thank you very much! Really helpful links - stored them immediately

Larkrise

We know that we are approaching the time when major oil producers will no longer have vast reservoirs of oil

yes, i know - and therefore, the high prices are not that bad - IMHO - because how else are people to convince to care for energy/environment? Sadly, most of them (not only the pampered rich sons) ignore the own responsibility for future, isn’t it? I remember so many persons in winter opening the window to control temperature - without turning off the heating - as long as it was not their own house - when others have to pay, why care? Maybe that will change now - and companies and cities will now bother about energy saving…

- but in julinjax links i found a very interesting quote

“Iran, for instance, is storing 25 million barrels of heavy, sour crude oil because, in the words of Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, Iran’s oil governor, “there are simply no buyers because the market has more than enough oil.”” (also: WSJ(5/21) Commodities Report: Futures Extend Oil’s Surge Crude Oil Spot Market Sees Oversupply, Not Scarcity, both referencing an article, i couldn’t find)

but i guess, now i understand, how it works

despite the fact, that i am not a fan of Mr. F. William Engdahl (Larkrise, your link was ‘Perhaps 60% of today’s oil price is pure speculation’?? ), he gave me an interesting hint in More on the real reason behind high oil prices:

“How many gullible lemmings followed behind with their money bets?”

because i often thought - in the last weeks - that the media are preparing people for high prices => they will accept it without asking questions or examining it => they will capitulate and not fight against it, but pay resignedly, when the price rises again - the Promised Land of Profits!

so i, admittedly, was suspicious about the whole situation - you know, cui bono…

+

in many of the articles, OTC and swap tradings are mentioned, things, more or less kept “secretly”

so if i “upgrade” my suspicion to not only fooling customers, but fooling small shareholders, too - i guess, you can make much money with that unholy alliance of the need for oil, the secrecy of the markets and the power over the media…

Google:
CNN Money.com
“Oil experts: Curb Speculation to Cut Prices” June 24, 2008

Paul Krugman does not agree that speculation is raising oil prices. I think it is a combination of factors, eg. Increased demand from China, India, U.S.,
Middle East instability, Big Oil corruption and avarice, time-limited supply, i.e. We know that we are approaching the time when major oil producers will no longer have vast reservoirs of oil, and oil speculation. These factors have combined to produce high prices. But, the commodities market is as volatile as the Stock Market. If there are big storms in the Gulf of Mexico, if another war breaks out in the Middle East, if there are major shut-downs in oil refineries, these will affect the price of oil, even if supply is not immediately affected or affected at all.

as I have known that oil specualtion was driving the price of gasoline for years now

me too - but i have a problem. My son is young and hopeful and therefore believes in the “you can do what you want” (while most elderly people know - like Woody Allan - it is more/all about luck “There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t and you lose.”)

as i mentioned the speculators, he asked me “how do they do that”?

and i couldn’t answer that precisely/exactly - looking at history, it is very plausible, that speculators can make money from muck (”pecunia non olet”), but i always try to verify things - and he knows that and asked me “how”. Usually i would not be able to stop before i know that, but at the moment, i have no time…

so please - do YOU know how oil speculations work - precisely?

There WERE regulations against speculating, but Old Fart Phil had them done away with. Voila! Oil speculation.

please, Larkrise et al., can you provide some links for me?

There is a price to pay for greed, avarice and corruption.

perfectly true

but problem in a linked world like the human society is - if you are strong enough you can “reroute” the price - and so others have to pay

those are the moments when i think about the “good” of death. Reminds me of a song i’ve heard some time ago about the lower, middle and upper class, about the people without hope, the people neither fish nor fowl and the people who stink against the wind because they make money from sh*t. But, the song says, don’t worry, be happy! In the end - we all go to hell - and there, we meet again…

on the bottom line ;-).

Laissez-faire capitalism is all about greed. The buck is the bottom line. Workers can die due to bad work conditions. Children can be poisoned by phthlates in their toys. Food can be tainted. The air, water and soil can be poisoned. No matter. Making a big profit is the Big Kahuna. Supposedly, the market will solve all problems. Baloney. The body count has to be considerable before any notice is taken of it. Even then, corrupt corporate practices will continue unabated without regulation, stiff fines and penalties, and serious investigations (all smirked at and abandoned by Bush.) The Chambers of Commerce of this country love to lick the boots of bums like Bush. They work themselves into a frenzy over “liberal, left-wing, pinko, tree-hugging” Democrats. As the economy continues to falter, with more and more
empty store fronts, let us see how long it takes those Chambers of Commerce types to realize they have had their heads up their patooties for too many years. There is a price to pay for greed, avarice and corruption. You can bet the farm on it.

actually - i waited for a post like that after the news

isn’t it a joke - the High Priests of Privatization DO clean and pure socialism (what else is buying the shares with taxes => ownership: government, huh?)

But what good is a tax cut when the taxes we still do pay go to rescuing failing businesses?

the “good” is to support “our elites”, not the “dull people” - we need elites! You know, “egalitarian = dull = regimented = communism”

= Pavlov Reflex, perfectly implemented by the Mind Making Money (The “Man” behind the Curtain)

= best protection against a working democracy, against “for the people, by the people”…

First, the idea that a failing business should be bailed out as a matter of course is dangerous to the idea of free market capitalism. ….Clearly, it’s a bad precedent to set in a free market system.

but that’s the same with import duties and subsidies to protect MY market, with Eads and Boeing, with tax paid wars for oil while not “caring about gas prices and ballooning mortgages” for the common people

Privatization and Free Market is not a fact/science - it is a religion. You can see it by just looking at the way they preach Free Market and Profits - they do it as maximum, not as optimum, mathematically seen. They talk about maximizing profits - but without restrictions. It is not about “maximizing profits under consideration of…” (e.g. “unworthy things” like future or humanity or environment), no! “Maximizing profits” is an end in itself. And a strategy like that is not survivable in a universe of conservation of energy

but an optimum would be - optima are survivable

the next thing you can see, that Privatization is a religion - and as most religions made for supporting the current Brahmans - is the way, they preach it. Privatization should fix everything - from First to Third World it brings happiness and heaven - that’s pure religion, isn’t it? Since the Fall of the Wall Privatization flooded the world - long enough to verify the results! But the wealth has not grown, to the contrary (at least not in the promised way - the superrich got richer, that is true - paid by the rest of the world)

the Holy Privatization did not repair the world - it just took the infrastructures, paid by taxes and exploited it without caring for it, because “care and repair is too expensive - we need TAXES to build the infrastructures”

isn’t that the song, we hear always and ever and everywhere?

and so - it is not really a surprise, when priests say something and do the other, isn’t it?

Think of the love, the Pope preaches - and what happens to the children…

individuals learn from their mistakes, while corporations do not

.

only the latter is true, because corporations as “bodiless” information processing systems cannot “feel” the consequences of their deeds - but that is the same for rich and powerful individuals - like Mr. George W. Bush

born in an elite family, his money always protected him from paying for his failures - so he never could and will learn

only the “common individuals” have to pay the prices for their mistakes => learn from mistakes

it is always about physics - isn’t it? About cause and effect - and if you cannot see/feel the effect, you will never understand the power of the cause…

History keeps repeating itself

griiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin - i guess, Steve would raise his eyebrows