Predatory capitalism is really what is driving up gas prices, the laws of supply and demand are not in effect.

This article suggests that lack of supply is not driving up the cost of oil. It is being driven up by deceptive practices and by greed.

I think he makes a very good case in this article. I believe what we are now seeing is another bubble driven by gamblers, con-artists and the deceptive business practices of big corporations. It is very telling that refineries are purposely running at 85 percent when they should now be running at 95 percent. They are doing it only to drive up their profit margins.

I know for a fact that people are cutting back on their driving a lot but yet prices keep going up. Demand in gasoline according to the government has fallen by six percent in the United State so we should be swimming in gas and prices should now be dropping like a rock.

So why aren’t prices falling when there is plenty of crude oil being pumped according to very reliable figures? There is enough oil but the problem is that refineries are not outputing what they should, crude oil is being hidden offshore and greedy speculators are gambling up the prices just like they did with their housing speculation credit market scam.

These greedy gamblers who manipulate the markets so prices have to keep rising got so greedy that their credit bubble burst and they lost some money but they were bailed out by the Fed. Now they are trying to cover their losses by purposely driving up the prices of all commodities. They keep dumping their highly leveraged funny money into these commodity casinos in order to force prices to keep going up. They probably think government will bail them out if this bubble also bursts as it is bound to at some point. Then they will try to manipulate some other market like perhaps the stock or bond market.

These people do not play with a full deck there are obsessed with greed. They are compulsive gamblers who are willing to bet the whole fortunes of insurance and pension funds etc. to get their own cut. They want ever rising paybacks that are not sustainable. There hope is to make a killing and then get out before the inevitable bubble busts and they do not care who they destroy doing it. They then just take there money and move it into new gambling speculations. This is predatory capitalism and it is what will kill the whole capitalist free enterprise system if these predators are not controlled.

So when free markets are being manipulated to just rip us off, what should we do?

Obviously, we need more government regulation and oversight in the markets. Perhaps some people need to go to prison. The problem is that these people too often fund the lobbyists that control your representatives in Washington. Nevertheless, one thing politicians fear more than lobbyists is not getting reelected. So let your representatives in Washington know how you feel about being robbed by these greedy bastards and tell them when there bubble bursts, as it will, to not use federal money to bail them out! If these are bailed out you are just using tax payers money to fund them to start another destructive speculation bubble.

The Reason for High Oil Prices

It’s not a supply crisis that explains the sharp spike in oil prices. It’s unregulated commodities markets and greed

We do know that refineries in the U.S. again cut back their utilization to 85%. That’s down from 89% a year ago, in a season when production is normally 95%, only because they’re trying to draw down gasoline inventories to bid gasoline prices up. Yet despite the reduced refinery runs, the EIA said, the U.S. managed to put another 800,000 barrels of gasoline in stock. The American Petroleum Institute put the gas gain at 1.4 million barrels. The point is that neither organization is in disagreement that gasoline was added into our active stocks; it’s just a question of exactly how much.

Yes, this line suggests that persons invested in the oil futures market are purposely driving even more money into oil to raise the prices even higher, even though the market’s actual supply and demand in no way justifies their claims. On a side note, Enron is named frequently in both investigations as exemplifying this type of energy market manipulation.

Commodities have often been the refuge for investors who have lost money on equities or fixed-income investments. Moreover, the commodities rush today is not limited to oil; now we also have runaway food and feed prices. Could it be that all the financial losses on subprime mortgages, plus the anticipation that the option ARM mortgages about to reset could be an even bigger problem, combined with the huge losses in securities last year, are why investment money today is flooding into often unregulated commodities, where the demand pricing of the final goods is inelastic?

Consider this: You may not buy gasoline or even eat today, but by next Monday you’ll probably have to do both, no matter what it costs. Basically, besides enabling the Fed to bail out Wall Street and our banks again, every time you gas up or eat you may be paying investors to cover other financial losses. We know that investors can’t control their losses on mortgages, securities, or bad loans. But, demonstrably, if not restrained they can drive up the price of goods that we can’t get out of buying. Odds are, that’s what’s really been going on.