The Oil Bubble
 

I just watched this video from CBS's 60 Minutes: "The Price of Oil". Worth watching (stick with it through the ad) because it shows what we all suspected -- the oil bubble of last summer was driven by Wall Street and it was only the failure of the big players when the housing bubble burst that brought oil back to a real market.

I suppose that many readers here might have seen the show, but it doesn't air here in Canada.

I'm a little too incensed for cohesive thought so I'll just say that sux.

It really kind of illustrates the fact that it's not elected governments that are in control. They are more like lesser hogs waiting for scraps to spill from the corporate trough. Why do I feel the need to look over the Book of Revelations?

"There is no emoticon for what I'm feeling" -Comic Book Guy

Doesn't it make you feel violated? I can't get my head around the venality of Wall Street -- what evil, greedy <expletive deleted>s.

Awww... don't delete the expletive - it's fully justified in this case! Instead of waging a war in Iraq to secure oil supplies from the region, Bush's administration would have done well to wage a war on Wall Street.

To me, it's the ultimate proof that markets simply don't work without regulation.

To me it's one more gigantic piece of evidence that there cannot be a free market without regulation. Right wingers will think that's an oxymoron, but it isn't.

And more of the same intense need for regulation and enforcement in another vein here: Shady subprime lenders creeping into federal mortgage program

Even a free market needs transparency in order to work correctly

Exactly, and you can't have voluntary transparency. It must be required by law, and vigorously enforced.

Yup. We've been had again by the robber barons. It will be a long time before my faith in the markets... stocks, commodities and the rest... will be restored. If ever.

Besides being down right PO'd over this, I am also really, really miffed that investigation after investigation over the decades have come up with the same old tired statement about supply and demand. Are our elected officials too inept to see what's happening, or are they simply looking the other way? It is a sad state of affairs when OPEC comes out looking like the smart, good guys.

The price of oil doesn't just affect the US, it affects the world. What the US has done here is wreak havoc throughout the industrialized nations. Well, maybe not the US, but certainly some of our criminal elements have done just that.

I, for one, am way past the point of thinking more regulation is the answer. It isn't just oil. Natural gas and electricity have also been manipulated (i.e. Enron and electricity prices in California).

It is time to nationalize energy resources. We cannot continue to allow thieves and unscrupulous speculators to have us by the throat. They have shown too many times that they cannot be trusted to refrain from choking us.

It would be easier to heavily tax any form of energy that must be shipped, piped, or trucked in. We could use those funds to develop wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and others while beginning to pay down the national debt.

We should do the same with every business that costs the taxpayers money: cigarettes for another example.

Me thinks that might result in higher prices to the consumers..... tax plus whatever the robber barons can exact from us.

We are simply being manipulated by the energy industry... pretty much across the board. The electric company here has nailed us twice now with their maneuvers... e.g. buy an electricity producer in another state for pennies, build a new power plant for them, and then bill us for the cost of the new plant in another state (all one big happy company now... share and share alike). Well, no. We built and paid for a nuclear power plan that produces cheap electricity and all that we need.... now being asked to pay for somebody else's not so cheap electricity production (coal & petro). Result was a 70 percent increase in our electric bills.

We've been down this road. Smokers don't cost taxpayers money, they save them money. Op Cit and all that. We should refund all the taxes we extorted from these poor souls based on flawed data and ignorance.

So, Wall Street manipulated, Commodities Market manipulated, Utilities Manipulated -- is "Free Market" an oxymoron?

That's the point: drive up prices for dirty energy up while funding R&D (especially development) of clean energy. You kill two birds with one stone!
Tell that to victims of second hand smoke, as well as the tax payers who pick up the tab for their healthcare when health insurance doesn't. Tell it also to nonsmokers who pay for health insurance either at work or on their own.
It's an illusion.

The cost of oil has basically been used as an excuse to raise prices of everything else across the board. They have gotten rich at the expense of practically everyone else across the globe.

If this market had been manipulated this severely by anyone other than the Wall Street crowd (including international counterparts), some nations could consider it to be an act of war.

More to the point, I think, is just how free can a market be before it devours us?

That's opposite the point! Unless your definition of "free market" is one where the government does not manipulate it but corporations are free to control entire segments of the market instead of competing.

Well, if you are interested you can watch a free movie online called Zeitgeist. Google search it and you will pull it up. It is broken down into three parts. The first two deal with religion and the whole 9/11 thing. Take it for what it is. The third part though is the most interesting in my opinion and it is about the economy and the free market and how it was manipulated by the government.

This is light weight conspiracy theory type stuff, so take it for what it is. They mention oil production and how it is nearing it's peak and at some point they will not be able to produce it as efficiently as they once could.

From what I see in it, they talk about how the free market is manipulated by corporate powers that manipulate the government. The power "behind" the government is not our government. Rupert Murdoch, for one example mentioned, is not the government.

That is serious, scary, and we're not doing anything about it. "Drill baby, drill" is only making it worse.

The only reason I will discredit some of it is because it has gaps in information when regarding Rothchild and Rockerfeller. While, I am not saying it is impossible I just know they have a few of the dates a big skewed.

Also, the whole 9/11 conspiracy thing is well, also stretched. The economy one I believe the most.

The section on religion is no news to me, as I have read up on many different ancient and current religions.

Since the incoming administration in the USA must surely be aware of all these breeches of the public trust in markets, I'm betting that there will be some hefty regulations coming down the pipe soon. I think the pendulum is about to swing the other way; hopefully not overdoing it.

Non-interference by government would be exactly how I would define "free market." Government regulation is, in my view, interference with the free market.

Please note I did not say corporate manipulation was a good thing.... it isn't. Anything that interferes with competition on a level playing field is bad. Of course, we should regulate those actions/people who interfere with proper market operation.... and the oil bubble is a classic example of why we should do that.

:eek:
But that's a pointless definition, as you show:
If there are people who are able to "interfere with proper market operation" that can only mean that the market is not free!

The timing of all this financial bedlam is kind of interesting. I wonder if people could see the party was soon to be over and decided to take what they could and run before it all hit the fan.

What I am suggesting is that a totally free market is not necessarily a good thing. Restraints and restrictions are necessary.

Either way human nature will out. Give the markets free reign and we've seen the results. Give the government tighter control and you're open to corruption as people try to grease the wheels.

Funny, I was saying the same thing to my wife last night -- then I said "Nah, that's just too much of a conspiracy theory!". She didn't think so, agreed with your point.

The secret story of 2 trillion dollars
 

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Sort of like no one having the right to demand how Mr Bernanke & the Federal Reserve Board has spent $ 2,000,000,000,000 (that’s two trillion dollars!)? Or what security, if any, they have received for taxpayers in exchange!?

By the way, two trillion dollars is about six time as much as the 350 billion spent by the US Treasury Dept., and makes the "controversial" bailout to US automakers look like pocket change.

There is a better way. Government shouldn't try to control. Instead, regulation should be aimed at creating and maintaining a free market. That's a primary reason for anti trust laws, and it's high time we used them again. Any company that is "too big to let fail" is also too big to be allowed to remain in one piece.