"60 Minutes": The '08 Oil-Speculation HUSTLE!!!

[Mr. Shaman]

"The historic swings in oil prices last year were the result of financial speculation from Wall Street and not supply and demand say several sources from the financial and oil communities."

.....While Bush-fans still insist it was a lack of "drilling"....kinda like their fairy-tale of "shortages" in '73. ​

 

[Sihouette]

Uh oh! Now who were those speculators working for exactly?

Looks like a paper-trail to price-fixing (gouging) has begun. Say, don't we have laws regulating monopolies? Wonder what else involving BigOil and the Iraq-invasion era will surface?

 

[PLC1]

.....While Bush-fans still insist it was a lack of "drilling"....kinda like their fairy-tale of "shortages" in '73. ​

Those shortages of '73 were quite real, trust me. They may have been engineered by OPEC, but were nontheless real, at least in the USA.

Somehow, we don't hear much about "drill, baby, drill" any more. Why is that? Maybe the strategy of pumping up our tires is working.

(If you're wondering whether that was sarcasm, then you just don't recognize it very readily.)

 

[pocketfullofshells]

Those shortages of '73 were quite real, trust me. They may have been engineered by OPEC, but were nontheless real, at least in the USA.

Somehow, we don't hear much about "drill, baby, drill" any more. Why is that? Maybe the strategy of pumping up our tires is working.

(If you're wondering whether that was sarcasm, then you just don't recognize it very readily.)

Yea it is nice to know that that idiot is not in higher office....ahhhhh collective sigh or relief

 

[Pidgey]

We probably aren't hearing much call for drilling now because so many businesses went Tango Uniform or nearly so from the price runup over the last few years. And it wasn't all oil either--it was steel prices and a lot of other raw materials. It's a lot easier and quicker to destroy or cripple a business than it is to build one up and that's what you're seeing: significant demand destruction.

On the energy side, everyone's down several percentage points on consumption and still going down. You have to understand, though, that not all oil was going for the spot market prices when they were at their highest. Most oil is bought on long-term futures and so a lot of our oil was already bought months and years before. The amount of oil that actually traded at that time for those prices was just the small percentage left that folks were buying to top off their economies. However, it was a glimpse into the future. The price ran up more than a little bit because nobody could manage to fill those contracts cheaply or even at all--many oil producing regions couldn't so much as squeeze out another drop try as they might (and don't think for a minute that they weren't trying at those prices!).

It was probably the fact that they couldn't that scared the pants off the traders and industry. Call it "the handwriting on the wall".

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Uh oh! Now who were those speculators working for exactly?

Typically....those folks who always get the first-shot at IPOs. ​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Those shortages of '73 were quite real, trust me.

I've never given much credence to people who say "Trust me."

Too-often, those people rely on what They say. ​

"Let's start with the embargo. Most people believe that it was directly responsible for long gasoline lines and for service stations running dry. The shortages were, in fact, a byproduct of price controls imposed by President Nixon in August 1971, which prevented oil companies from passing on the full cost of imported crude oil to consumers at the pump (small oil companies, however, were exempted from the price control regime in 1973). In the face of increasing world oil prices, "Big Oil" did the only sensible thing: It cut back on imports and stopped selling oil to independent service stations to keep its OWN franchisees supplied."

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Yea it is nice to know that that idiot is not in higher office....ahhhhh collective sigh or relief

DITTO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (ouch!!)​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

It's a miracle!! No Halliburton participation!!! ​

"Who was responsible for deregulating the oil future market?" Kroft asked Michael Greenberger.

"You'd have to say Enron," he replied. "This was something they desperately wanted, and they got."

Greenberger, who wanted more regulation while he was at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, not less, says it all happened when Enron was the seventh largest corporation in the United States. "This was when Enron was riding high. And what Enron wanted, Enron got."

Asked why they wanted a deregulated market in oil futures, Greenberger said, "Because they wanted to establish their own little energy futures exchange through computerized trading. They knew that if they could get this trading engine established without the controls that had been placed on speculators, they would have the ability to drive the price of energy products in any way they wanted to take it."

"When Enron failed, we learned that Enron, and its conspirators who used their trading engine, were able to drive the price of electricity up, some say, by as much as 300 percent on the West Coast," he added.

"Is the same thing going on right now in the oil business?" Kroft asked.

"Every Enron trader, who knew how to do these manipulations, became the most valuable employee on Wall Street," Greenberger said."

 

[Mr.Dysfunctional]

.....While Bush-fans still insist it was a lack of "drilling"....kinda like their fairy-tale of "shortages" in '73. ​

Next Mr.Shaman will be saying Embezzling and price gouging is a conservatives basic fundamental prinicpals and moral stance.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Next Mr.Shaman will be saying Embezzling and price gouging is a conservatives basic fundamental prinicpals and moral stance.

Nahhhhhhhhhhhhh.....such things are still considered Business, As Usual, for "conservatives".​

 

[PLC1]

Nahhhhhhhhhhhhh.....such things are still considered Business, As Usual, for "conservatives".​

Are the conservatives the Iranians who set up dummy companies to buy weapon parts from the US, or are they the businesspeople who sell to those dummy corporations, never suspecting that their products are actually going to Iran?

Just what does "conservative" mean in your lexicon?

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Are the conservatives the Iranians who set up dummy companies to buy weapon parts from the US, or are they the businesspeople who sell to those dummy corporations, never suspecting that their products are actually going to Iran?

Gee....I thought Homeland Security was supposed to take-care of such issues.

​

 

[PLC1]

Gee....I thought Homeland Security was supposed to take-care of such issues.

​

Homeland Security is a government operation. Conservatives don't expect government operations to succeed very often.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Homeland Security is a government operation. Conservatives don't expect government operations to succeed very often.

You should have had Dana Perino's job.​