Jon Christian Ryter -- The Oil Pimps, Part 3

THE OIL PIMPS
PART 3 of 3

By Jon Christian Ryter

June 4, 2008

NewsWithViews.com

The public outcry against the rapidly escalating price of oil has not slowed the zeal of the Wall Street hedge funds from bidding up the price of oil, with some bankers predicting that oil will reach $200 barrel before the end of the year. The speculation, they claim, is based on the soaring demand for oil by the emerging economies where all of the new jobs are being created to support the growing global economy of the transnational industrialists. What no one seems to notice is that the factories that are now churning out products in China and Indonesia are the same factories that were churning out the same products in the United States before those jobs were sent overseas and the factories that produced the jobs and the products were shut down. While we should expect some increase from the new factories in the third world since they will be seeking out new customers as well as serving the replacement markets in the industrialized nations, there are not enough "new consumers" yet to merit the increase in demand for oil touted by the Wall Street bankers and hedge funds that are bidding up the price of oil—particularly since there are no oil shortages, there is no "peak oil" problem, and the holding tanks at all of the refineries in America are full. These are the "unprecedented market conditions" that caused the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to quietly initiate an investigation of the Wall Street bankers and hedge fund operators in December of last year.

Most of the oil alarmists—both bankers and the hedge fund gamblers—are heavily positioned in the oil market. That means their irresponsible actions are specifically designed to profit them. The current investigation appears to be centered on the hedge funds and futures brokers with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission promising to detect and punish futures market manipulators.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman [D-NM] told federal regulators earlier that he was concerned that Wall Street futures traders were escaping federal scrutiny by placing their trades (those currently driving up the price of oil) through anonymous offshore exchanges called "dark pools" where unscrupulous swap dealers skirt federal regulations as they drive up the price of oil on the global market.

Sen. Pete Domenici [R-NM] the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee heralded the actions of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, adding that their investigation will help determine whether legislative remedies are need. In the last six years, the price of oil—the most plentiful fuel in the world—has increased sixfold solely because of rumor-mongering and shady trading by futures brokers and the artificial shortages masterminded by the oil pimps who slowed the spigot in the Seven Sisters' refineries to convince the consumers that there was a shortage when, in reality, the was a glut. If Domenici, who has been in the US Senate for 36 years, can't tell when the oil pimps are abusing the trading laws, he needs to resign his seat in the Senate, or the voters in New Mexico need to replace him this November.

Fueled by Seven Sisters fantasies about peak oil combined with the greed of oil and commodities traders, most economist and many legislators are convinced that if the oil pimps and the money pimps are allowed to continue unchecked, the oil and commodities markets will be afflicted with the fever that fed the technology stocks in the late 1990s, sending completely worthless stock soaring the pinnacles achieved only by the best of the blue chips.

It's time for the American people to reevaluate their place in the world, their role in history, and what is in store for them if they do not take back their own destiny. Oil is not a commodity that can trusted to any one man, any one family or a close knit cartel of powerful, greedy men at the pinnacle of power even in a free enterprise system like the United States that is controlled by special interest groups funded by cartels of powerful, greedy men who are reshaping the world into a one world political, economic and religious entity only because it suits their purpose to do so.

Oil has become a weapon in that battle for supremacy in the emerging global state. In that battle, the leaders of those nations have nationalized oil and are using oil as a weapon against the United States and the industrialized nations of Europe. These totalitarian regimes control 80% of the oil in the world. Wisely, they have chosen not to wage economic terrorism against their own people. Hugo Chavez, who has aligned himself politically with China, Bolivia, Cuba, Iran and anyone else who hates America, votes with OPEC to drive up the price of oil, charges the Venezuelan people 12¢ a gallon for gas. None of the totalitarian regimes who have nationalized oil prices charge their own citizens more than 90¢ a gallon for gas. European motorists pay upwards of $9.00 a gallon for gasoline and, in the United States, Americans are how paying upwards of $4.50 a gallon for unleaded regular.

The United States has reached a crossroads in its national life. If it continues on the path it is traveling, we will cease to exist as a nation within a decade. The transnationalist industrialists, bankers, the barons of business and regents of retail will simply move their corporate offices to the new retail centers in the emerging economies where tomorrow's consumers reside. Over the next decade, they will simply shut down their unprofitable US operations which, due to FDR-era federal regulations and costly fringe benefits like health insurance, retirement funds, the 40-hour work week and paid vacations, favor the working class. There is no Taft-Hartley in the third world.

The American people—and their government (those folks in bed in Big Oil and Big Business which fills their campaign war chests with millions of quid pro quo dollars)—need to realize what Franklin D. Roosevelt realized in 1935. If the pimps and prostitutes of Big Business are not restrained, their greed will destroy the rest of us. Roosevelt declared a state of national emergency in the United States on March 9, 1933 that remained in effect until Sept. 14, 1976 when House and Senate Special Committees to Terminate the National Emergency ended it. On that date Congress enacted, and President Gerald Ford signed into the law the National Emegencies Act of 1976 (50 USC 1601), Public Law 94-412. Before the National Emegencies Act of 1976 was enacted, President George W. Bush could have declared a national emergency and nationalized the oil industry. At the same time, under that same emergency, he could have opened ANWR to oil drilling, reopened the closed oil refineries under the control of the Department of Energy. But even more important, that president— or any president—could place a ceiling on the price of domestic oil at, say, $50 per barrel. Furthermore, under the current national emergency on oil, the president could, under the condidtions that existed prior to the passage of National Emegencies Act of 1976, decree that domestic oil cannot be exported, that the entire output of oil pumped from under sovereign US soil, without exception or waiver, must be consumed within the territorial limits of the United States.

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Of course, when the Democratically-controlled Congress enacted that legislation, they did so to control adversarial presidents like Richard Nixon. No president, without the full support and backing of Congress, has the singular authority to declare a national emergency of any type let alone one that lasts four-decades. Section 201.a of the National Emegencies Act of 1976 transferred the authority to create national emergencies from the White House to Congress. Thus, the power to do what is proposed here still exists providing Congress converts the presidential decree into law. What does not exist on Capitol Hill is the will to do it. Congress—on both sides of the aisle—has been in bed with the enemy for so long they no longer recognize the enemy as the enemy. To most of them, the enemy is us, a nation of working class stiffs who are patriotically known as "we the people."

[Read "Whatever Happened to America?"]