5/27/08 "oil bubble" ...Stop the Oil Speculators -- w/o speculators $60/barrel

www.nader.org.../archives/1276-Stop-the-Oil-Speculators.html#extended

Deborah Fineman, president of Mitchell Supreme Fuel Co. in Orange, New Jersey, summed up the scene:

“Energy markets have been dictated for too long by hedge funds and speculators, who artificially manipulate the numbers for their own benefit.

The current market isn’t based on the sound principles of supply and demand but it is being rigged by companies and speculators who are jacking up prices for their own greed.”

Harry C. Johnson, former banker who worked for many years inside Big Oil and ran his own small oil company in Oklahoma, blames the CFTC, the Department of Energy, the Administration, and Congress, as

“asleep at the switch on an issue that is probably costing U.S. consumers $1 billion per day.”

He cites “some industry experts, who profit greatly from the high price of crude, and have stated openly that the worldwide economic price of crude, absent speculators, would be around $50 to $60 per barrel.

Historically, oil has been afflicted with the control of monopolists. From the late nineteenth century days of John D. Rockefeller, and his Standard Oil monopoly, to the emergence of the “Seven Sisters” oligopoly, made up of Standard Oil, Shell, BP, Texaco, Mobil, Gulf and Socal, to the rise of OPEC representing the major producing countries, the

“free market” price of oil has been a mirage.

Despite the breakup of the Standard Oil company by the government’s trustbusters about 100 years ago, selling cartels and buying oligopolies kept reasserting themselves.

Also see "Oil Bubble" -- www.guardian.co.uk...


[edit on 4-6-2008 by counterterrorist]

[edit on 4-6-2008 by counterterrorist]