Are Speculators Manipulating The Price of Oil?
Are Speculators Manipulating The Price of Oil? – by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at The Care2 Election Blog)
Apparently, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been investigating this since December. Is there really anyone that thought the prices haven’t been manipulated?
The Great Oil Swindle: How much did the Fed really know?
The Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating trading in oil futures to determine whether the surge in prices to record levels is the result of manipulation or fraud. They might want to take a look at wheat, rice and corn futures while they’re at it. The whole thing is a hoax cooked up by the investment banks and hedge funds who are trying to dig their way out of the trillion dollar mortgage-backed securities (MBS) mess that they created by turning garbage loans into securities. That scam blew up in their face last August and left them scrounging for handouts from the Federal Reserve. Now the billions of dollars they’re getting from the Fed is being diverted into commodities which is destabilizing the world economy; driving gas prices to the moon and triggering food riots across the planet.
For months we’ve been told that the soaring price of oil has been the result of Peak Oil, fighting in Iraq, attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria, labor problems in Norway, and (the all-time favorite)growth in China. It’s all baloney. Just like Goldman Sachs prediction of $200 per barrel oil is baloney. If oil is about to skyrocket then why has G-Sax kept a neutral rating on some of its oil holdings like Exxon Mobile? Could it be that they know that oil is just another mega-inflated equity bubble—like housing, corporate bonds and dot.com stocks—that is about to crash to earth as soon as the big players grab a parachute?
Who Killed the Electric Car?
During the same period, the further development, marketing and production if the Electric Car was being stifled. This was ominously explained in the 2006 Documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car”. The film explores the birth, limited commercialization, and subsequent death of the battery electric vehicle in the United States, specifically the General Motors EV1 of the 1990s. According to the documentary, GM claimed there was no demand for this product and they then took back every single vehicle (which were only available on lease – none were actually purchased from GM). Despite many owners wanting to purchase their vehicles outright, GM would not respond to these drives, and at the end of the leases the vehicles were taken back and crushed. (Yes physically destroyed!)
From The Tampa Tribune…
The sudden, shocking increase in the price of oil is a market failure that resembles the damaging excesses of the dot-com bubble, Enron scandal and housing meltdown.
Speculators, loosely regulated, have bid up crude-oil prices to illogical highs. There is no oil shortage. You don’t have to wait in lines at the pump. The cost of bringing oil to market has not changed.
. . .
Part of the problem is that the Federal Reserve has kept money flowing, empowering consumers to bid up the price of food and oil. The easy-money policy helped the economy, but at the price of a weaker dollar, which adds to the rising price of oil and invites a surge of money into inflation-resistant commodities, such as grain, gold and oil.
Reining in speculators is key to returning the price of fuel to a fair level. Frenzied buying with borrowed money by people who never take possession of the oil does no good for either producers or consumers.
Also See:
What do you think? Are gas and oil prices being manipulated? If so, what can be done to stop it? Does anyone think that the prices aren’t being manipulated?
