And last week they peaked again at $72.

That is a sight to behold. Wow. Where do we go from here? I certainly wouldn't be long oil right now, unless I had a bunch of cash I was trying to hedge against currency destruction...

I don't know whether it is sad or funny/amusing that there are so many still here from a year ago who were predicting ever higher prices. That includes you paid GS lurkers, you know who you are.

Rob Dawg,

It was peak oil.. china and europe were going to decouple..

Oil peaks:

2008 - 145
2009 -72
2010 -36
2011 - 18
2012 - 9
....

2013 will be the summer of infinite cruising. Just like what $0.199 gas did in the 70's.

Lucifer (profile) wrote on Fri, 7/3/2009 - 2:54 pm

Rob Dawg,
It was peak oil.. china and europe were going to decouple..

Oh, yeah. Ever since the borders went up here in California its been hard to get real news.

Seriously, that looks like a head and shoulders formation.

So, any predictions on the Tour de France? Can Armstrong do it?

How many will admit here to loving their "Smart Car?"

from the CR inspired serial novel "American Apocalpyse"

We were sitting on a large mound about 20 yards off the trail. It was a mix of quartz boulders and Virginia vegetation. Probably dumped here illegally from someone who was clearing an old pasture for building. Back where we had come from there had been a number of ancient Indian village or camp sites. The quartz outcroppings drew them, and the proximity of the Potomac river had been a factor. I remembered reading that the strip shopping center, the one not far from the Motel, had once been an Indian village with an estimated 50-60 people living there. It had not stopped the bulldozers from building on top of it.

site: afterthecrash.net

Now that you no longer have to travel to France to observe socialism in the wild, they might as well move the Tour to California.

That chart makes it look like oil still has a pulse after flatlining for a minute....

Outsider it depends if the U stands for Un or Under.

burnside,

It sounds like you might be in the field?

What ever happened to using flywheels as energy storage devices? That's a materials science problem, and I seem to remember seeing popularized design drawings in magazines as far back as the 1960s.

Just curious: how does Chinese storage capability compare to our Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

An FTT or Tobin Tax of .1% would raise over a hundred billion dollars ...

which we could dearly use ... and

Discourage speculation while not harming legitimate hedging ...

.1% isn't going to discourage speculation.

"That would get the attention of GS wouldn't it ? "

But it would mess with legitimate investment transactions and decrease liquidity.

Why not just let the speculators get burned by the normal operations of the market? It seems to be working pretty well so far.

Dirk van Dijk

I think the City of London funds itself through a Tobin Tax if I remember correctly ...

Dirk van Dijk

mmcknl, I agree totally. Not just for commodities but for stock and bond transactons as well. It would be a tax that targeted the financial sector, the ones who got us into this ...

~~~~

Don't forget currency trading as well !

SPDC output reduced from 850k to 140k bpd since last year. Where is the panic?

Shell's Daily Output Drops to 140,000bpd in Nigeria!

This is a take from the CRS, June 08, on commodities speculation, price, and regulation...

http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/assets/crs/RS22028.pdf

Edit: just highlighting the Sage Greenspan on derivatives, note conclusion:

Derivatives have permitted financial risks to be unbundled in ways that have
facilitated both their measurement and their management.... Concentrations of risk
are more readily identified, and when such concentrations exceed the risk appetites
of intermediaries, derivatives can be employed to transfer the underlying risks to other
entities. As a result, not only have individual financial institutions become less
vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a
whole has become more resilient.

C

.....read my lips........no new taxes.

Discourage speculation while not harming legitimate hedging ...

A better way to discourage speculation is to stop the central bank from manipulating the currency.

One could argue that $4.50 gasoline provided an important price signal that caused people to do a necessary re-evaluation of their consumption. In any case, it was over with in a few months, but many people took an important message that still persists.

I have from you all that either I am retired (with retirement benefits) or I a have a lot of years ahead of me, so I can still play the market...

I am sorry, no matter your status in life, get ready to be fu&ked. You can sit back on your couch and watch MSM or yo can get off you #ss..

I really do not care what you do....Just do not come a Knocking at my door for help!

"More generally, I have a problem with using taxes to implement policy. If you need more regulation to stabilize a market, why not just regulate?"

~~~~~

Using taxes is the best way to implement policy, especially when you want less of something ...

The only other ways of implementing policy are rules-regs and subsidies ...

These are in place already for agricultural commodities;

Yes, but they're in there because the producers want them, not because the consumers do. Unless you suggest we increase oil producer subsidies.

Also, ag products are subject to weather, the only supply problem oil has is political.

Producers and consumers both benefit from avoiding speculative excesses in agricultural commodities...in my opinion.

Charles Kiting

Also, ag products are subject to weather, the only supply problem oil has is political.

~~~~

Weather disrupts oil supply as well ... think hurricanes ...

Producers and consumers both benefit from avoiding speculative excesses in agricultural commodities...in my opinion.

• the Saudis must have hated it.

Well, personally, my response was to cut back on driving by 50%.

• you were fortunate to have had that option. The vast majority of working people don't fit into that catagory.

broward

sending misinformation throughout the market leading to shortages or oversupply .

That can never happen except through the process of government intervention.

~~~~~

Either you are kidding or you are sadly mistaken ....

Manipulation, fraud are completely possible without government ...

and more prevalent without government oversight of markets ...

Tea Party Movement Flops ...

Tea Party Movement Loses Steam « The Washington Independent

just wanted to say thanks to barfly for the href skool linky thingy from last night.

stay safe Campers

broward

Maniupation and fraud can only happen when government exists.
Eliminating government will eliminate fraud.

~~~~~~~~

Someone steal browards name ?

Or is he that big of an idiot ?

Someone steal browards name ?

I've been converted to Anarcho Capitalistic / Free Market beliefs.

The free market will create the solution to fraud if you only allow it to function properly.

Things will be better when we are all One with Landru.
You'll see.

Things will be better when we are all One with Landru.

Herbert!

crazyv

Yes we need the Financial Transaction Tax ....

but not to do away with the capital gains tax ...

India Joins Russia, China in Questioning U.S. Dollar Dominance
July 3 (Bloomberg) -- Suresh Tendulkar, an economic adviser to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said he is urging the government to diversify its $264.6 billion foreign-exchange reserves and hold fewer dollars.
“The major part of Indian reserves are in dollars -- that is something that’s a problem for us,” Tendulkar, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said in an interview today in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he was attending an economic conference.
Singh is preparing to join leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations -- the U.S., Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia -- at a summit in Italy next week which is due to tackle the global economy. China and Brazil will also send representative to the G-8 summit.
As the talks have neared, China and Russia have stepped up calls for a rethink of how global currency reserves are composed and managed, underlining a power shift to emerging markets from the developed nations that spawned the financial crisis.
...
Singh adviser Tendulkar said that big dollar holders face a “prisoner’s dilemma” in terms of managing their holdings. “That’s why I’m telling them to do this,” he said.
He also said that world currencies need to adjust to help unwind trade imbalances that have contributed to the global financial crisis.
“The major imbalances which led to the current situation, the current account surpluses and deficits, have to be addressed,” he said. “Currency adjustment is one thing that suggests itself.”

That puts additional meaning into the Independence Day - Independence from US Dollar

Oh, well, happy July 4th, anyway!

"my neighbor (my brother) and I have two housefulls of young Navy men and women on leave here for the weekend. Be proud, America! These are good people. Later."

~~~~

The soldiers an sailors are great ....

This country's leadership .... not so much ...

I knew we were in deep kimchee last summer, when the hoi ploy couldn't afford an extra coupla hundred bucks a month for go-juice...

It spoke volumes.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more questionable in Washington, then along comes this (hat tip Tom).

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive "salon" at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

This is not a joke, it was a serious plan whereby the Washington Post was set and ready to use its publisher’s home to bring together lobbyists on the one side and White House and congressional people on the other. Boy, I wish I had that kind of access.

naked capitalism 

ResistanceIsFeudal

The free market will create the solution to fraud if you only allow it to function properly.

~~~~~

Yep ...uh huh ... just like Greenspan said it would ...

Any more bright ideas?

Or should we just let the Mafia take over now?

Sometimes the "solution" to fraud is a bigger fraud to cancel out the established fraud.

~~~~~~

When asked what type of government the American people were going to participate in, by a well-meaning woman,

a stern Benjamin Franklin warned that our new government was going to be "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

"This is not about moral rights, this is about capital flows."

~~~~~

Currency and trade manipulation are about capital flows ... No ?

mmckinl (profile) wrote on Fri, 7/3/2009 - 7:55 pm

a stern Benjamin Franklin warned that our new government was going to be "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

The temptations of power, once freedom is achieved, bias us to inflict gradual tyranny because it takes less effort and lower personal risk. That's the best pre-independence day explanation I can come up with, anyway.

....."Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed."

The Great American Bubble Machine, Matt Taibbi
.........how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression

Currency and trade manipulation are about capital flows ... No ?

Yes, of course. I am afraid I am not understanding your point ...

Pigged!

OK, experts, a real life question on your expectation of future oil price trends. A heating oil supplier has offered me a season contract (9/1 - 4/30) at $2.499/gal.

Do I take it, or take a chance?