Worse Than Enron? Goldman Sachs Accused of Fixing Oil Prices or The Ionizing of America

[McCamy Taylor]

I. The Ionizing of America

The pieces just keep falling into place. The so called Cheney Energy Bill of 2005 had something for just about everyone (read “ethanol” to get the Congressmen from the corn belt to sign on) but it mostly had giveaways for the oil and nuclear industry. Here is a summary of its provisions from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Policy_Act_of_2005

Note that Texas Companies were particular beneficiaries. Also note that the nuclear power industry received assurances of cost overrun support (they always go over cost and over projected planned time guidelines) and the old liability cap was extended for a few more decades (Who will pay if a plane crashes into a nuke and wipes out NYC? The tax payers.) and other incentives to start building new plants.

The last plant to begin production in the U.S. was the River Bend plant in 1977. Three Mile Island happened in 1979.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html

And then Chernobyl happened in 1986

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

And no one has even talked about building another nuclear power plant---until last year, when the first site approval request in 30 years was ok’d.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2007/2007-03-09-04.asp

WASHINGTON, DC, March 9, 2007 (ENS) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Thursday approved the first Early Site Permit for a nuclear power plant - demonstrating a new and previously untested licensing process for locating new nuclear plants in the United States. Critics say new nuclear plants are not needed if energy conservation is implemented.
The approval - for Exelon Generation Company's Clinton site, in central Illinois - was hailed by U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman as "a major milestone" in the Bush administration's plan to expand the use of nuclear power.
"NRC approval of the Clinton Early Site Permit represents a major accomplishment in this administration’s effort to address the barriers and stimulate deployment of new nuclear power plants in the United States," Bodman said.

Did I mention that presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain sees eye to eye with Bush when it comes to nuclear energy?

http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071204/NEWS/712040393

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain wants America to get serious about nuclear power.
"How can you possibly talk about alternative energy sources without nuclear power?" said McCain, who will take part in a candidate forum Thursday hosted by Seacoast Media Group, the parent company of the Portsmouth Herald. "It can have a real impact on decreasing greenhouse gases."

Just keep telling yourself Nukes are green as you glow in the dark. Here is a full color brochure from the NRC of all the new plants that are coming to an area near you. Note the Luminant (times 2) at Comanche peak. Those are owned by Goldman Sachs which bought the company formerly known as TXU back in 2007 and changed the name to Energy Futures Holding Co.

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-licensing/new-licensing-files/new-rx-licensing-app-legend.pdf

II. The Enron/California Type Electricity Price Gouging of Texas

Texas is one of the southern states that is being targeted for several new nuclear power plants. Don’t get me wrong. The people who live in the Lone Star State do not want three eyes babies. We just want to be able to afford to run our air conditioners in the summers when the heat commonly tops 100 for weeks at a time.

Remember when wholesale electricity prices used to spike for no particular reason in the western energy grids of the United States---only later we found out that there was a particular reason? Energy dealers were manipulating wholesale supplies on purpose and creating rolling black outs in California in 2001. The FERC refused to intervene. The guilty energy wholesalers bankrupted energy retailers. They killed people. They made a fortune. And no one has been prosecuted. Instead, the Republicans used the manufactured energy crisis as an excuse to drive a Democratic governor out of office and install the Terminator---ensuring that justice that will never be done, since he terminated the civil suit which was the last chance to determine how Bush, Cheney, Rove, Thomas White and their hand picked Federal Energy Regulatory Commission aided in the price gouging of California.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

Well, someone is doing the same thing in Texas. Here is the Fort Worth Star Telegram with a summary that sounds like a case of déjà vu. Wholesale energy prices go from $100 to $2250 a megawatt hour. Four smaller energy companies are forced out of business in rapid succession. 30,000 customers are forced onto high cost providers of last resort in our new and improved “deregulated” electricity market that was supposed to save us money. Note that during the last legislative session, Republicans who controlled the legislature refused to set any controls, and they may suffer for it this election, but the state’s utilities need not fear, they still own Gov. Rick Perry who will veto anything that is not good for Big Business---United States you are officially warned, Perry is W. II, so never vote for him for any national office.

http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/695376.html

Texans were not born yesterday. They watched the Enron saga unfold, especially down in the Houston area where it took a lot of jobs. They know that they are getting ripped off by an unholy alliance of big business and state government. This is wholesale price fixing, just like that which was done to the state of California back in 2001. Someone wants something. What?

III. To Hell With Three Eyed Babies, Texas Does Not Want to Pay Big Bucks For Over Priced Nuclear Energy

Texas has a reputation for being the reddest of red states, 100% behind Bush, ready to sell its soul and suck up any form of pollution if it is good for the energy industry. This is not exactly true. Texas is a bit like the United States of America. It is a very big state, and some parts are on a different wavelength than others.

For instance, The Dallas Morning News does not sing the praises of new nuclear energy plants. Here are some examples of stories from their newspaper.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-nukes_21bus.ART.State.Edition1.35ab368.html

Support for new nuclear power plants deteriorated slightly during the past two years among people living close to existing reactors, according to a survey by the Nuclear Energy Institute.

And then there is this:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-nrgcost_27bus.ART.State.Edition1.15de092.html

NRG Energy Inc.'s estimate of the cost to build two nuclear reactors in South Texas keeps climbing.
Last summer, officials with the power plant developer said the reactors at the South Texas Project would cost between $6 billion and $7 billion. Then the estimate moved to $7 billion. On Wednesday, executives said the reactors will probably cost $8 billion.
Snip
Some anti-nuclear groups have warned that building a new round of nukes could be very costly.
Some existing Texas nuclear reactors ended up costing more than power companies had expected.
Since the last round of reactors was built, Texas deregulated its power industry.
A nuclear reactor developer can no longer pass along higher costs to consumers in electricity rates.
Instead, NRG must pay for the reactors now and hope to recoup the cost when it sells electricity into the Texas power market in a few years.

In other words, electricity from a nuke is going to be expensive .



http://www.quickdfw.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/061308dnbusnuclearbrf.5376d8.html

And regarding Luminant or Texas Energy Holdings proposed new plants from June 13, 2008

A number of community leaders voiced support for the reactors. A few environmental activists expressed concern about the safety and cost of nuclear plants.
State Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, said he fears people in Dallas and Fort Worth will end up paying higher electricity prices to cover the cost of the plants.

Ouch! That kind of reporting is not going to increase local support is it? Quick, someone raise those wholesale electricity rates some more and maybe get some rolling brown outs going. Make those consumers beg for nuclear energy.

You do realize that Luminant does more than build nuclear power plants. It is also an energy wholeseller.

http://www.luminant.com/about/energy.aspx

Luckily for Luminant, there is Jim Fuquay of the Fort Worth Star Telegram. Fuquay is the man who writes business stories from the point of view of business, and he is the one who always manages to put a positive spin on anything. When Harris HMO, a local managed care plan was illegally bribing doctors to deny necessary services to patients back in the 1990s, Fuquay made it sound as if Harris HMO was doing just fine, thank you, lulling members into a false sense of security so that they were completely unprepared when the state finally stepped in to discipline the organization (as member physicians had warned that they would). He writes about how the people who rely upon the exiting reactors at Comanche Peak for their tax base are glad to see their tax base expand. Well, yes, they would be, wouldn’t they? Double the tax base, double the fun if you are a small community. But the overpriced electricity will still be overpriced.

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/story/696809.html

Speaking of overpriced, exactly why is oil, still America's number one fuel source, so damn expensive?

IV. McClatchy Speculates that Market Speculators Like Goldman Sachs (Owner of TXU) Are Driving Up Oil Prices

Oh man, sometimes The Math just jumps out at you and grabs you by the shoulders and will not let go. This morning, I sat down with a nice cup of cinnamon tea and my morning paper. The McClatchy stories are the best, and today’s McClatchy business story by Kevin G. Hall at the top of the business section is a doozy.

http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/706704.html

Almost all the economists studying today’s high oil prices think that financial speculators are helping drive up those prices, but hard data is lacking as to whether they’re a factor, and if so, how big.
Michael Greenberger said speculation is a major factor, and he knows a lot about the complex global oil market. He directed trading and markets for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1997 to 1999. That body regulates the trading of contracts for future deliveries of commodities, including crude oil. The contracts, called futures, drive oil prices. Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland, told McClatchy why he thinks financial speculation is driving up prices.
Snip

Who are these speculators? Do they have names and addresses?
I really cannot answer that with certainty because these unregulated markets are so opaque. Many say that Goldman Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley are primary traders on the principal market outside of direct U.S. supervision, the Intercontinental Exchange, otherwise known as ICE.
Snip
How much of today’s record oil price is attributable to speculation?
There are many estimates being made by observers of these markets, economists and industrial energy consumers suggesting that the price of a barrel of crude oil could be anywhere from 25 percent to 100 percent in excess of what market fundamentals would dictate. For example, (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) has recently said that a barrel of crude should not be in excess of $70, and it has opened its own investigation into excessive speculation in these markets to find out what interests are causing the price to be almost double that.

V. Time Out for Some Math

After I read the above, one of those General Electric light bulbs lit up inside my head.



(General Electric makes nukes too)

Goldman Sachs owns TXU/Luminant/Energy Future Holdings which will be one of the few companies left standing (I can predict this with 100% certainty) no matter how high wholesale electricity price manipulators manage to jack up prices in Texas in their attempts to create an artificial energy crisis.

Luminant is attempting to build more nuclear power plants. However, there is local resistance because people know that the things 1) use water which is scarce right now in the South and 2) are expensive to build and operate and therefore the price of their electricity will be expensive and Luminant will use its political clout to pass its cost overruns on to consumers and 3) where do we put the radioactive waste and 4) what about Three Mile Island and Chernobyl?

And now Goldman Sachs is accused of manipulating the market to drive up the price of oil. If true, this means it can decide how much it will charge for the oil that it sells from its refinery, Coffeyville Resources LLC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeyville_Resources_LLC

And it can make sure that the deal between its subsidiary Cogentrix Energy and Intel to develop new solar technology is profitable since oil prices will stay high, no matter how much the Saudis decide to increase production, meaning that energy prices will remain high, meaning that investment costs will be reimbursed as profit from continued high energy prices down the road even when peace is achieved in the Middle East.

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977375454

Through its East Coast Power holdings, which supply energy to other oil company refineries, it could conceivably enable the oil industry as a whole to create bogus oil shortages by staging brownouts or blackouts of power to refineries, which could then throw up their hands and exclaim “It’s not our fault, man!”

And, of course, it can manipulate Texas electricity markets to ensure that utility subscribers will eventually agree that something has to be done about the Texas electricity crisis, and since Arnold is already the governor of California, that means we will have to build more nuclear reactors.

Exorbitant profits, unlimited investment opportunities, the ability to set prices the way the seller wants them to be----who knew business could be so much fun? Obviously Enron didn’t have the smartest guys after all.

VI. How Does TXU/Luminant Get Away With It in Texas? They Own the Government

Right below the article about market speculators driving up oil prices in today’s Fort Worth paper, there is another article about how the Texas Secretary of State is leaving office in midterm to go work for….Luminant.

http://www.star-telegram.com/business/story/706703.html

Phil Wilson will continue to work on behalf of citizens through July 6, earning an annual salary of $117,000. The next day, he’ll flip a switch and start working on behalf of Luminant, the wholesale power unit of the former TXU Corp.
So if you have a problem with your electric bill this summer, you know whom to call.
There wasn’t a huge outcry about Wilson’s move or the obvious conflict of interest — or the effect it might have on the debate over electric deregulation.
If Texas is to make dereg work for consumers, as well as power companies, it has to make real improvements, and we have to believe that lawmakers and industry are working in good faith. Although Wilson doesn’t oversee utilities as secretary of state, he has been in the governor’s office since 2002, and electric dereg has been front and center much of the time.
Snip
Wilson, 40, was an aide to Gov. Rick Perry, serving as communications director and deputy chief of staff, and he oversaw the Texas Enterprise Fund that gives away money to companies expanding in Texas. Perry appointed Wilson secretary of state about a year ago.
Snip
Luminant says it simply wants to hire the best people to help navigate the political waters in Austin.
Not to worry. Last year, when the utility kept the Legislature from blocking the TXU sale or adding tough conditions, it spent about $6 million on lobbying.
And it enlisted some of the most powerful people in the state, including James Baker, former U.S. secretary of state; Don Evans, former U.S. commerce secretary; and Ron Kirk, former Dallas mayor.
Consumer advocates and many residents are already losing faith in the state’s willingness to stand up to electric companies. While others have backed away from deregulation, Texas is staying the course despite soaring prices.
If the system is going to last, we have to tweak it and fix it. Hiring a sitting state official looks like you’re trying to game it.

VII. The Feds Claim They are “Investigating” Yeah. Right. What Is Congress Going to Do About Manipulation of Oil Prices?

Wow, look at who was the biggest donor in political contributions in 2004. That’s right, Goldman Sachs.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2004-02-02-walmart_x.htm

And look at how much money they have given before and after---and most of it goes to Democrats. Sigh.
http://opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000085

I guess we will have to wait to see any action on this one.

[OwnedByFerrets]

1. WTG!!

Great gathering of information. Gladly k and r.

www.wearableartnow.com

[liberal N proud]

2. GREED!

Thanks for collecting this

Bookmarking

[JDPriestly]

3. Don't complain if you supported Obama. He loves nuclear. McCain loves it more.

Obama Weakened Nuclear Safety Bill After Consulting With Firm

When residents in Illinois voiced outrage two years ago upon learning that the Exelon Corporation had not disclosed radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear plants, the state's freshman senator, Barack Obama, took up their cause.

Mr. Obama scolded Exelon and federal regulators for inaction and introduced a bill to require all plant owners to notify state and local authorities immediately of even small leaks. He has boasted of it on the campaign trail, telling a crowd in Iowa in December that it was "the only nuclear legislation that I've passed."

. . . .

A close look at the path his legislation took tells a very different story. While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/03/obama-weakened-nuclear-sa_n_84651.html

For Both Clinton and Obama, Nuclear Donors

A cursory search of campaign finance report shows 158 contributions from people who identify themselves as Exelon employees, totaling more than $150,000.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/18/for_both_clinton_and_obama_nuc.html

McCain says wants 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN18280327

[McCamy Taylor]

4. Right now I am more concerned with market manipulation. How can we

have an honest debate about the pros and cons of any technology if the same people trying to sell us that technology also control the price of electricity and can cut off our supply or jack up the prices artificially?

[mojowork_n]

8. Thanks for putting it all together.

You're right, it *is* really impossible to separate the technology issues from the financing, control and oversight problems.

It's not just price manipulation once the power comes online, there are people who have to be paid off to get the power plants built in the first place. Besides Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, what really killed nuclear energy in this country was the calamity the last time a plant was built here. Remember the "Whoops" fiasco? That was how the acronym for Washington Public Power Systems was pronounced. It was a municipal bond Ponzi scheme. Bonds were issued to build 5 power plants, but cost over-runs and bad planning ate up the proceeds for all 5 plants, after only one (and a fraction of another) were ever built. I think it was the first default for that type of General Revenue bond in American history.

I don't know if it's necessarily even a debate about the technology, itself, that's the deal-breaker. France gets about 80% of its electrical production from nuclear energy:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html

but that's probably no yardstick for the U.S. to shoot for. For the same reasons that the French have government run (non-profit) health care, and we don't. In this country, you have to at least look out for the interests of the robber barons that run everything (if you're not actually cutting them in on a deal), before a project of the magnitude of a nuclear power plant can even come up for discussion.

Zoooot Alors...

[McCamy Taylor]

9. Thanks! Excellent point. Our current system REWARDS inefficiency.

It is like being a U.S. military contractor. Build more cost overruns and more delays and more problems into your nuclear reactor and you can drag out the project longer, secure in the knowledge that the federal government will bail you out to relieve the "energy crisis"---meaning that your company will have all the work it can handle forever.

I grew up in a NASA family, so I know all about the concept of companies having some employees who do the work and lots of employees to pad the payroll and Uncle Sam pays for it all. As a security sensitive project, nuclear reactors are a natural spin off for the kinds of businesses who feed at the US government trough.

Check out this series of citations

http://hamptonroads.com/node/252161

Retired military officers warn of the dangers of global warming, now advocate nuclear energy. And what kinds of companies do retired military officers work for? That's right. They work for...

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Nuclear_Energy_Institute

In September 2006, the journal Energy Washington reported how "Major defense contractors have begun to align directly with the nuclear power industry, quietly joining the industry's leading trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), in recent days."

The article continued: "The move has been significant in terms of attracting what some DOE sources call an ever-widening range of powerful new stakeholders looking to lobby for nuclear power's rebirth. The largest defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, along with Northrop Grumman signed on as members following meetings between NEI president Frank "Skip" Bowman and defense industry CEOs earlier this month"

"Bowman", said the article "believes becoming a leader in nuclear energy is a U.S. national security issue. The country's lack of infrastructure in specialized, often large, nuclear components needed for new or next generation reactors places the military and hence the nation at growing risk."

(The SourceWatch link above is useful for anything about the Nuclear Energy Institute, the source for much of the "Nukes are Green" pr you have been seeing the last couple of years)

Also, check out the loan guarantees that they want:

In May 2007, The Hill reported that NEI, along with "top banking institutions" are lobbying the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) for "more comprehensive" federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants. "Since the April meeting" with OMB, the DoE "has proposed that the federal government cover 90 percent of loan guarantees, higher than its original guidelines of 80 percent." <7>

NEI's "New Plant Finance Task Force" is telling federal agencies that without total or near-total federal loan guarantees, which "act as default protection for private lenders," nuclear power companies will "have difficulty in financing new plants, which can cost as much as $4 billion." NEI's Richard Myers said that even increasing the loan guarantees to 90% of plant costs "will probably not be workable." A DoE spokesperson said the agency was not supporting a greater than 90% guarantee because the agency must protect "the taxpayer dollar from the potential financial risks of these projects."

"Please, don't feed me to a defense contractor."

[mojowork_n]

17. It's an interesting subject., with a sort of time capsule quality.

Whatever you want to call it, a "window" into the way municipal, state and federal agencies work with technically "non-govermental" private corporations and private businesses was closed, when Washington Public Power Supply Systems tried (and failed) to build those 5 last nuclear power plants.

If your PilotOnline link is a good indicator of what's about to happen, and a "new" window is going to open up again, 30 years later, it would be a really interesting exercise to trace the connections, and areas of responsibility, between all those agencies, and corporations. To see how the relationships have changed, and how oversight authority/profit/risk has been redistributed, or re-apportioned.

Back when, along with all the usual pigs feeding from any accessible trough, a big part of the problem with the Whoops fiasco was inefficient, poor coordination between some of those quasi-private corporations, and other government agencies. A bunch of ranchers, civic and small business types (the sort of locals you'd expect to find on the executive board of a rural electric co-op), whose only previous experience had been with small dams, and hydro-electric power, suddenly were in charge of implementing safety standards for nuke plants. With stacks of regulations and requirements coming from federal agencies responsible for at least some of the cost over-runs, and delays.

That's how the story was spun at the time, anyway.

But it's a chance to make our first "nuclear" president (Rickover's favorite whiz kid) and our first "nooklier" administration (Boy Wonder), stand face to face. To bridge that time gap, like ants crawling on a string from opposite ends, suddenly collapsed together. Through some sort of money-and-power "wormhole" that has to be re-energized.

Edit-- Oops, I forgot to ask you where you found that funky space goblin graphic. I couldn't read the small print in the bottom left corner.

[ProSense]

10. This is the same BS spin that was being advanced during the primary

It's BS. It has been debunked here repeatedly.

[rhett o rick]

16. Why are you berating Obama? He is our candidate. nm

[SammyWinstonJack]

36. .

:eyes:

[bluesmail]

5. 'They're just a bunch of white supremecists pretending to be

religious' Kurt Vonnegut. Best quote ever.

[McCamy Taylor]

7. "We are not an ism. We are a democracy" Costa Gravis "Z"

The leader of CROC, that nasty military guy at the beginning of the film when he is giving one of his creepy fascist pep talks.

[BrklynLib at work]

21. One of the most incredible movies ever made.....

[McCamy Taylor]

28. Great soundtrack, too.

[bluesmail]

6. Sociopaths. Breeding baby sociopaths.

The cycle hasn't been broken. I doubt it can.

[Jakes Progress]

11. Move to Texas and see the future.

First you got our chimp in chief. Then you got our education program of all testing all the time. Now you get our energy monsters.

Sometimes down here, it gets hard to vote because almost all of our local, state, and national elected officials are full time employees of the energy and insurance companies. Just yesterday Joe Barton, Michael Burgess, Kay Granger and Pete Sessions (four of our North Texas rubber stamps for big oil) did a photo op at an Arlington gas station. Granger made a point of telling everyone that we would have two dollar gas again just as soon as the world knew we were going to start drilling in ANWR. Are people going to be that stupid? I hope not, but we have a lot of stupid voters (look at the last election).

If we have high prices because of a shortage, how can voting to start a 15 year development program give us $2 gas tomorrow as she absolutely promised. These are some evil sons of bitches. They are going to ENRON the whole country, not just California.

We need more people telling the country that the republicans and their owners are blackmailing us into letting them drill where we don't want them to. Barack has a hot hand right now. Maybe he would. Everyone here loves KO, Maybe he would.

[Miss Authoritiva]

12. Somewhere Molly Ivins is laughing....

She would definitely agree with you....something about Texas being the National Laboratory for Bad Government (her words, not mine).

[Jakes Progress]

13. She said that Texas politicians

were very honest and loyal. They always stood by the folks that bought them.

[paparush]

32. You've also got your NAFTA super duper highway in the works.

YOUR land..hahahahahaha..boy...that land is OUR land..so move outta the way and let this grader get to work.

[Jakes Progress]

35. And don't forget the fence.

Go ahead an laugh at us if you want, but every crappy little idea that gets sold to us, gets trotted out on the national scene. Like the FISA capitulation, it doesn't seem to matter whether you have Democrats or republicans in power. Money trumps it all.

[paparush]

42. Oh, totally agree. You are correct in that. We're all under the thumb of Big _____

fill in the blank.

[McCamy Taylor]

14. Countdown, about McCain, the "Enron Loophole" which allows commodity

traders to fix the price of oil--and how the notorious Phil and Wendy Graham from Enron are behind the McCain Campaign.

Ken Lay may be gone, but Enron never dies. According to KO in the last two years we have all paid about $2k extra in gasoline and that isn't counting the inflated cost of goods, services, airline tickets etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugss-PcNomg

:nuke:

[McCamy Taylor]

15. Another cross link from DU with some more info about Wall Street lobbying

to keep the ability to set oil prices. Where there is lobbying, there must be fire....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3358629&mesg_id=3358629

[crickets]

18. Kick!

Recommended and bookmarked to read more carefully later.

[penndragon69]

19. Goldman Sachs Enron

The bush family legacy continues.

[BrklynLib at work]

20. What an incredible post! Thanks so much for all the info and insight.

This should be published in major newspapers around the world, (hahahaha. Like they would ever touch it!) Perhaps Olbermann or Bill Moyers might be a good place to start speading this information.

[formercia]

22. Earthquakes anyone?

[Ilsa]

23. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, etc, Geez I hate these people. nt

[FREEWILL56]

24. Very good thread and I rec'ed it.

Do you have any specifics as to what representatives got what from goldman sachs? If I find my local rep taking this money I'll give him hell because he's on the energy committee.

[ringtailtooter]

25. Excellent Research!

Thank You.

[libodem]

26. Finally the dots

are starting to be connected. I wonder how this will be spun by O'Liely to make it the fault of the 'Democratic Majority Congress' and the Mainstream Media. This story make it abundantly clear there has been a conspiracy of speculation to drive up the price at the pump. I hope someone has to pay....beside the consumer. Makes Booosh's speech, about it being the 'Liberals' fault for stopping off shore drilling, more transparent. I can't believe after all the lies that even the most dedicated Republican would not know we are being lied to.

[Ms. Clio]

27. K&R n/t

[chknltl]

29. Please repost this in the Environment/Energy forum.

There is a pretty active ongoing debate over nuclear energy going on in that forum...this material should be a part of that debate imo. rec.d and bookmrkd.

[bananas]

41. There it is

Thanks for getting it posted there.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x156027

[27inCali]

30. IF this doesn't become the main issue of the election

than the American people are fucking stupid and deserve what they get.

[Javaman]

31. K & R! nt

[AzDar]

33. K &R...

:kick:

[McCamy Taylor]

34. Nuclear plants make convenient targets for attack. So why does the military favor them?

Why do Bush and McCain and so many Pentagon types want us to invest billions into small buildings which would be easy targets for terrorist attack? Buildings that are protected by rent a cops, since the owners of nuclear reactors do not want to alarm neighbors by making them look like military targets? Thanks to Bush's War in Iraq and his mishandling of the War in Afghanistan and the political training camp at Guantanamo, he will leave office with way more Al Qaeda and Taliban in the world than there were when he stole the presidency. And the Saudis have lots of money to keep funding their Sunni terrorist buddies.

Seems to me the last thing a prudent anti-terrorist president would want to do is build more nuclear devices close to population centers where people with political grudges might be tempted to do bad things. Esp. when said nuclear plants are proclaimed to be the United States' key to independence from Middle Eastern oil.

[Grinchie]

37. And Bernanke enabled the Large Banks by taking their worthless paper of their hands.

The Federal Reserve needs to be exposed for what they are.

It is a privately help consortium of Banks with international interests, that gets to control the money supply of the United States.

This is the lead up to a worldwide great depression, where they can snatch of the rest of the world for pennies on the dollar.

The Cabal is so big, it seems like they are unstoppable, as they have destroy the Credit of the U.S. and put us in the yoke of debt for the foreseeable future.

These big money interest control what technologies are researched and developed, and there is massive evidence of the suppression of efficient energy production starting back in the 1890's with Nikloa Tesla, and his involvement with, guess who, J.P. Morgan.

Stan Meyer developed the Water Fuel Cell and was killed in the 70's, yet upon the expiration of his patents last year, it entered the public domain. There are hundreds of bakyard hobbyists that have reproduced his works on shoestring budgets. Just this week, a company in Japan has announced a Water Fuel Cell car, and the video was posted on Reuters.

All of the great inventors were vigorously discredited and ruined financially because they stood for Democratic principles like "No War" and "Free Energy". Those precepts do not enslave mankind like massive debt and poverty.

Now we have allowed the most basic energy source, food, to be manipulated by greedy Corporations who have foisted GMO Foods into our own food supply with the blessing of a corrupt USDA. These food are poisonous, and we may not see problems for many years, but we are starting to see some of them now. Antibiotic resistant Clostridium Difficile, allergies to Corn and Soybean proteins that a slightly different in the GMO version of the plant, and toxic reaction in animals to GMO Feed is widely known. Colony Collapse Disorder and Tetracycline Resistant American Foulbrood are results of millions of acres under GMO cultivation.

The beauty part is that food makers don't have to label the GMO food ingredients thanks to our corrupted and Corporate friendly USDA,FDA/ARS/APHIS/EPA that require the labeling of GMO Foods. So if you get sick from your food, there really would be no way to link it to the GMO Foods being fed to you without your informed consent. For example, nearly everything contains High Frustose Corrn Syrup these day, mainly because Cargill developed an industrial process to use up our overproduction of Corn due to subsidized corn.

Yet, they will not allow anyone to tour or photograph the plant, "Due to Trade Secrets". If the label has HFCS instead of sugar, then it's most likely GMO Corn in the process.

We need to stand up and demand an Audit trail back to the GMO Seed companies if we are to have any rights when the massive problems of genetic pollution finally overwhelm the ecosystem and our food supply.

The massive Corporate influence is present everywhere, and it pays to be skeptical. The United States has abandoned the Precautionary Principle decades ago, starting with Nixon, and the Corporations and Central Banks have profited immensely from it.

Abolish the Fed. Return the control of Currency to the Goverment, not the Central Banks.

[Dover]

38. Fantastic Post and great research, links, etc.!!!!

Thanks so much. Lots to ponder here. There is also much buzz about the Wind industry in Texas which is being touted as the new frontier, while others are concerned that there is more hype than substance and concern the industry is being "Enronned".

Others are concerned that solar and other alternative power will be centralized in order to control profits and squash decentralization of new technologies. Centralized power of any type might work for cities and some other areas, but might also affect the more diverse and mass appeal of sustainable technologies being used in a more
diversified and decentralized fashion.

On a positive note, building codes in Houston and other cities are being 'greened up'...new requirements and standards.

[cstanleytech]

39. After reading this it makes me wonder something and that is

where is a good french style revolution to get the heads of those responsible when you need one.

[sarcasmo]

40. All in the name of GREED. This needs to be the news headline every day.

[Dover]

43. Don't know if this story is relevant to this issue, but it's about wholesale power price spikes.

SEC accuses three of duping investors
Some funds bought failed electricity firm, regulators allege
By TOM FOWLER

Two Spring men and one from North Texas misled elderly investors to raise money the men used to buy a Houston electric company that failed last month, federal regulators allege.

The electric company, National Power, was one of four that collapsed in recent weeks as wholesale power prices spiked. The failures forced thousands of customers to find other providers.

..cont'd

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5847516.html