Oil Speculators Drive Up Gas Prices

I’ve posted on this a few times already.  But with the message wars heating up, bloggers who aren’t affiliated with Wall Street or the Koch Brothers will need to keep stressing these points relentlessly.  “Drill Here Drill Now” will be echoing louder and louder between now and November.

Bernie Sanders has written a letter — co-signed by sixty-seven other congressmen — which is based on a report by the St. Louis Federal Reserve titled “Speculation in the oil market.”  The letter is urging the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to install caps that would prevent Wall Street’s largest  traders from establishing too much control in the oil futures trading market.

If you get your “news” from Fox or talk radio, the preceding sentence would translate to “strangling the economy with too many cumbersome regulations.”

The report cites “global demand shocks” — e.g. tensions in the Middle East — and speculation as the two largest causes of surging oil prices.

Bernie Sanders said:

“If the St. Louis Federal Reserve, a conservative institution, is saying speculation is contributing significantly to the high price of oil and gas at the pump, then I think that is clearly what the case is.”

The letter says the CFTC has failed to enact position limits on oil futures traders, even though the CFTC is required under existing law to create and enforce these limits.  The letter states in part:

“As the cost for American people to fill their gas tanks continues to skyrocket, the CFTC continues to drag its feet on imposing strict speculation limits to eliminate, prevent, or diminish excessive oil speculation as required by the Dodd-Frank Act.  Although the CFTC has adopted initial position limits, they are not strong enough and not yet in force owing to industry opposition, delays in swaps oversight and data collection. This is simply unacceptable and must change.”

As glacial as the CFTC’s pace has been, the agency is being sued by two Wall Street lobbying organizations:  the International Swaps and Derivatives Association and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

We’ll find out who has more political clout:  Wall Street or hundreds of millions of American motorists.

(It was a rhetorical question.)

You Go Bernie Sanders

In case there was ever any doubt, the record gas prices of 2008 were caused by oil speculators. Sorry, rightwads — those America-hating treehuggers had nothing to do with it.

Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent—VT) has leaked this information to the press. By publicizing this information, Sanders has infuriated Wall Street CEOs AND their [wink] “regulators.”

As with the Pentagon Papers and WikiLeaks (and their numerous spin-offs), the Powers That Be are having a mass panty-twist that “private” information has been leaked to the lowly public. For people who are NOT part of that self-contained Inner Party of corporate VIPs and the “legislators” and “regulators” who keep going down on them, the information itself should be infuriating, rather than the fact that the information was leaked to the public.

Bernie Sanders said:

“The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has kept this information hidden from the American public for nearly three years. This is an outrage. The American people have a right to know exactly who caused gas prices to skyrocket in 2008 and who is causing them to spike today.”

You Go Guy.

If You Like Sky-High Gas Prices, Thank a Republican

Without belaboring the obvious, our high gas prices are caused mostly by oil speculators; and NOT by a bunch of treehugging enviro-nazis who won’t let America drill her way to Freedom.

If energy speculators — commodity speculators in general — are not causing problems, then why are Wall Street’s Republican prostitutes so determined to derail the regulatory agency that oversees commodities markets? That would be the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Congressional Republicans have de-fanged the Commission by withholding $30 million of its funding.

If Republicans can keep oil prices waaay up there, they’ll get a twofer: Their Big Oil pimps will make even more money that they can “contribute” to their prostitutes’ re-election campaigns, AND they can point the finger at Obama while their gullible stooges chant “Drill Baby Drill!” and “Drill Here Drill Now!”

And now it’s time to stoke the Irony Meter: Target has produced a 13-minute film which they’re showing to all Target employees. This film is supposed to get their workers all fired up about the evils of labor unions and collectivism.

All of the actors in this film are — you ready? — Union Members.

And finally: We’ve all heard the cliché about sausage factories, i.e. if you ever watched sausages being made and could see the unspeakable ingredients they put in, you’d never eat another one. Well, the next time you go to your favorite Japanese restaurant, think about — uhh, [ahem] er…

Higher Gas Prices and Koch Industries

Once again, gasoline prices are going through the roof. And once again, you’ll hear vague rumblings about “oil speculators” being responsible.

If you’re like me, you probably have no idea who these oil speculators are, what they’re doing to make such huge profits from higher oil prices (without producing anything themselves), and why they keep getting away with it. (As well as “Hey, how can I get in on this?”)

Would you believe, Koch Industries is one of the largest oil speculators. Why is this not surprising?

Needless to say Koch Industries doesn’t extract any oil. But they’re major players in shipping crude oil, refining and distributing it. With such control over every stage of the market, they have excellent information for speculating on the future price.

When it comes to parlaying their insider knowledge into complicated convoluted financial schemes, Koch Industries has picked up where Enron left off.

In 2008, Koch Industries practiced “contango” market manipulation. That’s the practice of buying and storing huge quantities of a commodity in order to create a fake “shortage.” In 2008 Koch Industries leased four supertankers for holding/hording oil off the U.S. Gulf coast, in anticipation of higher prices.

As far as why they’re able to keep getting away with this: the Koch Brothers have stacked Congress with their own private army of prostitutes (formerly known as Republicans) to make sure Koch Industries can keep doing what it wants when it wants.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) says oil speculation is at a record high level right now; and this speculation is the cause of these skyrocketing gas prices you’re seeing. And by a sheer coincidence, Congressional Republicans keep trying to eliminate funding for the CFTC in order to protect their pimps.

In another wacky coincidence, Koch Industries lobbied frantically against last year’s financial reform bill because of certain provisions regarding transparency in the energy trading market.

If gas prices keep going up and up this summer, don’t blame it on them treehuggers. Blame it on the Kochsuckers.