Right... WE pay what THEY say... And we have no say.. But that's when the riots happen in the streets.. How else can the banks make a shitton of cash from what they lost in the subprime debacle? Corner the crude market, and refuse to accept dollars for your product! Seems logical... Close the fucking swaphole, protect the dollar, and you should see oil trading nominally at 1/10th the price of gold... 'Fair' price is about 80-90 bucks.. But then again who said life is fair...
Let me make this simple. Demand has increased worldwide, supply cannot meet it. So prices rise. "Our" supply and demand are irrelevant. When fundies support rising prices in a commodity market, speculators pay attention. Openinterest increases and volatilitywith it. Do they cause the rise? No, no more than they caused corn prices to go up dramatically. or steel. Or iron ore. Or Coal. Or any of a dozen other commodities. If you simply must blame someone, blame the chinese and blame democrats in congress for doing everything within their power to cause an energy crisis. McMasters is a simpleton who is probably someone liberal pol's son-in-law who was trotted out to "confirm" what the subcommittee chairman wanted ot hear, not to provide any insight. The other two witnesses I saw were equally clueless or just downright liars, I can't say which. I'm sorry you can't see this as the election year scam it is. Democrats have done everything in their power to block any increase in oil supply, have blocked nuclear power, have blocked coal plants, now they want to pull this evil speculator crap. The fact is they like higher energy prices. What do you think the point of a carbon tax is or cap and trade? They think buring fossil fuels is evil. They just see this as an opportunity to have their cake and eat it too by somehow convincing gullilbe people mad at paying $4 for gas that it is all the fault of republicans and speculators. Get real. As traders, our primary concern should be democrats' obvious desire to take over the markets and substitute government controls for free markets. Several have already come out and demanded nationalization of refineries and oil companies ala Hugo Chavez. Rep. John Conyers, whose wife has had a cush job with GM for decades, is now calling for 50% futures margin. Might as well just outlaw futures trading,which I am sure they woudl like to do.
yes, well said. this same thing happened during the 1929 crash--- lynch the speculator/trader threats. does anyone know this guys fund? did he make money or just another sore loser? perhaps a guilty feeling rich guy? something is seriously twisted here. surf
Ahh..yes.. another Blame the Dems guffaw.. What a load of horseshit.. Both parties are equally responsible.. They both are piles of shit...
All I have are two questions: 1. Do you think we should actually enforce the position limits currently in place in the commodity futures markets? Right now, they're not enforced because of the swap loophole. Should we eliminate that loophole? 2. Do you think that actual consumption and supply of oil since January of 2007 merits a threefold price increase? I agree with you that most of the measures proposed are asinine on any number of levels, but I support enforcing the exchange limits. Those limits were put in place to prevent what we're currently experiencing.
I'm going to go long oil, then send nasty letters to Royal Dutch Shell, trash talking their Nigeria Delta pipeline.