$2.5 Trillion – That’s the size of the global oil scam.
It’s a number so large that, to put it in perspective, we will now begin measuring the damage done to the global economy in “Madoff Units” ($50Bn rip-offs). That’s right – $2.5Tn is 50 TIMES the amount of money that Bernie Madoff scammed from investors in his lifetime, yet it is also LESS than the MONTHLY EXCESS price the global population is being manipulated into paying for a barrel of oil.
Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), BP (BP), Total (TOT), Shell (RDS.A), Deutsche Bank (DB) and Societe Generale (SCGLY.PK) founded the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in 2000. ICE is an online commodities and futures marketplace. It is outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws. The exchange was set up to facilitate “dark pool” trading in the commodities markets. Billions of dollars are being placed on oil futures contracts at the ICE and the beauty of this scam is that they NEVER take delivery, per se. They just ratchet up the price with leveraged speculation using your TARP money. This year alone they ratcheted up the global cost of oil from $40 to $80 per barrel.
A Congressional investigation into energy trading in 2003 discovered that ICE was being used to facilitate “round-trip” trades. ” Round-trip” trades occur when one firm sells energy to another and then the second firm simultaneously sells the same amount of energy back to the first company at exactly the same price. No commodity ever changes hands. But when done on an exchange, these transactions send a price signal to the market and they artificially boost revenue for the company. This is nothing more than a massive fraud, pure and simple.
“This is nothing more than a massive fraud, pure and simple.” /// Yea, verily.
and Congress is working hard to make these activities expressly legal.
No one in jail.
Absolute Governmental Corruption in our Faces.
VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE!!!
Change corporation laws to limit CEO pay. This crap will stop when criminality is not encouraged by those idiots confusing this with liberty.
… OR ask an incumbent to go hunting with you… see if they’re game.
We have known about this for some time now. Check out this Business Week article from 2008.
Everyone knows this goes on and nothing is being done to protect the consumer. Welcome to the new America.
I’m not sure what the big deal is.
We must approve of this or else the people wouldn’t have bailed them out, right?
A Mobil gas station attendant told me about this, two years ago. They were selling just as much gasoline as five years earlier, taking the same numbers of tanker deliveries, but charging three times the price. A friend in the merchant marine told me at that time that there were no oil shortages, oil tankers were still being commissioned. Dark Pooling, also explains the realty bubble, the grocery bubble, health insurance bubble. Basically, any kind of commodity price explosion without an attributable cause.
#4, Lover, You just want to be slapped, don’t you?
As Lou Dobbs was to illegal immigrationl, Dilon Ratigan on Morning Meeting, MSNBC concentrates on “Corporate Criminal Gambling” the key notion of which all this activity is not “investment” which is what capitalism and free markets is all about. Instead, this is NON PRODUCTIVE PROFIT SKIMMING. The leveraging without proper reserves makes this FRAUD. It will always be gambling no matter how closely it is regulated.
People really should be put in jail rather than lionized. “Doing God’s Work” somehow just doesn’t cut it.
#6 😛
Clearly, excessive regulation is the problem. If we’d just let these companies do business as they see fit, without onerous government control, we’d all be rich.
Somebody call Alan Grayson.
#9, Please, they were going out of business and they were bailed out. Their greed killed them and our lovely government resuscitated them.
Nothing new here. Just the same ole s&%t.
#10–Loser==I have to say you are actually better at sarcasm. Your analysis otherwise is overly simplistic as if you actually are trying to hide the ball. You do have balls don’t you?
In a “free” market, at least 2 things would happen:
1. Anyone trading in energy would be free to openly trade and sell at the highest price they think the market will bear.
2. No one gets bailed out if they get in too deep.
But because the public is afraid that #1 will lead to high prices, we get stuck with bail-outs.
Well Chuck, more simplicity and hiding of your balls. Are YOU a LIEBERTARIAN TOO?????
Public had little to NO input on bailouts which had zero to do with energy. You must have read a paper from 5 years ago by mistake and thought the article under the cat shit was really timely?
This is “all about” a few people at the Federal Reserve being able to buffalo a willing President(s) and Congress to avoid a 20 year Depression. The issues are complex enough that no one can FIRMLY say that wasn’t the case once the hole was apparent to everyone. Any “good” solution to this problem was avoided 20-15-10 years ago. Probably even 5 years ago was too late.
And still no one in jail. Laws being passed to make it all legal now. And idiots wants to apply one philosophy or another in a vacuum barring complexity.
Silly Hoomans.
On a related note; Americans are the biggest assholes in the world.
Libertarians would say buyer beware and let the market take care of it. Obviously you pay close attention to oil futures in several markets when you fill your car, right?
Leftists would build a huge labyrinth of rules and bureaucracy to manage this with so many rules that no one would have any idea that it’s going – and the outcome would be the same.
Obviously Aristotle’s Golden Mean doesn’t apply. 😉
hang them all :W
#15–qb==that must mean that Archimedes Screw is still in the running?
Libertarians have nothing meaningful to contribute to this discussion. To them, government is always the problem. So when it’s obviously not, they’re at a loss.
Well aren’t you repukes showing your true simplistic colors now. Ignorant and with the inability to read or comprehend common English. Anything wrong in the world must be that black dude your great grandpappy warned you about, right.
“founded the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in 2000. ICE is an online commodities and futures marketplace. It is outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws. The exchange was set up to facilitate “dark pool” trading in the commodities”
#18–Phydeau==glad to see the deep ontological appreciation of LIEBERTARIANS on this blog. However==government IS the problem. Without fair, effective, enforced, transparent RULES, capitalism/society cannot prosper. Without same, society becomes what we have become==a corrupt kleptocracy.
Sad a wealthy nation just throws away the future of succeeding generations for the variety of half-excuses there are.
VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE.
lol..This is news?
dam..i gotta dig up one of my old backup hard drives..i have tons of web sites captured that talked about this from 2001 just after it was formed..
homework: go back in (history) time to when these companies were first formed..or just track the history of JP Morgan himself..
this has been the “game” from the getgo..
anyone who thinks this is news has been watching too much tv/msm…
as another (history) distraction, learn symbology..minorly related..
jordan maxwell has some great pictorials that will raise an eyebrow or two and send you off on some cool tangents:
http://jordanmaxwell.com/articles/
if any of his “revelations” wake your brain up..then go here after:
The Internet Sacred Text Archive
http://sacred-texts.com/
here you will find thousands of old text from the 17,18,1900’s that will further help connect the dots of the global scams that have been going on for centuries…
last thought… i believe G&S only pay
in reality like a 1% tax rate here in NYC…which if corrected, would solve any budget shortfalls we have here in NYC… but nonono…they are “hands off”
end thought: dissolve all current two party systems.. they are only here to help perpetrate the illusion that we live in a democracy
The Mirror Image Rule applies.
-s
It wasn’t greedy oil companies after all who jacked up the price. Who would have thought. It was the people Bill O’Reilly blamed for this mess, the speculators. Just pass a bill requiring speculators to have to take actual delivery of the oil they are buying and that would solve the problem.
The free market works. What doesn’t work is these commodities markets that just add to the cost of everyone else except for the crooks at these markets.
So they bought and sold at the same time, to add revenue to their books. Doesn’t this also add expenses? Maybe this helps them fill some contracts at higher prices, but I don’t see this raising prices.
I read somewhere that we were approaching peak oil. Shouldn’t that cause prices to rise?
ICE probably wouldn’t exist if not for the deregulation that happened in 1999.
#20 Yes I agree bobbo, the free market only works when it is regulated, and our government has fallen down on the job.
#22 Actually, a well-regulated futures and commodities market works pretty well. As long as the regulators aren’t bought and paid for by the regulated.
#23 “I read somewhere that we were approaching peak oil. Shouldn’t that cause prices to rise?”
It’s very complicated. The folks over at theoildrum.com have been following “peak oil” and the worldwide prodiction and demand for years now.
It has generally been observed that the oil market has not been logically following normal supply and demand numbers, and market manipulation is a good explanation as to why.
World oil production has been generally stagnant for the past 5 years, but so has world oil demand. Most experts at the recent ASPO conference say oil production should be able to remain at current levels until around 2015. After that supply is likely to decline fairly dramatically, and if demand does not also go down at the same time, there are likely to be either permanent gas shortages, or permanent economic recession.
What is hopeful is that Big Money (the true power) no longer controls the information we receive. Thanks to which at least we can be somewhat aware of what they’re up to. How long will it take for the public in general to lose faith in the economic system? Get ready for it boys and girls, were being prepared for an economic collapse. They can’t steal enough as it is, they need a system that favors them even more. From the ashes of the old economies will arise new ones, with the same people as before firmly in control. Get ready for slavery, for chips implanted under the skin, for enforced conformity in the most Orwellian fashion. Freedom will be deemed unsafe for the public at large and the rights we now take for granted will be considered priveledges.
>are likely to be either permanent gas shortages, or permanent economic recession.
Those two go hand in hand. You can avoid the shortages if prices are allowed to rise.
I didn’t say I was in favor of a completely “free” market.
But saying we need a “regulated” free market is nonsense. It’s either regulated or it’s free.
We have a “regulated” market now – but its Goldman Sachs that decides what the regulations are, and when they choose to follow them.
The government is bought and paid for, so they are part of the problem.