2,100 Assholes Are Driving Up Our Price Of Energy/Oil/Gasoline! What Everyone--Even Rs--Need To Know

[orleans]

congress just needs to put the words AND ENERGY back into the 2000 commodities futures modernization act

a bill written by enron, "shoved into a multiple thousands of pages appropriations bill, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a constitutional crisis (florida 2000) by phil gramm and his (mccain's) finance chair and his top campaign adviser. no debate, no hearings, no nothing. that, my friends, is the true story about why you are paying what you are paying at the pump. that is the TRUE story. there is no energy shortage. there is no increase in demand that would cause the price of oil to go up $11 overnight per barrel."

"drilling--we have been drilling our asses off since 2000. drilling has increased dramatically. we have increased drilling 66% while gas prices continue to increase so you gotta know that drilling is not the answer. companies can't even keep pace with the rate of drilling permits that the federal government is handing out. over the past 4 years oil companies have received and are sitting on nearly 10 thousand permits that they are not using to increase domestic production.

"now why would they do that? there are many reasons why they would do it. number one is they like to do what enron did. they create the illusion of a shortage, scream and yell about how we gotta raise prices and then drive the price up through speculating on their own products and when the price is high...that's when they'll stick a drill in the ground. just like enron. when the price was high they would release the megawatts. to grandma. at $250 a megawatt hour. and the traders sit and laugh about 'grandma millie.'

"offshore drilling. do you know how much oil is currently open to leasing? 79%. all the oil and gas believed to exist on the outer continental shelf--almost 80% of oil, almost 82% of natural gas--is located in areas already open for leasing. in 2006 the federal government opened up 8.3 million new acres in the gulf of mexico for drilling. and yet, gasoline prices JUST CONTINUE TO SKYROCKET!

"10.5 million of the 44 million leased offshore acres are actually producing oil and gas. and there's another little problem too. there's no ships to go to the rigs. there's no ships. every ship that could go to a rig is working right now. every one in the world. every ship is working and is booked for years to come.

"this is a lie. it's a distraction. it's not going to solve your problem... it's not going to solve anybody's problem. so why is john mccain peddling it? TO DISTRACT YOU FROM THE PROBLEM HE AND HIS CRONY BUDDIES ACTUALLY CREATED FOR YOU. don't you get it? and if john mccain is president you can bet your ass that phil gramm and wayne burman and charlie black are going into his cabinet just like bush too joe allbaugh, and chertoff and cheney and rumsfeld and all his cronies. they're all going to work at various enforcement agencies all throughout the government--it WILL be a repeat on steroids of what bush did.
--randi rhodes

Oil Trading's Powerful "Dark Markets"

(CBS) As gas prices skyrocket, attention has turned to public "pits," where brokers trade "oil futures" - the right to buy or sell crude oil at a specific price, on a future date.

But far away from the hue and cry, hundreds of millions of barrels of oil futures contracts are traded electronically every day, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports.

More than 30 percent, experts say, exchanged in so-called "dark markets," the exact size and scope unknown to U.S. regulators.

"If you can trade out of the sight of U.S. regulators, you can manipulate these markets," said Michael Greenberger, a former top staffer at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, which regulates the trading of commodities like oil in this country.

He recently told Congress that speculation is placing a huge premium on the price of oil.

"How much per barrel?" Keteyian asked.

"Well, there have been various estimates - anywhere from 25 percent to 50 percent," Greenberger said.

"People can actually corner the market and drive up the price," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. "When there is no policeman on the beat, you know that crime can go up."

More and more fingers are pointing at one of the least-known but most powerful foreign exchanges - the InterContinental Exchange, or ICE.

By the end of 2007, the all-electronic exchange accounted for nearly a 50 percent market share of all global oil futures contracts, a total of 138.5 million contracts - up 49 percent from 2006.

Today it boasts more than 2,100 individual traders representing virtually all of the major players in oil - banks, hedge funds, energy companies, investment giants.

And according to a securities filing, two of those giants, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, were founding partners of ICE.

"The fact that they started this shows the intent of where they wanted to go," Greenberger said. "Which was to trade crude oil and energy products without any police in the United States supervising it."

That's because it's considered a foreign exchange. Taking advantage of a loophole created by the CFTC, the company says its "energy futures business" is conducted in London, it is not subject to U.S. laws. Over strong criticism, the CFTC agreed.

All this despite the fact ICE headquarters are on the fifth floor of a building in Atlanta, it's primary data center in Chicago, and nearly all its trades settled in U.S. dollars.

"It is a charade, and ... it defies explanation," Greenberger said.

In a statement, ICE CEO Jeffrey Sprecher told CBS News that ICE is committed to providing "the same visibility in our oil markets that exists for U.S. Exchanges," and that ICE Futures Europe is "fully regulated" by the British government.

But British financial authorities are notoriously lax.

Now Congress and others are asking just how much of the crude oil futures market is being manipulated by either excessive buying designed to drive up the price, or phony transactions that imply a supply problem that does not exist.

Today, under pressure, ICE finally agreed to impose stricter limits on certain trading, shedding some much needed light on the dark side of oil.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/17/broadcasts/main4188620.shtml

"there really is no "enron loophole." it's just a name. what it really is is: the commodities futures modernization act. it's a whole law." --randi rhodes (from 2000; about 200 pages, that "phil gramm and wendy gramm and charlie black who is john mccain's top adviser and this wayne burman creature who is john mccain's finance chair and phil gramm who is john mccain's economic adviser--all lobbied to get this done. it was written by enron. there were words in these laws that said agriculture and energy and they took out energy so that any regulation would be on agriculture futures--soybeans, pork bellies, but not on energy.) --randi 6/19/08

michael greenberger (who was a member of the commodities futures trading commission, CFTC) testified before congress and said all you have to do is but the words "and energy" back into the bill and prices will drop by at least 25%. possibly even more.