–
the fact that morgan stanley and goldman sachs play a heavy hand in this is should be no surprise..it stinks of massive long term market manipulation for a good reason…

-Morgan Stanley Goldman Sachs and were part of a consortium that bought london’s
International Petroleum Exchange back in 2001..

-whats the saying, Que Bono?

of course, if 60 Minutes wasn’t just another corporate media puppet..and actually connected the *real* dots for the public to see, they would have revealed this fact (amongst many others) in the report. or how about the recent revelations of JPMorgan suppressing/manipulating gold prices..

just like madoff is getting a walk…so will these crooks..

–
allowing savings banks and investment banks to merge (and all the deregs that came with it) gave the major banks the means to leverage and manipulate anything their hearts desired to heights only dreamed of in the past..

i’m willing to bet that this was the actual big-picture intention of the all the repeals and deregulations meant to get those high risk, no income earners into houses.. -that was just a “feel-good” cover..

-imo, G&S and JP and their ilk are more dangerous than any country on the planet..

to quote a Rothchild…

“I care not what puppet is placed on
the throne of England to rule the Empire, …
The man that controls Britain’s money
supply controls the British Empire.
And I control the money supply.”

-anyone think its any different here in the US..past or present?

-s

A very thoughtful piece. The one area I might disagree, with the caveat I don’t have the same connections Cow-Paddy does, is the current Gaza uprising. I think this probably has more to do with Bush leaving office and Israel can do as they please. They will settle down to a cease fire by Inauguration Day.

The rest though was smack on!

Denial: Something conFusion practises with excellent execution everyday.

Quite your whining. It was the conservative wing that wanted to relax regulations and the neo-cons in the White House that royally screwed up the oversight.

When people are in as much denial as you, it is a wonder these messes ever get fixed.

I’ll say it again. There isn’t one regulation on the books that hasn’t been asked for because someone wanted to do something society deemed wrong. The right wing conservatives want to do away with regulations because they stand in the way of taking advantage of people.

Of course not. Who did 60 Minutes rob?

Heckuva job at that, huh? Oil still down. Under 38 as of writting time.

>>Mike and Paddy, you need to find a better
>>group of experts to tell you things.

I’m not sure about Lyin’ Mike, but Paddy-RAMBO has connections at the highest levels, both in the Federal government and among pillars of industry. Heck, he as rearranged ornaments on Condi’s desk!

Even though oil is traded in US dollars, at some point those dollars need to be exchanged overseas. When you sell a barrel of oil for USD$50, and now it only gets you half of the Euros, Yen, Rubles, or whatever, then the price will go up.

I think absolutely this is theory of speculators driving the price up is true. But it became a self serving cycle (hence, a bubble). Investors had money that was not doing much on in stocks and securities. The value of the US Dollar was falling. By buying oil contracts, they get some protection from the falling dollar, and they hope they can also turn around and the make that a profit.

The actual oil consumers, such as gas stations, home heating oil, etc, had to compete for that oil against these investment funds. The cold hard fact is that the investment funds can out bid the consumers.

The theory about the “no place to store it” is also true, but only a smaller factor for the price run up. The companies that took delivery of oil and shipped it discovered that the the price fluctuations were so rapid that they made an impact on during the time it took to deliver a ship of oil. So they did what was in their best interest. They slowed down the ships. Every day a ship of oil was at sea meant that ship’s cargo became more valuable, to the point where the profit gain exceeded the cost of sitting on the oil.

But that too could not be sustained. Eventually they did run out of places to park oil and had to deliver it. The US dollar recovered, and demand did truly drop. I certainly could see it in the traffic (or lack of traffic) I saw on the Los Angeles freeways. People were simply not driving.

The same forces that joined together to drive the price up so fast turned around and drive it down with the same way, only in the other direction.

In fact, the downward price was amplified even more by the collapse of the US economy. The speculators had killed the Golden Goose. Oil doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It impacts the price of everything.

I can’t help but also wonder if the fighting in Gaza is partly driven by the Hamas and Hebollah paymasters in Iran and KSA trying to drive the price of oil back up. After all the 1973 war was very profitable for them.

This crap is why we need to go to electric cars and invest in a nuclear power generation system in this country. Our energy needs are too important to leave to whims of market manipulation and enemies of our state.

Don’t worry, I don’t listen to the enviro nuts.

I hope this CBS report turns up on YouTube, but so far is hasn’t. Would someone upload it there, soon? Thank you.