Since 1973, oil prices have once again dominated the world.
The impenetrable iron curtain behind the oil price shock is being pushed away one by one, and the whole world is examining the little-known shady and details that change their lives.
* * * Oil price and our quotation.
In 2000, George W. Bush, who had a deep personal relationship in Texas, won the presidential election against Democrat Al Gore. One of the key factors for Bush's victory was campaign funds from Texas energy giants and arms dealers. Therefore, the first question after George W. Bush won the election was how to repay those generous consortia.
Cheney, a director from oil giant Alibaba Burton, dominates the White House's oil price policy. Less than a period of time after the two men entered the White House, a naked war for Iraq's oil resources began. Under the cloak of all kinds of lies, the US military fought a six-year war in Iraq. It was from this year that international oil prices soared sixfold. High oil prices have brought huge financial resources to Texas's energy giants. ExxonMobil's operating income has soared from $30 billion six years ago to more than $200 billion. American oil companies have taken away most of the oil exploitation rights in Iraq, and Cheney, the big boss, is even going to move the headquarters of Alibaba Burke to this country that is still at war. The wealth effect brought by oil prices is almost the only reason for the Iraq war.
During the six-year oil price rise, there was almost no real adjustment. The most significant adjustment took place in August 2006. In the following six months, the oil price dropped rapidly from $83 to $53, a drop of 36%. It is worth noting that this is not an ordinary market shock, and * * * and the party's oil price have been vividly reflected again during this period. Around August 2006, when the mid-term elections in the United States were in full swing, polls showed that * * * and the party's high oil price policy made voters abandon * * * and the party one-sidedly, and they were very nervous about the election. At this critical juncture, the Bush administration suddenly announced that it would strictly investigate shady transactions in the oil trading market. In fact, the Bush administration knows all about this kind of transaction. When the mid-term elections are suddenly tight, * * * and the party and government have to reluctantly give up what they have given up and grab a model to control oil prices. Of course, none of them can abandon the Texas oil tycoon. At this time, British BP company became a scapegoat.
The fuse happened in 2006, when BP suddenly announced that the Alaska oil pipeline was closed due to explosion, which caused the crude oil futures market to skyrocket that day and reached a stage high, causing global panic. Bp's move angered the United States and the party government, which were worried about the tight election, and led the Bush administration to immediately investigate. According to the survey, in the past year, BP stopped work for no reason for many times to overhaul the refinery in Texas, which led to oil price fluctuations, while the company secretly made profits through the futures market, and they made a lot of profits in the transaction. After a long-term investigation, the US government finally imposed a huge fine on BP, which made an example of the effect and made the biggest adjustment of oil prices in recent years.
However, even if we get out of this round of adjustment, we can't save * * * and the party's mid-term elections. In the end, they lost most of the seats in parliament and transferred the control of parliament to Democrats.
However, this painful lesson cannot bring the Bush administration back from the brink. In the final analysis, high oil prices are the fundamental interests of oil giants represented by the Party. As a result, oil prices started a new round of rising below $60 non-stop. In the following year and a half, the oil price rose directly from more than 50 dollars to the highest 135 dollars a barrel.
Of course, * * * and the party and government have not forgotten that they have more important things to do in the next few days, that is, this year's presidential election. If the oil price is allowed to soar, it means that it has nothing to do with the next presidential election, and it may be worse than the mid-term election.
At this point, the Bush administration is political. The day after the oil price reached $ 135, the government followed suit again, offering the regulatory banner again, and announced that it would investigate the insider behavior of the oil futures market. After hearing the news, the oil price fell sharply in the next few days. Then, the regulatory authorities announced once again that they would investigate the cotton futures with abnormal fluctuations, and then extended them to all commodity futures.
The new regulatory actions have had a great impact on the price of crude oil futures. Oil prices have been falling for a week. Although it is still uncertain whether 135 USD is the mid-term peak of oil price, it is certain that the oil price * * * and the party market that have lasted for more than six years have ended.
Why can the big four investment banks do whatever they want?
The rise in oil prices naturally has fundamental factors. It is well known that the reasons are the rising global demand and the relative shortage of supply. However, another common sense is that various trading behaviors in the crude oil futures market have magnified this fundamental factor several times, thus contributing to the skyrocketing oil price.
"If you are still talking about the so-called fundamentals, it is really stupid." Mark lewis of Energy Market Consulting Company told the audience through the BBC.
In the past year when the subprime mortgage crisis intensified, the international fund industry focused on commodity futures. In the past year, about $260 billion of speculative funds poured into the commodity futures market, nearly 20 times higher than in 2003 at the beginning of the commodity bull market. The $260 billion speculative fund made a profit of $5 trillion, of which at least half was transferred to crude oil futures.
Hedge funds and social security funds have successfully weathered the subprime mortgage crisis by doing a variety of commodity futures. The famous American investment banks played the most important role in this round of market. What is unknown is that Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and JPMorgan Chase are the four giants in oil futures trading. It is they who have turned their hands on the oil futures market, causing waves of oil price increases.
The most effective way to curb the rise of oil price in the short term is to start with the transaction investigation of these four donkey kong!
As early as 2006, when it was still at a low level of $60, a committee of the US Senate began to investigate crude oil futures trading, and its investigation report clearly pointed out for the first time that buying a large number of futures contracts was the main driving force for the high oil price.
The report also reveals the shocking black hole in the regulation of derivatives trading in the United States. Generally speaking, the trading of US crude oil futures on regulated exchanges is strictly regulated by the Commodity Exchange Commission (CFTC). However, according to the survey, in recent years, more and more bulk contract transactions are being transferred to the electronic trading market in the OTC futures market, which is commonly known as the Asian electronic trading market in China futures industry. The regular floor trading market is the mainstream trading market in the United States, and the opening and closing of the regular market are limited by trading time. However, electronic trading in Asia is to meet the needs of traders all over the world who can't keep pace with the formal market in the United States. This kind of electronic trading continues after the regular market trading and ends before the opening of the regular floor market, so the two markets form a 24-hour uninterrupted trading market.
After the Enron incident broke out in the United States in 2000, the United States passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, requiring CFTC to closely monitor all transactions in the futures market and keep all its transaction records and documents to prevent market manipulation. However, a huge loophole is that this regulatory action excludes the over-the-counter electronic trading market from the scope of supervision, so this loophole gives the big investors on Wall Street a huge space to do whatever they want. In recent years, these investment banks have used this market for illegal transactions, but they have never been discovered and known by CFTC, and it is impossible to be fully investigated in the future, because this market will not keep their trading documents.
The disintegration of lies
Earlier, Goldman Sachs predicted to the world that the oil price would be $200 per barrel. The positioning of investment banks is always an important factor to determine their positioning. However, for ordinary speculators, this may be a very alarming signal.
The problem is that Goldman Sachs should easily list 100 reasons for rising oil prices as usual. However, the more sufficient their reasons are, the farther away they are from the downright fallacy.
Although crude oil inventories in the United States have been declining (which is one of the main reasons for futures traders to do more), gasoline inventories have reached the highest value since 1993. In the first quarter of 2008, world oil production increased by 2.5% compared with the same period in 2007, while global oil consumption only increased by 2% in the same period. According to the analysis of Citigroup, the global output will increase by 3.3% in the second quarter, and the growth rate will exceed 4% in the third quarter, while the global demand growth will only increase by 1.6% in the next six months.
In fact, in some countries, demand is on the decline. According to the statistics of Sempra Metals, an American commodity futures company, American gasoline consumption decreased by 4% in 2008 1 month compared with the same period of last year. In fact, the reduction of gasoline consumption in the United States began in July last year. Intriguingly, it is from this time that the world crude oil futures price began to rise sharply. Even in China, which is accused as the main driving force of demand, the growth rate of oil demand has dropped from 10% to 6%. In addition, during this period, the global surplus oil production capacity has increased from 6.5438+500,000 barrels per day a few years ago to 3 million barrels per day.
Demand decreased, supply increased, oil prices rose sharply, and Goldman Sachs' forecast fell apart. However, oil experts will have new opinions, so Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, blamed all the responsibilities on the weak market, dollar energy and geopolitical instability.
There is no denying that oil price is indeed a very important factor. Most oil futures contracts in the world are settled in US dollars. Since 2002, the dollar has depreciated by more than 30% against the major currencies in the world, which means that petroleum products denominated in dollars should rise. However, it is worth noting that since September 2003, the international oil price has increased by 400%, while the global demand has only increased by 8% in the same period.
There is no doubt that speculation in the futures market has led to the soaring oil price.
It's time to end the game.
Last week, Soros came to Capitol Hill to testify about the bubble and irrationality of oil prices. This man, regarded as a disaster by Southeast Asian countries, boldly told the truth to the whole world this time: institutional investors' prediction of the oil market is dishonest and will have incalculable consequences for the economy.