US government uncovers oil price manipulation

Agreed, to bad this information will be buried by tha MSM. Once again 80% of the population will wander around in a cloud of ignorance. All the while calling those with knowledge of these wrongdoings liberal socialists. Sad!!

If oil is treated like a stock then it seems like it'd be fairly natural for the price to be bidded up.

Isn't that what happened in the Dot Com era? People just assumed a particular stock was going to increase in value -- so everyone started buying it and just that alone drove the "value" of it through the roof.

Didn't the same thing happen with oil?

People assumed that it would go up in value (for whatever reason) so everyone started buying it up and that alone drove the price through the roof.

I think if we stop letting people speculate on oil then that would go a long way to keep the prices down and stable.

The most interesting part of this is that now that they are caught what will happen to them. Remember the Enron scandel? Also, if one is caught doesn't it follow that there are more? Possibly there are a lot more.

.....Manipulation......man....I....pull...at.....it sure has become a push me....pull ya....world......Blind hogs find acorns faster than our government catches wrong doers....kind of like a dog.....they love to chase their tail....never enjoy catching it......Golden Ruler....Will........

Corruption... The American Dream.

They just need to implement the rule/law that you must have the Barrels of Oil in your possession before you can resell them. Meaning you must have them shipped to your warehouse before you can sell it to someone else. That would certainly stop this shit dead in its tracks.

But fat chance of that ever happening...

good point A.2012.....without all that overhead they would think 2wice!

This doesnt suprise me in the slightest.

Government uncovers oil price manipulation

And you had doubts before uncovering this article?
They're all in cahoots with each other. The government wants to bankrupt all of us to achieve a One World Order. We have become slaves to money. When we can't afford life? The Government will step in and say;; We have a solution. But you have to do this, this, and, this.
You know, kinda like they're already doing now. In the process of breaking our will as free humans.

I bet the *.*.*, is listening in on this topic with interest

well said Virtual _will_rogers

I could have told them that three years ago.

And due to popular demand, they'll likely be convicted, even with a lack of evidence.

But mysteriously, after it's all said and done, oil prices will stay high and continue to rise.

Everyone loves to point the finger at anyone or anything but the real cause, themselves and their bad habits.

Could it be the fact that the U.S. uses 50% of the world's oil supply on its own?

Nah, couldn't be.

Could it be that our economies and our lifestyles have put such an absurd demand on oil that our production cannot possibly match it?

Nah, has to be those pesky speculators. It couldn't possibly be overconsumption.

I have to agree with brad. There has been too much legislation supporting the record setting profits of oil companies in recent history to think their hands are completely clean. Still, this could be a step in the right direction...

Duh it's manipulation...it's never been about supply and demand.

Oil should not be treated like amazon.com it should go straight from the ground to the refineries. It is dumb that there is any kind of speculation/ middle man waiting to fuck over every single person on the globe.

Hedging against future prices is a necessary element to a commodities trading market. Yes, the price of oil recently has definitely risen due to this type of speculation. And this specific type of manipulation is bullshit.

But, we cannot forget that world wide supply and demand is the main cause of the rise. The guy who testified in front of congress and said that oil would go down to 60 bucks a barrel if we got rid of speculation is full of it. The daily output of oil (being around 85 to 86 million barrels) has to be upped in order to address the constantly rising demand. The world at this point uses a couple hundred thousand more barrels than world wide refineries produce daily. So to affect pump prices more than just a few dollars, we have to drastically change the supply and demand situation. The way to do that, in my opinion, is to demand less petroleum by moving forward with alternative energy sources and flex fuel vehicles. Anything else is just pandering. (Congress is talking today about releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a course of action proven to affect the price of oil anywhere from 5 to 20 percent within six months.)

This is all done in Purpose. You all fall for it.

What about using the RICO Act to get them all? It may be a case of modern day organized crime? They should not be able to manipulate prices, destroy our economy and walk away. We can't walk away from it, with our hard earned money. They shouldn't be able to wark away with our hard earned money either.

Title should read:

US forced to reveal their oil price manipulation methods

Once again the boys on the hill and all their friends in big business have screwed the US and the world out of billions of dollars in the name of greed. The price of gas should be $1.64 a gallon but instead it's $4.50, record profits in oil and all time high in food prices and all our government has to say is, "what are you gonna do about it"

All we can do is hang on for the ride.

This is pathetic

VIVA BUSH!

They are just figuring this out now?
The government is behind all of this and they are just trying to dump it on the little guys

Why am I not suprised?

Does anyone believe that our corrupt nosey governmet does not know something at any given time especially when it involves them getting rich?

This is crap, our government doesn't uncover things... it chooses when to reveal them.

no wonder why gas prices have actually been going down recently.
the speculators dont want to get themselves engulfed in a vat of their own shit.

Interesting news which will undoubtedly do well here since everyone desperately needs to point the finger somewhere. Unfortunately, as the article states, whatever malpractice the CFTC discovers is very unlikely to have had any real effect on energy prices.

As our dwindling purchasing power continues it's steady ride down the spiral, affluent foreigners are enjoying the luxuries that we once took for granted. We are being driven out of the market by a combination of supply restrictions, GLOBAL demand and a weakening dollar.

I would invite anyone blaming rising oil prices on speculation to PLEASE point me in the direction of the glut of oil that they're creating. Since we'll probably be waiting for a while here are a couple of interesting articles that touch on this subject:

"It’s Not an Oil Crisis, It’s a Dollar Crisis" by Peter Schiff
http://current.com/items/88976223_it_s_not_an_oil_crisi...

"Speculators Fixing Oil Prices? Don’t Bet On It" by Robert Murphy
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/up...

This situation is why the World should cease to allow the Lunatics keys to the Asylum. Wait a minute, shouldn't it be a scenario that whatever the situation with the unit price of oil the global economies should be moving towards alternative sustainable means of mechanization?
Don't get me wrong I'm not a staunch advocate of high Gas prices and damn the consequence but hey, if the carrot is not doing the trick the stick ought to....!

This chaps my hide. I've lived in the United States my whole life, but now I'm not so sure I want to admit it. Hard to trust a goverments that lie to us. :(

Anyone seen Trading Places lately?

I haven't, but it stands to reason that script is art imitating life.

Why wouldn't an industry conspire to manipulate the prices in a scenario like this?

It's like pulling money out of thin air by jacking the prices on a necessity that runs the economy.

Everyone in the business theoretically gains at the expense of the clueless consumer.

The government quite likely wasn't paying close enough attention.

Better late than never though.

This may or may not lead to something, but I'm glad they are at least investigating it in much greater detail.

The fact that they've already found a couple people is interesting.

Where there's smoke, there's usually fire.

Hmmm, what's the correlation between them being outed and oil prices dropping?

I remember the first day of Journalism 101.

The first words uttered from my rather bright professor were,

"A true democracy avoids monopolies at al costs!"

What is the oil industry? A monopoly! And what has happen now as we have two oilmen in the Whitehouse leading our nation?

We are paying the price and yet the answer is simple and can be found in Journalism 101!

Cultural competition is the answer- different renewable energies, the promotion of science, the advent of progressive culture! No more GOP, no more monopolies, no more centralized culture! The dems now have a chance to change our nation for the better, if they fail too as the GOP a third party should unite and finish the job of a sustainable new world and power to each individual to harness energy and contribute to our culture!

@rube, one of the things you WON'T find in Journalism 101 is Economics 101....

how many oil companies are there in the world?

how many are majority or predominantly-owned by the governments of the countries that they're based in?

when you find that number, it will be a number greater than one.

how many companies does it take to define a monopoly? ONE.

the oil industry is NOT a monopoly. it MAY be an oligopoly [or should we invent the word, "oilogopoly"?], but it's not one company controlling all of the supply an demand.

they're all at each others' throats to maximize their profits, yes, but none of them control enough of the total supply to undercut all of the others and "take over the market" which is what a monopoly is and does.

between the two parties, the republicans and the democrats, you have a DUOPOLY, and those two fight tooth and nail to keep ANY other parties from having ANY chance of success on THEIR turf.

but they're totally outnumbered by oil companies.


YES, there are crooks in the oil business... look at the "late, great" Enron as a prime example.

but don't shoot ALL of the speculators, either... farmers speculate all the time by selling their crops into the commodity FUTURES markets, and it's become a HUGE business, world-side. it's THEIR way of maximizing THEIR profits and trying to insulate themselves from losses and market gyrations.

but in the US, to speculate in those markets, or buy or sell on margin, we have Margin Requirements which tend to be higher than those of many other countries. a US citizen might be able to play a speculative game, but only if they put up 40 or 50% of the value of the commodity futures they're trying to control.

if some other country lets their speculators put up only 5 or 10%, that gives those countries ten times more leverage in the market and ten times the potential gains if they win.

follow the money. the country that has the potential for ten times the gain will fight tooth and nail to NOT have anyone burst THEIR bubble!

and corruption will probably be ten times as frequent.

fight for uniform margin requirements.

doesn't sound nearly as sexy as "windfall profits tax" does it?

it^s the fraud of the century..or heist, I think Bush and his merry men were the fraud

With the oil companies reporting their highest profits in history, I would have been shocked if there wasn't collusion at the highest levels. The way crude oil prices skyrocketed just doesn’t fit the typical supply & demand formula; however, the U.S. going to war in the Middle East does. This really sucks & we're the suckers.

they get the oil well we get the shaft
nuff said

They government will bag a few of the little guys to placate the masses and to serve warning to the really big market manipulators like Goldman-Sachs.