From $2.00 gas to $5.00 gas in 4 years

Might want to look at that chart again.
A) Do you really think that anything that happens at that level today originated yesterday?
B) You'll notice a steady climb through the G.W. years culminating just before the election; then dropping suddenly. Almost like the oil companies said, thanks for the profits. Now we'll drop the price so it's not an election issue for you. Then we can continue business as usual after the election. Of course that would require political back scratching at high levels. Sort of like raising the terror threat level every time the President slips in the polls or his opponent takes the headlines. I mean people who would do that might even be capable of sabotaging campaigns of members of their own party who they view as competition.

Raise the Margin Minimums, Discourage Gambling

Actually the 'speculators' most likely have a lot to do with this current price increase in crude oil. BUT, I think it is a particular group of speculators...its the ones that play the minute changes in prices like a gambling table....its those speculators that have the fastest computer links to the market that play the market like a gambling table,...not an investment market.

And surprisingly there is a pretty simple solution to this problem....RAISE THE MARGIN MINIMUMS. In other words raise the minimum cash requirements to trade in oil stocks. In some cases these days investors only need a SMALL cash position to trade in BIG blocks of oil futures (sometimes less than 10% of the value they are playing with. This invites speculators that are simple gamblers rather than true investors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_(finance)

I believe this was done a number of years ago when the silver market was going crazy...wasn't there a couple of brothers that were driving the silver prices crazy?

We need to get some of this 'gambling/speculating' out of our market, and make it more of an investment tool....particularly in these days of high speed computer trading. So lets require these guys to put up a little higher percentage of cash if they wish to play with certain basic stocks.

The Perlous Price of Oil

The public is asking for an answer to two questions. The principal question is whether the sharp oil price increase is a speculative bubble or simply reflects fundamental factors such as rapidly rising demand from developing nations and an increasingly limited supply, caused by the dwindling availability of easily extractable oil reserves. The second question is related to the first. If the oil price increase is at least partly a result of speculation, what kind of regulation will best mitigate the harmful consequences of this increase and avoid excessive price fluctuations in the future?

While I am not myself an expert in oil, I have made a lifelong study of investment bubbles as a professional investor. My theory of investment bubbles, explained more fully in my recent book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, is considerably different from the conventional view. According to my theory, prices in financial markets do not necessarily tend toward equilibrium. They do not just passively reflect the fundamental conditions of demand and supply; there are several ways by which market prices affect the fundamentals they are supposed to reflect. There is a two-way, reflexive interplay between biased market perceptions and the fundamentals, and that interplay can carry markets far from equilibrium. Every sequence of boom and bust, or bubble, begins with some fundamental change, such as the spread of the Internet, and is followed by a misinterpretation of the new trend in prices that results from the change. Initially that misinterpretation reinforces both the trend and the misinterpretation itself; but eventually the gap between reality and the market's interpretation of reality becomes too wide to be sustainable.

The misconception is increasingly recognized as such, disillusionment sets in, and the change in perceptions begins to influence the fundamental conditions in the opposite direction. Eventually the trend in market prices is reversed. As prices fall, the value of the collateral used as security for loans declines as well, provoking margin calls. Holders of securities must sell them at distressed prices to meet the minimum cash or capital requirements, and such selling often causes the market to overshoot in the opposite direction. The bust tends to be shorter and sharper than the boom that preceded it.

This sequence contradicts the conventional view, which holds that markets tend toward equilibrium and deviations from the equilibrium occur in a random manner. The widely used synthetic financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which have played such an important part in turning the subprime mortgage crisis into a much larger financial crisis, have been based on that view.

...more here
http://www.georgesoros.com/articles-essays/entry/the_perilous_price_of_oil

Silver Margins Increased, Price Drops Dramatically

http://www.crossingwallstreet.com/archives/2010/11/silver-margin-raised.html

http://news.silverseek.com/SilverSeek/1304961753.php

Here is an interesting piece I came across from ExxonMobil titled: ExxonMobil’s earnings: The real story you won’t hear in Washington
This is stright from the horses mouth, Ken Cohen who is vice president of public and government affairs for Exxon Mobil Corporation.

Link here:
http://www.exxonmobilperspectives.c...s-the-real-story-you-wont-hear-in-washington/

Nice advertising piece. Quite frankly, when you boil it down to simple form for us simple folk it comes down to they made 10.7 Billion dollars, they received 4 billion dollars of my tax dollars and I'm now paying 4 times as much for gas and home heating fuel than I was a just a few years ago, and jobs are disappearing. Just today I had to tell an employer that my rates are going up despite the dismal shape of our industry. So I'm losing money, the people who hire me are losing money and it's all because there is one entity that we're all dependent on making 10.7 Billion Dollars and taking 4 billion dollars of my tax money as they pick my pocket directly at the pump. Quite frankly, I think that came from a different part of the horse's anatomy.

Maybe that is the solution to the gasoline problem?

Fellow Forum Friends (FFF),

I don't know if it has been posted before, but this may well be the solution for the gasoline problem. Would increase the requirements for crew accommodation more in line with new ILO regs, I suppose.

http://www.freakingnews.com/Yacht-Pics-11496.asp



BR
Olli

Government Subsidies to Big Oil Companies, I don't understand

...an email I sent to some friends recently

Can someone explain to me why a 'for profit company' that is the MOST profitable company in the world needs to continue to receive Government subsidies??

I just don't understand this.

Many of you I send this message to have been in business for yourselves. Did you get a government subsidy to conduct your business. I didn't?

If someone can explain this subsidy program to the oil companies, please do so.

Brian


http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/fortune/1104/gallery.fortune500_most_profitable.fortune/index.html
Exxon Mobil rode high oil prices to a staggering $30 billion in income, making it the most profitable Fortune 500 company for the eighth year in a row.


PS: Perhaps we all need to remember who voted AGAINST rescinding these subsidies in the next elections?

Granted it may be a small part of the equation, but at this point every little bit helps....ask any husband/wife who is trying to balance the household account these days.

Its not just the oil companies. American government "freeloading" is wide spread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OQjlzh279E

When it comes down to it, most of the major expenses of the average person or family are part of a deeply rooted scam.

Our Tax Dollars ... #1 Scam ... the politicians use our tax dollars like a personal piggy bank AND as a way to encourage a voter group to vote for them.

Our Food Supply ... Monsanto, ADM and all the other massive food conglomerates working closely with government to set prices, get subsidies and monopolize.

Oil ... We spend over a trillion dollars per year on wars, subsidies for other governments, naval presence ... while not even drilling in our own back yard.

Housing ... Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guaranteeing mortgages (with government assistance of course), work with Politicians and the FED to artificially reduce interest prices and underwrite mortgages based on it "being the right thing to do ... that everybody should own a home" whether or not they can pay for it.

Hedge Funds ... largely unregulated ... basically designed as a way for the rich politicians and their friends to be at the head of the line with regards to the stock market and commodities.

Cable TV ... Television used to be free ... now the average family spends $100 per month.

Internet ... $100 per month for the average family.

Our Litigation Happy Society ... costing EVERY family dearly.

The only people that are able to break the bonds of poverty created by all of these scams are the rich people. To them, all of these things are small change.

The policies of the U.S. Government only strengthen each of these scams year after year.

The only answer of course, is LESS Government. Which will increase our choices. But, with more people on the dole than not, we will only increase government.

I'm just sitting back and watching the horrible show ... "The American Sucker!"

Drill Baby Drill !!

Lets see I believe that the USA proven reserves of crude oil (not counting shale) is less than 2% of the world's supply.
http://exploredia.com/oil-reserves-by-country-2011/

"Proven oil reserves in the United States are 21 billion barrels (3.3×10^9 m3), excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The U.S. Department of the Interior estimates the total volume of undiscovered, technically recoverable prospective resources in all areas of the United States, including the Federal Outer Continental Shelf, the 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, and the Bakken Formation, total 134 billion barrels (21.3×10^9 m3) of crude oil. This excludes oil shale reserves, as there is no significant commercial production of oil from oil shale in the United States."

So does it really make sense to go out drilling all over the place in the USA....OR, set some real conservation methods as improving every house efficiency by 15% (not that difficult), improving municipal effeciences, improving automobile efficiences by 20-25%, improving truck efficiences, and converting a lot of transportation fuel requirements to natural gas (we have PLENTY of that), etc.

And perhaps rather than giving subsidies to the oil companies (that are already hughly profitable), we could invest some of that money into addition power lines to bring that that wind power from those remote corridors into the main grids. Those wind power guys ARE NOT asking for subsidies to build the wind farms (at least not Pickens), but they are asking for help with the permits and possible share some of the construction cost of the modern power lines to get that power out into the grid.

I think I would rather have my tax money going to those type projects rather than to big oil maga-profits. I'm not saying they don't deserve profits...certainly they do...but at this point they are scamming the system.

So, you would like to find a solution to one of the scams (Big Oil) ... but leave the rest in tact?

The entire American public is doing this dance (focusing on one problem or another ... what effects them most) while the Elites (the rich including the politicians) have a big laugh.

So ... while you focus on Big Oil, the rest of the scams are happily growing bigger and stronger.

The answer is to get rid of ALL the scams.

Of course, that would take a Libertarian ... no giveaways and reducing our government by approximately 60%.

Hence my link to John Stossel and his freeloader special. Until I saw that thought the USA was going to go under ground economy. Like Canada, once had under the last liberal regime of Chretien. Than I thought the grass was greener. Fox News reading between the lines discovered America is going the way of the last known empire's; Roman, British and Russian.

And the country without scams, price rigging, crooked politicians, and greed is?????

Hi,

yet to be discovered.......

Yeah, right. Someone at Faux News must have found a CliffsNotes on high school history in the john and thought it was investigative reporting.

Hence my understanding the American People will not change. Like a meth addict looking for it's next fix, America is on a death spiral.

Therefore I have positioned myself on the right side of things (one of the Elites ... friend of the Progressives like Obama and Bush).

And I will watch my fortunes grow as our nation goes into the crapper.

And yet I will continue to support the Tea Party which is the peoples only hope. Even though the American People (suckers) will vote for another Progressive because of the handouts.

Hi,

I think someone has added a few portholes to the old girl.

She has been in Banus for years and from what I have heard about the conditions onboard , slavery is not something the crew are strangers to.

You keep bringing it back to America. It's western civilization. When America goes down so will the rest of western civilization. And as for your positioning, remember, there is only one king/ dictator/ emperor,etc. They don't share. Unless that fortune you're amassing is upwards of $20B you'll just be falling further and harder. And if your "only hope" is Sarah Palin?

Obviously you will be voting for business as usual. Be assured, you are in the majority.

The Elites of our society appreciate your vote.

I will enjoy paying less for my staff due to the high unemployment rate and lack of opportunity.

I will watch my large cap equities grow as corruption grows every year.

Thank you.