Comment Text:
It looks like the crude and fuel speculators have reached a new level of self-denial. It would seem they are now raising the price of crude every time a bear craps in the woods.
Really is there anyone, any businessperson, including the speculators who believes the economies of both the US & Europe will do better under the growing load of higher crude and fuel prices. Do the "experts" at the CFTC really think, those still capable of rational thinking, that the world economies can continue supporting crude over $70 a barrel as Exxon/Mobil CEO Rex W. Tillerson is suggesting. If so just who are the winners? Has there been any real improvement in any economy as a result of higher crude and fuel prices? Can any sane person suggest that crude and fuel price are not a major drag in the world economies?
Crude is the very fact that most nations were cut off at their knees in November of 2008 and have still not recovered so that you can notice. All this hokum about China is pure bull. China needs both the US & European markets to continue growing. Right now China's population cannot in any way support the Chinese economy alone by China's own admission that will take another ten years to grow in economy independently. China has already hit a growing soft spot, with demands for higher wages, better working conditions, and the new move for payment up front from American companies producing their products in China.
It's the oil speculators that just can't see, or don't care about the damage they are doing by driving crude and fuel price to crippling levels. It's like watching a group of madmen setting around campfire in their hand-dug caves playing Russian Roulette, each with a fully loaded machinegun. It's insane. It's just to bad that they think it has to be the working class that pays with their jobs, their homes, their children's future, their hope, their very lives so a few can live higher and higher on the hog, while the resulting damage to the other 99% of America doesn't matter. Where is it written that crude speculators (gamblers) can hold nations hostage?
U.S. congress has been lax in enforcing existing racketeering laws related crude & fuel price manipulation, laws and regulations such as the RICO Law of 1932, the Hubbs Anti-Racketeering Act of 1946, the Sherman Act, and the Anti Trust laws to name a few to stop speculation spikes from pushing crude, fuel, food, healthcare markets to the point that everyday they increase the danger of another collapse of the worlds economies ...... and the CFTC, well it still can't make up it's mind as to who's side their playing on.
It wasn't that long ago, in 2008 the consumer was being faced with making life changing decisions as a result of untethered speculation in crude and fuel prices. The choices were; to buy fuel to get to & from work, or buy heating oil to heat the home, or putting food on the table, or paying the home mortgage. What happened is that carrying a mortgage became a luxury that millions of American families could no long afford, yet the U'S. Congress continues to this day to set on it's hands and do nothing to stop the pillaging of the American economy by hedge fund groups the likes of J.P.Morgan, Citigroup, Chase, and Goldman Sachs, and dozens more. During 2008 one hedge fund manager made an income of $3,000,000,000 at $900,000 an hour trading crude, fuels, and mortgage industry. At the same time shorting those same markets, knowing that it was just a matter of time before even a strongest economy could not support the never ending rise of crude and fuel prices. Goldman Sachs has spent over three billion in legal fees & fines in just the last four years on fraud changes. Two months ago Blankfein has hired the biggest legal gun in Washington Reid Weingarten as his legal defense council on more upcoming charges of fraud, and still crude and fuel prices continue to rise ...... http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/22/us-goldman-blankfein-idUSTRE77L5VK20110822
As far back as May of 2008 Congress held congressional hearings on the effects of the sky rocketing crude and fuel markets. It was Michel Greenberger, former director of the CFTC, who had resigned when ordered by the the Bush administration to stay off the backs of the Crude and fuel speculators. It was the result of Greenberger's testimony that opened the eyes of Congress (for a moment) that supply and demand had nothing to do with the never ending rise of crude and fuels. That in fact based on the costs of getting crude out of the ground and to the refineries, crude price should have been in the area of between $25 & $35 a barrel ( in 1999 oil sold for from between $10 & $12 ) depending on where on the planet the oil came from, not the $147 that plagued the US economy at the time. On November 8th as a result of the crash, crude, in one day, dropped to $32 a barrel as speculators ran screaming back into their caves. www. michaelgreenberger.com/files/IEF-Greenberger-AppendixVII.pdf
As a result of the hearings in June of 2008 Congress mandated the CFTC to develop new regulations to stop the manipulation of crude and fuel prices by January 1st of 2009. But on the very day that the new regulations were due, chairmen Gary Gensler of the CFTC told Congress that they needed until June of 2010 to finish drafting the new regulations, but again in June 10th of 2010 the chairmen told Congress that the draft and implementation of new regulations could not take place until June of 2012. Could this be the big secret ace in the hole President Obama is counting on for reelected, bringing fuel prices down to a win win level for both the "Oil slicks", industry, and the consumer? Don't count on it.
We need to get off oil dependency, but not by cutting the legs of the US & world economies. Think of the ten of millions of jobs that would be created by putting solar panels on every home, every office building, every factory, every government building in America, or the planet for that matter .... but then really who's serious the energy dilemma, the speculators, Congress?
Today the still untethered speculation in crude and fuel are helping to drag the US & European economies down that long chaotic road to nowhere for 99% of the US population, better known as the working class. The world economies are in worse shape today as the lingering result of the crash then it was in November of 2008. The next crash will have no bottom for the banks to fall on. It could very well be that civilization itself is at risk.
The "Oil Slicks" need to order a copy of Territorial Imperative. A inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations. by Robert Ardrey.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/05/13/v-print/114190/speculation-explains-more-about.html
http://www.heatingoil.com/blog/french-president-compares-speculators-to-mafia-0616/
Don Puckett / Greyfox Studios
USA
541-820-4238
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