AlterNet: How Big Oil's Lobbyists Contributed to Big Finance's Crash

[marmar]

How Big Oil's Lobbyists Contributed to Big Finance's Crash

By Antonia Juhasz, AlterNet. Posted October 23, 2008.

Working Americans are reeling from the "unintended consequences" of their relentless war against regulation.




In a monumental about-face, U.S. Security and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox became the latest deregulation devotee to confess utter failure, repudiating the policies to which he had committed his life's work and saying, "The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work."

Unless the current financial meltdown is to become a permanent state of ruin, the SEC is hardly the only government agency that must immediately be reformed. Among others, the Commodity Futures and Exchange Commission (CFTC) -- the government agency that regulates futures markets -- now needs a heavy dose of re-regulation.

The house of cards that is the deregulated futures market has so far benefited the remaining top two investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs -- and one industry, Big Oil. Even with the recent wild volatility in the price of oil (a hallmark of deregulated markets), Big Oil has maintained its spot as the largest economic victor the world has ever known, profiting from an area of "voluntary regulation" that should be far more worrisome for the average American and for the global economy than the collapsed subprime mortgage market.

Deregulation of energy futures took place in two stages, in 1992 and 2000, under the heavy and coordinated lobbying efforts of the nation's largest oil and energy companies and banks, including Mobil, Exxon, Conoco, Phillips, BP North America, Enron, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Chase Manhattan Bank, Citigroup and the American Petroleum Institute. The first effort succeeded in removing certain energy trades from CFTC oversight, while the latter removed entire exchanges from the agency's control. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/104133/how_big_oil%27s_lobbyists_contributed_to_big_finance%27s_crash/

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. Economic terrorists every bit as deadly as Al Queda

How many lives will be snuffed out because of the greed and criminality of these men?