$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.
#18–Phydeau==glad to see the deep ontological appreciation of LIEBERTARIANS on this blog. However==government IS the problem. Without fair, effective, enforced, transparent RULES, capitalism/society cannot prosper. Without same, society becomes what we have become==a corrupt kleptocracy.
Sad a wealthy nation just throws away the future of succeeding generations for the variety of half-excuses there are.
VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE.
lol..This is news?
dam..i gotta dig up one of my old backup hard drives..i have tons of web sites captured that talked about this from 2001 just after it was formed..
homework: go back in (history) time to when these companies were first formed..or just track the history of JP Morgan himself..
this has been the “game” from the getgo..
anyone who thinks this is news has been watching too much tv/msm…
as another (history) distraction, learn symbology..minorly related..
jordan maxwell has some great pictorials that will raise an eyebrow or two and send you off on some cool tangents:
http://jordanmaxwell.com/articles/
if any of his “revelations” wake your brain up..then go here after:
The Internet Sacred Text Archive
http://sacred-texts.com/
here you will find thousands of old text from the 17,18,1900′s that will further help connect the dots of the global scams that have been going on for centuries…
last thought… i believe G&S only pay
in reality like a 1% tax rate here in NYC…which if corrected, would solve any budget shortfalls we have here in NYC… but nonono…they are “hands off”
end thought: dissolve all current two party systems.. they are only here to help perpetrate the illusion that we live in a democracy
The Mirror Image Rule applies.
-s
It wasn’t greedy oil companies after all who jacked up the price. Who would have thought. It was the people Bill O’Reilly blamed for this mess, the speculators. Just pass a bill requiring speculators to have to take actual delivery of the oil they are buying and that would solve the problem.
The free market works. What doesn’t work is these commodities markets that just add to the cost of everyone else except for the crooks at these markets.
So they bought and sold at the same time, to add revenue to their books. Doesn’t this also add expenses? Maybe this helps them fill some contracts at higher prices, but I don’t see this raising prices.
I read somewhere that we were approaching peak oil. Shouldn’t that cause prices to rise?
ICE probably wouldn’t exist if not for the deregulation that happened in 1999.
#20 Yes I agree bobbo, the free market only works when it is regulated, and our government has fallen down on the job.
#22 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.
#23 “I read somewhere that we were approaching peak oil. Shouldn’t that cause prices to rise?”
It’s very complicated. The folks over at theoildrum.com have been following “peak oil” and the worldwide prodiction and demand for years now.
It has generally been observed that the oil market has not been logically following normal supply and demand numbers, and market manipulation is a good explanation as to why.
World oil production has been generally stagnant for the past 5 years, but so has world oil demand. Most experts at the recent ASPO conference say oil production should be able to remain at current levels until around 2015. After that supply is likely to decline fairly dramatically, and if demand does not also go down at the same time, there are likely to be either permanent gas shortages, or permanent economic recession.
What is hopeful is that Big Money (the true power) no longer controls the information we receive. Thanks to which at least we can be somewhat aware of what they’re up to. How long will it take for the public in general to lose faith in the economic system? Get ready for it boys and girls, were being prepared for an economic collapse. They can’t steal enough as it is, they need a system that favors them even more. From the ashes of the old economies will arise new ones, with the same people as before firmly in control. Get ready for slavery, for chips implanted under the skin, for enforced conformity in the most Orwellian fashion. Freedom will be deemed unsafe for the public at large and the rights we now take for granted will be considered priveledges.
>are likely to be either permanent gas shortages, or permanent economic recession.
Those two go hand in hand. You can avoid the shortages if prices are allowed to rise.
I didn’t say I was in favor of a completely “free” market.
But saying we need a “regulated” free market is nonsense. It’s either regulated or it’s free.
We have a “regulated” market now – but its Goldman Sachs that decides what the regulations are, and when they choose to follow them.
The government is bought and paid for, so they are part of the problem.
#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.