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08/21/08 @ 10:25:01 PM MDT
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A damning Washington Post article reveals it's the speculators in the oil industry squeezing up the price of our gasoline."It is now evident that speculators in the energy futures markets play a much larger role than previously thought, and it is now even harder to accept the agency's laughable assertion that excessive speculation has not contributed to rising energy prices," said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.). He added that it was "difficult to comprehend how the CFTC would allow a trader" to acquire such a large oil inventory "and not scrutinize this position any sooner."
The article goes on for three pages, quoting source after source, on how these firms played monopolizing middle men not to profit off the sale of the oil, but just to profit off the reselling of oil. All this while the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in charge of watch-dogging the industry was asleep at the helm: The CFTC, which learned about the nature of Vitol's activities only after making an unusual request for data from the firm, now reports that financial firms speculating for their clients or for themselves account for about 81 percent of the oil contracts on NYMEX, a far bigger share than had previously been stated by the agency. That figure may rise in coming weeks as the CFTC checks the status of other big traders.
and:
CFTC documents show Vitol was one of the most active traders of oil on NYMEX as prices reached record levels. By June 6, for instance, Vitol had acquired a huge holding in oil contracts, betting prices would rise. The contracts were equal to 57.7 million barrels of oil -- about three times the amount the United States consumes daily. That day, the price of oil spiked $11 to settle at $138.54. Oil prices eventually peaked at $147.27 a barrel on July 11 before falling back to settle at $114.98 yesterday.
Wanna know who first received an exemption to begin doing this kind of market manipulation: E N R O N.
Yeah, I'm sure I should have been talking about McCain's latest gaff, but this seems a mite more important. |
| johne :: In case you were wondering, $4 gas is ENRON all over again. |
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