations for about 25 years. I was aware that Gerald Ford had sponsored the legislation to ban onion futures sales and that the background related to market manipulation of onion futures prices. Pity that the senior management at Barings' Bank hadn't understood some of the lessons of the story. Those are only 2 of the futures-related scandals I'm aware of. I once visited the old floor of the Chicago Board of Trade (the OTHER exchange in Chicago), and was shown the desks with some wheat grain samples sitting at the back of the drawers from years previously.
I traded commodities on the floor of the CME for over 35 years.
Tell me about it.
There was quite a bit of hanky panky in the gold pits during the early 1980s. One Trader who made a lot of money in the gold pits, used his money to fund Expeditions searching for lost treasures in various places around the world.
The joke at the time, on the floor was, now that he stole all the gold in the trading pits, he's going to use it to steal all the rest of the gold in the world.
Chicago MEANS Onion in the Fox and Mesquaki language. They are the same people who named the major river of America the Mississippi, a Fox and Mesquaki word which means Plenty Of Fish.
This is my favorite channel. You’re the best. Have a great day and God bless you.
I now know about a Onion Scandal....Thank The Amazing THG🎀 and i sure do love Onion's 👍
Old F-4 Shoe🇺🇸
Well done. Very interesting topic. Especially as I plant our own onions in 2024
That was a delightful story. Thanks for sharing it.
What a wild ride about onions of all things. You sir, have a gift for making even the most obscure topics riveting.
What a fascinating look at onions, one of my favourite versatile vegetables.
Thanks a lot.
Brilliant! Caveat Emptor!
Put on a a play based on this called “The Onion King of Chicago” for my final high school group drama performance. Thanks for all the detail on the story!
Welcome to class. The mid-term has been cancelled. Enjoy the weekend.
But I spent all night studying for it 😢.
@@CAP198462I was gonna cheat off your answers...🤔
@@JeffreyGlover65 You're suspended from school. 😜
Gee Thanks!
Seattle's Pike Place market started when onions went from .10 to 1.0 and the housewives rioted. The public market connected farmers to consumers and skipped grocery price gouging.
Trading Places is one of my favorite movies.
I'm sure this video is Billy Ray Valentine approved
My hat is of to you, the king of dad jokes.
I had a friend who was a chef. I once asked him what’s the most important vegetable. He said onions.
as a professional prep cook 100% onion.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Just look at how many recipes are ruined without it, and how few substitutes for it there really are.
Louisiana cooking relies upon what they call the Trinity: onion, celery and bell pepper.
Totally. I am just an average home cook, but I keep 3 or 4 kinds of onions on hand all the time. Sweet, purple, yellow, leeks ( when available), and green onions. But shallots are great, too.
When I was a dishwasher, I hated to clean the bowls of French onion soup. I asked the chef why we served it, he said it cost $0.50 to make and we charged $8.50 a bowl.
One of the best editions!
“..obscene outlay of onerous onions..” *chef kiss*
I'm so glad you mentioned Trading Places at the end. It's my only knowledge of futures trading aside from this video.
I'm sure this has been said, but this episode had me weeping.
Every time someone is getting rich, you can guarantee someone somewhere is getting screwed, being exploited or is indentured to make it possible.
That's something to cry about
I appreciate you and thank you for making content.
I’m generally a big fan of this channel, and enjoy what is usually intelligent, insightful and often humorously entertaining commentary. On this particular episode, though, there’s a comment at about 2:50 regarding futures derivatives markets offering ways of “hedging against the risk that a bad harvest would depress prices”. This makes no sense to me- a generally bad harvest in any important growing area in any given season will raise, not lower prices due to the law of supply and demand. The risk being mitigated by farmers through futures hedging would be the significant risk that they, and everyone else growing the same crop they did, would have a bumper crop in the same year, creating a glut on the market which would drive down prices. Farmers mitigate the risk of a bad harvest in their own fields through crop insurance.
Agreed. I noticed that as well. It seems counter-intuitive in a simple supply v. cost driven economy.
Trading Places is such a great movie, and probably one of the only reasons most Gen-X'ers know anything about commodities futures.
Thanks History Guy and team. I like to buy local onions from the roadside stand.
I love how you mentioned the Abilene Reporter News as that is my local Newspaper.
That dude sounds like a pirate to me. ^^
The Onion Pirate!
...After all, don't all good stories have pirates? (Sorry, but someone had to say it.)
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel This man really knows his onions!
@@juliao1255 Yes, and I was thinking it too!
A shining example of why Human greed needs to be regulated; heavily regulated, for the benefit of society as a whole.
Regulation makes things more expensive.
During my studies of Horticulture I stumbled upon the event known as Tulipmania involving the trading of rare tulips in The Netherlands , 400 or so years ago give or take ,some people lost fortunes speculating on the newest fashionable flower bulbs from the middle east
th-cam.com/video/EreCgy4ECpA/w-d-xo.htmlsi=0qz730-Fy0J9qARb
Another fascinating, well researched and cited story!
There's an extra irony to this going down next to the Chicago River, named after a close relative of the bulb onions traded there, then dumped right in.
Lettuce recognize the importance of the subject.
A very interesting video, although I think you might have exaggerated the following: "In his riveting 1970 work, History of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Everret B. Harris...." But your enthusiasm is catching.
Thanks History Guy!
Shorting has a finite reward, while it has a potentially infinite loss.
Thanks for another great video HG
My family farms soybeans corn and cotton and future prices are a jagged edge especially when storms and drought wipes out crops
As someone who is very allergic to onions, and onions are in just about everything, the title of this definitely led me in a different direction of thinking.
This is the most I've learned about onions at one time since that episode of Good Eats.
There’s so many layers to this tale…
Amazing video brought a tear to my eye.