WikiLeaks: Saudis Often Warned US About Oil Speculators

While many of us have pretty much known how drastically speculation affects the price of oil it's nice to see it on paper... The fact that the Saudis are concerned is a red flag... Here are a few excerpts from the article

The cables show that the subject of speculation has been raised in working group meetings between U.S. and Saudi officials, in one-on-one meetings with American diplomats and at least once with President George W. Bush himself.

The Saudi concerns about speculation have a particular sheen of credibility. Saudi Arabia is the world's largest exporter of oil, serving dozens of clients in addition to the United States. As such, it carefully tracks the trends that drive oil prices, which send it billions of additional dollars with every increase.

According to the cable, Moneef said Saudi Arabia suspected that "speculation represented approximately $40 of the overall oil price when it was at its height."

The cable said that "al Husseini predicted that another oil price shock would likely hit sometime in the next year or two."

A McClatchy investigation earlier this month showed the extent to which financial institutions now influence the price of oil. Until recently, end users of oil — such as airlines, refineries and other consumer of fuel — accounted for about 70 percent of oil trading as they tried to hedge against price fluctuations.

Today, however, speculators who'll never take possession of a barrel of oil account for that 70 percent of oil futures trading, and the volume of speculative trading has grown fivefold.

70 percent....

mods; not sure if I put this in the right place... please move if you feel it belongs somewhere else...

It is disgusting

why are we all paying the price for this speculation??
Food, petrol, manufacturing it impacts us all in our wallets....

Originally posted by cabinda

It is disgusting

why are we all paying the price for this speculation??
Food, petrol, manufacturing it impacts us all in our wallets....

It gets even better when you factor in that we are funding the worst of them with our tax dollars

reply to post by UcDat


and when our tax dollars don't cover it the fed just prints more money and loans it to them...