All this is well and official. But how today’s oil prices are really determined is done by a process so opaque only a handful of major oil trading banks such as Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley have any idea who is buying and who selling oil futures or derivative contracts that set physical oil prices in this strange new world of “paper oil.”
When you read of an opaque process, what is meant is they are doing things they don't want you to know.
A June 2006 US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report on “The Role of Market Speculation in rising oil and gas prices,” noted, “…there is substantial evidence supporting the conclusion that the large amount of speculation in the current market has significantly increased prices.”
What the Senate committee staff documented in the report was a gaping loophole in US Government regulation of oil derivatives trading so huge a herd of elephants could walk through it. That seems precisely what they have been doing in pumping oil prices through the roof in recent months.
The Senate report was ignored in the media and in the Congress.
Ignore in the media??? What in the hell was Harry "I Surrender" Reid doing? Worrying about how many AG's Bush fired? You know, it is truly funny. The dumb ass Democrats were desperate for a scandal, had one handed to them and they couldn't see it.
Kinda makes you wanna look at campaign contributions, eh??? I mean the Demos ignored this??? Makes no sense.
“Until recently, US energy futures were traded exclusively on regulated exchanges within the United States, like the NYMEX, which are subject to extensive oversight by the CFTC, including ongoing monitoring to detect and prevent price manipulation or fraud. In recent years, however, there has been a tremendous growth in the trading of contracts that look and are structured just like futures contracts, but which are traded on unregulated OTC electronic markets. Because of their similarity to futures contracts they are often called “futures look-alikes.”.
The only practical difference between futures look-alike contracts and futures contracts is that the look-alikes are traded in unregulated markets whereas futures are traded on regulated exchanges. The trading of energy commodities by large firms on OTC electronic exchanges was exempted from CFTC oversight by a provision inserted at the behest of Enron and other large energy traders into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 in the waning hours of the 106th Congress
Remember that $400 billion retirement package and how he "earned it?" Sure. No doubt.
In January 2006 when the CFTC allowed the ICE Futures the gaping exception, oil prices were trading in the range of $59-60 a barrel. Today some two years later we see prices tapping $120 and trend upwards. This is not an OPEC problem, it is a US Government regulatory problem of malign neglect.
And what has that neglect wrought?
Perhaps 60% of oil prices today pure speculation
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley today are the two leading energy trading firms in the United States. Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase are major players and fund numerous hedge funds as well who speculate.
In June 2006, oil traded in futures markets at some $60 a barrel and the Senate investigation estimated that some $25 of that was due to pure financial speculation. One analyst estimated in August 2005 that US oil inventory levels suggested WTI crude prices should be around $25 a barrel, and not $60.
That would mean today that at least $50 to $60 or more of today’s $115 a barrel price is due to pure hedge fund and financial institution speculation. However, given the unchanged equilibrium in global oil supply and demand over recent months amid the explosive rise in oil futures prices traded on Nymex and ICE exchanges in New York and London it is more likely that as much as 60% of the today oil price is pure speculation. No one knows officially except the tiny handful of energy trading banks in New York and London and they certainly aren’t talking.
Do you know what that means? Of that last $50.00 fillup at least $25.00 of it went straight to the speculators. Want to find "suckers" in the dictionary?
It is right next to a group picture of us. The American Public.
Read the whole thing. Print copies and send them to your congress people. Tell them that the jig is up and it is time they shape up or be replaced. This is the biggest scandal in a 100 years and the press is worried only about Hussein getting elected.
Shame on Congress. Shame on the media.
My thanks to BizzyBlog.
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