What *can* we do to oil speculators? What *should* we do to oil speculators?

[Stinky The Clown]

Given Phil and Wendy Gramm's Enron Loophole, what we *can* do to speculators is little to nothing.

I also suspect there would be little or nothing done to them were Congress to get off its collective ass and actually do something.

What **should** be done? In my book, all options are on the table.

What would you do to them?

[Vincardog]

1. WE should nationalize our energy industry. Make long term contracts for our oil and other energy

needs and take the parasitic corporations out of the picture.

[endarkenment]

3. Ok, but our domestic oil resources peaked in the 70's.

Nationalization would get public control of the tail end of a dying extraction industry.

[Vincardog]

9. What part of "Make long term contracts" don't you understand?

[endarkenment]

18. Make long term contracts with whom?

The sauds? Why would they do that when China, India and Europe are all eager to buy oil to feed their economies?

[Vincardog]

24. China buys its' oil on long term contracts. Why not US? OR do you have a problem with a rational

energy policy?

[endarkenment]

27. No problem at all but I do not see this as being a way to reduce

significantly the cost of gas at the pump. (Not that I even think that is a good idea, but that is a different although related discussion.)

If on the other hand you think that evil speculators are the cause of the steady rise in oil prices over the last few years, it probably would result in the magical 50% reduction that idiots in DC were proclaiming. I just don't believe that the increase is primarily caused by run-away speculation. I think we are in the early phases of peak oil economic chaos and that long term contracts will be worthless over the long term, and increasingly difficult to get suppliers to agree to anyway. In an inflation suppliers are quick to learn that they are fools to lock in today's price to tomorrow's ever more worthless dollars. I hadn't noticed that the Sauds were fools. Vile worthless gangsters, but not fools.

[Leopolds Ghost]

29. China's oil policy is fucked up. Do you support their crash program to deliver cheap oil?

If everyone in China drove as much as YOU do, the price of oil would skyrocket "until demand is killed"

as oilman T. Boone Pickens told Congress.

You call that speculation because you don't understand scarcity
and Dems don't understand economic fairness.

Economic fairness is realizing we have to drop our standard of
living down to Greece or Cuba in order to prevent third world
people from starving because of resource exploitation and using
up the Earth's resources to support YOUR and Chinese capitalists'
subsidized lifestyle.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwins_nightmare

[Vincardog]

30. I put more miles on my horse than my pick up truck. Project much? Why do y'all

think my call to nationalize the energy industry is a call for lower oil?
The OP asked about what to do about SPECULATORS.

[Leopolds Ghost]

31. And you expect us to support your horse-driven lifestyle by subsidizing the cost of manure?

;-) :hi:

Only by securing promises from politicians can we increase the supply of horse shit.

[Super Soaker Sniper]

32. Didn't we secure a promise

from Nancy Pelosi that if the Democratic Party won a majority they would lower the price of 1.99 a gallon gas in 2006? I am sorry and while I do not believe that speculators should have free reign over anything, the people in charge of FEMA and TSA do not inspire confidence in me that they should be in charge of anything. Congress cannot even Impeach a President with a 26% approval rating but they can run a national industry?

[Leopolds Ghost]

12. Rather like we bailed out the railroads at the nadir of the coal economy and bailed airlines in 2001

Now control of the railroads is something worth nationalizing as air
transport becomes more expensive. The railroad infrastructure is in
horrible shape and is geared for bulk commodity transport only. There
is no law or custom on the books that allows new railroad lines to be
built without twice as much enviro review and twice as much local
opposition as any highway gets. That is because people are used to
too many highways tearing up the landscape, like railroads did
100 years ago. They don't need to see "return on investment" from
a rural road, but transit is kept out of developing areas because of
short term ROI.

[taterguy]

2. Screw up their scheme by not buying gas

[Imagevision]

4. Saudi Arabia stated this morning it was US. speculators driving up the oil costs...

[kestrel91316]

5. How about kestrel's stock solution to ALL problems on the right?

.......because I am JUST. SO. FED. UP. WITH. THESE. PEOPLE.

[Leopolds Ghost]

6. Nothing. Trying to drive down the price of oil goes against everything the Enviro movement has been

trying to accomplish for the past 30 years.

Europe is the model here. They keep the price of oil deliberately high,
which is where the market would have it were it not for Government laws
prohibiting walkable development and both requiring and subsidizing
parking for every user of every licensed occupiable dwelling (meaning
Parking is a Clinton-style entitlement and a mandate, unlike health care.)

Europe taxes gas (because American and Chinese demand floods the market
with oil that should not be pumped) and puts the money into rapid transit
(a concept even US Enviros are against, witness a letter I recieved just the other day)

Europeans do this to avoid wasteful American style
strip mall lifestyle where 90% of the people on this very blog
refuse to walk more than 4 blocks without getting into a car.

In America and China, the automobile is not just subsidized but mandated,
hence the concomitant low price of oil and artificially high price of
houses in walkable neighborhoods. It is a classic textbook example of a
"prohibition economy" you learned about in Econ 101.

Rapid transit is the answer Americans refused to talk about.

Voters in Seattle and LA and South Florida went to the polls to BAN
rapid rail.

So quit cher hypocrisy on this issue, Blue America.

[Redstone]

8. Yes, indeed. Much as I'd like to see those parasites taken outside and shot,

you are 100% correct.

Redstone

[Leopolds Ghost]

11. My solution is commodity investment co-ops.

Destroy the forces that want to cartelize oil, like diamonds.

Control and who gets the money are the real issue.

[leftofthedial]

7. firing squads

then

nationalize oil

and health care

and pharma

and defense

[Leopolds Ghost]

10. Nationalize oil to make it cheap?

See post above. This and ethanol subsidies are the worst possible
application of democratic socialism -- this idea is the sort of thing
that destroyed socialism in the 20th century. Keeping prices
artificially low for all users (not just ability to pay, or need)
encourages wasteful, anti-environmental and uneconomic growth lifestyles.

[leftofthedial]

13. I didn't say to artificially make it cheap

did I?

You could do that with price controls without nationalizing it.

I'm saying take it out of private hands. Corporations are the absolute worst way to manage and deliver a critical resource. They are corrupt and amoral by design.

[Vincardog]

14. Who said anything about keeping oil cheap? The OP asked what to do about speculators.

My answer to nationalize the ENERGY INDUSTRY and make long term contracts for our energy needs would get rid of the speculators and move us on the road toward a sustainable energy policy.

I do not and have never proposed we keep energy at artificially low levels.

[dysfunctional press]

15. nationalize the energy industry. until then we are fucked.

nt

[NewJeffCT]

16. Require more margin from the speculators

would drive most speculators out of the market pretty quickly.

[Truth2Tell]

17. You want a toe? .

[Leopolds Ghost]

19. There are ways of dealing with peak oil, Dude. Believe me, you don't want to know.

[ben_meyers]

20. How about public execution of the co-sponsors

and anyone who voted for and the more than 200 Representatives and Senators that took Enron donations and the F'ing idiot who signed the bill.

And then find someone with the guts to repeal the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.
It would be a start

The "Enron loophole" exempts most over-the-counter energy trades and trading on electronic energy commodity markets from government regulation. The "loophole" is so-called as it was drafted by Enron lobbyists working with U.S. Senator Phil Gramm to create a deregulated market for their experimental "Enron On-line" initiative.

The "loophole" refers to 7 U.S.C. §2(h)(3) and (g) of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 or CFMA (Public Law 106–554, §1(a)(5) , December 21, 2000, 114 Stat. 2763, 2763A–365, 7 U.S.C. § 1).

The legislation was signed by President Bill Clinton in December 2000 to allow for the creation, for U.S. exchanges, of a new kind of derivative security, the single-stock future.

The "Enron loophole" effectively banned the prohibition on single-stock futures and narrow-based indices that had been in effect since 1982 with the Shad-Johnson Accord, a jurisdictional pact between John S.R. Shad, then chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Phil Johnson, then chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

On June 22, 2008, U.S. Senator Barack Obama proposed the repeal of the "Enron loophole" as a means to curb speculation on skyrocketing oil prices.

[Stinky The Clown]

21. The bill was severa thousands of page slong. The loophole was a dark of night ......

..... last second addition put in by Phil Gramm. I get the sense no one really knew it was there.

But you go ahead and call Clinton a 'fucking idiot'.

[ben_meyers]

22. And what do we pay these fools to do?

They get a pass for being idiots? We pay them the big bucks and they have large budgets for staff and you give them a pass? Do you get away with that kind of excuse in your business? Oh, I didn't have time to read the bill, I was too busy counting my Enron donations.

That is just so much B.S.

And if Clinton and his staff didn't know what was in the bill then yes he's a f'ing idiot. Or does he get a pass from you too?

Isn't it time to hold these elected officials accountable for something?

What **should** be done? In my book, all options are on the table.

Giving them a pass is not an option!!

[Stinky The Clown]

25. Who read the Patriot Act?

Who read countless other bills that got passed in the dark of night?

Condemn them all? Whatever floats your boat.

[ben_meyers]

26. I think you just made my point

who did read the patriot act? Or are you saying you can't expect these people to do their jobs?

[Stinky The Clown]

36. I'm saying yu need to call them **all** fucking idiots or back off on selected ones.

You're either consistent or you're not.

Now go back to your arm flapping ........

[Thothmes]

33. So much for the concept of

Constitutional Government and law.

[orleans]

23. hard to say. they weren't breaking the law. phil gramm and his dirty

little fucking wife were the rotten bastards behind this.

[lonestarnot]

28. Take all their fucking money and buy housing for the homeless.

[ColbertWatcher]

34. Hold them accountable; throw the fucking book at them. n/t

[madokie]

35. hang'em by the nuts

for the ones who have some that is. Thats covers both questions :-)

[rucky]

37. There's a plot next to Ken Lay's...

villa in Paraguay.

What'd you think I meant?