Lehman/Enron oil 'front-running' champs?: Oil Speculation Collapse Brings More Realistic Prices

Lehman/Enron oil 'front-running' champs?: Oil Speculation Collapse Brings More Realistic Prices

(ALSO, NOTE THE TIMING BETWEEN LEHMAN BROS GOING BROKE AND FANNIE MAE collapsing to public bail-out) -- we appear to be witnessing the City of London/Fed/Bundesbank AGAIN robbing tax payers of trillions of dollars!!!

“Front running” is one way to view what criminal Enron executives did to California.

www.monetary.org... (since the url is suspended, I've included the article)

"'Front running' Against Humanity in the Oil Markets", by Stephen Zarlenga, Director, AMI

“

Front-Running is an insiders’ term for an often illegal, always immoral practice in commodity and other markets.

Here’s what happens:

A broker holding a client’s order to buy at a certain price, instead buys for himself just in “front” of it. The clients order isn’t filled and the broker has an unfair advantage over other traders because he controls the client’s order which will buy the position back from him and protect his trade from a loss.

The client loses the opportunity to gain, where his order is never filled if the market moves away from his order point. If some participants can trade with little or no risk, over time everyone else is hurt.

Because Exchange Members’ margin requirements are only about 1%, the front running brokers have a possibility of great gain quickly with almost no risk of loss.

Why is this important to “public policy?”
“Front running” is one way to view what criminal Enron executives did to California.

They had the client’s non cancellable, inelastic “orders” to buy electricity and they grabbed the available supply in front of that, restricted the delivery process and extorted higher prices; blaming price rises on “market forces.”

Enron was bad enough, and Sarbanes-Oxley was passed to hold corporate officers criminally liable - a good law as judged by the corporate types screaming for its repeal. But apparently it didn’t go far enough as judged by the present bold attack against humanity taking place.

The manipulation of energy markets has widened from cheating the people of California, to a deadly attack on all humanity. That’s what allowing speculation in oil futures is doing today. These markets aren’t providing “price discovery” as apologists like to claim. They’ve driven the price of oil to destructive levels. The damage has already been immense.

We’ve seen the devastating effects oil prices have had on airlines; trucking; food delivery and production; on average families trying to keep up with living costs; on restaurants and hotels Americans can no longer afford.

Add your examples. It’s the speculation and hoarding that does it. Exxon couldn’t grab 12 $billion record 2nd quarter profits if their costs of obtaining oil were rising.

And so I put aside an outline for this paper when it appeared Congress would do its job – [quote[rescue the world economy from this pernicious vandalism, by limiting speculation in oil futures to a few contracts per account.

That’s all it would take to stop the nonsense.

There’s no reason to allow speculators to position themselves between the world’s limited oil supplies, and those who have to use that oil to keep the world economy functioning. Such speculation leads directly to hardship, starvation, death and warfare.

“Congress will finally fulfill its responsibility to act.” I thought, but the measure failed in the Senate with 50 for, 43 against, and 7 not voting!

Why didn’t Congress act?
If this scenario is so clear and harsh, how could the Senate refuse to act? Are they a gang of demons?” No, but something potentially worse – we’re confronted with a bad idea that many people believe in – the sanctity of markets!

The vote exposes a faulty methodology - an ideology based on false axioms; a false view of markets that’s been strongly promoted, not questioned; with its negative effects not understood; that view gives markets a sacred character:

Don’t try to legislate against what the market does – market forces will crush your laws. (its omnipotent!)

Don’t try to instruct market behavior; it has inputs from millions of participants and knows more than your regulators ever could! (Its Omniscient.)

Do the right things and the market will reward you; misbehave and you will be punished! (Its benevolent.)

Well, omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence are attributes of a god, and Senators don’t often fight with god!

What’s sorely missing from these beliefs and assumptions is evidence!

Where’s the evidence that removing regulation from the airline industry had good effects?

Where’s the evidence that removing FCC restrictions on media ownership had good effects?

Where’s the evidence that removing government regulation from any industry has had good effects?

Of course it’s worse than that. It goes beyond a lack of evidence because there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary! Holding those beliefs requires ignoring loads of evidence: ignoring the damage done to the airlines by deregulation; the damage done by media concentration; the continuing damage done to America’s middle class.

How can proponents of unregulated markets justify ignoring the facts? Its crazy, but it’s also a necessary part of their false methodology which loves theory but avoids experience – the facts. One of their leading “lights.” economist Ludwig Von Mises, carries it to extreme levels actually claiming that facts cannot disprove his theories! So we are dealing with momentous errors of judgment and methodology.

Though these men are in the U.S. Senate, they are thinking like scared children. But such errors belong in children’s sand boxes, not our nation’s halls of power.

This battle over methodology is an old fight. We even see it in our nation’s beginnings.

Ben Franklin’s 1729 essay “The Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency” gave the correct methodology when he summarized the ideas used to help Pennsylvania set up its paper money system in 1723 rescuing her from a prolonged usury crisis. Franklin told the world: “Experience, more prevalent than all the logic in the world has fully convinced us all that paper money has been of the greatest benefit to the country.”

Maybe as some Senators voted against stopping oil speculation, perhaps a more human inner voice rebelled against what they did. Was that voice stifled by an unholy combination of greed & selfishness, assuaged by their comforting though unsupported belief in the utility of unbridled selfishness and greed? The false notion that selfishness “works?”

The Senators are not demonic, but their ideology, summarized as “Market worship,” which ignores the human part of the resulting tragedies, certainly is.

Stephen Zarlenga,
Director, American Monetary Institute
The American Monetary Institute holds its 4th annual Monetary Reform Conference at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Sept. 25-28, 2008
www.monetary.org...

----
This is an excerpt from an email from American Monetary Institute (AMI) www.monetary.org... :

A few weeks ago we sent out an essay titled, 'Front running Humanity in the Oil Markets'. It pointed out how allowing such futures speculation was actually endangering mankind, causing starvation and other problems that could lead to warfare.

Since then the oil price has continued to plunge, falling altogether from about $150 a barrel down to about $100 a barrel. It turns out that most of the "trading" taking place had nothing to do with supply and demand and the actual use of oil, but was/is primarily a deeply anti-social; anti-human speculative gamble by people who think its OK for them to profit by inserting their accounts in front of those who must use the oil to keep societies around the world functioning; even though their speculation will increase human starvation and death.

Where does morality enter the picture? Where do the moral imperatives of Christianity or Judaism or Islam enter the picture? Most of the speculators would claim alliance with those religions. (While Islam abhors usury, it does allow futures trading - see Chapter 22 of 'The Lost Science of Money'.

The speculation is ending not because of the consciences of these characters but because the U.S. Congress merely threatened some action against the speculation, and the gamblers knew that this could bring the price down to the real supply and demand levels, which I'd guess is in the $35-55 a barrel region.

Remember - never allow oil men near the White House again!

The US Dollar has had a major move up against other currencies (the Euro down) because a great part of the dollars weakness was due to sending dollars abroad for oil.

The Gold price collapsed from over $1,000 an ounce to around $750.
Agricultural prices declined dramatically as the speculators pulled out of those futures contracts also. Farmers who were enticed into high cost production now face terrible prospects.

REMEMBER this is all an effect of the ridiculous idea that so called "free" markets do a better job than strong governmental regulation. Mankind's experience does not support that view - just the opposite.

---








[edit on 16-9-2008 by counterterrorist]

[edit on 16-9-2008 by counterterrorist]

reply to post by counterterrorist


What an awesome post. You have provided details I have not heard mentioned. I thought all along the oil market is being manipulated. Everyone kept on screaming China. Yeah China, a place where the average worker makes $2,500 a year and a car cost $50,000. Total BS!!!

So how do we fix it? I said all along that traders of commodities should only being allowed to trade in the futures if they show they have the ability to take delivery. What are your thoughts.

Once again, your research is impeccable. Is your full report something you can share? Thanks.

thank you so much for your response.

Originally posted by AtlantaInsider1
reply to post by counterterrorist

 

What an awesome post. ... I said all along that traders of commodities should only being allowed to trade in the futures if they show they have the ability to take delivery. What are your thoughts?

Once again, your research is impeccable. Is your full report something you can share? Thanks.

The info in the opening post is not mine, it is from the urls posted. If you go to the website that is referenced, you can get the email for the director and communicate with him directly. I'm merely a researcher and editor. My only insights come from everything I research, in that I just draw conclusions from the documented research of others.

Please go to the website referenced in the orig post and contact the director directly by email. I've spoken w/him before. As director of American Monetary Institute, his work on monetary reform is based on Eustace Mullin's, who I used to call regularly up until a year ago. Mullin's wrote: The Secrets of The Federal Reserve, in 1950 -- and was blackballed thereafter. Eustace Mullins www.whale.to...

The other person to become familiar with, was also blackballed when he published reports from his post at Hoover Institute that documented some of the interlocking directorate of the Fed/Bank of England from 1921 financed Soviet (communist) Russia and Nazi German and revolutions in China. His work is neatly summarized in a series of videos:

The reason I point these men out to you, is that the interlocking directorate of the fed/City of London owns the banks that own the oil companies and own the traders that create the 'bubbles', such as the internet bubble, the iraq bubble, the oil bubble, the housing bubble ... and so on.

The trick (apparently I've noticed, from being an editor for an IPO writer while I was at redherring.com before the dot-com bust) is to get in at the beginning and create the bubble, turn your profits (at tax payer (or investor) expense) over about 10-30 times, all the time dispersing and sheltering your profits, then go bust and have tax payers pick it up.

I've posted the youtube Sutton interview's below. (You might also enjoy this post -- which documents every single mortgage is a 'bubble', 'NO ONE! will believe you about the No. 1 NWO bank conspiracy – 6% fixed rate mortgage is really a 580% variable mortgage.', at: www.abovetopsecret.com...
and
'Fannie Mae run by nazi/neo-nazi directorate interlocks -- why no fraud prosecution?', at: www.abovetopsecret.com...
and
'Fed founded by pre-Nazi/Nazi/neo-Nazi/NWO Warburg family', at
www.abovetopsecret.com...
and
'Obama (almost?) backed by Bush & Deutche Bank, Union Bank, Brown Bros Harriman, neo-Nazi's & Enron' at:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Skull & Bones armed al Qaeda, Viet Cong, USSR & Hitler; Bush & Hitler joined Skull & Bones
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Professor Antony Sutton: Wall Street & rise of Hitler 4 talks about Wall Street supplying financing, arms & technology to USSR for Vietcong to use against U.S.A. troops; as well as U.S.A. supplying nuclear & missile technology to USS.R. during Cold War.
www.youtube.com...

remember: Antony Sutton broke these stories & as result feared for his life & went into hiding for many years. Knowledge we take for granted first put out by brave men risking their lives for our freedom, education & survival. Sutton one of first enemies of O & WO & NWO. He named names. He died about 5 years ago.


Professor Antony Sutton: Wall Street & rise of Hitler 5 talks about Tri-Lateral Commission & Council on Foreign Relations as both being Rockefeller's.
www.youtube.com...

Prescott Bush & Adolph Hitler both joined Skull & Bones. Bush joined U.S.A. chapter in 1917 & Hitler joined German chapter in 1919.
see,
www.abovetopsecret.com...
G. W. Bush’s granddad, Prescott Bush joined Skull & Bones in 1917. Two years later, Adolph Hitler joined German Skull & Bones in Germany.
The full name: The Skull & Bones Order Of The Brotherhood Of Death


Professor Sutton on Skull & Bones secret society 3
www.youtube.com...


& Wall Street financing & supplying technology to Hitler.
Professor Antony Sutton: Wall Street & rise of Hitler 1 talks about Wall Street financing & supplying technology to Hitler & to USSR communists, from day 1.
www.youtube.com...


Professor Sutton on Skull & Bones secret society 1
www.youtube.com...


Professor Antony Sutton: Wall Street & rise of Hitler 2
www.youtube.com...


Professor Sutton on Skull & Bones secret society 2
www.youtube.com...


Professor Antony Sutton: Wall Street & rise of Hitler 3
www.youtube.com...

wow this is a great thread... "star"

i usually don't add a post unless i can add an opinion, but this time i have a question for the poster, or anyone reading this really

does anyone know, or have read anything relating to, any speculations, or theories on the future of the price of gas?


i don't understand how the market can crash and oil prices stay the same *somewhat*

i heard somewhere on ats, that the US had been buying stock piles of oil and would always have a surplus of extra oil to sell to china, but now china realizes our situation and doesn't want the deal... so now we have all this extra oil, anyone else heard this?

if this is true, sooner or later we'll run out of that surplus, if it's true...

but with the declining dollar it doesn't matter, we're ffffffffckkkked!!!
so once again...

does anyone know, or have read anything relating to, any speculations, or theories on the future of the price of gas?

I don't pretend to understand, but it seems obvious that OPEC manipulates the supply side and work closely with hedge funds to manipulate conditions. Where there is an oversupply they just close the taps until the surplus is used up. What commodity dealers do is manipulate the market so that the laws of supply and demand don't work.

Capitalism has failed because the marketplace is manipulated to prevent market forces.

Ironically the worst manipulators are the same right wing crowd who scream loudest for de-regulation and free markets. The only people who benefit from de-regulation are those who have the power and capital to exploit and manipulate markets.

The antidote has to be a move to more socialist market principles. Nobody seriously argues for communism, but if markets don't operate in a fair manner then we are all just slaves to the rich and powerful. Crooks have no loyalty to the society they steal from.