A thought before I post a profile of GS

Before I begin running down a shabby profile of GS, I want to give the url to this msn article about GS: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43931226/ns/business-us_business/ . In short, it talks about the supposedly shady practices of GS in one of its new businesslines, warehousing of aluminum! I don't think there is in fact any shady practice (though I haven't read the facts, if there are even any) but I know it is in the right of any company to diversify into other businesses. To me, it's a vertical expansion because not only have they been in the aluminum trading business but they are now also in the aluminimum warehousing business. Good for them, I guess. This leads me to another point I have been forming in my head for months (years?). Financial intermediaries bring buyer and seller together more efficiently than ever before, but in the past when financial intermediaries weren't so efficient the incongruities would lead to profit and loss to be taken by actual buyers and sellers and now these instances of possible profit or loss have been seized by financial intermediaries. Let me illustrate, take aluminum markets for example, in the past with a less efficient system, buyers and sellers would have be price the materials and negotiate very well, if not either one could take a loss and the other a profit. Now, because of more efficient financial intermediaries, prices and negotiated much better consistently, therefore the buyers and sellers are no longer exposed to the risk of mispricing. Remember though without risk there is no profit. The efficiency leads the financial intermediary to benefit from fees for its services. I wonder if the efficiency of financial intermediaries is even needed nowadays, especially in lieu of considerable technological advancements which could probably allow the buyers and sellers to perform just as good a job of price discovery as the financial intermediaries.