Lieberman: Restrain Large Speculators

Quote from Landis82:

Unlike Maverick and some of the others on this website that were some of the more vocal Bush "cheerleaders", I am proud to say that I was one of the 11%.

He was an idiot then, and he is still an idiot now. You can take Phil and Wendy Gramm with him too, and the rest of his neo-con bunch that wouldn't know a STRONG DOLLAR policy if it hit them square in the face!
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LOL, at least your consistently wrong. BTW, I don't think you even know what neoconservatism means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism
 
As usual you bring solid provacative insights to the discussion.
Quote from Cutten:

WHo elects them? It is the public that is spineless and greedy - they want cheap oil for their gas guzzling SUVs, then whine when the consequences of 2 decades of cheap prices and absurdly polluting unnecessary demand come back to bite them in the ass. Politicians are simply responding to voter imperatives, don't blame them. If they try reform they get ignored (voter apathy) or voted out (voters love their special interests).

Ron Paul's run showed that most people WANT more of the same mainstream socialist politicians.
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Good post.
Quote from bkveen3:

Wow BLSH sounds like he gets upset quite easily. Kinda makes me regret ever believing some of the BS he writes about. Why does every oil thread turn into an Iraq war thread? Look at Iraq's oil production pre and post war. Insignificant in both time frames. On the other hand Iraq does have a massive amount of oil under its feet. Hopefully as stability comes to the region Iraq will start to be a major contributor to the world oil supply. Again whether or not you agree with the war, the fact is that this never would have been possible under the old regime. The infrastructure was already unable to keep up with its current production. A little known fact; however you feel about him now pre invasion Bush had the highest approval ratings of any president..... ever. He may not be the best president we've had but he's by far not the worst (cough carter). On the matter of speculation in the market. Speculation is good for ALL markets, even the commodities market. But as was pointed out in the legislation it should be 80% consumer/producer driven and 20% speculator driven. Thus the speculators don't have control of price they simply follow it to profit. The commodities market with its recent influx of money has gotten an inverse ratio where speculators have an 80% market share. Liebermans proposal does not keep institutions out of commodities markets it simply brings the margin and position limit regulations up to par with the other markets. Where they should have been all along. If you disagree with me I would rather you don't go the route of BLSH and personally bash me. I would much rather have an intelligent debate.
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I don't think JL can legislate his way out of a wet paper bag...he has alienated his core constituency in the senate, and, he is the biggest bore in the place.

If not for the growing clamor to 'do something', he would have 'no chance in hell'. Now, despite his 'both hands tied behind his back' stature, he may 'make some hay' with his bluster.

Maybe JL is willing to 'piss on a spark plug'

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PeA402b0Kws&feature=related
 
I honestly respect McCain. I believe him to be a good guy and I truly believe he is running for all the right reasons. But why in the world is he letting a guy like Phil Gramm get close.
 
Quote from Covert:

Thank goodness- I was beginning to think that this thread was full of loons.
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Agreed.
Idiots think the problem started yesterday when speculators began to "excessively speculate".
 
2005- 40,000,000,000

2007- 240,000,000,000

Its not yesterday but its fairly new. The problem actually goes further back than this as the Suadi's said the price of oil was 60% over fair value in 2005. The problem has just been exacerbated by an inability to make money else where. Hedge funds do well in markets with little regulation. Can't make money in housing so they turn to there back up, commodities. Just tell me this. Why shouldn't the commodities market have the same level of regulation as the other markets?
 
the hedge funds are just protecting their cash from inflation from FED lowering rates to 2%

gov't can't steal from the professional investors by causing inflation.

that cash has less buying power than 5 years ago..

the private individual will do what he will do...

raise fed rate to 5% and all new money will exit commodities market



Quote from Trader5287:

NYT Business Section

June 12, 2008

Lieberman Seeks Limits to Reduce Speculation

By DIANA B. HENRIQUES

A prominent Washington lawmaker said Wednesday that he would propose next week to ban large institutional investors, including index funds, from the nation’s booming commodity markets.

The idea is one of several outlined by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. That committee will hold a hearing on June 24 to continue examining whether financial speculation is affecting the prices of crops and fuel.

“There is excessive speculation in the commodity markets that is driving up the cost of food and energy,” the senator said in an interview. “The question is, do large institutional investors play a positive role?” His concern, he said, is that they do not.

Over the last five years, hundreds of billions of dollars have flowed into commodity futures markets, which play an important role in setting world benchmark prices for a variety of materials, including corn and crude oil.

One steady source of money has been the growing number of new funds that mirror specific commodity indexes, like the Standard & Poor’s Goldman Sachs Commodity Index. More recently, exchange-traded funds — popular new investment vehicles that trade on stock exchanges but track commodity prices — have followed the index funds into the market.

Other Washington lawmakers also turned up the heat this week on the investors they blame for sharp run-ups in food and energy prices.

Two other Democratic senators, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Carl Levin of Michigan, said Wednesday that the White House had agreed to their request for a new federal task force to investigate whether “manipulative or deceptive practices” are adding to the run-up in energy prices.

The task force would include members from the Treasury Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Reserve and the departments of energy and agriculture.

Central to both proposals is the view that both oil and food prices are artificially inflated by financial speculators whose trades do not reflect fundamental factors of supply and demand. But most lawmakers also agree that increased food and fuel demand from China and India, widespread weather problems that have affected harvests, new mandates that have steered food crops into ethanol production, and a weakening dollar have all influenced these key prices as well.

Besides what he called the “aggressive” idea of banning institutional investors from the commodity markets, Senator Lieberman said he would also put forward other ideas for discussion at the hearing on June 24.

One less-sweeping proposal would be to strengthen existing regulatory limits on the size of the stake that each speculative investor can hold in a given market, called speculative position limits.

And he plans to propose barring investment banks from using the regulated futures markets to hedge speculative bets their clients are making in the vast unregulated global swaps market — what he called “the swaps loophole.”
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