Who's to blame for SKY-HIGH Food & Fuel Prices??? -- HINT: It ain't the Saudis or Iran!!!
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“Supply and demand” is irrelevant in this circus. The game is not about supply levels; it’s about betting on what the price will be in the future. It does not matter how much food or oil exists. All that matters is the price. If the price is too high, then ordinary people can’t eat, can’t drive their cars, and can’t heat their homes in winter.
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This is a follow-up to a comment I made last night at 2:00 am my time, regarding the reasons for the current food crisis and sky-high fuel prices, and what can be done about it. (http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/7062#comment-29805 )
Let me simplify this matter, so WUFYS readers can have facts ready to go if this topic comes up in their conversations with friends or family.
I want WUFYS readers to know exactly why the prices of food and energy are going through the roof.
I shall go into depth, but at the end I’ll summarize the major points you must remember for the exam, so to speak.
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THE COMMODITY FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION (CFTC)
Behold the center of the problem. The CFTC is not doing its job. Indeed, the CFTC is working hard to make the situation worse, in order to help rich people get richer.
The CFTC is supposed to regulate futures exchanges, which look just like stock markets, but instead of trading stocks and bonds, people trade contracts to buy or sell something in the future at a specified price. People bet on the future prices of items such as food or oil.
As with stocks and bonds, the game is based on human perception, which is easily manipulated. Hence the CFTC was established in 1974 to keep the game fair, just as the SEC was established in 1934 to keep stock exchanges fair.
The CFTC oversees futures exchanges such as
· Chicago Board Options Exchange Futures Exchange
· Chicago Board of Trade
· Chicago Mercantile Exchange
· HedgeStreet
· U.S. Futures Exchange
· Kansas City Board of Trade
· Minneapolis Grain Exchange
· New York Mercantile Exchange
· New York Board of Trade
· OneChicago
In addition, the CFTC oversees 360 public brokerage houses (futures commission merchants), plus 38,000 commission-registered futures industry salespeople and associated persons, plus 2,500 commodity trading advisers and commodity pool operators, plus 3,000 members (traders) of the main exchanges listed above.
All these people trade contracts that are connected with oil, food, metals -- you name it. If an item has a fluctuating price, it can be traded.
To keep track of all this, the CFTC (http://www.cftc.gov/ ) maintains large regional offices in Chicago and New York, plus smaller regional offices in Kansas City and San Francisco, plus a sub-office of the Chicago regional office in Minneapolis.
In 1992 the CFTC had 600 staff members. However, since the CFTC no longer performs its function, it now has about 450 staff members that get paid $130 million per year from the government. These do-nothings are always whining for more money, and Bush wants to give them a $30 million raise as a bribe so they'll continue to uphold the current nightmare. Their job is to confuse the public and throw out lame excuses as to why they’re not doing their job.
For example, they say, “There’s no single solution to the current price crunch,” or, “It has to do with the Federal Reserve,” or, “We’re studying the problem,” or “It’s peak oil,” or just simply, “It’s very complex.” These are all lies, as you will see below.
Whenever anyone asks the CFTC to do something about out-of-control prices, the CFTC says, “We are doing something. We’re investigating.” (When israelis commit atrocities, and get called on them, they say, "We're investigating.") Indeed the CFTC has been “investigating” sky-high oil prices for the last six months, during which time the CFTC has deliberately allowed oil prices to rise by another 42 percent.
The CFTC’s 450 people work in secrecy. Their bosses are five commissioners appointed by the U.S. president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Bush’s appointments are all greedy criminals (naturally). As President, Bush designates one of these five commissioners to be chairperson. Today the chairperson is a clown named Walter Lukken from Indiana, who has been with the CFTC since 2002, and was confirmed as Bush’s chairman yesterday (4 June 08).
Since Bush handpicks the CFTC commissioners, the commissioners naturally claim that speculation, manipulation, and lack of regulation have nothing to do with the price of food and oil.
A NIGHTMARE IS BORN
The CFTC did its job more or less okay for its first fifteen years. In those days, speculators (including pension funds, mutual funds, endowments, and other investors not directly tied to the food industry) were limited in the amount of trading they could do in specific commodities.
But starting in 1991, the CFTC embarked on a course of deregulation. It relaxed its rules, increasing limits for some of these investors, and exempting others altogether. The game was afoot.
The real nightmare took off in 2000 when Bush seized power. That’s when large energy traders (notably Bush’s buddies at Enron) got Congress to pass the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed oil futures to be traded electronically "over the counter" -- that is, traded in unregulated markets outside the CFTC’s jurisdiction. This trick became known as the “Enron Loophole,” and it allowed oil to be traded in a global free-for-all. A gigantic casino was born. Prices started to climb higher and higher, and became truly insane after the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. (More about that below.)
After the Congress and the CFTC deregulated the trading of oil, the CFTC started deregulating all sorts of other commodities, especially food. On 22 April 08, CME Group Inc. (the world's largest grain exchange) requested CFTC permission to clear trades on over-the-counter grain swap contracts. CME wanted to play in the global casino.
The casino has pushed food prices so high that millions of people around the world now face death by famine. (Remember: famine kills more people than wars, disease, cyclones, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc etc etc) The more food and oil we produce, the more “gambling chips” are available for use in the casino, and the higher the prices rise. In other words, the more food we have, the more we starve, because of the global casino.
“Supply and demand” is irrelevant in this circus. The game is not about supply levels; it’s about betting on what the price will be in the future. It does not matter how much food or oil exists. All that matters is the price. If the price is too high, then ordinary people can’t eat, can’t drive their cars, and can’t heat their homes in winter. We can explore for more oil, or invest in “alternative fuels,” but this will only provide additional chips for the casino, and will therefore push prices even higher. In the casino, trying to bring down prices by increasing supplies is like trying to put out fire with gasoline.
Indeed, more and more farmland is being converted to grow corn for ethanol, instead of crops for food. It’s all about getting more chips (fuel commodities) to use in the fabulous casino, which sucks in more and more money. The casino is a black hole, draining the life of all mankind.
And remember: speculation is one thing, but manipulation is another. Since a lot of this game is done secretly, the biggest traders manipulate the casino. Little or no information about their activities gets out to the public. The fabulous casino has no windows.
Because this game has nothing to do with supply and demand, any economist who attributes rising prices to things like “rising demand from China and India” is a paid liar. Plenty of food and oil exists. Big traders like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are hoarding oil, betting the prices will go even higher. Goldman Sachs holds far more crude than exists in U.S. Strategic Reserve, and is also hoarding heating oil. That’s why the Saudis told Bush to get stuffed when he recently begged them to increase oil output. The Saudis told him what everyone knows: that production and supply have little to do with today’s prices.
The culprits aren’t the grocers or the gasoline station owners. Their profits have shrunk as prices have risen. Ten years ago, gas station owners made most of their money selling gas. Today they can only stay alive by selling snacks and drinks. High gasoline prices have put retailers near the limits on their lines of credit.
Meanwhile, anyone who uses a lot of fuel (e.g. truckers, airlines, etc.) is now facing bankruptcy. The only people getting rich are the big traders on Wall Street, in London, and in Dubai.
LONDON AND DUBAI
Dubai (the UAE) has little oil. Wall Street and London have no oil. People in these places get rich by trading oil.
The CFTC oversees the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) plus the Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange, but actual trading in these exchanges is done through London and Dubai, where the CFTC has no jurisdiction. It’s the same as U.S. businesses taking out post-office boxes in the Cayman Islands so they can avoid U.S. taxes and business laws. The British Financial Services Authority is supposed to regulate the London Exchange, but it’s even worse than the CFTC.
The Dubai Exchange is tied directly into the NYMEX, while the London’s International Petroleum Exchange is owned by the IntercontinentalExchange in Atlanta. The owners of these exchanges have become filthy rich. Naturally they insist that speculation has nothing to do with high prices, since they want their casinos to stay open.
In 2007, Congress asked the CFTC to start regulating the markets in London and Dubai, since they are directly tied into the U.S. market.
The CFTC refused, knowing that if it starts doing its job, the casino will be brought down to sane levels.
Meanwhile the CFTC is pursuing plans to let even more hedge fund money pour into food and energy commodities.
BUY A CHAIR AT THE CASINO TABLE WITH LITTLE OR NO MONEY DOWN!
When you want to buy stocks, many brokerage firms require that you put up between 30 percent and 40 percent of the market value of the stock in your “margin account.” Thus, if you want to leverage a hundred dollars of stock, you must put up at least thirty dollars in cash, and you must take the hundred dollar hit if the stock tanks.
By contrast, in the global food and oil casino, you only need to put up six dollars in cash. Suh-weeet! This attracts all kinds of gamers that otherwise couldn’t get into the casino. And the more people crowd in, the more they push up prices.
If we force the CFTC to raise margin requirements for commodities futures to 30-to-40 percent, as occurs in the stock market, there would be a shakeout, since a lot of people could no longer play in the food / oil casino. Speculators would have to borrow more money to play the game, and would have to assume more risk. Since 30-60 percent of today’s food and oil prices are caused by sheer speculation, there would be a price drop of at least 30 percent.
Naturally Bush, the casino owners, the gamers, the regulators, and their paid media lackeys deny all these facts. They say they are being unfairly scapegoated, and that a curtailment of their theft would hurt consumers. (They said the same thing during the real estate bubble.) They say that increasing the margin requirements would have no effect on prices. Worse, it would drive trading away from regulated U.S. commodity exchanges, thereby causing prices to rise. But trading is already non-regulated, and prices are already rising unchecked. Prices keep going up because unregulated speculators keep betting that prices will keep going up.
The scammers are getting rich off their casino, and they will do and say anything to keep getting rich. They’ll pay whatever it takes to keep the laws from being changed, and they offer crazy excuses to justify their theft
Here’s another trick: rather than fix the problem, the CFTC is working on ways to improve risk-management choices for farmers and agricultural businesses, including developing alternative financial tools and a plan for the clearing of agricultural swaps. Translation: the CFTC’s solution for the nightmare (caused by so many people entering the nightmare) is to get more people into the nightmare.
Or here’s another trick, the oldest trick of all. Let’s call it the it-won’t-fix-every-problem-so-forget-it trick. (This is like sitting on the Titanic and saying we should plug the leak. “No,” the scammers say, “that won’t get us to shore, so forget it.”) Casino players say that increasing margin requirements, and re-regulating the markets, will not stop speculation, so it’s useless. Well of course it won’t “stop” speculation. We’ve always had speculation. What the world cannot tolerate is runaway speculation.
Today there is no investment in the production of food. There is only price speculation. What we have is a bubble, as we’ve seen countless times before, from the Netherlands tulip craze in the 1600s, to the stock market crash of 1929, to “pet rocks” in the 1970s, to cabbage patch dolls in the 1980s, dot-coms in the 1990s, real estate in the 2000s, and so on. There is always a scam in which people seek to get-rich-quick at society’s expense.
When the mortgage meltdown began, the culprits (banks, hedge funds, etc) moved into the food and oil casino to recoup their losses. And, just as regulators and rating agencies collaborated in the real estate scam, so does the CFTC “regulator” collaborate in the food and oil scam. Let the entire world perish, so long as WE insiders get rich!
IS CONGRESS IN ON THE SCAM?
Only those members who are tied directly into the Bush regime, and those who are players themselves.
Other Congress members are focusing more and more on the CFTC, having realized that if we don’t re-regulate the casino, we're doomed.
A strong proponent of re-regulation is Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash) who unfortunately is a mixed up bimbo that voted for the “Patriot” Act. She calls herself “pro-labor,” yet she voted for NAFTA and CAFTA. She’s an Irish Roman Catholic, yet she champions abortion. (In fact she was one of 34 senators to vote against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.) She calls herself “anti-war,” yet she voted against the Kerry-Feingold Amendment (2006) that would have set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.
Despite all this, she has recently made the CFTC her target, and with Sen.Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is now mounting a push in Congress to force the CFTC do its job.
Cantwell has little power in Congress, but the heat on the CFTC is increasing. The day before yesterday, that heat caused the CFTC to drop a proposal that would have increased position limits once again (i.e., would have made it even easier for speculators to gamble). The CFTC also said it would not provide a blanket exemption for all index funds, and would not increase speculation limits on agricultural futures contracts.
Last month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid proposed a bill to prevent traders of U.S. crude oil from routing transactions through offshore markets to evade regulation.
The bill would reduce the CFTC’s secrecy, and would require the CFTC to boost margin requirements for all oil futures trades. (If all this could be accomplished, it would bring food and oil prices back under control.)
Also last month, senators Carl Levin and Dianne Feinstein co-sponsored a bill called the Oil Trading and Transparency Act, which would close the "London Loophole."
In the meantime, the CFTC and its allies are using sly tricks to keep the casino running. Last month, for example, Congress passed the Farm Bill to close the Enron loophole, which has allowed food trading to be unregulated. The scammers agreed to this, but with a twist: the Farm Bill places the burden on the public to prove a trade needs regulation, rather than placing the onus on the trader to prove it does not need regulation.
(Tee hee hee.) Ergo, the casino continues.
IS THERE NO HOPE?
The high price of food and oil is causing such massive problems for the entire world that more and more people are focusing on the nightmare of runaway speculation. More and more news stories mention the CFTC. More and more Congress people are paying attention, since their districts are sprialling into bankruptcy. There’s a chance (albeit a slim one) that enough people will wake up for us to come out of this alive.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW FOR THE TEST
--The food and oil crisis is caused by runaway speculation.
--Runaway speculation was caused by total de-regulation, and by the regulators (CFTC) being in on the scam.
--After the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the criminals (banksters, hedge fund managers, etc) moved into the commodities markets.
--To restore sanity, we must regulate all commodity exchanges worldwide, and we must increase margin requirements for commodity traders. (That is, we must demand that players put up a lot more money, and take on a lot more risk).
--We need not discuss the weak dollar (which plays a role) or rising demand from China, India, etc. Our immediate priority is to re-regulate the commodities markets NOW, and stop this insane bubble from metastasizing further. We absolutely must get food and oil prices under control.
Otherwise the USA is headed for a depression, and much of the world is headed for famine.
Thanks for reading.
Excellent! Hard copy saved for reference.
Capitalism is inequality. Wealth will trickle into the pockets of capitalists because there is a difference between 'added value' and 'surplus value'.
The 'material value' of a product ( be that services, materials or goods ) is the accumulated sum of [the cost of] the work put into it making it. Each amount of work adds some value to the product. 'Added value' is the cost of the work added and the total material value of the product is the accumulated amount of added value. Material value equals the accumulated amount of work - i.e. the total amount payed for work.
For example: The material value of the metal gold comes from the relatively hard work in finding it - someone needs to be payed. The value of a gold necklace is the value of gold, plus the value of the workmanship ( maybe including the wear on the goldsmiths tools ), plus the cost of selling ( - since the shopkeeper is payed a salary ). The price of the necklace minus the price of the gold used to make it is added value. The material value is accumulated from work on natural resources, manufacturing, services and organising.
Let me introduce 'surplus value'! A capitalist will hire someone ( a CEO, manager or just clerks or shopkeepers ) to trade or supervise instead of himself and maybe some other employees. Thus he himself performs a minimal amount of work. The material value of the product is increased by the added value [performed as work by his employees]. The capitalist has to pay for the added value as salaries. In addition to the added value the capitalist adds surplus value to the product - he adds greatly more to the price of the product than his own work, lest he would not earn much on his business.
However workers ( who earn their money from work - not from having capital ) can pay only the true material value for products, since that is how much they were payed in salaries. Workers salaries equal the added value. But they have to pay for the material value *and* for the surplus value. [On average] they can't! As a result they can buy less than they have produced. So products [as they include surplus value] can only to a limit be bought by those who made them. The rest of thee material value is bought by capitalists who have earned their income from surplus value.
For each batch of products a portion cannot be bought by the workers (even if they produced all of it from nothing). The key to offering work is to control a key resource such as machines or tools needed for manufacture, real estate, licenses or other permits needed for trade. This is often whole, factories, shops and other businesses. All of these capital resources are items that are traded with the same rules of added value and surplus value. If you already own the means of production, fixed portion of the newly created means of production will always accumulate with the capitalist. He can use nearly all of his income to accumulate more means of production but the worker uses his income to live (food, housing, clothes, entertainment). The combined group of workers have less wealth available for capital investment than the combined group of capitalists.
History has shown that there is plenty of margin for large surplus values. There seems to be no competition between capitalists to lower the surplus value. Why should there be? The benefit of a somewhat cheaper product would be offset by the loss of huge surplus value.
THERE IS NO TRICKLE DOWN! Wealth gradually trickles up towards the capitalist. NO HARD WORK THAT CAN REVERSE THAT!
I say we regulate first, then pop the bubble. Nothing's like greedy middlemen sucking the juice out of us like pharasites.
What a way to get rich! By starving the poor to death!
Just like killing Africans with their own diamonds!
ROME (Reuters) - The global market is "full of oil" and rising crude prices are being artificially driven by forces trying to further their geopolitical aims, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday.
"While the growth of consumption is lower than that of production and the market is full of oil, prices continue to rise and this situation is completely manipulated," Ahmadinejad said in his address to a U.N. food summit in Rome.
Without naming countries, the Iranian leader said "hidden and unhidden hands are at work to control the prices mendaciously to pursue their political and economic aims."
He said the goal of "powerful and international capitalists" was to keep the price of oil and energy "artificially high" in part to justify new explorations in the North Pole and the deep seas.
In an apparent reference to the United States, he said the international community should have a mechanism to force "the bullying powers to resort to peace and amity instead of occupation and warmongering...."
MSNBC has a live vote that asks readers who they blame for high oil prices. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24773520/)
to get rid of my V8,
maybe its time for a hybrid car?
At least with Nostradamus, there's room for doubt....
PROTOCOL No. 6
We shall soon begin to establish huge monopolies, reservoirs of colossal riches, upon which even large fortunes of the GOYIM will depend to such an extent that they will go to the bottom together with the credit of the States on the day after the political smash....
It is essential therefore for us at whatever cost to deprive them of their land. This object will be best attained by increasing the burdens upon landed property - in loading lands with debts. These measures will check land-holding and keep it in a state of humble and unconditional submission.
The aristocrats of the GOYIM, being hereditarily incapable of contenting themselves with little, will rapidly burn up and fizzle out.
At the same time we must intensively patronize trade and industry, but, first and foremost, speculation, the part played by which is to provide a counterpoise to industry: the absence of speculative industry will multiply capital in private hands and will serve to restore agriculture by freeing the land from indebtedness to the land banks. What we want is that industry should drain off from the land both labor and capital and by means of speculation transfer into our hands all the money of the world, and thereby throw all the GOYIM into the ranks of the proletariat. Then the GOYIM will bow down before us, if for no other reason but to get the right to exist.
To complete the ruin of the industry of the GOYIM we shall bring to the assistance of speculation the luxury which we have developed among the GOYIM, that greedy demand for luxury which is swallowing up everything. WE SHALL RAISE THE RATE OF WAGES WHICH, HOWEVER, WILL NOT BRING ANY ADVANTAGE TO THE WORKERS, FOR, AT THE SAME TIME, WE SHALL PRODUCE A RISE IN PRICES OF THE FIRST NECESSARIES OF LIFE, ALLEGING THAT IT ARISES FROM THE DECLINE OF AGRICULTURE AND CATTLE-BREEDING: WE SHALL FURTHER UNDERMINE ARTFULLY AND DEEPLY SOURCES OF PRODUCTION, BY ACCUSTOMING THE WORKERS TO ANARCHY AND TO DRUNKENNESS AND SIDE BY SIDE THEREWITH TAKING ALL MEASURE TO EXTIRPATE FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH ALL THE EDUCATED FORCES OF THE "GOYIM."
IN ORDER THAT THE TRUE MEANING OF THINGS MAY NOT STRIKE THE "GOYIM" BEFORE THE PROPER TIME WE SHALL MASK IT UNDER AN ALLEGED ARDENT DESIRE TO SERVE THE WORKING CLASSES AND THE GREAT PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY ABOUT WHICH OUR ECONOMIC THEORIES ARE CARRYING ON AN ENERGETIC PROPAGANDA....
Israel remembering Hoffa for his support of Zionism
Just know that skulking Jewry is behind the oil charade. This is all about Greater Israel's oil and how Americans are going to die for their commodity grab. Over my dead body. Jewry needs a real ass-whipping now...no more playtime. It's serious time now.
In the video you provided, Michael Greenberger (formerly of the CFTC, now a law professor at the U of Maryland) notes that the Commodity Futures Modernization Act was passed the same way all disastrous bills are passed: late at night, just before Congress adjoined for a Christmas vacation.
Moreover these hideous bills are usually concealed in a giant omnibus bill, such that no Congressperson has time to read them, and could not understand them anyway. (Sen. Phil Gramm was the actual person who pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.)
The same thing happened with the Federal Reserve Act, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and so on. (Did any Congressperson ever read the gigantic “Patriot” Act?)
Comments about the video…
1. Greenberger says the CFTC regulates NYMEX, but not the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE). That was true when the video was made five months ago, but West Texas Intermediate began trading in Dubai on May 16, 2008. The NYMEX has been tied directly into the Dubai market since May 2007, allowing traders in the USA to conduct business through Dubai, thus circumventing CFTC regulations.
Greenberger acknowledges this in an updated video (June 5, 2008) seen here… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNp0y0SjOkY
In the updated video he says,
“The Enron loophole was written by the exchange that needs to be regulated! Prior to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, every futures contract in the USA, regardless of the commodity involved (food, oil, etc) had to be traded pursuant to regulation that had age-old and time-tested controls on speculators. All those controls were dumped in one fell swoop with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which eliminated all regulation.”
Incidentally the Dubai loophole was created by John D’Agostino, a young Brooklyn kid who worked in the NYMEX, and set it up by forming a joint venture between NYMEX, Tatweer (a member of Dubai Holding) and the Oman Investment Fund. For opening up the Dubai loophole, D’Agostino was rewarded by becoming the youngest VP at the NYMEX. Seventy percent of NYMEX trading is speculative, not commercial. Ninety percent of Dubai trading is speculative.
2. In the updated video, Greenberger mentions the British Financial Services Authority (FSA) which fully admits it dropped the ball regarding the Northern Rock bank. British citizens paid for a hundred billion dollar bailout, and still the bank collapsed because FSA refused to do its regulatory job (just like the CFTC). The FSA “regulates” oil trading done by the Atlanta IntercontinentalExchange (ICE). (NYMEX trades through Dubai.) The only person who praises the FSA is Walter Lukken, the head of the CFTC -- which, like the FSA -- regulates nothing. Nor does Dubai.
3. Greenberger makes a good point about people offering thousands of pages of bills to fix the Enron loophole, when simply adding the word “energy” to legislation would put oil trading back under CFTC control. However as I explained in the post above, this would not go far enough. We must also increase margin requirements to make them more like the stock market.
4. Greenberger seems to think the CFTC continues to regulate the trading of food commodities. If that were true, then there would be no food crisis. Food traders have several ways to evade CFTC regulation. In any case, the CFTC is not doing its job.
5. Greenberger notes correctly that the Enron loophole was Enron’s undoing. It led to the Enron west coast electricity crisis, for example. James Newsome, the head of NYMEX, said speculators had nothing to do with a 300 percent rise in electricity prices, but then documents were released that proved Enron had rigged the game, and that speculators drove up prices. Today Newsome says speculators have nothing to do with oil prices, which have also risen by 300 percent.
6. The reason Bush filled up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is that private interests own it. It’s a “strategic reserve” for the traders who are hoarding oil, waiting for the price to climb even higher so they can make a huge profit when they sell it. Morgan Stanley alone has hoarded eighty percent of all the heating oil in New England. Energy is hoarded today, because it will be more expensive tomorrow.
7. The high prices allow oil companies to make record profits, since oil companies can charge whatever the prevailing price is. However, Venezuela can also charge those prices, so Venezuela is also getting rich. Since all attempts to get rid of Hugo Chavez have failed, the U.S. strategy is now to break up Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela by supporting secessionist movements in their richest provinces. Military support for this is channeled through Columbia, and will also be provided by the U.S. Fourth Fleet, which will become active again on 1 July 2008 after a 60-year hiatus.
8. Is Iran getting rich? No—at least --not like the oil companies. Iran sells to Europe and Asia, where the price madness is not as extreme. One problem for Bush all is that high prices are forcing Japan to buy oil from Iran, which Bush doesn’t want.
9. What do Hillary and Obama plan to do about runaway speculation? Nothing. They don’t understand the problem, or else they are collaborating with speculators. Both say the situation should be “investigated.” Both say we must reduce our demand for oil (even though demand is down already because people aren’t driving, and the Ford Motor Company says it will cut manufacturing levels, and the airlines are mothballing their planes, etc etc) Both say they would “consider” a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Both say we must have a “long-term energy strategy so we can be independent of foreign oil.” Both say we must raise fuel efficiency standards on cars, invest in alternative energy technologies, and blah-blah-blah.
NEITHER says we must re-regulate the trading of food and oil. Hence, neither will do anything to get prices under control, even though both of them admit there is a crisis, and that soon people will not be able to afford to drive to work.
This is a common misconception about European oil prices. Prices at the pumps in Europe have been steadily climbing for quite some time. At the moment I am paying €0.24 a litre more than I did six months ago, which amounts to an increase in the region of 21%. Prices at the pump are a good 50% more than they were four years ago. The only reason why the price increases don't seem as 'mad' as those in the US is that we are not simultaneously suffering a severe devaluation of our currency - THE currency in which oil is denominated. Factor out that currency devaluation and you'll probably find that the actual increases are broadly similar.
With human numbers increasing currently by 77,000,000 a year relentlessly, at some point we are looking at real capacity constraints to keep up food supplies to this human herd (jews included) of 6.7Billion. The fact of diverting swathes of land to grow food crops for fuel only brought forward the equilibrium point by a few short years. Our numbers increase geometrically, food production increases arithmetically. Exceptions here only prove this rule. Markets sense this and anticipate shortages and thus profit from being correct, just like they now anticipate what the price of crude will be when, not if, Iran is nuked, which has been the true reason for the rapid rise in recent months; an anticipation that the Straits of Hormuz will be blocked. Were the US of Israel to pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq and go home, as well as make no more threatening sound bites at Iran, the price of crude would be slipping as the Straits of Hormuz would also remain open. Not to be overlooked is to say that as crude is abiotic in origin and hence is virtually limitless in quantity, and were there to be the requisite change in public perception that the origin of crude had nothing at all to do with old dinosaur farts, then the public anger that we had been had all along would have a downward pressure on prices also. Carefully managed public perception that crude has a biotic origin reinforces the notion that it is scarce and will soon run out, which justifies the high price in the public mind. But this is just oil company propaganda which oil futures markets don't mind at all !
Just after the WTC attacks, gas prices took a dive- I remember seeing 89 cents a gallon at one Southern CA station. I couldn't understand why at the time, maybe everybody was depressed and was staying home.
When I read this article, a possible reason for this drop hit me- the speculators were scared away from the trading pits, or their activities had been physically disrupted.
Would it benefit us if, for some reason, it became dangerous for speculators to enter the place of speculation?
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qydyct
This guy hit it on the nose
And the polititions in office House,Congress,Senate all need to be reminded of this.
So everybody contact them and tell them to get off their asses and do something about it now.
Great article