$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.
#25, 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.
And that’s why regulation never works.
You can’t find an expert at something that isn’t involved in the industry from a personal standpoint.
Would you know now to regulate this market? Could you write a 2000 page document on it?
Now Chuck==there is NO SUCH THING as a free market. What a stooge!!!
The ONLY reasonable debate is WHAT KIND OF REGULATIONS do we want and how much teeth in their enforcement.
What a boob.
#31–Liberty Idiot==what a tool. You do know some people post here that are just dumb enough to swallow the crap you shovel out?
After the crash called 1929, regulations were put in to prevent another crash and THEY WORK. We had ups and downs until starting with Raygun and followed too much by everyone thereafter, DEREGULATION and LACK OF ENFORCEMENT became the rule resulting in 3-4 bubbles, foreshocks if you will, that were intentionally ignored with support by IDIOTS LIKE YOU!!!!
Government doesn’t work when it is staffed by IDIOTS LIKE YOU.
IDIOTS LIKE YOU should be in jail—NOW. But they won’t be because of IDIOTS LIKE YOU!!
So, not only “can I” write regulations that work, they already have been and just need to be dusted off. Will this do away with the 90 Trillion Dollar Hedge/Futures/Swap market?? Yes. And that is the whole goal of it. No dark trading. No profits from gambling with no real economic purpose other than making a few rich and no one else.
Yes, IDIOTS LIKE YOU CAUSED THIS MESS and you crow like you have some kind of insight.
Beneath contempt you are.
#28 That may be the theory, but the lessons of the oil spike of 2008 has a different theory.
If prices go high enough it will cause an economic collapse. If the economic collapse is bad enough, distribution could collapse. If that happens you will not be able to get gas no matter how much you are willing to pay.
Study also the Phoenix Gas Shortage of 2003 for another example
First off, “supply and demand” have almost nothing to do with the “free” market economics. -everything is scripted.
That aside..
-peak oil is a hoax, oil is constantly being geologically produced. -no dinosaurs required.
I’m still waiting for an explanation of all the “rivers” of hydrocarbons found on the esp on the gas planets.
(or how the hydrogen-helium P-P fusion process of the sun can create every element found on this planet-as is seen in it’s spectrograph, when on a good day, the model at best can produce 11 or 12 elements..)
So far as we know, no dinosaurs or plants were killed and squooshed in the making of those planets or the rivers of hydrocarbons found on many of them.
Face it, everything we have been taught is a mathematical hoax. -upside and backwards to boot.
We live in Mirror Image fantasy land to keep us slaves to those who created the illusion in the first place.
It’s all hidden in plain sight. You need only look, *yourself*
-s
Oh, Don Quixote… Still charging windmills…
#5 This actually is the free market ad supply and demand functioning normally. Whether the investment banks are running a scam or not it’s having no sigificant impact on the marker. This is a real commodity with real buyers and sellers.
Supplies have not increased since 2005, the oil industry was not able to increase production these last fee years, yet the world economy was growing strongly from 06 to 08. That’s just the facts
Of course there’s no shortage and of course the price has increased, this is because the energy markets are actually a properly functioning example of the free market. Supply and demand. Supply is flat, demand is up, price goes as high as necessary to reduce demand. So there is no shortage, the price rather limits demand down to what supply can provide.
#35–soundwash==what percentage of the prodigious amount you read do you think you put in the proper context?
Fer Instance: what negates petro-chemicals/coal products can be made in many different ways dictated by the same physics but different resources/environments?
Where is this “river” of hydrocarbons that is being constantly produced and what is the production rate???? Even if this “theory” proves true, seems like a safe bet that we are overpumping the oil out of the ground just like we are ground water. I see the rain, where is the oil?
etc.
Simple fix. No individual or entity should be allowed to buy or trade oil futures unless they can prove that they have the physical capacity to actually take delivery of the oil on the date of contract maturity.
For instance, an investor should not be able to buy 500,000 barrels of future oil production unless they have an EPA approved oil storage facility that has a 500,000 barrel tank(s) that is either empty or scheduled to be empty at the time of delivery.
So if they don’t take delivery, they have to sell it back on the market right? So all their purchase did is delay the price drop a little.
Hey ! It’s just Wall Street making money the Old Fashioned Way – THEY STEAL IT !!! And they deserve a BAILOUT ??? No, they deserve a FIRING SQUAD !!!
I find it interesting that EVERY other Government charges tax on FUEL as a Percentage and the AVERAGE is 50% of the price of gas.
ONLY in the USA is there a State and Fed tax, as a LIMITED amount. MAX tax per gallon is $0.70.
In other countries if the PRICE of gas is $5 at the PUMP $2.50 is tax.
In the USA the price of Gas could be $3.00 and the tax would be LESS then $0.70.
So lets look at the price.
$2.60 at the pump.
-0.70 tax
$1.90 per gallon from the company.
RESELLERS are getting about $0.10 per gallon profit, and ALL the rest goes back to the company.
NOW what products do they get from 1 barrel of crude. If you didnt know, the process is 99.5% processed. <0.5% is lost.
Fuel comes of as EQUAL to the amount put in.50 gallons = 50 gallons, NOT counting all the other products from the crude.
Propane
Butane
TAR
chemicals for Fertilizer
Chemicals for BUG spray
…
And the list goes on. About 100 different materials are gained.
In the end, its about 1-100 process.
For that 1 barrel, they are getting 100 barrels of material.
AND FUEL is the cheapest.
Figure out how much per gallon you pay for BUG SPRAY.
It costs ABOUT..Buying/shipping/handling/processing/tax/licenses/EVERYTHING.. makes the cost of fuel <0.50 per gallon. Out of the $1.90 listed above..$1.40 is PROFIT.
Here’s another scam:
The US Military presence in the Persian Gulf is there to protect the oil fields. You think that cost is passed on at the gas pump?
Oil is the most heavily subsidized commodity in the world. If the true cost of oil is reflected at the gas pump, the Republican sheeple may reconsider hauling their asses to the mall on a Hummer
Ariane, yes high prices hurts the economy, but you don’t have to get a shortage. If people are allowed to sell at whatever price they want, then no shortages.
The SEC may be finally doing something proactive. Just read SEC requested a copy of STOCK SHOCK–new movie about market manipulation and naked short selling of Sirius XM stock (among others). Amazon has the movie on DVD, or stockshockmovie.com has it.
“IDIOTS LIKE YOU should be in jail—NOW. But they won’t be because of IDIOTS LIKE YOU!!”
Authoritarian sociopaths are always quick to show their violent nature.
# 35 soundwash:
“-peak oil is a hoax, oil is constantly being geologically produced. -no dinosaurs required.”
Maybe, maybe not, but even if so, we’re pumping it out of the ground between on thousand and one million times as fast as it’s being produced.
“I’m still waiting for an explanation of all the “rivers” of hydrocarbons found on the esp on the gas planets.”
That’s easy: hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, including here in our solar system. There’s also plenty of carbon available locally, from supernova explosions in our stellar neighborhood before the solar system formed. Being chemically active, these two elements get together a lot, in many different forms, especially when thrown together in a large ball of gas as big as a planet.
“or how the hydrogen-helium P-P fusion process of the sun can create every element found on this planet-as is seen in it’s spectrograph, when on a good day, the model at best can produce 11 or 12 elements..”
That’s easy, too: the sun does NOT in fact produce every element found on this planet, or indeed within the sun itself. Very little on this planet was produced by our sun, except the energy we receive from it every day. All the elements were already present in the gas cloud the solar system (including the sun) formed from, and, except for the hydrogen and helium, most of them were created in other stars and dispersed in supernova explosions.
I recommend Asimov’s “The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science” first published in the ’60s, with several revisions in the following years. I found it an excellent intro. Your local library may still have a copy. Or any college intro to astronomy.
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Pardon the digression.
It looks like a giant reverse/anti-Marxist revolution is going on and I don’t know what can be done about it, other than eating the rich…