Boone Pickens & Those Stealing From Consumers (& Investors/Traders) Should Be Hung

[limitdown]

Quote from walter4:

McCain Defends 'Enron Loophole'
by Jason Leopold

John McCain May 19, 2008 Sen. John McCain says he opposes the $307 billion farm bill because it would dole out wasteful subsidies, but his chief economic adviser Phil Gramm also wants to stop its proposed regulation of energy futures trading, a market that was famously abused when Enron Corp. manipulated California's electricity prices in 2001.

Clearing the way for that California price gouging, Gramm, as a powerful Texas senator in 2000, slipped an Enron-backed provision into the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that exempted from regulation energy trading on electronic platforms.

Then, over the next year, Enron with Gramm's wife Wendy serving on its board of directors worked to create false electricity shortages in California, bilking consumers out of an estimated $40 billion.

Gramm left the Senate in 2002 but now has emerged as what Fortune magazine calls "McCain's econ brain," not only filling the Arizona senator's acknowledged void on economic expertise ("I don't know as much about the economy as I should") but recognized as one of McCain's closest friends in politics. The two men talk daily.

A McCain aide told me that the Arizona senator opposes the farm bill because it "rewards lobbyists" by granting rich farmers lucrative subsidies, although he would support "a reasonable level of assistance and risk management to farmers when they need America's help."

But the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee also opposes the farm bill because Gramm advised McCain that he should resist its regulatory language on the energy futures market.

Democrats have dubbed that gap in energy futures regulation the "Enron loophole," but it played a part, too, in the more recent attempt by the Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to corner the national gas market by shifting trades to the unregulated "dark markets" of the Intercontinental Exchange.

The "Enron loophole" also has become part of the debate over the soaring price of oil. Last week, a study sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, concluded that speculative futures markets were partly to blame for the surge in oil prices that have pushed gas at the pump toward $4 a gallon.

At a May 15 news conference, Levin said the skyrocketing price of oil is not the result of supply and demand. Speculators have taken over most of the futures market."[...]


http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2008/051908Leopold.shtml

he does?

you're kidding right?

who can defend this?

 

[limitdown]

Quote from walter4:

Boone Pickens is the reason you're paying $4.5 a gallon for gasoline.


The California energy crises provided a special training ground for savvy energy commodities traders who quickly learned how to work the information system. Specifically, they learned that they could drive up natural gas prices incrementally by purchasing one natural gas spot market contract and submitting the trade to one of the journals that collects and publishes market trade prices. At the time, there was no method of validation, so the trade price was published. In the meantime, the same investors could be holding several natural gas futures contracts. The price of the futures would increase on the report of the spot trade price that was reported.

no arguement with the blue man group statement.....

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

Has anyone else noticed that democrats seem determined to elevate every problem in life into a "crisis", which of course can only be solved by a massive injection of government. Then, after distorting the marketplace, they bitch about people who exploit gaps in regulation or "loopholes". Of course, their biggest ire is reserved for "speculators", unless they have decide to run for office as democrats, then they become statesmen, eg Mark Warner, Jon Corzine, Bob Rubin.

Throughout recorded history, commodity prices have fluctuated, sometimes wildly. The beauty of the market is that high prices are their own solution, as they stimulate alternatives, dampen demand and encourage new supply.

I suppose it is inevitable that people who think they can control the world's climate by mandating use of flourescent lights think they can also regulate the prices of commodities and arrive at the perfect price. As I recall, every other time someone tried to do that, it resulted in long lines, rationing and black markets, but of course, we never had a person like Obama in charge.

 

[Pa(b)st Prime]

Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

As I recall, every other time someone tried to do that, it resulted in long lines, rationing and black markets, but of course, we never had a person like Obama in charge.

In Obama's past life he fed multitudes with a single loaf.....

 

[murray t turtle]

Quote from Pa(b)st Prime:

In Obama's past life he fed multitudes with a single loaf.....

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He blame gamed FOX news for his Kentucky loss;
funny , but he actually help empower FOX with that remark.

Boone Pickens seems to understand oil much more than Washington D.C.