Oil Prices Rose Today Due To Supply Issues.......

[global1]

Do you believe that? Most people are cutting back. If there are any supply issues its that there is an oversupply because demand is down.

Everyday it's a new excuse why oil prices go up. Why are we letting them hose us?

[Breeze54]

1. More LIES!!!!!

:grr:

[Selatius]

2. People have to stop assuming the free market mechanism is functioning with oil. It's not.

The market can easily be manipulated by several large players working in concert either overtly or covertly. That's not a "free" market in any true sense of the word. That's oligopolism, little brother of monopolism.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

3. IT IS THE "FASTMONEY REPUBLICANS" AND THE FUTURES SLIME

FORCE THEM TO TAKE DELIVERY OF THE CONTRACTED CRUDE.

[NMDemDist2]

4. fucking brilliant!! n/t

[On the Road]

5. If the Commodities Markets are Like the Stock Market,

nobody really knows. Some analyst (or worse, a journalist) looks at the daily headlines and ascribes the movement to one or more things on that list.

So I agree with you -- the provided reason is not necessarily the real reason. A lot of movement is technical traders reacting to patterns. Some of it is money moving out of other areas and looking for a new home. Most investments have not returned much recently, and speculators tend to jump on the hot property until the trend changes.

Hopefully this will break. Futures markets are supposed to provide stability, not wild fluctuations. I would love for an oil producer to be caught manipulating prices. But I kind of think it's just general bubble behavior, like internet stocks and California real estate.

[klyon]

12. If it is possible for speculators to move the prices up and down

then don't we have a huge problem with our stock market and commodities markets? Is this the best method on which to finance and create our economic system. Seems to me that something that promoted stability and long term investment would be better than day trading and leveraged buying. We are seeing wealth made but no product. Seems very foolish to me.

[On the Road]

16. They are Supposed to Provide a Different Type of Stability --

over time, so that buyers and sellers (farmers, wholesalers, miners drillers, airlines etc) that have long-term horizons can lock in future prices and plan accordingly.

There is always short-term volatility based on uncertainty about future conditions (often aagricultural forecasts). The idea is that the commodity buyers absorb this investment instead of the producers and users. What's happening now it out of the ordinary.

Securities of any kind can be manipulated by anyone with enough cunning and resources. What Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd in Trading Places is an example. Penny stocks do not take much money to "pump and dump" and are frequently manipulated, sometimes by unscrupulous brokers.

The oil market is too big for any one entity to manipulate directly, even the US government. Annual worldwide production is in the trillions of dollars at today's prices. But like stocks or real estate, a rally can touch off a stampede and inflated prices. And news is a nonfinancial form of manipulation.

[Rosemary2205]

14. Futures markets can't provide stability now that Asswipe deregulated them

[Mountainman]

6. There will be an equilibrium price someplace right?

The higher the gas prices the more people will look for alternatives to buying gas if they can. Already SUV's have become instant dinosaurs. Nobody wants to buy one now. Demand will be for fuel efficient cars. Who ever build them will sell them.

I am not too concerned with gas prices. Of course I ride a bus and ride a motorcycle. I fill up our Explorer every other week. I can't sell it for what I owe so I drive it but not a lot.

I think we will be better off in the long run.

Seems that in the long run we can come up with a foil against corporatism. We will get a Dem government next year, and a balanced Supreme Court, health care for all, an energy policy that is not based on fossil fuel an end to constant war.

In the short term a lot of us are hurting. Our expectations are not being met. These are "strange times indeed."

[Puzzler]

7. Yeah... they're lying...

... people are cutting back, bigtime.

Think California electricity and Enron. That supply manipulation was happening right under everone's noses.

[HughMoran]

8. It's mostly BS, but you also need to consider that the US isn't the major influence on oil now

Yes, we are using less, but China, India and other places, albeit they use far less than us now, have increasing demand that is offsetting out reductions in usage.

[Puzzler]

9. But... the world demand has not doubled in the past year.

.

[HughMoran]

11. Clearly the supply-demand free market model has no fairness or rationality clause

It's clearly out of hand irrational now, but this can't keep up indefininitely unless some people want to be very much hated (or worse :) )

[Terry in Austin]

13. Price has to double to reduce demand by 7%

It's the http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3323649&mesg_id=3325448">price elasticity of oil. Oil and gas are very inelastic.

[Hannah Bell]

18. in 2006, world demand increased less than 1%. 0.7% to be exact.

2005 = 1.4%.

2007 = 1.1%.

not big increases, in fact, lower than in the past. 2008 would seem to be slow so far, us demand down ~3-4% & the us = 1/4 of world consumption.

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2007/STAGING/local_assets/downloads/pdf/statistical_review_of_world_energy_full_report_2007.pdf

[Canuckistanian]

10. "Oil Prices Rose Today Due To....."

1. Chinese auto sales are up.
2. Nigerian terrorists made an unspecified threat to a pipeline.
3. Demand is up sharply in Albania
4. Sheer fantasy
5. Any of the above

[DemoTex]

15. Much more surprising was this:

The sun rose this morning in the east.

[Elwood P Dowd]

17. Oil prices rose today thanks to a criminal named Phil Gramm

and his Enron whore for a wife.

[Kip Humphrey]

19. Show me the gas lines... Its not a supply problem; its a declining dollar & speculation problem.