gr8fuldaniel: The Great Oil Swindle: How much did the Fed really know? | The Smirking Chimp

gr8fuldaniel

Rantings, Musings, Observations, Political Protest, My findings in a quest for truth posted here, open to all. Comments have been disabled due to spam bombers. Pray4Peace.

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Monday, June 02, 2008

The Great Oil Swindle: How much did the Fed really know? | The Smirking Chimp

The Great Oil Swindle: How much did the Fed really know? *snip*
As far as “buying on margin” consider this summary from author William Engdahl:

“A conservative calculation is that at least 60% of today’s $128 per barrel price of crude oil comes from unregulated futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups using the London ICE Futures and New York NYMEX futures exchanges and uncontrolled inter-bank or Over-The-Counter trading to avoid scrutiny. US margin rules of the government’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission allow speculators to buy a crude oil futures contract on the Nymex, by having to pay only 6% of the value of the contract. At today's price of $128 per barrel, that means a futures trader only has to put up about $8 for every barrel. He borrows the other $120. This extreme “leverage” of 16 to 1 helps drive prices to wildly unrealistic levels and offset bank losses in sub-prime and other disasters at the expense of the overall population.”

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