JPMorgan Hires Supertanker for Storage (of heating oil), Brokers Say

[sabra]

Source: Bloomberg

une 3 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., the second- largest U.S. bank by deposits, hired a newly built supertanker to store heating oil off Malta, shipbrokers reported, in the company’s first such booking in at least five years.

The bank hired the Front Queen for nine months, according to daily reports from Oslo-based SeaLeague A/S and Athens-based Optima Shipbrokers Ltd. David Wells, a spokesman for JPMorgan in London, declined to comment.

JPMorgan, which has never hired an oil tanker based on data compiled by Bloomberg going back five years, follows companies including Citigroup Inc.’s Phibro LLC unit and BP Plc in hiring ships to store crude or oil products at sea. The firms are seeking to take advantage of higher prices later in the year.

“It’s opportunity-driven,” Sverre Bjorn Svenning, an analyst at Fearnley Consultants AS in Oslo, said by phone. “I doubt it’s going to be a permanent or new sort of trade.”

Heating oil for immediate delivery costs $553 a metric ton in northwest Europe and supplies for August are at $580, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aZtS4TC9mxJM

[kirby]

1. Bailout supported market manipulation! n/t

[Baby Snooks]

2. The ripoff continues...

Obama handed them trillions of dollars in taxpayer money, and if there are defaults we cover them just in case someone still doesn't understand that, and here they are again. Ripping us off.

I hope everyone remembers this when their utility bills go sky high and the price at the pump goes up to $4 again.

Obama seems intent on replacing Bush as the worst president in the history of this country.

Or perhaps more accurately someone seems intent on making sure he is intent so that in the summer or fall of 2011 they can go "This wouldn't have happened if you'd voted for Hillary Clinton in 2008..."

The worst mistake of Barack Obama's was picking Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff. He is more a trojan horse of the Clintons and the DLC crooks who aren't even Democrats - they are Republicrats.

Of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation.

[boomerbust]

12. No

It was Bush who handed them trillions.

[northzax]

22. your remarkably juvenile understanding of economics on this scale

is matched only by your willingness to blather on about things you don't understand.

[Hannah Bell]

28. ad hom: for when you really don't know shit.

[northzax]

31. sorry, calling a childish idea juvenile is ad hominem now?

my bad. maybe I think we're better off with an intact banking system of some sort rather than none at all. I don't want to return to a cash-based economy (and by cashbased, I mean the folding stuff, not ATM or debit cards or checks. I don't want to be paid in cash every friday, thank you very much. I like being able to purchase things on day to day credit (that's what you get when you use your debit card as a visa, you know, a day's credit free.) these are good things, I don't want to see banks crashing and burning (only to be bailed out by the taxpayer anyway through the FDIC.)

maybe, out of some sort of class revenge, you do want that. that's fine. but I will insist on being paid in chickens when you need me.

[heliarc]

3. Sick nt

[notesdev]

4. The Market Ticker just weighed in on this

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1087-Oh-Really-Mr.-Hoenig-and-JPM.html

damning.

[pjt7]

5. Why the F did we give them

one penny of our taxpayers money?

They have always & will always be financial terrorists.

BTW, Duteche Bank is also going to be buying physical oil & hoping to increase energy prices.

[notesdev]

6. If someone sunk their tanker...

... it would serve them right. Especially if it came after they spent oodles of cash renting it and just before they were able to cash in on it.

[RantinRavin]

20. They really wouldn't care

Cargo like that is highly insured. Either way they make money.

[Hannah Bell]

7. from the link: "So let me see if I get this right."

The Taxpayer hands JP Morgan billions of dollars to bail them out and keep them from potentially being declared insolvent.

In return for this JP Morgan spends that money speculating on the price of oil, and in fact does one better - they take physical delivery and lease a ship to store it in, thereby withholding the oil from the market and propping up the price, hoping to be able to sell that oil at a higher price later.

In the meantime, however, they are partially responsible for the rise in gas prices, meaning that not only did they collect taxpayer money once, but they are effectively partly responsible for you the consumer paying a second tax, this time through higher fuel prices at the gas pump.

Then, when the time is right (for them) they will sell the oil and profit a second time.

You, the taxpayer, will pay for all three of these actions.

And we, the idiots in America, along with a bribed and purchased Congress, will allow them to get away with it.

[sarcasmo]

15. Bingo, we have a winner, the Banks manipulate the price.

[nc4bo]

17. Your post is almost poetic.

President Obama, please stop the madness!

[OhioChick]

19. You nailed it....

Let's not forget: "JP Morgan told to explain India outsourcing plan (increasing 25% more work to India)"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3791555

[Igel]

32. And not just *any* oil!

Heating oil!!!

Completely useless for making gasoline so keeping it off the market can't affect the supply in the least, which is sure to cause an immense spike in gas prices, in Europe, harming every blue-blooded American citizen. (Surely we're good, Democratic-blue-blooded citizens, not that nasty Republican-red-blooded kind? So let's hear it for the blue-bloods!)

The real issue is how will those Europeans stay warm through the frigid, European summer, where temperatures are expected to plummet into the 70s and 80s, or with global warming causing ever lower temperatures, even the 90s or 100s?

The cruelty of it all. This commodity, crucially scarce in the early sumemr months, should be distributed at once to help the poor Germans heat their hovels--if they're not at a compfortable 98.6 degrees 24/7, it's a crime against humanity.

How dare we allow Chase Morgan to not let European peasants stay comfortably hot this summer?

:sarcasm:

[PeteytehMawnstar]

8. This is why

I and everyone should go third party, i would have voted for Kucinich, or Gravel if they had made it, but I'll gladly vote 3rd party if my only choice is a corporatist.

[jpak]

27. I think you are in teh wrong place

:D

[Wednesdays]

9. K&R

:kick:

[pinniped]

10. Gas is $3.00 again and rising fast.

Looks like business as usual.

[RedCloud]

11. Make them swim in that tanker.

[geckosfeet]

13. This is why I am buying five chords of wood for the winter.

This is market manipulation.

Aren't there laws against this?

The tanker is foreign owned and parked offshore, but JP Morgans objective is clear - to cash in on the backs of the American taxpayer.

[northzax]

16. so let me get this right

it's perfectly ok for you to buy wood at summer prices to store for the winter, and perfectly wrong for JP Morgan Chase to do the same thing? how very...odd.

[nc4bo]

18. Yea really! I also want to ask geckosfeet where he spent HIS share of the bailout money..

Just in case anyone takes this the wrong way I better add this ----> :sarcasm:

[northzax]

21. have you?

have you asked where his share went? we all did share, after all, from a certain point of view (maybe your 401K lost less than it would have otherwise? maybe your house is worth more? who knows?

ah, whatever. fuck them all. shut it all down.

[nc4bo]

23. Via tragedy we lost our home (w/2nd mortgage) in a fire in 05

We went through pure hell getting Allstate to pay us fairly for our loss - took 2 years but with the payoff we bought 2 homes on 2 acres in a rural neighborhood where there are no restrictions on what you can do with your property. We have another 4 acres of woods in the same town and we can clear and farm if times get bad.

Free and clear of obligations ('cept property taxes). My hubby isn't retirement age yet but will have a small pension from Texaco(non-401k) + SS if it still exists. I will only have SS (if it still exists).

If we must, we can make it through...

I just wish I could get my grown kids to prepare themselves for whatever life tosses their way. Right now they are basically as carefree as fruit flies. Ugh.

Anyway, I agree what corps like JP Morgan, Citi, etc. are doing needs to stop yesterday. If you or I were to do what these corps are doing, we'd be serving several years in prison with our lives in ruins.

[geckosfeet]

24. Yes. The wood needs to season for the summer. And I won't be reselling it come winter.

This is the way it's done. I will be cutting my heating bill by about 50%. I am helping my wood provider stay in business. I don't see anything odd about that.

I do see something odd about a finance company manipulating the oil markets though. Maybe that's what you meant.

[Psephos]

25. you going to buy carbon credits for all that smoke?

lol JK!!

[geckosfeet]

29. Ha ha. Less than what it takes to generate the electricty that I would use otherwise.

Modern wood burning appliances burn pretty clean. Lots of federal regulations around their emissions performance. But it all depends on what you burn and how you burn it. Seasoned wood burns hot and efficiently.

My only regret is that several strong hardwoods were harvested to keep warm this winter. But I suspect my overall environmental impact is less than processing and transporting hundreds of gallons of hating oil from south america.

[PM Martin]

14. Let the mega(monster)banks DIE!

[jpak]

26. A bid to ward off anti-speculation regulations by Obama and teh Dems

guaranteed

[Vidar]

30. Bail out the speculators of death!